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Lucy Quaggin

The United States’ National Science Foundation (NSF) is set to ban collaborations with Chinese research institutions designated as restricted entities, as well as their employees, under a new policy that moves away from seeking to balance security risks with the benefits of international collaboration.
The policy reflects a broader congressional push by House Republicans to curb academic partnerships between China and the US, amid lawmakers’ concerns that such ties could contribute to Beijing’s military and technological development.
The public notice, posted on the NSF website last week, notified the American research community that agency funds would no longer be used for collaborations with entities on US restricted-party lists, including Chinese universities and research institutions.
John Moolenaar, chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, called the policy “commendable and commonsense” in a statement following the announcement, adding that it “will protect taxpayer-funded research and innovation”.
“Prohibiting federal funding from being used to collaborate with Chinese entities that are national security risks or human rights abusers is straightforward and all federal agencies should follow the lead of the Pentagon and NSF,” Moolenaar said.
The NSF, a federal agency established by Congress in 1950 that funds scientific research through grants, said the US government determined that these entities warrant restrictions on national security and other foreign policy grounds.
Liu Chang, a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington, said US-China cooperation in science and technology is inherently mutually beneficial, contributing to the shared interests of both countries.
“We hope that relevant US institutions will do more to promote scientific and technological exchanges and cooperation between the two countries, rather than the opposite,” he added.




The new policy marks a pivot from just two years ago, when the NSF announced a risk mitigation process called the Trusted Research Using Safeguards and Transparency (TRUST) framework, which guided assessments of potential national security risks of grant proposals.
At the time, Rebecca Spyke Keiser, NSF’s chief of research security, spoke about balancing risks while preserving international scientific collaboration to further American innovation.
In 2024, Keiser, who is now also NSF’s acting chief of staff, called the TRUST framework “a major step in pivoting from a compliance culture to a research security culture”.
“But we cannot continue to lead the world in science and innovation if we are fixated on achieving zero risk related to research security,” she added.
Keiser said the US needed to invest in science domestically while continuing to encourage principled, mutually beneficial international collaboration.
The Select Committee highlighted that the forthcoming policy prohibits senior and key personnel on NSF awards from “holding appointments or positions at, receiving research support from, or collaborating on NSF-funded research with these restricted entities”.
The change reflects a shift from managing national security risks on a case-by-case basis to wholly prohibiting NSF-funded collaboration with entities the federal government has deemed to be too risky.
The move puts the agency in line with a broader push by the Trump administration’s Department of Defence, which has increasingly treated collaboration with China as threatening US national security.
The Pentagon updated its research security initiatives in January this year, following a 2025 Select Committee investigation that reported around 1,400 research papers published between June 2023 and June 2025 had involved collaboration with Chinese entities.
“Of these, over 700 publications – or just over 50 per cent – were conducted in partnership with entities affiliated with China’s defence research and industrial base,” the Select Committee claimed in a release.
The NSF said questions could be submitted on the policy and that it intends to implement it in the federal financial year 2027.


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Raising security fears, NSF moves from case-by-case approval to full ban on working with restricted entities and their employees


Raising security fears, NSF moves from case-by-case approval to full ban on working with restricted entities and their employees.


US National Science Foundation to ban projects with flagged Chinese institutions

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Raising security fears, NSF moves from case-by-case approval to full ban on working with restricted entities and their employees

Raising security fears, NSF moves from case-by-case approval to full ban on working with restricted entities and their employees