Over the last 40 years, US and Chinese scientists at all levels have been engaged in broad-based diplomacy, publishing hundreds of thousands of scientific papers together. Recently, amid tensions between the two countries and official and unofficial government actions to curtail collaboration, joint publications have fallen. Ernest Moniz, Secretary of Energy during the Obama administration, has been a practitioner of science diplomacy at the highest levels. Trained as a physicist, Moniz worked with his Iranian counterpart, Ali Salehi, on the Iran nuclear agreement in 2015.

In this episode, Moniz talks about the ways that science can provide a common language and a sense of trust during diplomatic negotiations. And he emphasizes the importance of collaboration to scientific discovery. Science, he says, is cumulative, extending far beyond the experience of a single person. If collaborations are prevented, we will never know what knowledge we failed to create. 

Moniz is president and CEO of the Energy Futures Initiative and CEO and co-chair of the Nuclear Threat Initiative. He served as the thirteenth US Secretary of Energy from 2013 to January 2017. He is also the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics and Engineering Systems emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Resources

E. William Colglazier, “The Precarious Balance Between Research Openness and Security,” Issues in Science and Technology 39, no. 3 (Spring 2023): 87–91.

Sylvia Schwaag Serger, Cong Cao, Caroline S. Wagner, Xabier Goenaga, and Koen Jonkers, “What Do China’s Scientific Ambitions Mean for Science and the World?” Issues in Science and Technology (April 5, 2021).