Critical Issues In The US-China Science And Technology Relationship

>> Frances Hisgen: Thank you so much to our audience for joining us this afternoon. I'm Frances Hisgen. I'm a senior research program manager here at the Hoover Institution. And you're all here for Critical Issues in the US China Science and Technology Relationship, a program hosted by the Hoover Institutions Project on the US China and the world.

And I'm really delighted today to be moderating a panel of distinguished scientists and China scholars to speak to these important issues. I'll begin by introducing our guests on the panel. I'll offer some brief framing remarks. We'll have a discussion among the five of us for about half of the time.

And then as soon as I can, I want to turn to audience questions because I'm sure there will be many to start us off. Zhenan Bao is the K.K Lee Professor of Chemical Engineering at Stanford University. She is known for her work on artificial electronic skin, which has applications in neuroprosthetics, human friendly robots, human machine interfaces, and health monitoring devices.

Sitting next to her is Yasheng Huang, the Epoch Foundation Professor of Global Economics and Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management. And Professor Huang is also serving as the President of the Asian-American Scholar Forum, a non-governmental organization dedicated to promoting open science and protecting the civil rights of Asian-American scientists.

He was further the author of MIT's comprehensive report on the University's engagements with the People's Republic of China. Peter Michelson is the Luke Blossom professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences, as well as Professor of Physics at Stanford University. And for the past 15 years, Professor Michelson's research has been focused on observations of the universe with the Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope, launched by NASA in 2008.

He leads the international collaboration that designed, built, and operates the Large Area Telescope, the primary instrument on Fermi, which includes members from more than 20 nations, including the People's Republic of China. And lastly, sitting next to me, Glenn Tiffert is a Distinguished Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a historian of modern China.

He co-chairs Hoover's program on the US-China and the World and also leads Stanford's participation. In the National Science Foundation's Secure Program, which I'm sure we'll hear a lot about today, a $67 million effort authorized by the Chips and Science act to enhance the security and integrity of the US Research enterprise.

And we've assembled this conversation today at a critical juncture where, to our view, the practice of science is changing in an increasingly complex geopolitical environment. Many great powers, including the United States and China, see Leadership in Science and technology as core to strategic interests and the global scientific landscape has diversified.

The top research partners of the United States are no longer limited to traditional allies and partners in the global North. And I'll say, speaking for myself, that I find that an immensely positive development, but it's also a development that requires new habits of practice and methods of working.

It's further clear that no country has a monopoly on scientific talent or innovative ideas, and that the United States cannot rest on the comforting assumption that our past leadership in this realm and our historic investments and our old methods of practice guarantee future success. At the same time, American scientific ecosystems face and have faced legitimate concerns about misappropriation of research technology transfer, violations of research integrity, and malign foreign government interference.

Past attempts to grapple with this issue, including attempts that have leaned heavily on a law enforcement side, may have been counterproductive and left us in a place that we don't want to be in. And I'll just brief gesture to what happened late on Tuesday. The recent election I think has left us in a little bit of policy uncertainty around these issues, but I do believe that the research sector right now has a robust chance to build an affirmative vision for tackling these issues as a community.

And in this conversation today, the panel will be touching on core issues including thorny topics like the US China science and technology agreement, the utility of concepts like fundamental research, dual use, NSD189, the urgent need to both promote and protect science, and as well a topic that is core to my own research here at Hoover.

Doing this in a way that rejects discrimination and stigmatization in particular of Chinese and Chinese American students and scholars. And so I wanna open this up with our working scientists. First to Zhenan and then to Peter. Could you give us a ground level view of how you see the current environment?

What is it like right now to practice in your field? How's the environment for international collaboration and how have you been impacted by research security policies?

>> Zhenan Bao: Maybe I'll start. First, thanks everyone for joining. I think this is a really important topic, not only affect just Chinese born or Chinese-American scientists, but I think this topic will really impact the capability of science and technology development in the US for the long run.

Maybe to give a little bit of context about myself, I came to the United States when I was 19 years old. I've been here for almost 30 years, became a citizen right after PhD and voted immediately after I became a citizen and to enjoy the rights of voting.

Really. I feel that I myself is example of the openness of the US culture and the immigration culture to provide opportunity for everyone comes to this country with nothing can do anything they want. So the current situation or I think the climate I would summarize in a few words.

First I think it's confusion confusion about what are exactly the rules for engagement, for collaboration, what's allowed, what's not allowed. The confusion mainly comes from, previously, there were a lot of things allowed then suddenly they became even illegal or people, scientists were charged and then even put in jail, some wrongfully charged.

And then also the rules for disclosure changes all the time, so it was very confusing for scientists as for what to report or what do I put in my current and pending. And if I forget something, then am I going to be charged? So that confusion of course, leads to a lot of stress.

Not only the stress of just reporting, but I have colleagues and also even graduate students being visited by FBI unannounced. Now, we have learned what are the procedures to handle this situation. But a few years ago, nobody knew that this could happen. And even more recently, I think there were or I heard examples of students born in the US but they were descendant of Chinese, but they were born here and visited by FBI.

They had no idea why, that was the case and what they should do as a result. So there are kind of the environment also, there is kind of hostile environment. There were colleagues who walk around campus and people would say, go back to your country. But we have been here for just as long as anyone else, and we are just as US Citizen as everybody else.

Sorry, I was very angry when I hear that.

>> Zhenan Bao: I think that's probably enough.

>> Frances Hisgen: Thank you very much Shannon. So now I want to bring Peter in on this to give us your perspective.

>> Peter F. Michelson: Well, thank you. So, the impact on myself and my research, I actually have to say, has been minimal.

But I see what happens to my colleagues, particularly those who are of Chinese origin or who grew up in this country even. And I think there's, some of the practices and programs that government put in place, the China Initiative being the primary one, just did incredible damage, and we have not recovered from that, I think.

And Shannon mentioned this about the rules are not always clear, and they're still not clear, they're still evolving. And I think I would characterize my, that's had an impact on me, and I would refer to it as compliance fatigue. There's just been a growth of bureaucracy to implement much of this, and I think that puts additional burden, let alone just the risk of not being in compliance.

And I think that's something that doesn't get that much attenten,and I still have concerns about that. That just keeps growing. So that's had an impact not only on my colleagues, but on me. Well, I think I've said enough.

>> Frances Hisgen: Thanks Peter, I think we'll definitely come back to some of these things.

Compliance burden, the China Initiative, recovery from the China Initiative. But I want to turn now to Yasheng, who I think can speak to this from two perspectives. One, as a scholar of the PRC, a social scientist of the PRC, and two, to give us a vision of what he's learned from your work at AASF.

>> Yasheng Huang: Yeah, thank you, Francis and Glenn, for organizing this discussion, it is incredibly important topic, both for the country as well as for the individuals and practicing scientists involved. In terms of what we have seen since the China Initiative, which was put in place in 2018, is this incredible climate of fear exclusively among the Chinese American scientific community.

