Science advice does not operate as a simple bridge between research and policy, according to Québec’s chief scientist Rémi Quirion. It is a system that must be built and maintained over time.

“The role was created because there weren’t strong enough links between the research world and the government,” Quirion said on The Science Diplomat podcast.

He took on the position in 2011, when Québec’s chief scientist role was new. “I would be the first one,” he said. “So you start from nothing and you try to build it.”

What he built depends less on authority than on credibility, he suggested. One of his early goals was to create what he called “a one-stop shop” for government. Instead of ministers or deputy ministers relying on a narrow circle of familiar academic contacts, the office would connect them to a wider network of expertise.

That system, he said, only works if it is reinforced constantly. “You have to repeat and repeat and repeat,” he said, because policymakers “have so many things on their minds.”

The challenge of science advice became especially clear during the COVID-19 pandemic, he recalled. When Québec’s premier asked what was known about the virus in the early days of the outbreak, Quirion replied: “Nothing.”

He said the most important thing in such moments is to “stick to the data” and explain clearly what is known, what is not known, and the trade-offs between options. “It’s much better to keep the trust of these officials, instead of trying to convince them when you don’t have data that are not solid,” he said.

Québec’s model is unusual in part because the chief scientist role is defined in law rather than tied directly to the government of the day. Compared with systems where science advisers change with political leadership, Québec’s model offers greater continuity. Quirion, a neuroscientist by training, has now held the job under governments of different parties.

He argues that this legal structure provides a degree of stability lacking in systems where science advisers turn over with political leadership. “There is more stability in the Quebec model,” he said.

His role is also unusual because it overlaps with research funding through the Fonds de recherche du Québec, which he leads as well. In his view, that dual function has been an advantage rather than a conflict.

“It was a good thing. It was a positive thing,” he said, pointing to the ability to move quickly when government backed a scientific initiative. During the pandemic, that included the creation of a Québec biobank. More recently, it helped support a network of science diplomacy chairs.

For Quirion, science advice is not only about getting evidence into government but about building institutions durable enough to carry that evidence across crises and political transitions. That task, he said, has become harder over the past two years.

“What’s happening, for example, in the USA, but not just the USA about science,” he said, has created “a very challenging now new world that we are into.”

He described efforts to help U.S. researchers working in fields that have come under pressure there, including climate science and vaccines, and to redirect Québec postdoctoral researchers toward Europe and Asia.

Those shifts, he suggested, are one reason science diplomacy has become more important. Asked whether he would describe himself as a science diplomat, Quirion answered cautiously. “In a sense,” he said. “I’m a science advisor.”

But he added that Québec’s international presence, and the growing need to project scientific influence abroad, gradually pushed the role in that direction. “With time, I started to see, well, we needed to show the type of influence that can have abroad, and science diplomacy is one tool that we are using.”

Listen to the podcast:

Issue No. 1 | Monday, April 20, 2026

Good morning,

Welcome to the first edition of The Science Diplomat Playbook, your Monday morning guide to what’s shaping the week ahead in global science diplomacy.

The Lead

Africa–Europe science diplomacy is moving into a new phase, but coordination remains a challenge.

The Africa–Europe Science Collaboration Platform (AERAP) opens its annual forum in Brussels today as cooperation on research and innovation shifts from planning to delivery. With the A.U.–E.U. Innovation Agenda approaching its third year and a growing focus on areas such as artificial intelligence, research infrastructures and climate collaboration, attention is turning to how shared priorities translate into concrete programs and results.

The central issue is not ambition but alignment. A growing number of initiatives are moving forward, but coordination across institutions, funding and national priorities remains uneven. The coming months, beginning with AERAP and continuing with A.U.–E.U. meetings later this year, will show whether the partnership moves toward a more coherent system.

Inside Institutions

United Nations — Global AI panel begins work
The U.N.’s Independent International Scientific Panel on AI meets in person for the first time this week, launching a multi-year effort to assess the impact of artificial intelligence and inform global policy discussions. → Read more

European Commission — Science diplomacy framework advances
A new proposal to establish an E.U. framework for science diplomacy is moving forward, as officials move to link research cooperation more closely with economic security and global positioning. → Read more

United Nations — Secretary-general selection process draws attention
Public dialogues with candidates for the next U.N. Secretary-General begin this week, highlighting ongoing tensions between the Security Council and General Assembly over transparency and leadership. → Read more

Signals

Science diplomacy is moving from planning to delivery
Across regions, governments are placing greater emphasis on turning cooperation into concrete programs and results.

