Geopolitics threatens science and societal progress

International cooperation and collaboration is the backbone of modern science.

It’s key to solving new and enduring problems in Japan and throughout the world. It ensures that Japan — like most countries — stays on the leading edge of innovation, honing the tools and capabilities it needs to maintain a vibrant and dynamic society and economy.

And, of course, that collaboration is now threatened by the deepening tensions that define international relations. It is precisely the applications of that research and their potential impacts that have prompted governments to more closely scrutinize, and subsequently restrict, scientific cooperation.

The biggest challenge then today for researchers, the institutions they labor at and the governments that oversee that work, is finding the right balance between promoting and protecting science. It’s a work in progress and the effort doesn’t seem to be making anyone happy.

Collaboration is the new norm in science. In a 2023 paper, Norwegian researchers Dag Aksnes and Gunnar Sivertsen found that the share of publications worldwide representing international collaboration expanded from 4.7% in 1980 to 25.7% in 2021. Within specific countries, the proportion of such publications ranged from less than 30% to more than 90%. The president of the Australian Academy of Sciences noted last year that 90% of the top 50 cited papers from Australian authors in the Web of Science (from 2013–2023) were co-authored with overseas collaborators, and 80% of Australian Research Council Discovery projects in STEM fields awarded in 2022 involved international collaborations.

In this world, the prospect of greater controls or reduced international cooperation can only be damaging. Every accounting of U.S. primacy in science and technology starts by acknowledging that it is the product of an openness to foreign researchers that attracted the best talent in the world.

The competition for top-tier talent has intensified as other nations have closed the gap in basic capabilities and, perhaps most important, have the resources to attract and retain those researchers. Intellectual capital is now a global commodity and an increasing number of governments are actively recruiting to acquire it, with promises of prestige, resources, job security and students. We no longer speak of a “brain drain” but rather “brain circulation.”

Fear that a loss of primacy will undermine its national security has prompted the United States to take steps to secure its scientific knowledge more generally. For the past five years, various pieces of national legislation have mandated greater attention to and protection of research at U.S. universities and institutes.

As one of his last acts, then-President Donald Trump issued the National Security Presidential Memorandum-33, which was aimed at “strengthening protections of United States Government-supported Research and Development against foreign government interference and exploitation.” The Biden administration has endorsed that effort. Congress did its part by including mandates for research security in legislation like the CHIPS Act of 2022.

Earlier this month, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) issued a memorandum on Guidelines for Research Security Programs at Covered Institutions. It further explained who — participants in U.S. R&D enterprise receiving federal science and engineering support "in excess of $50 million per year" — had to do what, such as implement programs on cybersecurity, foreign travel security, research security training and export control training to protect their work.

The guidelines are less restrictive than expected, the product of considerable pushback from the scientific community. Earlier this year, the head of OSTP said that public comments on draft guidelines created “considerable pause” and finalizing the requirements became “more complex” than anticipated.

The U.S. isn’t the only government pushing for greater research protection. Earlier this month, Group of Seven science and technology ministers issued a statement that called for “greater awareness ... about the potential risks of foreign interference in research and innovation” and expressed that they are united in taking “effective, proportionate and appropriate risk mitigation measures within our domestic systems to promote trusted research collaboration.”

In February, a G7 working group released a report on best practices for secure and open research that detailed efforts undertaken by member governments. It includes a list of “Principles on Research Security” that begins with the need to balance national and global interests and emphasizes the maintenance of openness.

Anyone reading between the lines of these statements will sense the tension between security-minded policymakers and scientists. That is understandable. Scientists see themselves as pursuing truth, unhindered by ideology or politics. They aren’t speaking Japanese, English or Chinese, but as Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Yasheng Huang argues in a comment endorsing U.S.-China scientific cooperation, “they speak the same language — of mathematics, logic and evidence.”

Even during the heights of the Cold War, there was an understanding that basic research should be unfettered and its results available to all. Applications of that work, especially military ones, were (and are) a different story.

It’s easy to dismiss the growing concern as paranoia. Some of it may be fear mongering. But it’s not unfounded. In their 2019 assessment of “Fundamental Research Security,” the JASONs, an independent group of elite scientists that advises the U.S. government on matters of science and technology (think of the smart Avengers without the superpowers) concluded that foreign influence on U.S. research “through rewards, deception, coercion and theft ... occur to some degree.” They “see a developing situation that appears to be worsening and that represents a threat to our fundamental research enterprise and in the longer run, our economic security and national security.”

In an updated report, released in March of this year, JASONs warned that China’s recent efforts “to preferentially direct fundamental research toward military needs and its decision to restrict the flow of information out of the country may severely limit the benefits of collaborations with research organizations within the PRC.”

Japan isn’t immune to these dilemmas. For some time, Japanese scientists and officials have bemoaned the country’s declining international standing and presence. The 2021 Science, Technology and Innovation Basic Plan noted that “the international status of both the quantity and quality of papers continues to decline,” pointing to a falling number of frequently cited" high-quality" papers — so-called top 1% most highly cited papers; the country’s ranking had fallen from fourth in the 1990s to 12th in 2022.

In the 2023 Diplomatic BlueBook the Foreign Ministry noted that “recently various indicators have given rise to concerns over the decline of Japan’s international presence regarding science and technology capabilities.” In its 2023 report on Benchmarking Scientific Research, the National Institute of Science and Technology Policy warned that Japan's relative position in scientific research continued to decline, prompting the minister of state for science and technology policy, Sanae Takaichi, to speak of “a strong sense of crisis.”

Cognizant of the need to stay on the cutting edge of research, Japan has been eager to engage in as many multilateral projects as possible. It has been especially keen to work with the U.S., its ally and chief security partner. That desire has sensitized Tokyo to U.S. security concerns and has shaped policy in both the public and private sectors.

Washington’s insistence on better information security as a condition of Japan’s participation in projects on new and emerging technologies has contributed to the urgency of many of the recent legislative initiatives in this area. In addition to those new laws and regulations, the Cabinet assessed new risks of international research as part of the Integrated Innovation Strategy Promotion Council in 2021 and created a checklist template for researchers and universities and research institutes in December of that year; that template was revised last year.

All governments struggle to find the right balance between preserving the openness that has been the foundation of leadership in science and protecting the fruits of that work. Too easily, however, the balance has been tipped because of geopolitical animus or simple prejudice.

In 2018, the U.S. Justice Department launched the China Initiative to combat economic espionage. In less than four years, it would end amid charges of racial profiling and discrimination against Chinese Americans. Yet, routine cooperation between the U.S. and China continues to be suspect, denounced and terminated as espionage. After detailing actions designed to hinder joint research, MIT’s Huang concluded that “at a practical level, the era of close and unfettered collaborations between U.S. and Chinese scientists and technologists has come to an end.”

That is a troubling conclusion from a distinguished historian of science. I worry, however, that this is only a beginning. Conversations are being cut off across a wide and expanding range of disciplines and endeavors. It is a trend that denies us not only the potential fruits of those collaborations but also the means to build the confidence that is a prerequisite for genuine problem solving. We all suffer as a result.