Over the past decade, and especially in the last few months, national-security issues have become considerably more prominent in relations between research universities and the federal government. Those issues, coupled with the emergence of social and ethical questions raised by new technologies, by intensified and often controversial relations between research universities and corporations, and by developments within the universities themselves, have significantly altered the environment in which those of us at research universities operate. In fact, the fundamental values of our institutions -- the freedom to publish and exchange information without governmental restrictions, the opportunity for unfettered association with students and colleagues worldwide -- are under threat.
The most immediate changes stem from heightening concerns among government officials about the transfer of military technologies and capabilities to hostile states, groups, or individuals. That concern is, of course, not new. It has been, to varying degrees, a focus of American foreign policy since efforts to halt the proliferation of nuclear weapons and missiles after World War II. Throughout the cold war, and particularly during the Reagan administration, the government devoted considerable effort to the problem of unwanted transfer of scientific and technological information to the Soviet Union.
Today, however, we face a much larger host of adversaries who are able to use our own technologies in ways that could attack us directly and undermine or deter our military forces. The danger is not limited to “rogue” states or terrorists, but extends to nations like India and Pakistan, whose military efforts, with nuclear weapons now available, could seriously affect American security. China is also viewed as a danger, especially by those who believe it will be the state most likely to challenge American predominance in the future.
The result is an increasing proclivity among government officials to restrict the export of scientific and technological research that can be used for military purposes. That, coupled with the lack of understanding in at least some parts of the government about what is important for research productivity in universities, may encourage more policies that limit the flow of information, interactions with foreign students, and international contacts among scientists.
Research universities have already had to confront such limits in the space sciences because of the rather arcane International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), which applies to all technologies with military applications. In March 1999, Congress shifted the export licensing of commercial satellites from the Department of Commerce to the Department of State, which is responsible for implementing the ITAR and controlling the export of information concerning armaments on the U.S. Munitions List. Two incidents in which commercial satellite manufacturers were accused of giving the Chinese information useful for their ballistic-missile program precipitated the move.
When a project falls under the ITAR, a license is required before information can be shared with foreign nationals, including students. Individuals, universities, or corporations found to have violated the ITAR are subject to criminal penalties, including fines and imprisonment. “Fundamental research” -- defined as basic and applied research, the results of which will be published and disseminated without restriction from government or corporate sponsors -- is excluded from coverage of the ITAR. Yet there are often ambiguities about what meets the criteria, especially when the research relies on technologies that are on the munitions list -- an obvious problem for the space sciences. In addition, with many thousands of applications each year, the process for securing a license can be extremely slow.
In March, after several years of research universities’ strong representations to the White House and lengthy internal agency negotiations, amendments to the ITAR appeared in the Federal Register. Those amendments reassert that fundamental research is excluded from coverage and exempt universities in nations in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and a few allied countries from the licensing requirement. Such changes help those working in the space sciences, since the amendments cover many of America’s leading space collaborators. Yet they create other problems -- such as assuming that universities will be willing to discriminate among foreign students, who come from a much wider range of nations.
Meanwhile, although officials at senior levels in the government have been appreciably more receptive to universities’ difficulties, those at working levels in several agencies have become much more aggressive in their attempts to control information transfer than they were even a decade ago. A vivid example is the proposal under review in the Department of Defense that would require prior authorization for publication of Pentagon-sponsored research, including basic research. Aside from the costs to the productivity of science in the United States if the policy were enacted, all such research would automatically be excluded from the fundamental-research provision of the ITAR, further interfering with relations with foreign students and scientists.
The ITAR situation of the past several years has created considerable unrest in the space-science arena, with many costs: Proposed projects have been delayed; some potential foreign collaborators have decided not to work with Americans; and discussions at several international scientific meetings have been constrained or aborted altogether. In some cases, a climate of fear of possible consequences, or simply of complications in relations with graduate students, has led individual faculty members to withdraw from projects.