And our organization did a survey in 2021, it was publishing Penis in 2023 that shows that more than 70, nearly 80% of the Chinese American faculty expressed fear about working and basically doing science in the United States. And the other finding is really remarkable, which is that even the freshly minted PhDs, many of them said to our survey that they do not consider US as the first, the place of choice for doing their work, scientific work.

So this finding is extremely important because these are young people, they represent future of the science. And we are losing the future of science when these people don't want to stay. And the other is that the very fact that these are freshly minted PhD and yet they have expressed this fear, means that the psychological effect is incredible, right?

So these are not what we call PiS, these are not principal investigators. By definition, they don't have a history of applying to grants from the federal agencies and they don't have the complicated relationships as compared with maybe their advisors and established professors. And yet they don't consider us as their choice, first choice.

Other data show that US has been losing scientific talents to Europe, to China, the net. So there are people coming in, but there are more people leaving, so the net losses are quite substantial. The other thing that we have found both in our survey and in our conversations, is that the compliance burdens are such that and the fear is such that many scientists decide not to apply for federal grants.

Just think through the implication of that decision. The truly breakthrough scientific discoveries are supported by the federal government. You can what is known in economics as a private science, there is private science, but private science has many conditions attached. Some of it is proprietary rather than for public.

So, the private science is not able to replace public funding of scientific research. So if more and more people are gravitating toward private science, away from public science, we're losing the public nature of the entire scientific enterprise. So let me just close with one more observation. There has been research by political scientists and economists that have shown systematically, the impact of China Initiative on the productivity of American scientists.

There's a paper which I reviewed for peanuts that shows that after the China Initiative was initiated, there was a loss of something between the age to 11% of the productivity on the part of life scientists in the United States. And the laws of productivity is especially prominent among the most productive scientists, right?

So let me end with a larger observation. We can say we are protecting national security and all of that. One national security that we are failing to protect is the future of science, which is going to produce benefits, not just for the Americans, but for the entire humankind in the future.

If there are drugs that fail to be discovered, that is a cost of this particular approach. We hope to have more conversations so more people will know that there are substantial damages with the kind of a law and this legal approach, criminalization approach.

>> Frances Hisgen: Thank you very much for that context, Yasheng.

I wanna turn to Glenn now and ask Glenn to reflect on a couple threads that have been put on the table, both by Peter Yasheng and Zhenan. Which is, Glenn, it's clear that we have challenges when it comes to talent promotion, when it comes to pipelines, when it comes to the promote side of science.

And I know that some of your research at Hoover has attempted to speak to these. So it'd be great if you could offer reflections on that for our audience today.

>> Glenn Tiffert: Sure, thank you, Francis. First, I wanna say thank you very much to our guests because it's critical to have these multi-stakeholder perspectives in this conversation.

If there's one thing that's been apparent in the way that this field is developed and the policy level decisions that have been made in the last several years, it's that too often people are not speaking to one another, they're speaking past one another about these topics. And so it's critical to have, I think, the perspectives on the table so that we can move forward together.

I'm really conscious that I occupy a very different position in this panel. I'm neither a scientist nor of Chinese origin. I came to this field really as a subject of empirical study because it was affecting the research that I do, not on the US side, but on the Chinese side about 15 years ago.

I began seeing the conditions of research changing, affecting the choices that were made, affecting the safety of scholars, and students, and so forth. So I became very interested in the subject of how do we bridge the kind of chasm that has progressively opened up over the last 15 years between the US and China with regard to the conduct of research.

Not just in the sciences, but also the social sciences and humanities. But it is clear to Francis's question that the things and decisions that we do and adopt to ensure that we conduct research that's consistent with our interests and values that we protect the research that we do is only valuable if we promote it.

Promote research as well, because the research, the future of the country, the future of the US Economy, the advancement of the frontiers of knowledge, the solving of global problems is contingent on our ability to continue to execute science at an extremely high level. And only then do we have anything that is worth protecting and is worth sharing.

So this is, I think, what we need to especially pay attention to in the years going forward. As someone recently said in the CHIPS and Science act, which funded the Secure program that I'm participating in, Congress forgot the science part. And so, there's a lot of money authorized that was not appropriated.

We need to reinvest in our science ecosystem to ensure that fundamental research is well funded so that scientists have the resources that they need. We are no longer building big science infrastructure, which brings global collaboration to the United States and keeps the United States as a center of international scientific activity.

We are no longer funding the students at a level that they can actually survive as students on the postdoc wages that they get. The administrative burdens are growing. And in particular, we need to solve the visa and immigration problem as well, simply from a national interest perspective, let alone values.

If we are training the world's people and not retaining that talent, but shipping it back out of the country, that does not help the United States. And so we need a multidimensional approach to this problem to ensure that the US Science ecosystem remains healthy, that it grows, that it is vibrant, that it continues to execute and build on the history of immense productivity that it has, rather than coast on it.

And so we have to attack this from a variety of angles, really, and do that in concert with the best talent from around the world, bring them to our shores, find ways to collaborate with them, and not simply to build walls. I think that would be a tremendous mistake.

>> Frances Hisgen: There's the risk of building walls, there's the risk of insufficiently promoting science in this country. But there are also real risks to national security and economic security from malign international partners or from behavior from international partners that is malign. And so I wanna ensure that that's put on the table because I think it's crucial to today's conversation.

I saw Yasheng nodding on this, and I know that in your Nature article and in the MIT China Report, you've written in great detail about what you see are some of the risks, and I wonder if you would comment on that for us.

>> Yasheng Huang: Yeah, so I think we shouldn't be naive about the geopolitical complexities and the challenges from China.

And I understand Xi Jinping China is a different country as compared with China before. So I think it's not wrong to revise the policy and to take it seriously the threat from, not just from China, but from other countries due to some of the leakages. But just before I get to the nature of the challenges, I just want to mention that as Zhenan pointed out, before roughly 2017, 2018, universities and the US federal government were encouraging the faculty to engage with China, right?

So the rules were not clear because it was not viewed as important to make it very clear what you can do, what you cannot do, because the overall collaboration was supported by the US Government. Now the situations have changed in China and possibly in the US, and therefore, policies should also change.

But we shouldn't go retroactively to go after the faculty, and the scientists, and others who collaborated with their Chinese colleagues under the previous policy regime, right? So the basic principle of rule of law is that you don't invoke a law to punish people before the law was established.

So I think that should be a basic operating principle. And going forward, then, we have hopefully more clear rules and disclosure requirements and things like that. In terms of the nature of the threat, China has always been a very strong technological power, and the emphasis on science and technology has always been among the top Parity of the Chinese government, but I will say, before Xi Jinping, not that effort was not directed toward for geopolitical purposes, and for it didn't really factor in terms of the geopolitical relationship between China and the West.

Now it's a bigger factor, in 2017, there was a central government commission that explicitly combines technology with military applications. So even without the commission, you could still do the integration, but the commission puts that integration at one of the highest government priorities. And the commission is personally headed by the president of the country, so you can't say it's low priority.