AI governance is taking shape at the global level
New international efforts, including a U.N. scientific panel on artificial intelligence, reflect growing attention to how countries can work together on managing fast-moving technologies.

On the Calendar

April 20–22 — Africa–Europe Science Collaboration Forum (Brussels)
AERAP brings together policymakers, scientists and institutions to advance A.U.–E.U. cooperation on research and innovation.
Program → https://aerapscience.org/events/africa-europe-forum-2026

April 21–22 — U.N. secretary-general candidate dialogues (New York)
Public sessions with candidates will be held at the General Assembly.
Michelle Bachelet → April 21 at 4 pm EDT (U.N. Web TV)
Rafael Mariano Grossi → April 21 at 9 pm EDT
Rebeca Grynspan → April 22 at 4 pm EDT
Macky Sall → April 22 at 9 pm EDT

April 22–24 — U.N. AI scientific panel first in-person meeting
The U.N.’s global scientific body on AI begins work toward its first assessment.
Background and timeline → Independent International Scientific Panel on AI

Closing

You’re reading The Science Diplomat Playbook, a weekly briefing mapping global science diplomacy.

Season 1, Episode 3
Duration: 44:22 minutes
Recorded: April 6, 2026

Dr. Rémi Quirion, Québec’s chief scientist, head of the Fonds de recherche du Québec (FRQ), and president of the International Network for Government Science Advice (INGSA), joins The Science Diplomat for a conversation on how science advice systems are built, sustained, and tested under pressure.

Drawing on his experience creating Québec’s science advisory infrastructure from the ground up, Quirion describes science advice not as a single point of interaction between knowledge and policy, but as a long-term institutional system requiring coordination across government, academia, and funding structures. He emphasizes that scientific evidence does not determine decisions, but informs choices shaped by political, economic, and social considerations.

The conversation examines how trust is established and maintained between scientists and policymakers, particularly in environments where uncertainty is unavoidable. Quirion reflects on the role of repetition, consistency, and independence in building credibility over time, noting that science advice depends as much on relationships as on expertise.

The discussion also explores the structural features of Québec’s model, including the integration of advisory functions with research funding through the Fonds de recherche du Québec. This dual role enables coordination across disciplines and institutions, while raising questions about how influence is exercised within government systems.

Beyond Québec, Quirion reflects on the global expansion of science advice through INGSA, which now operates in more than 130 countries. He emphasizes that effective systems cannot be transferred wholesale, but must be adapted to local political and institutional contexts, with capacity-building framed as partnership rather than replication.

The conversation situates these developments within a broader geopolitical environment marked by fragmentation, shifting research alliances, and increased pressure on multilateral cooperation. In that context, science diplomacy is described as a practical mechanism for sustaining dialogue and collaboration where formal political channels may be constrained.

Finally, Quirion addresses emerging challenges, including the role of artificial intelligence in shaping how evidence is produced and interpreted, and the need to preserve human judgment, ethics, and contextual understanding within decision-making processes.

The discussion returns to a defining moment early in the COVID-19 pandemic, when asked what was known about the virus, Quirion’s answer was: “nothing.” That tension between uncertainty and decision-making remains central to how science advice operates.

Listen to the full conversation below.

The Science Diplomat Podcast — Season 1, Episode 3

Key Themes

• Science advice as institutional infrastructure rather than episodic input

• Trust, credibility, and repetition in policymaking environments

• The boundary between scientific evidence and political decision-making

• Design and coordination of science advice systems within government

• Global variation in science advice and capacity-building through INGSA

• Science diplomacy as a mechanism for sustaining cooperation under geopolitical strain

• Artificial intelligence and the future of evidence in decision-making

Transcript

This is the verified transcript of Season 1, Episode 3 of The Science Diplomat podcast, featuring Dr. Rémi Quirion. The text has been lightly edited for clarity and minor transcription corrections. The substance of the conversation has not been altered.

