CSET Research Analyst Emily Weinstein discusses difficulties in identifying Chinese entities that are defense-affiliated amidst growing concerns over American university research being relayed to the Chinese military.

In May 2020, the White House announced it would deny visas to Chinese graduate students and researchers who are affiliated with organizations that implement or support China’s military-civil fusion strategy. The authors discuss several ways this policy might be implemented. Based on Chinese and U.S. policy documents and data sources, they estimate that between three and five thousand Chinese students might be prevented from entering U.S. graduate programs each year.

CSET Senior Fellow Melissa Flagg discusses the importance R&D protection from foreign adversaries on the Federal Drive with Tom Temin podcast.

CSET Senior Fellow Melissa Flagg recommends that the Biden administration take a broader approach to protecting U.S. research from foreign influences.

Based on news coverage alone, it can seem as if corporations dominate the research on artificial intelligence and machine learning when compared to the work of universities and academia. Authors Simon Rodriguez, Tim Hwang and Rebecca Gelles analyze the data over the past decade of research publications and find that, in fact, universities are the more dominant producers of AI papers. They also find that while corporations do tend to generate more citations to the work they publish in the field, these “high performing” papers are most frequently cross-collaborations with university labs.

U.S. research security requires trust and collaboration between those conducting R&D and the federal government. Most R&D takes place in the private sector, outside of government authority and control, and researchers are wary of federal government or law enforcement involvement in their work. Despite these challenges, as adversaries work to extract science, technology, data and know-how from the United States, the U.S. government is pursuing an ambitious research security initiative. In order to secure the 78 percent of U.S. R&D funded outside the government, authors Melissa Flagg and Zachary Arnold propose a new, public-private research security clearinghouse, with leadership from academia, business, philanthropy, and government and a presence in the most active R&D hubs across the United States.

CSET experts will discuss strategies for the Biden Administration to ensure U.S. leadership in artificial intelligence and emerging technology.

Over the last decade, Moscow has boosted funding of universities and implemented reforms in order to make Russia a global leader in AI. As part of that effort, Russian researchers have expanded their English-language publication output, a key—if imperfect—measure of the country’s innovation and impact. Between 2010 and 2018, the number of English-language publications by Russian scientists in AI-related fields increased six-fold.

Axios Future highlighted a series of one-pagers issued by CSET providing AI policy recommendations for the next presidential administration to consider and implement. The full piece from Axios can be found below.

Establishing a new open-source National Science and Technology Analysis Center