Editor’s note: This is an opinion article. It reflects a position on current science policy and does not claim neutrality.
Science does not interfere with politics. It would be nice if politics returned the favor.
On July 10, the National Science Foundation announced a new policy that bans virtually all collaborations between the scientists it funds and hundreds of Chinese research institutions and their employees. Effective October 1, the policy uses restricted-entity lists maintained by the Department of Defense and other agencies to prohibit NSF-funded researchers from interacting with employees of leading Chinese universities, national laboratories, and research institutes. Tsinghua University, which recently hired Nobel laureate Omar Yaghi away from UC Berkeley, appears to be the one notable exception.
This is not a measured recalibration of research security. It is a wrecking ball.
The TRUST framework that never was
Just two years ago, NSF’s chief of staff Rebecca Keiser stood before the scientific community and unveiled the TRUST framework, a carefully constructed risk-mitigation approach designed to balance the genuine national security concerns of collaboration with China against the enormous benefits of open science. “We cannot continue to lead the world in science and innovation if we are fixated on achieving zero risk related to research security,” Keiser said then.
Now NSF has abandoned that framework entirely, declaring that risk mitigation for Chinese collaborations “is not sufficient.” The political calculus is clear: in the current climate, a federal agency cannot afford to be seen as anything less than zero-tolerance on China, regardless of the consequences for American science.
The real damage
Let us be precise about what this policy does.
China is the world’s second-largest producer of scientific research by volume and an essential partner in fields ranging from materials science to quantum computing to climate modeling. Chinese researchers co-author tens of thousands of papers with American counterparts each year. Chinese graduate students and postdocs make up a significant fraction of the research workforce in U.S. laboratories. The mutual benefit is not hypothetical, it is the structural reality of contemporary science.
The new NSF policy does not merely restrict sensitive technology transfer. It bans casual conference conversations. It bans co-authorship. It bans the informal exchanges of ideas that are the lifeblood of scientific progress. As Kevin Wozniak of the Council on Governmental Relations noted, “Co-authorship is not necessarily equivalent to collaboration, but NIH calls it a factor,” and this policy is even broader.
Stanford physicist Peter Michelson, who organized a petition signed by hundreds of Stanford faculty against earlier efforts to restrict Chinese collaboration, called the policy “very damaging.” He is understating the case.
A pattern, not an exception
This policy does not exist in isolation. It is the latest, and in many ways the most consequential, step in an accelerating campaign to subordinate scientific decision-making to political ideology.
Earlier this week, we covered the OMB’s proposed rule that would give political appointees direct control over federal research funding, which scientific publications to allow, and which topics are “in the national interest.” The comment period closes July 13, two days from now.
Together, these two policies represent a coherent vision: science is not to be trusted with its own direction. Peer review, international collaboration, and investigator-driven inquiry are to be replaced with political oversight, national security vetting, and ideological alignment.
Denis Simon, former executive vice chancellor of Duke Kunshan University and now at the Quincy Institute, put it plainly: “NSF until now has been very responsible in assessing the pros and cons of any interaction with China. But in the current political climate, that’s no longer a tenable position for a federal agency.”
He expects no significant policy change in response to community pushback. He is likely right.
The irony
Representative John Moolenaar (R-MI), chairman of the Select Committee on China, called the policy “commendable and commonsense.” Moolenaar’s committee will hear testimony from NSF and other agency leaders on July 15.
The word “commonsense” deserves scrutiny here. Is it common sense to sever scientific relationships that produce discoveries, train researchers, and advance knowledge? Is it common sense to abandon a risk-mitigation framework in favor of a blanket prohibition? Is it common sense to tell the world’s second-largest scientific workforce that American laboratories are closed to them, while Chinese laboratories remain open to Americans who choose to go there?
The OMB proposed rule and the proposed Uniform Guidance would go even further, banning collaborations not just with specific Chinese institutions but with anyone from entire “countries of concern,” China, Russia, Iran, North Korea. If enacted, that rule would prohibit Yaghi’s collaboration with Tsinghua as well.
What is being lost
Science is not a national enterprise. It never has been. The discovery of the structure of DNA depended on work from Britain, the United States, and New Zealand. The development of mRNA vaccines drew on Hungarian, German, Turkish, and American researchers. The detection of gravitational waves required a global collaboration of a thousand scientists across dozens of countries.
The United States became the world’s leader in science not by building walls but by building the most open, attractive, and collaborative research system in history. Scientists from every country came here, studied here, stayed here, and contributed to American leadership. That system is now being systematically dismantled in the name of security.
China will continue to do science. Other countries will fill the gaps American researchers leave behind. The question is whether the United States will find itself, a decade from now, in the position the Soviet Union occupied after Lysenko: having lost a generation of scientific talent and leadership to political decisions that seemed prudent at the time.
Katalin Karikó’s warning in the OMB article applies here as well: “Patients don’t care where their medicine comes from.”
Neither does scientific progress.
Sources:
1. Mervis J. “New NSF policy would ban almost all collaborations with Chinese scientists.” Science. 10 Jul 2026. DOI: 10.1126/science.zqtusk2. https://www.science.org/content/article/new-nsf-policy-would-ban-almost-all-collaborations-chinese-scientists
2. Saey TH. “Here’s what happens when you put politicians in charge of science.” Science News. https://www.sciencenews.org/article/omb-politicians-lysenko-science-history