Amna Habiba: Welcome to Episode 3 of The Science Diplomat podcast. Imagine being the top scientist in the country during the most terrifying health crisis in a century. The premier of Quebec looks at you and asks, ‘What do we know about this virus?’ Most people would pivot, but Dr. Remi looked him in the eye and said, ‘Nothing.’ Science advice is often discussed as a bridge, but today’s guest argues there’s actually a massive, largely invisible infrastructure, one he has been building for over a decade. Dr. Remi didn’t start in a government office. He started in the lab as one of the world’s most cited neuroscientists, eventually becoming Quebec’s first chief scientist, president of the International Network for Government Science Advice, and the person responsible for helping connect science to decision-making across many systems. This episode focuses on how those systems actually work and what it takes to build them. Dr. Remi, I wanted to ask you this. You’ve built your career as a neuroscientist and then moved into creating science advice systems. What led you to step away from research and into shaping how knowledge is used in government.

Dr. Rémi Quirion: Well, I was very, very fortunate during my career as a neuroscientist at McGill University in an institute in mental health. I had a great student, postdoc career, probably too many publications for my own good. So things were going very well. And then the government came to me, and said, ‘Yes, you should take it.’ I was not convinced at all at the beginning. But then at some point I said, ‘Yeah, maybe I could train a few more students. Maybe I could publish a hundred more scientific papers.’ Unlikely I’ll get a Nobel Prize or whatever. So maybe I could help another way. And decided to jump into the new position. One of the attractive features in Quebec was that I would be the first one. So you start from nothing and you try to build it. That’s always what I’ve been trying to do during my career.

John Heilprin: Was there a moment when you realized that producing knowledge just wasn’t enough and the real challenge was how it connects to decision-making?

Dr. Rémi Quirion: Yeah, certainly early days, even as a scientist, when I was at McGill, I had still, at that time, really at that time, I had quite a bit of collaboration with government, especially with the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs. And of course, the language of the two worlds were very, very different. It’s like one speaks English and the other one’s not only French, it’s kind of Mandarin or Chinese. So you have to learn the language of the other. And I said, well, maybe that would be an interesting challenge, to try to connect more strongly with policymakers, decision makers, but also elected officials. So at the beginning, the way I started was by doing a tour of the various ministries in Quebec, meeting with deputy ministers, meeting with elected officials. And trying to convince them, in a sense, that I’m not there to take their job. I’m there to work with them and to add value to what they do. And in the end, it’s not me. There’s not a chief scientist anywhere in the world that makes the decisions. It’s the elected officials that say, ‘Oh yes, we consider science, but also other things.’ So we have to adapt to that situation as well that, basically, the elected official will make the final decision, but hopefully it will be informed by science.

John Heilprin: Going back to what Amna referenced when the premier told you that you couldn’t say that publicly, because people would panic. How in general do you navigate that tension between scientific honesty, where ‘I don’t know’ is a valid answer, but in the political world where that uncertainty is often seen as a weakness?

Dr. Rémi Quirion: Yeah, that’s a very good point. And I think what I try to do, and colleagues that have a similar job are trying as well, it’s always better to stick to the data, to stick with the most current, valuable information. Instead of trying to make a story, when you try to make a story, often it backfires. So basically, you’re honest. You see, this is what we know. Could be option A, option B, this is what we don’t know, the advantage and disadvantage of both. And then in the end, you will have the trust of these guys, of these officials. And I think it’s much better to keep the trust of these officials, instead of trying to convince them when you don’t have data that are not solid. But of course, I think this was kind of the way it was going for the past 10, 15 years since I’m on the job. The past two years have been a bit more challenging, and maybe we’ll discuss that a bit more in detail. But of course, what’s happening, for example, in the USA, but not just the USA about science, basically you have data, you show that to the government, and basically some of them will say, ‘Well, I have data too, I don’t believe you.’ So that’s a very challenging now new world that we are into, and that’s why, in my mind, science diplomacy is more important than ever.

Amna Habiba: I wanted to just go back to your role as a chief scientist. You’ve built the office of the chief scientist from scratch in 2011, with no job description, and have now served under more than a dozen ministers, if I’m not wrong. The role was created because there weren’t strong enough links between the research world and the government. What do you think wasn’t really working? And when you kind of stepped into this role, what did you see changing around you?

