Geopolitical Unrest, Science, and Technological Innovation

Innovation is increasingly shaped not only by markets and technological opportunity, but by geopolitics, national security concerns, and state intervention in science and technology. Governments are restricting cross-border knowledge flows, tightening immigration and training regimes, and reorienting innovation systems toward national priorities, fundamentally altering firms’ access to scientific knowledge, talent, and complementary assets. This symposium brings together four papers that examine how rising geopolitical tensions reshape innovation systems at both national and organizational levels. Drawing on population-scale data, novel empirical strategies, and perspectives from strategy and policy, the papers document how geopolitical frictions affect scientific collaboration, researcher mobility, and firms’ reliance on global science. Collectively, they show that perceived hostility and policy uncertainty can redirect talent flows, alter knowledge trajectories, reduce innovation efficiency, and alter organizational strategy, even in the absence of formal restrictions. At the same time, the findings highlight persistent asymmetries in how science is produced globally but used locally, and the continued centrality of leading innovation hubs in translating science into valuable technologies. The symposium advances understanding of innovation strategy in an era where geopolitical conflict increasingly defines the environment in which public and private actors generate, diffuse, and capture value from new technologies. Building a Wall around Science: The Effect of US-China Tensions on International Scientific Research Author: Raviv Murciano-Goroff; Boston University Author: Robert Flynn; Boston University Author: Britta Glennon; The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania Author: Jiusi Xiao; Claremont Graduate University A Quarter of US-Trained Scientists Eventually Leave. Is the US Giving Away Its Edge? Author: Dror Shvadron; - Author: Hansen Zhang; Duke University Author: Daniel Gross; Duke University Global Science Sustains U.S. Innovation Author: Christopher Esposito; University of California Los Angeles Global integration in science-based innovation Author: Jay Prakash Nagar; Duke University Author: Daniel Gross; Duke University