I'm going to call it malice. Either way the people running the government now are the avowed enemies of functioning institutions. No need to give these freaks the benefit of the doubt.
(See Russ Vought's comments about putting all government workers in trauma just for one and he's head of OMB.)
It's not the regulars at NIH. If anything they are pulling more unofficial overtime than ever before to try to compensate for what is coming from on top and what DOGE destroyed
From the outside, I can see how they want to revamp the institutions with hopes to accelerate timelines, and reduce waste. But it’s also funny because it’s not something that can be achieved in a span of 4 years and without long term goals/objectives/process changes/changing the pipelines/etc.
I’ve mentioned it in the past as well, but everything that US has done in the past looks like as a knee-jerk reaction to China’s achievements. That being said, I sincerely hope they can compete in advancing the tech and research, since competition is good for the world.