Dr. Rémi Quirion: I think one of the main objectives when the government during that time decided to create the job, was for them to have a one-stop shop in a sense. They were interacting with experts in university, in institute, already doing that, but they were usually, let’s say, you’re in finance, you know one person at one university, and you always contact the same person. It’s not that the person is good or bad. It’s just that you don’t have all of these connections. So basically, one of the objectives was, well, when I have a question, I will call Rémi, and he will be the one having to find the expert in the network. So instead of the minister or deputy minister trying to find a best person, it was on me. They say, we’ll have a one-stop shop, all members of government use the same one, and then it’s my challenge to try to find an expert to where they are in Quebec. And in a sense, not only in Quebec, it could be international as well. But Quebec’s a relatively small community. So after a little while, you know almost everyone. So that makes it a bit easier. And maybe I was a bit lucky in the early days, to when I had a question like thatm to find the right expert. And that they give the right advice to government, and then you build the trust of the elected officials. That’s probably the way it happened the first few years.

John Heilprin: You’re talking about it being a small community, but Quebec is, at least, the land size is bigger than a lot of countries. And I think you’ve now been the longest-serving chief science officer in a government capacity, longer than anyone else in the world. Is that correct?

Dr. Rémi Quirion: Yeah, and that’s also because of the way it’s organized in Quebec. The position of the chief scientist is defined in the law, so it’s not dependent on the government of the day. So I have been doing it for a different party for a different government. So they could always get rid of me, fire me, almost anything, but they have to go to the national assembly and discuss in the national assembly with the other party. So it’s a bit more challenging. Usually the format that we see in most countries is elected. The person is chosen by the government of the day. The government changes, the whole crew changes. So we see that in the U.S., often the U.K., in Australia and New Zealand. So that’s a model where there is — my bias — that there is more stability in the Quebec model that does not depend on the color of the government. So you have some kind of stability. Of course, you need to renew these types of offices, but there is a bit more time and less pressure in the political system that we have in Canada, which is kind of a British type of system.

Amna Habiba: Do you think that having that sort of influence over funding makes science advice more effective? I mean, you’re in that role with the government, but you’ve also served as a scientist, right? Or do you think it introduces new constraints for you or in that workspace?

Dr. Rémi Quirion: In my own experience, and again with the different governments over the year and many ministers, it was a good thing. It was a positive thing. Of course, I was not involved at all in the decision-making process. The peer review panel, I had less to say in the sense than when I was at McGill, and I was involved with many kinds of reviewing, many proposals. Then it was more like saying the overall guidelines, in terms of the priority, supporting research on all aspects, all fields, the next generation of scientists. So the general thing like that, and having a bit of support, financial support, when you have some special thing that you want to do. Again, during the COVID pandemic, we were able to very quickly establish a bank, a biobank of samples in Quebec. One of the first ones in the world. And then the rest of Canada followed us. But it was because we had a bit of cash to be able to do that. The network of a chair in science diplomacy is a bit of the same thing. I discussed with the government, they said, ‘Yes, go for it,’ and then we had a bit of financial support to be able to act on it.

John Heilprin: What have you learned in your job that you think that maybe it’s hard for anyone else to see, because you’ve served in this position longer than anyone else?

Dr. Rémi Quirion: I think I mentioned that a few times already, but trust is certainly key. Keeping the trust of elected officials, independent of the political orientation. This is very important. Never taking anything for granted, because sometimes as scientists, and that’s what I was doing before, you go, you meet with one minister, you just add a paper in a prestigious journal and you summarize it for that person. You think, that’s it, it’s done, your job is done, no. You have to repeat and repeat and repeat, because they have so many things on their minds. So you’re never taking anything for granted. So you have to repeat the same type of story over time, because often they may tend to forget it. And also you have to bring on new information as they come along. Of course, especially again, during the pandemic, things were changing every week almost, because we’re learning about the virus, learning about the science behind the COVID-19. So that was changing. It was challenging to convey that to government, to our elected officials, but in the end, I think they started to appreciate science and the way we build science even more than before.

John Heilprin: Would you call yourself a science diplomat?

