If any country wants to become the world leader in scientific research over the course of around 5 years it would be shockingly cheap and easy to do so

The NIH’s annual budget before these cuts was less than $50B. NSF is about $10B. Spend like $50B on building new facilities across your universities, and start a visa program that’s basically “If you had a research grant cancelled by the US we’ll give you a new lab and fulfill your grant here” and a parallel track for lower level researchers (grad students, techs, etc).

Congratulations, you’ve now become the leading producer of scientific research in the world for like 1% of your national budget. You can probably do it cheaper if you’re China and actually control supplies and manufacturing.

If you’re a small country, pick something specific you want to be the leader on and just do that. Open a new Neuroscience center and offer easy visas to neuroscientists. Shit like that.

The US doesn’t actually spend that much on scientific research, most countries have just neglected it entirely and relied on the US. Scientists love to be courted and a lot of them (especially the lower level ones) care more about doing their research than staying in the United States, and would happily leave if their research got funded.