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NATIONS’ DECLINE
source: www.mod.uk/linked_files/jdcc/st/
4_ScienceTechnology.pdf
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Excluding the US, and perhaps to a lesser extent Japan, the concept of a comprehensive national critical technology base will progressively decline…- Regulatory control of science and technology, combined with corporate self-interest, will continue to protect intellectual property and to guard against the leakage of technology that would threaten security or undermine commercial advantage. Intellectual property law and information security will be of increasing premium to this end.
- However, the challenges will be great given the increasing volume of research, the general increase in the ease of information sharing, and the more interconnected and less tightly-controlled manner in which research is taking place. There will be increased impetus to regulate on a multinational basis, particularly in weapons and biotechnology.
- This is unlikely to become sufficiently comprehensive to prevent some technology leakage to states and non-state actors, or the development of high-threat technologies indigenously by states operating to a different set of ethical standards.
- In the face of rapid innovation, global markets, transnational corporations, collaborative public research programmes and technology leakage, few countries will be able to nurture and protect the full range of their desired research knowledge on a national basis. Countries will still seek to protect key knowledge for commercial advantage or national security but acquiring and protecting this unilaterally will become increasingly costly. Further, the comparative advantage that it endows is likely to have
a reducing life span given the rate of innovation and knowledge diffusion.
- Collaboration, whether between governments or enterprises, will continue to increase in importance. Since 1990, companies worldwide have entered into more than 5,100 known multi-firm R&D alliances, involving strategic high-technology alliances. Access to technology through collaboration will depend critically on a more effective means of protecting information security, and enforcing intellectual property rights.
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