European Research Council head pleads for openness at G7 science summit

The president of the European Research Council has pleaded with G7 science ministers not to strangle global cooperation by further tightening research security measures, as Western countries worry about leaking valuable knowledge to China and Russia.

During a gathering in Italy this week, Maria Leptin told ministers that there would be “costs to applying restrictions” during a special closed-door discussion on research security and integrity.

This year, Italy is hosting the G7’s annual get-together. Science ministers and their equivalents from France, Italy, the UK, US, Germany, Japan and Canada – plus EU research commissioner Iliana Ivanova - met this week in Bologna to hash out a communique on future collaboration.

The language is unsurprisingly diplomatic, and there are few concrete measures, but the communique gives some sense of the G7’s top-level priorities over the next year.

Top of the list is research security – making sure rivals do not get their hands on the G7’s most advanced knowhow. China is not named, but it is the G7’s top scientific competitor and the chief target of new security measures.

“Greater awareness should be sought about the potential risks of foreign interference in research and innovation (R&I). To this end, G7 members are united in the implementation and enhancement of effective, proportionate, and appropriate risk mitigation measures within our domestic systems to promote trusted research collaboration,” the statement says.

The G7 already has a research security and integrity working group, which has produced a handful of papers and set up a so-called virtual academy to share information.

The working group has now finished its work, but this academy will continue – and expand its work this year outside the G7 to countries “that share our common values and approach to research security and integrity.” A dedicated security and integrity conference is set for December in Bari.

“We don't want the result of science to be used by hostile nations or for hostile purposes,” said Anna Maria Bernini, Italy’s universities and research minister, in a press conference following the summit on 11 July.

Closing down

G7 countries have enacted a range of new security measures in recent years: Canada, for example, will bar scientists from federal funding if they work with universities and research institutes perceived as risky, on certain sensitive subjects.

The US has also just introduced new rules requiring universities to track the travel of foreign researchers who work on certain sensitive subjects.

But speaking to ministers at the event, the ERC’s Leptin stressed that “closing down the free flow of information will slow progress in fields that are currently open”.

She pointed to examples of international collaboration working effectively – for example, in the sharing of the Covid-19 sequencing data that allowed rapid work on vaccines (Zhang Yongzhen, the Chinese virologist who shared genetic data with the world, has since faced unexplained hurdles to his career, and was temporarily expelled from his lab earlier this year).

With scientists now asked to assess security risks of joint work, “I am not sure we and our institutions are sufficiently prepared and equipped for that, or that the task of assessing security risks should be imposed on researchers or institutions,” Leptin told ministers.

‘Geopolitical’ infrastructure

The G7 also said it would work more closely together on big research infrastructures, and hinted that even these projects – which, like the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor or the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (Cern), have traditionally involved geopolitical rivals like China or Russia – are now part of the great game of scientific competition. The ministers spoke with Fabiola Gianotti, Cern’s director general.

In October, Italy will host a G7 conference specifically on large research infrastructures, to explore not only their scientific impact but also the “geopolitical impact of these facilities”, the group’s statement said.

“The conference is expected to discuss emerging opportunities and potential collaborations among G7 members in large research infrastructures,” it said.

The G7 will also trial a new global “dialogue” of research infrastructure managers from across the group.

The group also issued a warning that artificial intelligence combined with the latest in synthetic biology could create “new potential risks”, and the G7 urged members to “work together to promote biosecurity risk-reduction throughout the research, development, and innovation pipeline.”

Some scientists are worried that AI could make it easier for terrorists, rogue states or careless scientists to engineer deadly pathogens. The US last year took action to tighten up rules on mail-order DNA, but the EU has yet to make similar moves.

This coming year, the G7 said it would also focus on research ties to Africa, mirroring a push spearheaded by Italy to engage more with the continent – the so-called Mattei Plan, which includes €5.5 billion for joint projects.

In addition, there were vague exhortations to cooperate more closely on artificial intelligence and quantum technologies, supercomputing, space, fusion energy, and small modular nuclear fission reactors.

Side deals

Aside from the main summit, the G7 is a chance for science ministers to get together and make bilateral deals.

Commissioner Ivanova met with Arati Prabhakar, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, to discuss better US-EU collaboration on health, climate and energy research.

An early-stage joint statement is currently in the works, which if agreed, could be made public after the summer.

Ivanova also met the UK’s new science minister, Patrick Vallance. Vallance, who as chief scientific advisor became a regular fixture on British television during the pandemic, was brought into government by the new Labour prime minister Keir Starmer last week.

The pair discussed how to better get UK researchers re-involved in Horizon Europe, following the UK’s near 3-year hiatus which ended last September following an association deal.