So definitely there's that, so we need to think about the ways to deal with that particular configuration of challenges. And I want to be very clear, it is not an easy challenge to deal with, it's very complex, it's very complicated. It probably should case by case, field by field, product by product, and lab by lab, it should operate at that level.

But the approach that we are seeing now on the part of the US Government is at a very aggregate level, right. I have a friend who is a conductor of an orchestra, and he has invited some Chinese musicians, and one of the musicians from China wanted to use AI to generate music.

And he was stopped at the border and he couldn't come to the US to perform his music because he has AI in his musical creativity. And so, I mean, do we want to go that far, right, and quantum, right, that's another area. So if I see effort, serious effort on the part of the US Government to convene panels of scientists, panels of technologists, panels of people like Glenn, panel of geopolitical thinkers to think through these issues and then issue guidelines and policy.

Then I have more confidence in getting this issue, right, one of the difficulties is that science is a very difficult subject matter. And I knew personally mostly on the more humble side, and so it's a very difficult subject matter. And now you are putting the burden on the Justice Department to enforce this severance of collaboration between China and the United States.

They don't know science, and they are not in a position to know it, they are not trained as scientists. So what do they use, they use racial profiling, right. If you just assume the best on the part of the Justice Department, they don't know science, then they have to use something, right.

Then the racial features, racial backgrounds become the natural deciding factor, right. Some people will go further, they say they purposely go after the Chinese, I think it's more because they don't know science. But then they observe Chinese scientists, Chinese American scientists, then they go after them, right. That has all sorts of implications for civil rights, for our values for democracy, and in addition to the damage on science and technology.

>> Frances Hisgen: I want to throw it to Glenn now to talk about the Secure Initiative funded by the National Science foundation. Because spoiler alert, much of what Yasheng, you just described about wanting a targeted approach, a field specific approach, a data driven approach to operate from a stronger posture of knowledge is I think, at the core of that program, Glenn.

>> Glenn Tiffert: Thank you, Yashung, Well, first let me say it's a great honor to be able to partner with you personally, but also ASF as we try to get this balance right. And it's a hard problem to solve, not only just empirically as a subject of study, but also because of decisions that have been made in the last several years and choices, unfortunate choices that were made.

There's a lot of pain and mistrust to overcome that. We have to work very hard to earn back from the scientific community, from the Asian American community, to be a trusted partner as we work together to try to get this right. Partly for that reason, I think the NSF was extremely wise in turning to a group of non governmental entities to try to take this as a community building approach and a subject of serious empirical research.

So that we could begin to solve the problem for ourselves and do better to devise solutions that made sense to academics and researchers from a variety of disciplines. Each discipline will have its own culture, its own conventions, what works in AI doesn't necessarily work in high energy physics, which is massively collaborative.

And then there are other fields like computational biology which have different practices. You really have to get this right in a way that speaks to the discrete experiences of doing different subfields and different disciplines and practices, from medicine to computer science to engineering. And so it's critical to have all of those voices represented, the Secure program has two components.

It has the Secure center which will be focused on really establishing a mechanism for the community to sit there and co- generate solutions that make sense for them. That respect the diversity of institutional governance conventions that are operative across different universities and small and medium sized businesses to find solutions that work for all of them and to build trust and products and best practices that make sense for them.

That is being led by the University of Washington and involves a large number of institutions, Francis and I are also on the team. And then the second pillar is secure analytics and this is really the data science, the really granular. Let's figure out exactly where the risk is and isn't in international research, and this is not looking at any one particular country.

Because it is critical that as the United States goes out and does science on a more global basis and reaches beyond its traditional research partners. Which have been largely from the world of liberal democratic nations that in many respects resemble our own practices, our own conventions, our own systems, ideologies.

As we go out to the larger world, as we must, we need tools to help us figure out how to do this safely in ways that are consistent with our values and national interests. And so we need to develop data sets, methodologies that can go down to the level of the institution, down to the lab, the subfield of science, the individual.

To help researchers keep the academic freedom that they enjoy, but give them the information that they need to make better decisions about what a risk and opportunity calculus looks like. Because every engagement with a partner, no matter whether it's a trusted partner or a new partner who has yet to earn trust, involves a kind of opportunity cost, benefit, opportunity risk, trade off.

That's just life, what we need right now is the data to help people make those decisions in a better way, and we have not given them that data. So they've been operating in the dark and then being liable for the consequences of that. And there was a time a few years ago where suddenly our policymakers woke up in a panic that actually.

Actually, long simmering but neglected problems had finally reached a point where they felt that they needed to act, but they were acting not necessarily from a position of knowledge. And so they adopted policies and overcorrected and caused harm, we don't want to do that. And so I think now it's step back, let's build the knowledge, let's build the data so that we can make the right choices.

And that is exactly what the Secure Program is aiming to do. And we're going to do it to ensure that we get the risk right, but we also get the science right. And for that, partners and the scientific community are essential, because I understand certain things about China.

I'm not a quantum scientist, I'm not a computational biologist, but I need to know who is so that I can turn to them and say, help me be smart about this. So that's part of what this panel, what this series of meetings that we're building is about. So that science is too important to leave to the politicians, but it is also true that the politics is too important to leave to the scientists.

And so we've gotta bring everyone together to solve this.

>> Frances Hisgen: I wanna turn now then to the chemical engineer and the physicist on the panel and say, as Glenn and Yasheng have laid out, we're in a rapidly changing policy environment. We're in a space where new initiatives like the Secure Program are nascent and where those who are running them are actively looking for feedback and suggestions and advice from the scientific community about how to overcome some of the problems that we've laid out and how to maybe move in a positive direction.

So, Zhenan and Peter, you've got two of the Secure Program people at the table. I count at least a dozen of them online. What would you say?

>> Zhenan Bao: Well, first, I think this is great to have such a program to understand the situation and design some rules and guidance.

I think, actually, while you were talking, and then I started thinking, actually, for academics, collaboration is something actually takes a lot of effort. And funding agencies in the past 20 years have been trying to promote people to collaborate so that we can do better science. It's not that we're collaborating with another country just for the sake of collaboration, but rather it's because when we collaborate, we can do better work.

We actually spend more time and more effort and try to understand each other in order to collaborate. So I think that seemed to maybe have been lost somehow in kind of just thinking about our policy and what we need to set to set the wars between countries. But actually the reason for collaboration is really to do better science and also when thinking about which areas to set, certain rules and regulations.

The other thing I want to point out is us is leading many fields, but we are not the best in all fields. So we are also learning from other countries, from our colleagues. So that's why we are collaborating. So this kind of interaction is really important. And while we set up certain guidelines, also I think it's important for us to think about, especially in areas.

So maybe us is not the leading player. How do we help us to collaborate, even if the area may have security concerns, but how do we help us to be the leader in the area?

>> Frances Hisgen: Thank you for that, Zhenan, Peter.

>> Peter F. Michelson: Well, thanks, so I think, first of all, just thank Glenn for the work you're doing and Francis on this secure analysis.

