Why Should Taxpayers Care About Scientific Cooperation?

In “What Happens When the Nuts and Bolts of Science Diplomacy Come Loose?” (Issues, Summer 2025), Cole Donovan argues that the United States uses protective measures, such as export control, rather than promoting meaningful international scientific cooperation. He reasons that instead of addressing the logistical and bureaucratic hurdles to promote sustainable cooperation, government officials settle for short-term, noncommittal “wins.”

It is true that science diplomats are burdened with “finding deliverables” and “wins,” often without any budget to support the deliverable. Frequently, they make lemon water (lacking the sugar for lemonade) out of lemons. This situation places the United States on its back foot, unable and unwilling to meaningfully leverage scientific cooperation as a strategic foreign policy tool. By not addressing the bureaucratic hurdles and deeming it “too difficult,” the United States misses the opportunity to lead in modeling risk-informed cooperation.

Risk is an innate component of scientific cooperation. Risk-informed cooperation acknowledges that national security and intellectual property risks exist, and develops tools to assess and address threats. It is vital that the tools leveraged, whether they fall under the promote or protect framework, do not prevent cooperation but support our ability to openly and securely cooperate.

As Donovon correctly points out, at the crux of the problem is the high cost and lack of predictability in science and technology cooperation. To remain a global competitor, the United States must commit to building strong international scientific alliances, appropriating significant federal funding to international scientific cooperation, and strategically leveraging industry and philanthropy for a multiplier effect. Achieving these goals will remain difficult, however, if scientists and policymakers cannot articulate the benefit of international scientific cooperation to US politicians and taxpayers.

Why should taxpayers care if the United States conducts scientific cooperation with the Republic of Korea or Taiwan? How will cooperation benefit Americans living in Arizona or Indiana? Will it create more training opportunities or jobs? Will it improve the quality of life for everyday people? The short answer is “Yes, but not overnight.” Just examine the projected economic impact of the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company’s facility now under construction in Arizona. It’s projected to result in 6,000 high-tech jobs and tens of thousands of construction and supplier jobs over the next decade.

As a scientist, I understand that scientific cooperation is risky, the outcomes are years on the horizon, and research is expensive. None of these factors equates to a quick win. However, having spent time in the policymaking world, I also know that international scientific cooperation creates jobs for Americans, safeguards our crops, improves our weather forecasting and response systems, and develops lifesaving drugs. The protectionist approach to science diplomacy is easy to sell to political leadership. It demonstrates American strength and safeguards our assets. Promoting international scientific cooperation, however, has national security, intellectual, economic, and societal benefits for the American people too. We must do a better job of telling this story to demonstrate how promote and protect tools work collectively to strengthen the US science and technology ecosystem.

Felicia Fullilove

Cole Donovan makes important points about structural problems that frustrate foreign governments wanting to work with the United States. I’ve witnessed these problems firsthand. While managing science grants at the US Agency for International Development, I regularly saw how difficult it could be to put money behind science diplomacy goals. Common pathologies included limited and inflexible funding, restrictive contracting mechanisms, and varying levels of interest and understanding of science diplomacy by USAID leaders.

These challenges are compounded by restrictions on federal science agencies, and by the limited funding that the State Department has for grants. While State can organize international visits and host meetings, it is not set up to fund large-scale research projects. The National Science Foundation generally does not fund foreign partners, and other science agencies face restrictions on whether and how they fund international partners.

To address these issues, the National Science and Technology Council, in its 2022 Biennial Report to Congress on International Science and Technology Cooperation, proposed the creation of a flexible funding pool that federal agencies could use to support joint science goals, along with a mechanism to fund capacity-strengthening for foreign partners with limited scientific capacity. The latter recommendation was arguably something USAID was already doing, but we had neither the funding nor the contractual flexibility to conduct this work on a large scale. The recent transfer of development and humanitarian functions from USAID to the State Department may enable it to use international research funds more flexibly. However, due to layoffs of State’s grants and contracting experts and elimination of its Office of Science and Technology Cooperation, the department may lack the capacity to effectively use those funds.

Beyond Donovan’s observations, program staff also face challenges making evidence-driven cases for science diplomacy. Due to limited and often inaccessible evidence, it was difficult to convince leaders of the development impact of science funding. While scholars have demonstrated the benefits of international co-publication to scholarly impact, having more quantitative (and ideally causal) evidence on the potential for science cooperation to achieve diplomatic and economic goals would be invaluable.

For example, we need to better understand the extent to which research coinvestment with allies attracts foreign funding and private-sector support and provides diplomatic benefits to the United States. This could entail studying the social return on investment in international research projects and developing ways to quantify and analyze the diplomatic benefits of international research collaboration. Gathering and effectively communicating this evidence would help science diplomats more successfully inform their leadership. In the longer term, more informed leadership may be able to advocate for policies and interagency coordination to effectively fund international science.

Andrew Gerard

Cole Donovan lays out operational challenges in US science diplomacy that impede the nation’s engagement with the global innovation enterprise. Two points merit further comment: the erosion of comparative advantages in US research and development funding and the longstanding imbalance between policies to “promote” and “protect” R&D.

Donovan touches on the importance of predictability in R&D, which is arguably as important as the absolute level of annual funding. Research operates on multiyear cycles. Building infrastructure, recruiting and retaining talent, and planning cutting-edge experiments all require long-term planning. Without predictability, skilled personnel leave, maintenance is deferred, and research ambition is scaled back.

Predictability impacts international collaborations too. If the United States cannot commit to supporting ambitious scientific projects beyond one fiscal year, even on its own soil, why would others invest? So while countries in Asia and Europe, which Donovan raises as models of streamlined scientific collaboration, have their own challenges with coordinating and implementing R&D policies, those that plan on multiyear cycles can better reap the rewards that predictability confers. The United States benefits from a large R&D budget and a responsive annual appropriations process, but persistent budget delays and ongoing uncertainties risk eroding these advantages and US scientific leadership.

Donovan’s other challenge—an increasingly defensive posture focused on blacklisting and export controls over constructive collaboration—deserves particular attention. Here, he alludes to the promote/protect framework, a conceptual model used to shape US innovation policy through the dual goals of promoting innovation by incentivizing new ideas, research, and partnerships and protecting innovation by safeguarding national security and economic advantage. While both approaches are essential for a comprehensive global engagement strategy, they have been unbalanced for years and suffer from a perception of being at odds, rather than interdependent.

The cause of this imbalance is likely multimodal; “protect” efforts tend to be more visible, urgent, and easier to legislate, regulate, and enforce, therein delivering more immediate political returns. In contrast, “promote” work may not always be as fast or urgent and it requires broader coordination across relevant agencies and actors. Moreover, the political returns can be harder to articulate in the short term, and benefits diffused over a longer time horizon. Yet promote is what keeps the global innovation ecosystem vibrant and interconnected; it builds trust, drives scientific progress, and ensures that the United States remains a central and collaborative force in shaping emerging technologies.

The United States can and does pursue ambitious science in thoughtful partnership with the international community. But as Donovan rightly points out, we need to revisit the mechanisms by which we support this ambition. This includes modernizing the policy frameworks that enable international collaboration and rebalancing the nation’s innovation posture to better reflect the mutual reinforcement of promoting and protecting US science.

Esha Mathew