Dr. Rémi Quirion: In a sense. I’m a science advisor. And, of course, I did that a lot in Quebec, but early days. Quebec has many, many offices all over the world. So a lot of international activities as well. So in a sense, I became probably a science diplomat over the years. It was not at the beginning, certainly it was not the plan, it was mostly for Quebec. But with time, I started to see, well, we needed to show the type of influence that can have abroad, and science diplomacy is one tool that we are using.

John Heilprin: While we’re still on the subject of you being chief scientific officer, I’m wondering about relations with the U.S. Because, of course, there’s a different picture going on in the United States, and I’m wonder what the relations are like? Do you have a counterpart that you deal with? And relations are strained between the two countries right now?

Dr. Rémi Quirion: It’s quite surprising still for me. I never expected to live through that in my lifetime. Because, of course, the U.S., in terms of power and science, excellence in science was a gold standard, even more than a gold standard. And we were collaborating. I did some studies at the NIH in the state for my postdocs, a lot of links, collaboration, at the scientific level, but also interactions with the federal government in Washington, D.C., with state governments, and so on. And almost from one day to the other, different mindset, very, very challenging. So I, in my job, was still trying to help colleagues in the U.S. that are working in disciplines that are not popular there anymore, like, let’s say climate change, vaccine, mRNA vaccines, these type of things. Trying to offer them maybe a way to come to Quebec, to Canada for a little while. They may decide to stay, they may decide to go back later on, we’ll see. So that’s one thing. Also for our students, because in the Quebec research fund, we are providing a postdoctoral award. And 80% of our PhDs getting the awards were going to the U.S. for postdocs in all fields, social sciences, humanities, engineering, health. From one day to the next, they cannot go there or don’t want to go there anymore. So basically the answer is okay, well, we try to see what kind of links and partnerships we can develop with various countries in Europe, or in Asia and all that. But it’s still difficult because, of course, the U.S. was investing a lot in, let’s say, longitudinal studies about the ocean, about the Arctic. From one day to the next, they are not there. And we don’t have the means to replace them from one day to the next. So I think we have to continue to help to support the scientists in the U.S. For us, more and more, we’re working at the level of states and the level of cities, many, many states, for example, because probably the richer ones, like Michigan, like Massachusetts, New York state, they say, well, ‘If the federal government doesn’t believe in this, in climate change, for example, we do.’ So how can we continue to work with you? The cities of New York, Boston, Boston with Montreal, are now discussing science diplomacy, having joint partnerships in science diplomacy. So I think we’re trying to find other ways to work with colleagues in the U.S. But certainly it’s a challenging type of time for all of us, and also bridging with countries, especially in Europe, that have the same approach to science, trying to have stronger partnerships with them.

Amna Habiba: You talked about your own journey, the transition from academia into government, and you’ve pushed hard on public engagement, appearing on platforms like Polis, where public interest in science was overwhelming. For many young researchers, though, moving towards policy can feel very risky. How do you convince a student who would like to go into science, or a PhD student, let’s just say, that pursuing policy is worthy enough?

Dr. Rémi Quirion: I think first is to convince a younger generation to go into science, that science can be fun. In Quebec, in Canada, often when I discuss with a young adult, I try to say, well, maybe, as a man, you’d like to play for the Montreal Canadiens, play hockey, but it’s as fun to do science if you learn something about a star, if you learned something about a bug, and a vaccine, and develop a new molecule. So it’s not easy to do that, but trying to say that science is for, I will exaggerate a little bit, but almost for everyone. It’s not just for the happy few. Just that probably the way it’s taught in high school and college, maybe it’s not the most exciting for some people. So we need to change that as well. Especially when you’re a teenager and the group has a very important thing. So if one is in science, the other one finds that he’s a bit nerdy. So I think we have to change that and do more like science. The practice of science is probably what needs to be done at that stage. It’s done, but we need to do more. Then the next step is to go to a science policy, science advice, and of course, chief scientists. I remember when I saw on my business card, chief scientist of Quebec, my God, this is quite pretentious to have a business card like that. And if someone would say, ‘Oh, I’d like to become one,’ this is hard and very few, happy few. But on the other hand maybe thinking of working in government, in science policy. And if you can improve on the law that’s being discussed in government, my God, the impact of that may be much more than many people that publish in Science or in Nature. So that’s why we have also started a program to offer a PhD student to go to work in ministry in the Quebec government, as we do in the Quebec office abroad, and now, more recently, in the cities to be associated with the level of cities with mayors, and providing science and science advice, because that’s very concrete there. When you have flooding, the mayor needs to have a solution - for that you don’t have to write a PhD thesis. So I think providing opportunities like that for the young generation, and showing to them that science policy, science advice can have impact in society, and the younger generation really will like to have impact and often they are frustrated, rightly so, for example, with climate change, that there are all kinds of discussions, but not much has happened. But I think if we make it closer to the ground and are showing them that it’s possible to have impact, and that their advice can have impact, and I think then they start to talk to their colleagues, to their friends, and slowly but surely, you build the crowd that way. So that will be my suggestion.