I think it's actually important. My main concern about it is it'll be more bureaucracy, but you're aware of that.

>> Peter F. Michelson: But I do think getting feedback and interacting with the scientific community at the people actually engaged in international research is incredibly important. And I just reiterate what Zhenan said, my own experience with collaboration.

The reason you collaborate is you get to know somebody. And I'm talking about a scale that's sort of peer to peer, maybe somewhat larger, rather than thinking institutional to institutional or nation to nation. And I realize that's in the background, but scientists typically wanna collaborate with people, that there's a benefit and the benefit should be mutual.

And I think developing an understanding of what the goals of the research are, and there's shared goals and an understanding and an agreement. Sometimes it's informal, but depending on the scale, it may have to be more formal. And I think that's something that scientists have to really be engaged in and including with scientists from China, from anywhere.

And that's something I've had some experience with, growing a large international collaboration. And I think that thread shouldn't be lost. I think it's that personal trust that gets developed that's incredibly important. And I don't know how you factor that into something like this secure analysis, but I think developing that kind of trust, even with people who live in a country where geopolitically we don't share the same ideologies, I think it's very important to have those bridges.

>> Glenn Tiffert: So let me address that, Peter, because I think maybe Yasheng and I might share this on this panel, actually. And that is, unlike scientists, the subjects of our study are not portable in the way that they are for you, for example, let's say a wall goes up and it becomes impossible to work with partners from China, and we don't want that.

Let's just say, hypothetically, it is possible to do work in biology, AI physics. Elsewhere, we'd lose a lot, but it is possible. Your identity as a scientist is not at stake, right? But for Yasheng and me, China is not just the site of study, it is the subject of our study, in a way.

And so our identity as historians or political economists and so forth, it is literally impossible for us to do the work that we do. And so, just speaking for myself, it is critical to get this balance right, because we don't want to lose, I think, the importance of having international collaborators on both sides, despite all of the troubles.

We've got to figure out a way to navigate around this and navigate in a smart way. But I think it's valuable and critical for the people who do this work to, I think, come from the perspective of there's so much to be gained and so much to be lost if we don't do it right.

>> Peter F. Michelson: No, I agree with you entirely. In fact, I would say once we start building walls that don't have doors, we're in big trouble. And particularly, with a global power like China.

>> Glenn Tiffert: Yeah.

>> Peter F. Michelson: We absolutely have to be committed to keeping those doors open in a responsible way.

>> Yasheng Huang: So, by the way, my solution to that problem is that I have now begun to do more research on history. And you are moving in the other direction.

>> Frances Hisgen: Talk to me about closed archives one day.

>> Glenn Tiffert: Yes, come on in. You're welcome.

>> Yasheng Huang: Anyway, so then, but I think there's a sort of broader discussion that we also need to have secure.

Those activities are at the very downstream end of this question. At the top end, at the upstream end, I have troubles with a policy orientation that restricts collaboration and restricts funding at the same time and gave tax breaks to rich people and all of that. And so, as you pointed out, the CHIPS and Science act, the science part has not been appropriated in the current budget.Okay The funding for National Science foundation is reduced, is decreased.

Right, so it is remarkable for a political system that restricts collaborations while its own policies are reducing funds available to do scientific research. One thing we know about the evolution of science is that science has become more labor intensive and capital intensive over time. There's a paper that shows that today, if you replicate the Moore's law, you need 17 times as much as scientific manpower as in the 1970s.

So essentially, we need more people to do science and we need more money to do science. It is okay if you cut off the collaborations, if you yourself increase funding of science, if you yourself increase funding of education, both at the basic level, all the way to the tertiary level.

But we're witnessing a government, and that may increase after January 20, the tendency to cut federal spending and undercut the bureaucracies that have been supportive of science. That combination worries me tremendously.

>> Frances Hisgen: I'm going to take moderators privilege to editorialize myself a little bit on this point. And I think it's crucial to think about this in the historical context of the post 2008 financial crisis, when it is clear that many states across this country cut budgets for their flagship universities significantly, which also impacted scientific budgets.

And at the same time, places like the People's Republic of China were investing heavily in talent recruitment programs in funding scientists who may face a gap on one end. And so it seems a simple incentive structure that if I were sitting in Dunan's shoes in 2009 as a chemical engineer in a department that was losing funding, and I got a call from the PRC offering to build me a lab and help me get grad students, that seems like a natural choice to make.

And Yashang is right to point out that those kinds of collaborations were incentivized and celebrated for a long Time before the moment in the 2017, 2018 reach. I see that we have quite a few questions online. I know that the in person audience. This is not a room of people without opinions and without the desire to state them.

So I want to move to that now. So if those could just raise hands. I'll try my best to take down a list of the in person group. But while that percolates, I want to ask an online question first. And that is we have somebody who has asked, who wants to point out that China no longer fosters an open and mutually beneficial academic environment.

The CCP is tightening its control over the administration of Chinese universities. The Data Security Law impacts disclosures of data sets that may be sensitive individually or in the aggregate. The Anti Espionage law can be weaponized or used as a barrier to conduct research on topics deemed as too sensitive in any fields.

Shouldn't this all require a substantial recalibration of our academic engagements or our habits of science? I'll throw that to the panel, whoever wants to weigh in on this one.

>> Glenn Tiffert: I have a view, but I want to defer.

>> Peter F. Michelson: Yeah, I would, I'm very concerned about that and I would say we shouldn't do the same thing.

>> Frances Hisgen: Go on.

>> Glenn Tiffert: Yeah, so I think we, we need to study China as it is and adapt to it as it is. I think the danger is if we remain radically open and treat China the same as we treat our other more open partners. China is not the same as Canada.

China is not the same as Germany. If someday it behaves in ways that are comparable, then we should treat it like them. It's simply behavioral. And so to the extent that, I'll give you an example, recently a paper was published in Cell, which is a major journal in biology, in which the authors said that they would not, as is the standard practice in these publications, submit the data on which their research was based because it was governed by China's data security laws.

And yet the paper was published. Why do we compromise our standards when we wouldn't do that for probably anyone else simply to publish that paper? So I think it is really important for us to be clear and make intentional decisions about how you manage the discrepancy of these two really divergent systems of science.

You can't pretend that they're identical because then I think what you end up doing is sleepwalking into serious problems that, well, then will provoke a crisis. So the key thing is, I think, being honest and then figuring out things, being what they are, how do we make this work?

>> Frances Hisgen: In person. Questions, anybody? Yes, sir. Over there. And if you could briefly introduce yourself before you ask your question.

>> Alex: Citizen, I work for a brokerage industry company and came here on happenstance today. Happy to be here. My name's Alex. I have a question. We're talking about sort of what's happening.

What do we do? Who's getting traction in companies and enterprises. How many people in China want to work on this the right way? What do we know about that? What are we doing to promote those things? Obviously the tech companies here. Stanford, unbelievable. My dad and my wife's dad went to school here.

