> CERN isn't a US government project and the US doesn't provide funding.

That's news to US taxpayers, which have provided money to CERN projects for decades, including LHC. Half a billion dollars for LHC was considered a lot of money back in 1997 (when US GDP was ~37% the size it was in 2019).

2008: "On Monday, the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation announced that the United States has completed - on budget and ahead of the September 30, 2008 milestone - its contribution to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Under its agreement with CERN, the U.S. contributed $531 million of accelerator components and particle detectors for the LHC."

https://www.aip.org/fyi/2008/us-contribution-lhc-budget-and-...

The US's contributions to CERN are equipment and services rather than money, but indeed they are a big contributor. They are certainly the largest participating country in the LHC by number of scientists.

The US isn't on here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CERN#Member_states_and_budget

Cern is European, the counterpart in the US are fermilab, they are highly knitted together.