A Major blow to Computer Science in the US

If you ever worked as a research assistant in Computer Science departments at American universities, you'd know a lot of research funding comes from DARPA or Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. A lot of CS research projects get funding from DARPA even though their work isn't remotely related to Defense. Still, it pays for a lot of interesting and valuable research.

Now, the defense department is cutting back on the funding[reg req'd] of basic research in CS. Funding will now focus on military projects that have well-defined 'deliverables'. Also, some projects will require all graduate researchers to have US citizenships. This is not surprising given the nature of the research, but you will have to keep in mind some 60% of CS grad students are foreign. Unless some other US agency makes for the shortfall in funding, CS research in the US is likely to suffer.