Amna Habiba: When would you suggest scientists or prospective scientists to start thinking about at the undergrad level or the graduate level? For context, I’m doing my bachelor’s in science right now, but I would love to transition into a policy-making space. At the same time, when do you think a student particularly would be ready to move into a more policy-focused role? How much science do you really need to know before you can step and advise in a government setting?

Dr. Rémi Quirion: My bias would always be to start early for science, science advice, science policy. You need to start very early in the game to show to the younger generation there are various opportunities in science, including science advice. And maybe a bit of exposure to that at the undergrad level is a good thing. Working maybe in the ministry, having a few weeks, a few months type of training program. That exists in some places, not generally enough, not everywhere. I think we should build on that. And then of course, as you get toa higher level, like masters and PhD, of course then you have more of a background in science to be able probably to judge a bit more what’s good science, not that great science. So I think, but I think early, for me, earlier will be better. And maybe also when you have a bit, do that a bit early in your career, then you realize, ‘Oh, I was thinking that I would like it, but that’s not really for me.’ So you have it when you are working in a ministry, for example, and going just for a few weeks there, you will find out if it’s really something you like to do in your life.

John Heilprin: I want to talk about this new initiative that Quebec has launched, one of the most structured investments in science diplomacy to date. It’s a network of university research centers funded by your offices. Can you just tell us more about that, the significance of it, what you modeled it on, what problems you’re trying to solve, what are your long-term goals?

Dr. Rémi Quirion: Yeah, I think Quebec is always a bit different. And of course, as I mentioned before, we have many offices abroad. It’s one of the only provinces in Canada that has that. So we have offices in many cities, many countries in Europe, in the U.S., in Asia, in Africa. These types of offices are there to link to the economy, the economical level, interaction between business in Quebec and business in those parts of the world. But also higher education is one of the important ones. Culture, the culture of Quebec, is very important, French and all that French culture, is important, science in French, having a training program to send scientists to these offices abroad. So that started a bit from there. We’ve been building that over the past few years. We now have about 15 or 16 of these, it’s what we call scientists in residence abroad. And they are fabulous. Now I have been creating networks, exchanging, and all that. Seeing that, then I mentioned to my government, ‘Well, maybe we could go now another step in that field, and start having chairs in science diplomacy.’ So to having really a person or a group of people that will focus on science diplomacy, at least for a little while in their career. And what we decided to do, and the government was very, very positive, and what we decided to do is to create a program where each university in Quebec was allowed to submit one proposal. So we have 18 universities in Quebec. So we opened that last year, last spring. They submitted a proposal on science diplomacy, or maybe focusing on some aspect of it, being specialized, for example, in science diplomacy in the Arctic, in the northern part of Canada. But we were very open to them. And myself, I was not involved at all with any of the decisions. We had a peer review panel that looked at the proposals, and in the end they recommended that we support, that we should fund eight of them. And I must say, it was quite surprising. Very happily surprised by the outcome where, without asking them, without telling them what to do, they all came with a proposal saying, myself, with a partner, of course, science diplomacy needs to be with a partner at the international level. So each of them had a partnership with various countries, and one of them decided to focus on climate change. Another one, they focus on the Arctic. Another one, they focus on food security. Another one, they focus on the governance of AI, and one on knowledge from the First Nation on the impact on science diplomacy, with a country in Europe, with a country in Africa, a country in Latin America, and a country in Asia. So I was very happily surprised. And when we launched it a few weeks ago, we asked each of the chair holders from Quebec, from Quebec University, to invite at least one of their partners at the international level. And it was like fire. It was amazing, beautiful to see — each of them had a few minutes to present what they wanted to do, what they had proposed in the context of the chair. And immediately they started to say, ‘Oh, I need to talk, I need to work with the other one.’ So to almost build the network on that day, in a sense. So there is a lot of interest. There’s a lot of interest locally, here in Quebec, in Canada, but a lot of interest at the global level as well. A few days ago, I was at the head office in UNESCO in Paris, and they were very, very keen on that. They’d even say, ‘Oh, maybe the next meeting of that group should be at the head office of UNESCO in Paris.’ So I think, I’m quite optimistic that in the end that will have impact, the visibility of Quebec, in terms of science, in terms of science diplomacy and science advice, in various fields. And I hope that very quickly other parts of the world, other countries or regions, will do the same and will do even more, will have even more chairs than us, and that it will be creating a network of networks, in a sense. And your shop will be very key on that, to follow up and try to know what works. Probably with some things, something will work well, others will probably not. But just seeing the enthusiasm of the chair holders last week was amazing.

