Science, Technology, and Public Policy

Breaking up Big Tech companies could trigger unintended, and possibly irreparable, collateral damage to America’s quest to remain the world’s leader in new technologies, write Venkatesh Narayanamurti and Steven C. Currall.

New forms of international cooperation and technology competition with China are the main drivers of public investment in energy innovation, though it remains insufficient to help meet climate goals.

New forms of international cooperation and technology competition with China are the main drivers of public investment in energy innovation, though it remains insufficient to help meet climate goals.

As latecomers to the industrialization process, developing countries may face barriers to upgrading from the production of mass-produced goods to higher-value technologies. Using a comparative qualitative case study focusing on three renewable energy technologies, this paper develops a typology of catching-up opportunities in green energy industries and finds that policymakers should target certain technologies in their industrial strategies based on certain technology characteristics, and should seek opportunities to capitalize on a local niche that creates a need for innovation.

In reshaping the National Science Foundation and other institutions to best support innovation, policymakers should apply evidence-based principles drawn from scholarship and previous experience, write Steven Currall and Venkatesh Narayanamurti.

Joseph Nye argues hat the major threat to U.S. power comes from its internal divisions. These are serious liabilities but they were not created by the invasion of Ukraine.

This paper focuses on the market and geopolitical implications of renewable hydrogen adoption at scale in the European Union (EU). The authors analyze long-term strategies based on three reference scenarios in which the EU prioritizes a different strategic variable: energy independence, cost (optimization), or energy security. Developing competitive and secure hydrogen markets will require close coordination between policy, technology, capital, and society—and for EU countries to unite behind a shared long-term vision.

Over the past decade, there have been consistent alarm signals about U.S. leadership in science and technology. Venkatesh Narayanamurti argues that the remedy is not merely additional funding for R&D, but also more effective funding in technoscientific research, a key engine of innovation.

Abolghasem Bayyenat argues that rather than insisting that the JCPOA be restored strictly in its original form and implemented per its letter, the parties should seek to redress the agreement's imbalance in regard to its enforcement mechanisms and delivery of its economic benefits.

In The Genesis of Technoscientific Revolutions, Venkatesh Narayanamurti and Jeffrey Tsao propose a new and holistic system, a rethinking of the nature and nurturing of research. They share lessons from their vast research experience in the physical sciences and engineering, as well as from perspectives drawn from the history and philosophy of science and technology, research policy and management, and the evolutionary biological, complexity, physical, and economic sciences.