But we're just talking about stuff. We're not talking about who's succeeding, what are we doing? I mean, companies are succeeding, bureaucracies get in the way. The government today, I mean, I'm an editorializer.

>> Frances Hisgen: I think we'll keep it to the question, but I want to ensure that the panel gets in on this to give us a view.

>> Alex: Thank you.

>> Yasheng Huang: I think we need to draw a sharp line between companies and universities. This discussion is mostly about universities. So there's a fundamental difference between fundamental research, which is open to the public, and the proposal. Prior to research that is undertaken by the companies. That's the prerogative of the companies whether or not they want to collaborate with Chinese companies, Indian companies.

Many of them probably don't want to do that, right? So the issue facing them is actually much more simple as compared with the issue that's facing the university community, right? Because everything that we do, Stanford, is, is the same. We do not undertake classified research. MIT does only in one part of the mit, which is called Lincoln Lab.

And I, as an MIT professor, cannot get into the Lincoln Lab because I don't have security clearance. So the issue here is that how do you treat public knowledge as a source of national security threat, right? So that's the nature of the discussion and we shouldn't confuse that with what's going on the corporate sector.

>> Frances Hisgen: I wanna take moderator's privilege here to ask a question that was triggered by your comment, Yasheng, about public knowledge. I know that many on this panel might have disparate views of the line that we've historically used in the United States to make determinations like this and SDD189, which established the fundamental and open distinction.

That on one side, it's open research and you're free to collaborate with who you want, and on the other side, we have a landscape of export controls, classifications and so on. I throw it to the panel. Do you feel that this is a useful distinction for the environment that we're in right now?

>> Peter F. Michelson: Yes, I think, in fact, NSDD189, which defines fundamental research back from the Reagan administration, I actually think that's a very valuable position. And I also understand why it's challenging and it's become increasingly challenging because of things like dual use of technology and so forth. But I think in the university environment, I think the openness and the welcoming environment that any student admitted, for example, at Stanford, assuming they have a research advisor who agrees.

That student can work on whatever research that advisor is hosting in their lab, independent of their citizenship or national origin. And I think we can't cross that line. Now there are areas, and I've experienced this myself, when you build a satellite, there's all kinds of this stuff to deal with.

It is possible and I think it takes work, but it is possible to put lines around things that are export controlled. And at the same time, the core fundamental research is open to any student. And if you cross that line, it's a little bit fuzzy, but I think it requires judgment on the part of the university and the principal investigator that have to take responsibility for that.

But I think involving students from any background, any part of the world that are talented, they have to learn to collaborate. And I think that is something that's of incredible value to the United States and that's something that universities should take a leadership role in. So I really think we have to, but we also have to recognize some restrictions.

And I think there are policies in place that have to be tuned up, but I wouldn't see any radical change.

>> Zhenan Bao: I also agree with what Peter just said and I think it's important to draw that line. And it has been working pretty well because the rule is very clear.

And there is decision tree that I can go through to determine what's fundamental research, what's export controlled and under what situation fundamental research becomes export controlled? So I think as long as the rule is clear, there's no problem and no problem for engagement.

>> Glenn Tiffert: So this is good because I think we have a divergence of views now.

And that is I share the values that you've articulated. I want clarity and I also want faculty and individual scientists and students to have the freedom to work on whatever topics they feel it's most appropriate and fruitful to work on. I wanna preserve that space that NSD189 has walled off.

I think everyone loves the clarity of a bright line. But I also spend a very large part of my day studying what happens in this protected zone of open and fundamental research that is nonetheless deeply worrying? Because it is really just one or two steps away from applications that are adverse to either our values or our national interests.

And in fact, it is the openness of that space that is exploited by actors who see it as a pantry they can raid without any restrictions put on them. And in order to preserve that, I encourage the academic community, we have this moment now. And the secure program, I think is a gift that actually resources us to step up to take a more active role at the level of the institution and the individual bench scientists.

The PI, to do more in this space, to be good citizens in science, to think beyond just the sort of optimization of research result that they're rewarded for in their careers and say, what are the bigger stakes here? So that I can not just have a compliance mindset.

Here's an export control, short of that, I can kind of do whatever I want with whomever I want is not good enough in a world in which the geopolitical considerations are changing. It's not a stable solution and it will invite heavy handed intervention in that open space that we don't want.

So it's incumbent on us to fill that with our solutions and to come up with better ways. And that's partly what secure is about. It's about giving you the data to go, maybe I should do this in a slightly different way, possibly with this partner, but adopt particular mitigation measures so that the choice is, yes, you can do this.

No one's going to say you can't do it. It's not illegal, and we wanna preserve that. So let's make sure you do it safely so people don't say, this is too unsafe to allow you to do it.

>> Frances Hisgen: Peter, do you wanna jump in on this?

>> Peter F. Michelson: Yeah, well, I think, going back to some of the earlier discussion, I think to make that judgment, you said there's some areas that are just two steps away from a dual use that could be harmful.

I think it's important to look at those in a very, very granular way. And I think this is a challenge and this is where the scientific community, quote Yasheng, they can't ignore politics.

>> Glenn Tiffert: Yeah, yeah, that's why we have to do it together, right?

>> Peter F. Michelson: Yeah, no, I think that's right.

But an area where, just an example where I think a term gets used that you use the word quantum in Washington and everybody says national security, quantum information. My God, I think that is just absolutely the political establishment in Washington. I'm not saying people in the executive branch don't understand this, but I don't think very many other people do.

And the scientific community has to be involved in that.

>> Frances Hisgen: I saw Melissa's hand.

>> Speaker 7: Yasheng had a-

>> Frances Hisgen: Yasheng.

>> Yasheng Huang: So very quickly. I think that the difference between Glenn's view and Peter's view is not as big as As probably first appeared. I think the issue is whether or not we still consider fundamental open research as a first principle.

I don't think you would disagree with that, right? So then the issue is there are specific areas that we have to think carefully about restriction and collaborations, right? And then Peter's point is that we have to operate that principle at a very granular level. The analogy that I see is free speech, right?

In a democracy, we protect free speech, but there are situations in which free speech is not protected. You are held liable for free speech if you shout fire in a crowded theater. But that judgment has to be made at a very, very specific activity level rather than at a very high level.

It has to be made by people who understand what the nature of the activity is.

>> Melissa: Questions to the panel, if we flipped it on the other side, if you looked at the PRC government's perspective, and they asked for cooperation in areas that American scientists would not be able to do, how do we find a Venn diagram where we can cooperate?

We don't have a science and tech agreement anymore, so there's no clarity there from the Chinese side. And they were often using that as a blueprint for what they could collaborate with on the US.

>> Yasheng Huang: So it's important to define what collaboration means, right? So there could be Stanford collaborating with a Chinese university.

But another form of collaboration is that Stanford collaborates with Chinese talents at the student level and the postdoc level and at the level of the faculty that have been trained at our institution. That's also a form of collaboration. The danger now is that we are restricting even that form of collaboration.