All of that predates the events of September 11 and results not only from the belief among government officials that information is reaching undesirable hands, but also from a sense that the United States has to protect its technological lead from all challenges, even when comparable capabilities already exist elsewhere. Those concerns extend far beyond the ITAR. For instance, the Justice Department’s efforts to track and monitor foreign students -- and the apparent public support for those policies -- suggest that the environment for academic freedom of inquiry and information-sharing may be much less open in the future.
That shift should be considered in the broader context of what I call the immutable “bedrock” attributes of research in science and technology, as well as several recent changes in how universities conduct research in such fields. The first attribute is that all technologies have dual uses; they can be used or adapted for civil purposes or for military purposes, for peaceful goals or for destructive goals. In fact, what is most striking today is the extent to which some of the most exciting developments in science exhibit that dual character: Molecular biology and its technological offspring, biotechnology, are prime examples.
Another fundamental attribute of scientific and technological knowledge is that it inevitably spreads. Barriers can delay, but not prevent, its transfer to those who seek it. What is available today in one country’s lab will eventually be available in many other places, with obvious implications for military capabilities.
Not that the effective transfer of knowledge is always easy. For example, the United States can provide radios, automobiles, or missiles to societies that do not have them, but transferring the actual knowledge of how to manufacture, repair, or even maintain those technologies can be difficult. The history of measures to transfer knowledge -- from West to East during the cold war, from multinationals’ subsidiaries to their headquarters, even from the lab to the production line within one building of a company -- demonstrates the difficulty.
In addition, many possible technologies are never developed or don’t survive once they are developed. Harvey Brooks, a professor emeritus of applied physics at Harvard University, has used a biological-evolution metaphor: Which technologies are “selected” depends on the environment, including the political environment, in which their development takes place. In other words, political action can help deter the development of undesirable technological capabilities, as we see in the much smaller number of states that have acquired nuclear weapons than have the ability to do so.
A final bedrock attribute worth singling out is that the most significant applications of a new technology may be far from the goals sought at its creation. A striking example is the application of the knowledge embodied in the transistor to the creation of integrated circuits -- far beyond its original purpose as simply a replacement for the vacuum tube.
A corollary is what can be called the “synergism among technologies": Technologies that come from widely different disciplines -- such as materials science, electronics, and communications -- can interact to produce new capabilities not foreseen within the individual fields alone. For example, the ubiquitous silicon-based chips essential to high-performance computers are dependent on material sciences, lithography, and communications, among others, for their design and manufacture.
Ultimately, we can never be sure where the most significant applications of specific technologies will be found -- nor, in fact, what those technologies will be.
In recent years, those bedrock issues have been overlaid by a significant change in the effects of technological developments that have expanded in size and scale the systems on which society depends. Global networks linking societies and economies have arisen; our international systems of finance and energy, as well as the World Wide Web, are prime illustrations. Dependency means vulnerability, which technology can reduce but not remove.
In addition, the results of the laboratory and their technological applications are more closely related in many fields than they were in the past, especially in the rapid movement of biological knowledge from discovery to application. In parallel, a growing number of technologies, such as biotechnology, are now more science-based than ever before. Both developments have made not only technological but scientific information more directly relevant to potential military applications.
Given all those factors, it is not surprising that the transfer of scientific and technological information to states and others, and the routes by which those transfers can take place, has become a steadily larger presence on the policy agenda. What we saw on September 11 and during the anthrax aftermath vividly demonstrates how any knowledge can be used for destructive purposes and thus be a candidate for restrictive measures. Moreover, it is clear today that the growing technological competence of a larger number of nations -- including many still considered to be “less developed” -- puts them in a position to assimilate even advanced technology if they can gain access to it. The decreasing costs and expanding capabilities of weapons exacerbate the new dangers.
At the same time, however, research universities themselves are changing in ways that will increasingly put them in conflict with national-security measures. The most obvious and relevant development is the internationalization of higher education. As competence in science and technology spreads throughout the world, and as more subjects must be dealt with on a global scale, all major research universities and many other higher-education institutions have established a wide variety of international ties. Those include overseas campuses, research and teaching alliances with universities abroad, and special training programs focused on specific countries, among others. Many institutions have also sought financial support from companies and governments abroad.