Amna Habiba: So I wanted to move on a bit to your work with INGSA. Since 2021, you’ve been the president, and it operates across more than 130 countries. What drew you into that global role? And how do you think it’s changed your understanding of science advice across different systems?

Dr. Rémi Quirion: I think when I started as chief scientist, of course, I had no blueprint, no textbook on what do you do as a science advisor. So I just jumped into that and in the first couple of days on the job, my minister at the time, when I said, ‘Well, I’m here now, what do I do?’ Because I did not know. And he said, ‘Oh, I wanted the chief scientist early on. Okay, now we need to build.' So I called the chief scientist at that time in the U.K., in Australia, in the U.S., in New Zealand. Finally, Peter Gluckman, who was the chief scientist in New Zealand at the time, organized some kind of a meeting. And some of us said, ‘Well, maybe we should try an exchange.’ I would not call it a best practice, because it was fairly early days. But what did we learn over the past few years? How can we help each other? So very loosely, we did not even have a name at the time at that meeting, but then said, ‘Okay, we’re having Peter and a few colleagues establish some kind of a structure.’ That became — it stayed very, very loose. But they had a lot of appetite, especially from the Global South. The first kind of science advice training program that we had was in South Africa. Then in various parts of the world, we started to create chapters. And when Peter decided to step down and was appointed as president of the International Science Council, they suggested, some member of the group suggested, well, maybe you could take over. And it was a bit, it was interesting for me, because I was not — I was in a region, not necessarily at the country level, but I had support from the French, support from the Quebec government as well, and still continuing to focus on building capacity in science advice all over the world, focusing especially on the Global South. So what I learned is that basically, there is no — we’re trying to support the development of science advice everywhere, but there is no one formula that will work for everyone. So depending on where you are in the world, depending on your culture, depending on your language, you have to adapt the type of advice that you are giving. And often it’s something that we tend to forget, especially from North America or whatever, you say, ‘Oh, I know it all,’ and you go there and you say you should do A, B, C. And often they will be very polite. They will not say much, but then nothing happens. So instead saying, ‘Okay, you have a problem, you have the challenge, how do you like to go about it?’ And then they build it and you try to support them. So basically that’s what INGSA has been trying to do over the past few years. And again, as I said, mostly in the Global South, yeah, and the chapter in Africa is doing quite well, Latin America, a new person there. Asia is still building capacity, but doing well. We created one in Europe a couple of years ago. And of course there, there is a lot of structure, a lot of organization, the kind to do science advice. So we did not want to duplicate anything. So it’s Claire Craig at Oxford that took that chapter. And basically that is what I was mentioning — so what was the impact of culture and language on the efficacy of science advice? And Europe is fabulous for that, with all the countries, all the languages, and all that. So that’s one of their main areas of focus. And we are developing one in North America. And that one decided, the group in North America decided to focus on building capacity and science advice at the level of cities, at the very local level. And it’s not just North America that kind of needs that. It’s all over the world. The pilot will be more and more in North America. And as I mentioned a bit earlier, a lot of interest from cities and with what’s happening, for example, in the U.S., and them saying, ‘Well, for us, climate change is important.’ How do we go about it and working with other cities to learn from each other? So it’s really, again, building capacity and science advice. And by doing that, I think we are also, we’ll have an impact also on science diplomacy. For me, to have good science, diplomacy and good science.