We are not allowing Chinese students to come, we are denying their visas, and we are turning them away at the border, right? So in terms of institutional collaboration, I think that's case by case, and we should be careful about the concern that you raised.

>> Melissa: And if I may just add to that, so just a little data, empirically speaking, we approve over 90% of the visa applications.

But what I would also say is that there's a self-selection process on the PRC government side. Those are very self-selecting students who are getting through the wickets just to get into the application line. There is a line of PAP guards around every embassy and consulate, US embassy and consulate in China, and they are the first line before those applicants can even get to us.

>> Glenn Tiffert: People's Armed Police.

>> Melissa: Yes, thank you.

>> Frances Hisgen: Melissa, could you introduce yourself to those in the room who don't know you and your background?

>> Melissa: A happy visiting scholar at CSAC who happens to have a government background.

>> Frances Hisgen: Sir, in the Patagonia vest.

>> Kevin Fong: My name is Kevin Fong.

I have a question for I have a practical question. I have a medical company hires probably about 20 Russian scientists in the past. And some of them some of our technology, start another company. And I talked to my lawyer, and then we talk about, discuss about it, we found it's not worth it pursuing it.

Because they probably took away 10% our technology, particularly about 9% of the value in our company. So my question is this, in this exchange, academic technology between China and US, probably we're gonna lose some technology to China? But most of them are created in this country also by the scientists.

So the question is why bother?

>> Yasheng Huang: So I can give you a specific example.

>> Kevin Fong: But this is my example, yeah.

>> Yasheng Huang: Okay.

>> Yasheng Huang: Let me supplement your example with another example.

>> Yasheng Huang: The Chinese EVs now are dominating the world and all of that, right? The battery technology was first invented in the United States.

There's a company called A123, which was a technology pioneered by MIT professor, but we have systematically failed to scale that technology in the United States. A123 was first sold to American companies and automobile companies, and they couldn't scale and develop and deploy that technology. It was sold fair market value to a Chinese company, they scaled the technology.

So in this case, we cannot possibly blame the Chinese for our failure to scale the technology in the first place, right? And the government support is incredibly important, the Inflation Reduction Act is incredibly important, and Chips and Science Act is incredibly important. Let's make sure that the new administration is not going to cancel these legislation.

>> Frances Hisgen: Glenn.

>> Glenn Tiffert: Yashung, I applaud your point because if we focus purely on the science that is done in the university lab, I think we're missing the bigger play here. Because I speak to scientists everywhere who say, I've invented something that potentially has market-changing applications. And I wanna take it out of my lab and I wanna begin building a demonstration manufacturing site, trying to scale up my technology, bring it to market.

I can't do that in the United States. Either I cannot get the capital that is willing to wait it out for me to actually make this thing efficient and start bringing in money, or I can't build it in the United States because we've lost the manufacturing ability, and it can be done cheaply in Asia, particularly China.

And so even if you protect the technology in all kinds of ways, ultimately, if someone wants to convert it into a tangible product, they may have no choice but to manufacture it in China. And then the technology will leak to local competitors and you'll have IP control issues and so forth as well.

And so let's focus again on the technology promotion side about not just funding the fundamental science, but fixing the problems with our capital markets, with our depreciation schedules and investment. With ensuring that permitting goes more quickly, with doing training of the workforce that is required for basic engineering people who can staff and run manufacturing lines.

So that when people invent really cool things in the United States, we can maximize that potential and create jobs and entire industrial ecosystems around that. We need to be thinking in those holistic terms.

>> Frances Hisgen: And I'll add to that, to reap the rewards of process innovation, because manufacturing isn't just about manufacturing.

>> Glenn Tiffert: That's right, they're virtuous cycles, yeah.

>> Frances Hisgen: I had Steve Koonin.

>> Steven Koonin: I'm Steve Koonin, I'm a senior fellow here at Hoover. And over the course of five decades of career, I've seen this issue from many different dimensions as a working academic, scientist, as an academic administrator, government administrator, giving money out in the private sector to labs in China to do some interesting work.

And just one reaction to what I've heard so far, you can Put the burden of determining where the line is on the PI. It's got to come from the funding agency. And one thing we did at Caltech where I was provost for almost a decade, is if there are any controls on the research, it doesn't belong on campus.

And that's a responsibility the sponsored research office or the funders. Now, I don't know if the same thing applies here on Stanford, but it's a pretty simple principle on Brightline.

>> Frances Hisgen: Steve, I might flip that comment into a question. How do we feel about that proposal that it should be up to the funding agencies panel?

>> Zhenan Bao: I completely agree, cuz funding agencies, they are the funders. They should make the rule clear. And also the underground level, when the first time I had to approach a problem of whether a project has asphalt control or whether a student with certain nationality can work on the project.

I felt so relieved that I was told by Stanford that, well, Stanford is not going to accept any contract that has a restriction on the nationality of the student or postdoc working on the project, cuz I do not have to to draw a line or make a wall in my own research group to keep certain things confidential.

I think that's so.

>> Steven Koonin: And there should be a place you can go to ask that question if it's not directly coming from the fund.

>> Zhenan Bao: Right.

>> Frances Hisgen: I'll just note, I know Glenn, you might wanna come in on this. That that is true for Stanford, that is true for MIT, that is true for Caltech.

But there are hundreds of academic institutions across this country that do take classified research that do accept export control restrictions.

>> Glenn Tiffert: I'll say one consequence of that choice, Steve, might be that the world of NSD 189 becomes radically restricted then. And so a great amount of the freedom that PIs currently enjoy to do research in particular lines of inquiry will then be on the wrong side of the fence if you put it in the hands of the funding agencies.

The funding agencies understand the science very well, but I'm not sure that they understand the risk side of the equation either. And so you get sort of the mirror image or the flip side of the problem as if you handed it to the FBI and asked them to make decisions.

So I trust, let's say, DOE Office of Science more than I would trust the FBI. But the government folks or the funders bring one other factor. They understand the broader context. PIs generally don't know what goes on behind the fence, whereas the government folks do or should.

>> Zhenan Bao: And also, another, sorry, another example, there was a project in order to receive the funding I was told to follow certain guidelines, including reporting on visits by malign, maybe visitors from malign country with malign intentions or behavior and I have no idea what that means.

>> Zhenan Bao: What's considered that kind of behavior?

>> Frances Hisgen: The gentleman in the blue jacket.

>> Joel Wong: My name is Joel Wong, I classify myself as a community activist. I'm retiree of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. I want to bring out the case of Tesla. A few years ago, Elon Musk went to China and said, I wanna build a plant in China and China waived all the regulations.

They didn't even want to have 50% of the state, and say, you can do whatever you want. A year later, they build a Tesla factory in Shanghai, and that's very successful. A few months before this, Elon Musk went to see Xi Jinping opened the door, I want to test of my navigation system in China using your satellite.

And Xi Jinping said, yes, you can do that.

>> Frances Hisgen: Sir, do you have a question?