For example, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, like most major universities, has large research and teaching alliances with universities in England, Switzerland, Japan, China, and Singapore, among others -- several with government agencies as sponsors. In addition, research universities have developed closer ties with the private sector, both in America and abroad, a trend that also raises national-security issues. What’s more, the multinational character of many American-based companies means that their foreign subsidiaries regularly have direct access to university research.
Finally, growing numbers of foreign students are populating American universities. The Institute of International Education reports that close to 550,000 foreign students are in this country, an increase of about 50 percent in the last 15 years. In several departments at MIT, foreign graduate students are in the majority.
In short, just as the government is moving in one direction -- limiting the sharing of information across national boundaries -- research universities are moving in the opposite direction. They are expanding their international activities, setting up collaborative research programs with foreign scientists and institutions, welcoming more foreign students, developing closer ties with foreign corporations, and jealously guarding their freedom and the open dissemination of information.
A clash seems inevitable.
The government is most likely to challenge the principles guiding university behavior in four areas. The first, the commitment to openness in the research enterprise, is already under attack through the ITAR situation. So far, space science is the primary area involved, but it is almost certainly only a matter of time before physics, biology, and biotechnology are affected. The ITAR, in fact, refers specifically to biological and chemical agents.
We in research universities must work to formulate our views -- perhaps jointly with relevant government agencies -- on what information should be restricted, with the goal of producing guidelines or modified regulations that both sides can live with. A starting point could be the proposition that sensitive information should be classified, or otherwise not subject to restriction. We might also recommend a broader interpretation of fundamental research, one that recognizes that all research is not necessarily published and that brief publication delays for patent purposes should not deny the fundamental-research exclusion.
The second issue likely to arise is the government’s interest in having the universities apply their competence to developing technology to deal with terrorism. Inevitably, some of that research and development might be classified. I doubt if the public would understand a blanket refusal to accept such projects, yet that is exactly the position that should be taken regarding on-campus research. We have been through the problem in the past, at considerable cost to the free flow of ideas. Conducting classified projects at off-campus locations, an accepted practice today at universities that manage defense-related facilities, may be controversial at times, but it avoids creating undesirable barriers among faculty members and students. We need to consider whether that model would work at more universities.
A third problem area is the closer relationships between American and foreign universities or corporations. Those ties could invite greater government scrutiny and attempts to fence off specific areas of research from unfettered access by representatives of those foreign institutions. We should firmly resist the pressure for any such forms of discrimination.
Finally, new policies toward foreign students and scholars are already being formulated by the government, and it may very well attempt to impose restrictions on whether students of certain nationalities can study in specific fields or work on government-sponsored research. The Bush administration is already considering barring international students from fields that have a “direct application to the development and use of weapons of mass destruction.” The government may also require universities to exclude altogether nationals from a wide range of countries, or to discriminate among them according to their country of origin, as the recent amendments to the ITAR require. We must stoutly oppose those steps, so inimical to the essential character of open universities.
During the cold war, research universities argued that the best way to stay ahead technologically of the Soviet Union, the single antagonist, was to play to our proven advantage in open, unfettered research and teaching. Today, in an era when relatively primitive technologies can become deadly weapons, that argument is not self-evident. But it remains valid in light of the many national purposes that a robust scientific and technological enterprise can serve. Even in the security area, many capabilities will require continued technological leadership -- for example, developing technologies of countermeasures, monitoring, interdiction, and protection.
Within that context, we in research universities must clearly define our appropriate role in support of the nation’s security goals. We must also make evident to government officials and to the public why certain restrictions on research in science and technology that may appear reasonable will, in fact, hamper our national security. In short, we must take the lead in proposing how to manage the new challenges and dangers that the United States faces. Universities are resilient, but it still would not be hard to damage the resource they represent, a resource absolutely critical to the security as well as the vitality of our nation.
Eugene B. Skolnikoff is a professor of political science emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the author of The Elusive Transformation: Science, Technology, and the Evolution of International Politics (Princeton University Press, 1993). This article was adapted from his Lewis M. Branscomb lecture at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
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