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U.S. researchers face new restrictions on publishing with foreign collaborators

https://www.science.org/content/article/u-s-researchers-face-new-restrictions-publishing-foreign-collaborators
63•ceejayoz•1h ago

Comments

BeetleB•41m ago
This could be understandable if some rationale was provided, but it's worse than that:

> Neither agency has publicly issued new formal guidance describing these requirements. Instead, officials are informing grantees individually, leaving researchers confused and concerned.

They've not even made it official. They're just randomly flagging.

munk-a•35m ago
Unclear arbitrary rules are the best way to rapidly induce a chilling effect.

If the enemy is the science happening then a lack of clarity is a highly effective tactic.

platinumrad•29m ago
I genuinely don't understand how the titans of industry who support the Republican party don't understand that science is the foundation on which their entire fortunes are built.
groundzeros2015•27m ago
Because science is an abstraction for ann incredibly wide range of human activity some of which benefits industrial applications and some that doesn’t.
watwut•24m ago
They already have that fortune. So, they dont care and dont have to care. Moreover, someone else using science to create fortune is just another competitor and a threat to said fortune.
jmalicki•23m ago
It benefited them in the past, that allowed them to build up their fortunes. Bill Gates, for example, is now a big holder of farmland. Science allows others to build up fortunes that challenge theirs, and hurts the stasis in which they become gilded aristocracy.

Lowering their taxes while burning everything to the ground benefits them now.

dekhn•15m ago
I imagine some of them think that the industrial sector could replace academic sector for foundational scientific researcher ("the free market solves all known problems"). I imagine others believe we are headed for a huge crash that affects the whole world, in a way that having a large academic scientific establishment will not help. Just go live in a bunker in NZ until society rebuilds itself, or whatever (Altman). I suspect a few of the folks are just looney, and don't think rationally (Thiel).
linguae•5m ago
In my opinion, it’s been a problem for a long time. Sure, the titans of industry are very interested in the profitable applications of science, but they are generally less interested in investing in science, let alone the science itself. Science is seen as a cost center, and research is inherently risky. Even in the glory days of Bell Labs and Xerox PARC, both were backed by monopolies (the Bell System was the phone monopoly, and Xerox had patents in xerography). The former was subject to special government rules due to AT&T’s constant anti-trust troubles, and the latter’s culture was heavily influenced by ARPA due to ex-ARPA people like Bob Taylor.

I am reminded by this quote from an email exchange between Bret Taylor and Alan Kay, published in 2017:

“As I pointed out in a previous email, Engelbart couldn't get funding from the very people who made fortunes from his inventions.

“It strikes me that many of the tech billionaires have already gotten their "upside" many times over from people like Engelbart and other researchers who were supported by ARPA, Parc, ONR, etc. Why would they insist on more upside, and that their money should be an "investment"? That isn't how the great inventions and fundamental technologies were created that eventually gave rise to the wealth that they tapped into after the fact.

“It would be really worth the while of people who do want to make money -- they think in terms of millions and billions -- to understand how the trillions -- those 3 and 4 extra zeros came about that they have tapped into. And to support that process.”

https://worrydream.com/2017-12-30-alan/

The titans of industry not understanding the importance of science beyond its profitable applications doesn’t surprise me at all.

epistasis•5m ago
Their fortunes are already built. They have shifted into defensive posture. They don't care about enabling more people to do discovery, that actually puts their position at great risk of disruption. What they want is to have very little innovation, and be able to capture the innovation that squeaks through.
epistasis•6m ago
This is a very common thing for corrupt governments. No rules are clear, so that those at the top can dictate whatever they want whenever they want. Which means that the only safe route is to always be on very very good terms with leadership.

Very sad to see the US fall away from the rule of law, into kleptocracy.

See also the way that grants are now being distributed at NCI and NSF. Only very large grants for many many years, to reward those who are in the favored status, and kill those who are disfavored. Decision making is random and capricious, just be sure to bribe those at the top with whatever favors you can.

mnky9800n•40m ago
I wonder when the trump administration will ever decide if it wants to Be isolationist or global imperialist.
jolmg•35m ago
They're not mutually exclusive
unethical_ban•22m ago
It's a decent bet that they are truly foolish. I've said this before. If the administration isn't acting as agents of a hostile nation trying to destroy America from within and scuttle its global leadership, they're doing a great job acting like it.

Short of them just turning a nuke on a large city, I can't think of better ways to harm America without fomenting an actual uprising than what they're doing to us today.

jshier•10m ago
Autarky requires imperialism to grab the resources needed to be fully isolationist. So it's really both, until they hit the tipping point to become fully isolated. But this is something else. This is just the anti-science ignorentsia coming together with the xenophobic white supremacists to screw America. They say Trump can't bring people together, but he's done a great job of uniting all the worst people in the country.
kahrl•21m ago
Well, we can't have have the non indoctrinated taking away our freedom. USA USA USA.
Avicebron•18m ago
It's interesting after reading briefly about this, but I think previously NIH funding was more permissive to directly awarding funds to foreign nationals/groups. But interestingly enough, China doesn't do the same for say foreign researchers trying to collaborate with chinese researchers. (Unless you already live there etc etc). So it was indeed asymmetrical.
petcat•16m ago
The article says that these restrictions on research with a "foreign component" have been in place since at least 2003 but have only recently been clarified to include the researchers themselves.

It's actually more surprising to me that NIH and NASA research co-authored by non-Americans was supposedly not requiring scrutiny under the "foreign component" rules before this.

matthewdgreen•6m ago
Many graduate students, faculty and post-docs are foreign citizens. So banning them from conducting research could potentially shut down big research projects. It is not surprising to me that the NIH and other funding agencies didn't want to do this. (It is also unsurprising to me that the current administration would have few qualms about disrupting research: we know they don't care, ask the cancer studies that had to be saved with private Foundation funding last year.)

Before you start throwing disruptive rules at projects, you generally want to know that there is a critical security concern for that specific work. Most research just gets published a few months later, so foreign interests can just read it in a journal and download the dataset.

kittikitti•15m ago
I knew that most research had ties to government funding but it was only recently that I realized the scale of it. Along with the pullback of any government funding remotely resembling DEI, policies like the one described in the article wouldn't decimate research from my previous understanding. In terms of influence, it's now clear to me that the government controls anywhere between 75 to 99% of academic research. I feel foolish for believing all the details in subsequent papers from the research about why their work is necessary or important. It turns out, all of it is because the government requested it and really nothing else.
WaitWaitWha•8m ago
Can we take a step back and review the article and the underlying information? I am very much against any arbitrary and often unnecessary government interference. I also publish.

Lot's of weasel words.

This is not unprecedented. Restrictions tied to foreign collaboration are not new, NIH has done this as far back as 2018 if I recall. Yes, foreign research restrictions have escalated recently.

We have no official statement for either agencies. Collaborating on sensitive or classified material with identified FOCI coauthors is and always have been highly scrutinized activity. Title 32 CFR 117.11 is old. It goes back as far as DoD 5220.22-M in the '90s.

NISPM-33 Office of Science and Technology Policy efforts have been around since 2018 too or so (i am sooo old :/).

This appears to be a continuation of escalation of research-security, rather than a wholly unprecedented break from prior policy.

Why Japanese companies do so many different things

https://davidoks.blog/p/why-japanese-companies-do-so-many
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U.S. researchers face new restrictions on publishing with foreign collaborators

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