Absolutely Right!

Looking at it from outside the US, nothing makes sense except for two possibilities;

1) A vested group (local+foreign engineered) in the US is bent on destroying everything that made the US a scientific/technological powerhouse. The effects will only be known many years in the future when it will be too late to do anything about it.

2) A complete buy-in into AI/AGI possibilities and hence a belief that you don't need human collaborations across the globe. This is a very iffy premise with a low probability.

Science has many other challenges and if you put everything together, the future does look uncertain. Some links;

Papers and patents are becoming less disruptive over time - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34248858

MIT president: Why so many optimistic scientists are losing heart - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48304379

New research shows scientific innovation narrows as scientists age - https://datascience.uchicago.edu/insights/new-research-shows...