>> Joel Wong: My question is I want to ask any of the panelists to comment on the attitude of China versus the United States. So I wouldn't trust the political judgment by Elon Musk-

>> Yasheng Huang: Just my personal.

>> Yasheng Huang: But one of the things he did was from the very start he made the software of his company open source. And he had the belief that nobody else could produce on the same scale, same sophistications as he would, and he was totally wrong about China, right? The Chinese engineers, Chinese companies are extremely good at scaling.

And this is what we have known for a long, long, long time. Relative to inventions, they're much better at innovations, deployment, and scaling the technologies. And now the Chinese EV companies are catching up and in terms of scaling and they are occupying the markets, not just in China, but also in other countries, right?

So in terms of the regulatory restrictions, one of the key issues that the current administration has discussed is permitting, right? So if you look at the IRA, it has allocated a lot of the investment money to red states. There could be a political calculation behind it, but mostly because those states had a more friendly regulatory regime, right?

So the current administration recognizes that issue, permitting reforms are a very important reform. I mean we can never go the way the Chinese government, that's just too much. And also, they treat Elon Musk very well, they may not treat other entrepreneurs very well. They can be very, very selective.

We cannot possibly replicate the Chinese method.

>> Glenn Tiffert: I'll say the example of Tesla though is instructive. It's particularly so for US policymakers, because Tesla was admitted to China and welcomed to China as a very strategic choice to bring world leading technology to China. To train a workforce to catalyze the development of an indigenous capability in this area so that home grown national champions would then be able to challenge Tesla in the Chinese market and in the world.

US policymakers are taking the opposite decision. We're building walls trying to keep out the world leading technology that's coming from China, because we're afraid of it. Instead, what we should be doing is bringing it in and challenging our firms to beat it, because otherwise, we're gonna lose the global marketplace.

>> Frances Hisgen: In the back and the sport coat.

>> Speaker 12: I wanted to build on Glenn's earlier comment about the need to reinvest in the US innovation ecosystem by asking a question about the role of a talent acquisition strategy for the United States just commented about the need to bring in technology from abroad.

But if the US had an effective immigration strategy of seeking to proactively recruit like the The world's top scientists, including from the PRC, and then make the US a really attractive place for those people to settle, and then also had clarity and efficient kinda compliance systems. Would that benefit technology research in the US?

Or does collaboration really require kind of cross-border research collaboration where US universities are partnering with universities in China, which I think would introduce greater risks of technology leakage? So does talent acquisition also play a role in fostering collaboration in a way that could protect the resulting technology?

>> Glenn Tiffert: I wanna give you all an opportunity, please.

>> Zhenan Bao: Yeah, actually there is a recent National Academy of Science study and report about foreign talent programs and in comparison with the status in US. And the finding is that US is the only country that does not have talent program to actively attract talents from foreign country, while other countries, including China, but many other countries, develop their own talent program to attract people from US to their countries.

So the recommendation is for US to design some level of talent program.

>> Yasheng Huang: I just want to add to that observation. The reason why every other country has a talent program is because US used to be so attractive.

>> Yasheng Huang: So essentially, these countries had to get their act together.

And if they just leave it to the market, they are not going to able to attract one single person, right? So here's the issue, right? Are we willing to destroy this open free research environment to put ourselves in that position where we have to design specific recruitment programs, right?

The beauty of our system is, we actually don't need to do that. And everybody wants to come here.

>> Frances Hisgen: I do, even though I am the moderator, wanna come in on that. Yeah, sure.

>> Frances Hisgen: Which is, yes, it's true that we have been the beneficiary of not needing to have talent programs, of attracting tremendous flows of people over the past several decades.

I would not exist in this chair if the United States were not a beacon for scholars from China. But I wonder though, even without affirmative policy action to put up walls in this country, to clip at the way at the edges of the open system, we also have to think affirmatively about building these kinds of talent acquisition strategies.

Other countries are climbing up economic value chains. It's more and more common for students and scholars in China to stay in their country and not come to the United States for graduate school. India, the United Kingdom, all of these places are the recipients of students staying at home.

Glenn and I were having a conversation with a scientist from Taiwan recently who mentioned that in the 70s and 80s, the entire class of Taida would move to the United States, probably to Stanford or Berkeley. And we've been the beneficiary of that. And I think even in the absence of our changing scientific practice, we have to grapple with an affirmative talent strategy, too.

>> Glenn Tiffert: I'm not prone to sports metaphors, but there was a time where the US men's Olympic basketball team just had to show up and they would win. That's not good enough anymore. They have to play as a team, they have to train, because the world has gotten better.

>> Yasheng Huang: But I think the issue here is, using the economic language, whether that is a complement or substitute, right? I would rather see this as a complement to a free, open research environment rather than as a substitute. China needs these recruitment programs because otherwise nobody will go there, right?

Now, I was offered many, many things in China. I will never go there, no matter how much money they pay me, because I know, first of all, I may not be able to speak freely and I may be in jail by now. So-

>> Yasheng Huang: Through these calculations, right?

So the very reason it's actually a sign of weakness, right? And Singapore used to go out and have a systematic program, precisely because Singapore was not an obvious place for technologists and scientists to go there. They need this program to put the country on the map, right? We are a beacon of democracy, we're a beacon of scientific enterprise, right?

We should preserve that, and then on top of that, design and recruitment program.

>> Speaker 13: Thanks for the very interesting discussion. My question is about the action item. I think the national security issue we're discussing here is like the security check at airport. I think we probably all agree that we need the security check, we're not going to remove it, but also we need a good X-ray machine rather than some machine that just randomly alarms, which is sort of what we have now.

So the question is, what are the concrete action items, especially for the university professor? What can we do to make this mechanism better, to reduce this information barrier so that there is a good balance? We all can feel this is not a barrier for research if I'm just doing all the open fundamental research, but if there's actual research, then there is a mechanism.

So what is the-

>> Frances Hisgen: I wanna supplement that question with one from our online audience, which is complimentary and asks about, if I can rephrase it, action items for other constituencies, federal agencies, university leadership, for who owns what subset of this risk.

>> Glenn Tiffert: I love your question because it's, if I may rephrase it, what can I do to help?

And for every individual researcher who feels that way, please contact us. Because this is exactly what we're building here in the SECURE Program, inviting the community to participate in the construction of solutions and to tell us when we're getting it wrong so that we can preemptively get it right.

This is critical. So it's too big of a question to answer here, and I hope the phone will ring off the hook, but please call us.

>> Frances Hisgen: Peter.

>> Peter F. Michelson: Yeah, something I'd just add that I became aware of several years ago, that I think would contribute to talent recruitment and retention in the United States, is if Congress would pass legislation that had been introduced, I think, the first time about five, six years ago, called the Keep STEM Talent Act.

And it never gets to the finish line. And I think that kind of legislation focused in this area of science and technology to allow immigrants with advanced degrees in particular fields, broadly STEM fields, to get permanent residence in the United States and for their immediate family members as well.

And I think that would do a lot to encourage people who wanna come here to actually come here.

