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Trumpian Chaos Has Infected the Planet’s Most Remote Research Outpost: Antarctica

“There’s a sense of unease on the station like people have never felt before.”

• Leah FeigerBio

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Coast Guard Cutter Polar Star visited Palmer Station, a USA research station on the Antarctic peninsula on March 3, 2023.U.S. Coast Guard / ZUMA

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This story was originally published by WIRED and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Few agencies have been spared as Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has ripped through the United States federal government. Even in Antarctica, scientists and workers are feeling the impacts—and are terrified for what’s to come.

The United States Antarctic Program (USAP) operates three permanent stations in Antarctica. These remote stations are difficult to get to and difficult to maintain; scattered across the continent, they are built on volcanic hills, polar plateaus, and icy peninsulas.

But to the US, the science has been worth it. At these stations, more than 1,000 people each year come to the continent to live and work. Scientists operate a number of major research projects, studying everything from climate change and rising sea levels to the cosmological makeup and origins of the universe itself. With funding cuts and layoffs looming, Antarctic scientists and experts don’t know if their research will be able to continue, how US stations will be sustained, or what all this might mean for the continent’s delicate geopolitics

“Even brief interruptions will result in people walking away and not coming back,” says Nathan Whitehorn, an associate professor and Antarctic scientist at Michigan State University. “It could easily take decades to rebuild.”

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One form for staffers “asked if you had a preference with which gender you housed with,” a source says. “That’s all been removed.”

The USAP is managed by the National Science Foundation. Last week, a number of NSF program managers staffed on Antarctic projects were fired as part of a wider purge at the agency. The program managers are critical for maintaining communication with the infrastructure and logistics arm of the NSF, and the contractors for the USAP, as well as planning deployment for scientists to the continent, keeping track of the budgets, and funding the maintenance and operations work. “I have no idea what we do without them,” says another Antarctic scientist who has spent time on the continent, who along with several others WIRED granted anonymity due to fears of retaliation.

“Without them, everything stops,” says a scientist whose NSF project manager was fired last week. “I have no idea who I am supposed to report to now or what happens to submitted proposals.”

Scientific research happens at all of the stations. At the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, scientists work on the South Pole Telescope and BICEP telescope, both of which study the cosmic background radiation and the evolution of the universe; IceCube, a cubic-kilometer detector designed to study neutrino physics and high energy emission from astrophysical sources; and the Atmospheric Research Observatory that studies climate science and is run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. (Mass firings have also taken place at the NOAA.)

“The climate science [at the South Pole Station] is super unique,” an Antarctic scientist says. “The site has so little pollution that we call it ‘the cleanest air on Earth,’ and they have been monitoring the ozone layer and CO₂ content in the atmosphere for many decades.”

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Other directives from the Donald Trump administration have directly affected daily life on those stations. “Gender-inclusive terms on housing documents” have been removed from Antarctic staffer forms, a source familiar with the situation at McMurdo Station tells WIRED. “It asked if you had a preference with which gender you housed with,” the source says. “That’s all been removed.”

“The damage caused by gutting the [Antarctic] science budget like this is going to last generations.”

Staffers have already pushed back. “People have been painting waste bins saying “Antarctica is for ALL” in rainbow, people’s email signatures [have] pride additions, [others] keep adding preferred pronouns to emails,” the source says.

“There’s a sense of unease on the station like people have never felt before,” they add. “The job still has to get done, even though people feel like the next shoe can drop at any moment.”

That unease extends to their own job security. “There are some people currently at the South Pole that are worried about losing their jobs any day now,” a source with familiarity of the situation tells WIRED. Workers present at the station aren’t able to physically leave until October, and a midseason firing, or loss of funding, would present a unique set of challenges.

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Sources are also bracing for at least a 50 percent reduction in the NSF’s budget due to DOGE cuts. These cuts are sending Antarctic scientists with assistants and graduate students scrambling. “We didn’t know if we could pay graduate students,” says one scientist. While research is conducted on the continent, scientists bring their findings back to the US to process and analyze. A lot of the funding also operates the science itself: For one project that requires electricity to run detectors, the scientist “was paranoid we would not be able to literally pay bills for an experiment starved for data.” That hasn’t come to fruition yet, but as funding cycles restart in the coming weeks and months, scientists are on tenterhooks.

Sources tell WIRED that Germany, Canada, Spain, and China have already started taking advantage of that uncertainty by recruiting US scientists focused on Antarctica.

“If the South Pole [station] is shut down, it’s basically nearly impossible to bring it back up. Everything will freeze.”

“Foreign countries are actively recruiting my colleagues, and some have already left,” says one Antarctic scientist. “My students are looking at jobs overseas now…people have been coming [to the US] to do science my whole life. Now people are going the other way.”

“Now is a great time to see if anyone wants to jump ship,” another Antarctic scientist says. “I do worry about a brain drain of tenured academics, or students who are shunted out.”

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“The damage caused by gutting the [Antarctic] science budget like this is going to last generations,” says another.

Throughout DOGE’s cuts to the federal government, representatives have said that if something needs to be brought back, it could be. In some cases, reversals have already happened: The US Department of Agriculture said it accidentally fired staffers working on preventing the spread of bird flu and is trying to rehire them.

But in Antarctica, a reversal won’t necessarily work. “One of the really scary things about this is that if the Antarctic program budget is cut, then they’ll very quickly get to the point where they can’t even keep the station open, much less science projects going,” an Antarctic scientist tells WIRED. “If the South Pole [station] is shut down, it’s basically nearly impossible to bring it back up. Everything will freeze and get buried in snow. And some other country will likely immediately take over.

Others share this fear of a station takeover. “Even if science funding is cut back, there is an urgent need for the US to invest in icebreakers and polar airlift capability otherwise at some point the US-managed South Pole station might not be serviceable,” says Klaus Dodds, an Antarctic expert and professor of geopolitics at Royal Holloway University of London.

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Experts are concerned that countries like Russia and China—who have already been eagle-eyed on continental influence—will quickly jostle to fill the power vacuum. “Presumably it would be humiliating for anyone who wishes to promote ‘America First’ to witness China offer to take over the occupation and management of the base at the heart of Antarctica. China is a very determined polar power,” says Dodds.

The political outcome of the US pulling back from its Antarctic research and presence could be dire, sources tell WIRED.

Antarctica isn’t owned by any one country. Instead it’s governed by the Antarctic Treaty System, which protects Antarctica and the scientific research taking place on the continent, and forbids mining and nuclear activity. Some countries, including China and Russia, have indicated that they would be interested in rule changes to the Treaty system, particularly around resource extraction and fishing restrictions. The US, traditionally, has played a key role in championing the treaty: “Many of the leading polar scientists and social scientists are either US citizens and/or have been enriched by contact with US-led programs,” says Dodds.

That leadership role could change quickly. The US also participates in a number of international collaborations involving major Antarctic scientific projects. A US pullback, Whitehorn says, “makes it very hard to regard the US as a reliable partner, so I think there will be a lot less interest in accepting US leadership in such things…The uncertainty will drive people away and sacrifice the leadership the US already has.”

“If the NSF can’t function, or we don’t fund it, projects with long lead times can just die,” another scientist says. “I’m sure international partners would be happy to partner elsewhere. This is what it means to lose US competitiveness.”

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