According to TheRegister.com, the OECD’s Science, Technology and Innovation Outlook 2025 report reveals that governments prioritizing national security over scientific collaboration are hindering global research and economic development. The report shows R&D support for energy and defense increased sharply by 51% and 17% respectively between 2020-2024, while health-related research declined post-COVID. OECD Secretary-General Mathias Cormann warned that policies must “strike the right balance between security, openness, and innovation,” noting that US-China tensions are the primary driver behind collapsing international cooperation. The analysis indicates seven countries including Australia, UK, and Switzerland depend heavily on international talent, with at least 40% of doctoral graduates coming from abroad—many from China—creating potential talent shortages. This security-first approach risks creating two parallel research ecosystems aligned with Washington and Beijing.
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The Silent Cost of Research Fragmentation
What the OECD report captures but doesn’t fully quantify is the opportunity cost of this research fragmentation. When scientific communities operate in parallel rather than collaboratively, we’re not just slowing progress—we’re duplicating efforts and wasting resources on a global scale. The national security concerns driving these policies are legitimate, but the economic inefficiency of maintaining separate research tracks for technologies like AI and quantum computing could run into hundreds of billions annually. More critically, this fragmentation creates what economists call “network effects in reverse”—where each additional participant in a closed system actually reduces its overall value compared to what could be achieved through open collaboration.
The Talent Pipeline Crisis Looming
The dependency on international talent highlighted in the report represents a systemic vulnerability that most Western research institutions have failed to address. Countries drawing 40% or more of their doctoral candidates from abroad have built research infrastructures that assume continuous international talent flow. The sudden restriction of this pipeline—particularly Chinese students and researchers who comprise significant portions of STEM programs—could create a “lost generation” of research capacity. Unlike manufacturing shortages that can be addressed through capital investment, research talent requires decade-long development cycles. The nations most affected have no quick fix for replacing this expertise, and the deepening US-China tensions suggest this isn’t a temporary disruption but a structural realignment.
Dual-Use Dilemma and Innovation Stagnation
The report’s mention of dual-use initiatives linking civilian and defense research points to a deeper structural problem: the militarization of basic science. While defense funding has historically driven technological breakthroughs (the internet being the classic example), today’s security environment creates different incentives. Research becomes classified earlier in the development cycle, cutting off the cross-pollination between academic, commercial, and defense sectors that has driven past innovation. The OECD’s concern about proportional security measures reflects industry feedback that classification and export controls are being applied too broadly, capturing technologies with minimal security implications but significant commercial potential.
Climate Progress as Collateral Damage
Perhaps the most concerning implication is how this research fragmentation threatens global climate change mitigation efforts. Climate technologies—from carbon capture to advanced renewables—require massive, coordinated R&D investment and rapid global deployment. The emerging parallel ecosystems mean competing standards, duplicated testing, and slower adoption curves. When China develops advanced battery technology or the US perfects grid-scale storage, the security restrictions preventing knowledge sharing could add years to global deployment timelines—years we don’t have given climate targets. The security concerns around certain dual-use technologies are valid, but treating all clean energy innovation as strategically sensitive threatens to make climate goals unachievable.
Path Forward Beyond Binary Choices
The solution isn’t simply reversing security measures but developing more sophisticated approaches to international research collaboration. What’s missing from current policy discussions is the concept of “managed openness”—creating frameworks for collaboration in specific domains like public health or climate science while maintaining strict controls in genuinely sensitive areas. The OECD, under Secretary-General Mathias Cormann, could play a crucial role in developing these nuanced frameworks. We need international agreements that recognize some research domains as global commons requiring special collaborative status, similar to how nuclear non-proliferation treaties created exceptions for peaceful energy research. Without such frameworks, the current trajectory points toward permanently divided scientific communities and diminished capacity to address humanity’s greatest challenges.