>> Frances Hisgen: That, I think, complements a question that we have from the online audience, which is, we've spoken today about how STEM is important for national security. We've spoken Spoken about funding gaps in the Chips and Science Act funding act funding gaps for our scientific funding agencies, immigration reform.

To the panel, what information or action do you think is needed to effectively move the needle to convince policymakers to make these sorts of changes? And then if I may add on to the online question, what other Say if you were monarch for a day or you know, Senate Majority leader for a day policy action, would you introduce on the table?

>> Yasheng Huang: So we need to match our actions with our rhetoric. If our rhetoric is that Russia, China represent a large looming national security threat, that's the rhetoric many policymakers have, many politicians have. We can debate whether that's accurate rhetoric but nevertheless, many of them have their rhetoric. We need to match that with concrete policy actions.

Compare with the Sputnik moment which galvanized this country to step up on science, mathematics, physics, education, research across the board. As a percentage share of the GDP, federal spending, R&D is multiples of what the federal spending as a percentage share of the GDP is today. And the Congress is still arguing for reducing R&D spending.

Reducing federal spending on National Science Foundation. By the way, the National Science foundation has long ago decided not to fund any social science research except very narrow topics having to do with the United States, right? At the time when the international geopolitics is becoming extremely complex, the economic situation is changing rapidly.

We are both under investing in science and under investing in social science. I just don't get it, right? I mean, maybe I'm just a stupid academic. I just don't understand why our government takes the action that it has and at the same time systematically going after American scientists who did collaborative work with China at the time when the US China relationships were amicable, right?

So I mean, if you put all these pieces together, the picture is pretty, pretty depressing, I would argue.

>> Glenn Tiffert: Okay,

>> Frances Hisgen: you're scribbling furiously there.

>> Glenn Tiffert: If I was monarch for the day.

>> Frances Hisgen: I usually phrase it king for a day, but I'm a big fan of inclusive and gender neutral language.

>> Glenn Tiffert: Exactly. I would try to overcome the incredible coordination and misalignment problems that we have across various stakeholder constituencies in this problem set. We've spoken a lot in this conversation about policies, about rules, about regulations, about government, about funding agencies. Researchers don't like to talk about what they can do, which is why I love that question.

It's always somebody else's problem to fix. Not my responsibility, not my job. So how do we solve those coordination problems and bring people together in a structured way where their perspectives are represented? Presented and we can build solutions that are, you know, Pareto optimal for everybody.

>> Frances Hisgen: Peter Monarch for a day, dictator for a day, President for a day, pick your favorite.

>> Zhenan Bao: Well, yeah, I completely agree. As researcher, we need to do our part and speak up about what are our experiences and what we encounter so that the policymakers can make the rules accordingly. And I also want to say that it's really important that universities being supportive to support their faculty members, their students, because that's locally the environment for everyone.

And having universities on our back, I think it's really important. And that will be something impact whether a colleague decides to leave or stay or students when they think about their next job, whether to go to China or stay in the United States, it's their own personal experience in their environment that helps them to make that decision.

So I also want to ask universities for their support.

>> Yasheng Huang: After the China initiative, the one university that has stepped out to protect its faculty, Professor Gang Chen, arrested by the FBI on totally made up charges, was MIT. And many universities have not come out and defended their faculty.

And we're not talking about minor universities, we're talking about some major universities, major research universities. I think this is problematic. Universities also need to step up.

>> Frances Hisgen: I think we might have time for a couple more questions if there's nothing else from. Please.

>> Speaker 14: I watched this FBI witch hunt going on especially at Berkeley, and it wasn't just the professors, it also impacted the tech transfer office and nobody was equipped to deal with it and they really didn't have the support they needed.

But I wanted to ask, are you also looking at that translation into commercialization process as part of this NSF secure program?

>> Glenn Tiffert: So the mandate for the secure program was defined in the Chips and Science act and it includes small and medium sized businesses. And so very much the translation in particular of research that's done in universities to the startup sector is very much in mission.

And so we understand that that raises separate challenges, right? Many technology transfer offices have traditionally been focused on like who signs the best licensing deal without regard to due diligence on those partners. And so we need to adapt to a more complex geopolitical environment without breaking the system that has worked so well.

And working with those offices to give them the res they need to make the decisions that they need to make is part of what is a big part of what we're going to do in the last couple of minutes here.

>> Frances Hisgen: I wanna end on a positive note and I wanna do a little round robin of our panel.

So in a sentence or two, what gives you hope in this space?

>> Peter F. Michelson: What did I what.

>> Frances Hisgen: What gives you hope in this space?

>> Peter F. Michelson: In the last two days?

>> Peter F. Michelson: Be helpful. I think we're going through a difficult time in this country, and I think we have to keep an eye on the future.

We have to think, how are we going to improve the future in this country for everyone? And I also would say for the world at large, because we are living on a planet that has global challenges, pandemics, climate change and. It's not just about national competition. There's really global problems that we have to address and we should not lose sight of that.

>> Yasheng Huang: So first of all, I thank Hoover Institution for convening this discussion. We need to have more of these discussions rather than less. I don't think I can end on a hopeful note, but let me just point out one difference between what I have seen. The difference between the two parties, right?

The two parties are united on China. There's a bipartisan agreement on China. The difference is that one party believes that climate change is real, public health issues are severe. All these energy transitions are very important. And to do these things you need to collaborate with China. So there's almost an economic and technological and scientific necessity, if you recognize the importance of dealing with these issues.

The other party doesn't even recognize the importance of these issues and therefore they don't recognize the importance and necessity of collaborating in China. So that's one big difference between the two parties. The other difference that I have seen is that yes, they are united on China, but one party has become more careful about balancing civil rights, balancing openness of science with security.

And the other party, I would say, does not think too much about that trade off. In Florida they have passed a law that restricts Chinese students from working in their laboratories in the state universities, right? So that's the emerging scenario that we have to think about as the political change in this country is going to happen.

I mean, I have a lot of worries about that.

>> Zhenan Bao: Well, I think when my students encounter research challenges or problems, I tend to tell them, well, step back and think about what's the purpose of doing research. So here I think I'm hopeful that if we think about what's the reason for us to do science or for collaboration, and I think we all have to go to make our world better, to develop new knowledge and new technology that benefit human.

So I hope that common goal will bring us together. And I'm hopeful that that's the goal for everyone.

>> Glenn Tiffert: I'm the kind of person who kind of, when you encounter adversity, you roll up your shirt sleeves and you get to work. And so I see this as an opportunity for us to manifest the change that we want.

Meetings like this are hopeful. The meetings that come out of this are hopeful. We have a moment and the secure program, I hope will play a large role in this, to begin to make these solutions for ourselves before someone tries to do it for us, because we won't like those solutions.

And so that is also helpful because we've been given an opportunity that we should not squander.

>> Frances Hisgen: Thank you to our online audience and our in person audience for your dedicated attention during this last hour and a half. I hope you'll joining me in giving these fantastic panelists a big hand.