Amna Habiba: I found it really interesting that you brought up Sir Peter Gluckman, since we had him on the podcast as our first guest. So I’m a bit curious, when you’re collaborating across countries with really different capacities, what’s actually the hardest thing to build? Is it structure, expertise or trust? And how do all these different organizations really interact in reality?

Dr. Rémi Quirion: I think of how can we help each other, or how can can we help the partner. So usually that’s the way we try to go about it. My day job as chief scientist, but also with INGSA, is trying to help each other. In addition to that, of course, financial support always helps. So we have a bit of financial support as well for the chapter, but especially in the Global South. They can do a lot with a relatively small budget. They know that they have good network, like in Africa, in Asia, Latin America. So when they connect with each other, the impact is amazing. So I think letting them do what they want is important, trying to help them. And in Europe, or North America, where it’s different, the same thing. What will be the added value? What is the added value of an INGSA chapter in Europe? And one of the things is that we’re kind of a neutral convener. We had a few meetings in Brussels and the colleagues from various groups said, ‘Well, it’s nice to be together. We have never had that opportunity.’ Because sometimes they see each other more as competitors than collaborators, and being around the same table, maybe they could do this together without affecting their day work, in a sense. So that’s really what we’re trying to do — be a convener trying to help the various countries that want to build science advice and science diplomacy.

John Heilprin: Could you follow up a little bit more about competition versus collaboration, how that actually works?

Dr. Rémi Quirion: Of course, training as a scientist, you’re used to competition. Yes, you collaborate a lot, but in the end, it’s really more of a competition. So you have to change a little bit the mindset. I’m saying that by collaborating, how it will help me, it will help me to go faster or to reach my objective sooner or to have more of an impact. And there, in a sense, is what’s happening in the world, especially in the U.S., the crisis in science, is helping. Because we, as a big partner that we are losing, so now we say, ‘Okay, we have to work with others that are similarly minded all over the world.’ So they collaborate. So yes, probably there’s still a competition between let’s say, Canadian scientists and scientists associated with Horizon Europe. But more and more we say we need to collaborate. We need to work together if we want in the end to have some kind of an impact on climate change. So I think the mindset is changing a little bit, and of course, one of the things we have to do is to trust, trust the collaborator. So often I would say be a good collaborator instead of competitor. Collaboration isn’t enough. It has to be a bit of a partnership, like a couple. You have good days, you have bad days, but you are there for the long haul. And I think there, what’s happening again, worldwide, is helping us in that sense.

John Heilprin: I’ve got a couple more follow-up questions on that: whether as a competitor or a collaborator, how high a priority is science diplomacy for Canada and for your province at this point? Is it essentially a top priority at this point?

Dr. Rémi Quirion: I think, yeah, I was lucky, it was a few years ago when we started to think about it, but now more and more, especially since we have lost one big partner. Science, policy, science diplomacy is seen as something essential. We are developing a strategy for the province, science diplomacy, and we’re not the only one. The Japanese government just released their own science diplomacy policy. So I think all of us are realizing that it’s not the only thing that’s needed, but certainly in the current world, science and science diplomacy is a way to move forward, instead of just building a frontier, adding a frontier, adding a wall between countries, science can be a bridge. So that is very important for us.

John Heilprin: And we started talking about this actually before we started recording this — a little bit about how science diplomacy has been going on actually for centuries, arguably, just not under that name. And I’m wondering now, the U.N. is in the process of picking a new secretary-general. Is it fair to say that the secretary-general’s job is essentially, in some ways, the world’s top science diplomat? Or, can you say that the president of the European Commission, who does happen to be a doctor and a politician, is she a science diplomat? And, if you extend that, are many of these leadership roles science diplomat jobs, whether or not they have a background in science and diplomacy?

Dr. Rémi Quirion: I think you can become a science diplomat by practicing it, you don’t necessarily need to be a neuroscientist like me, or whatever else. I think you can learn that, you have to be exposed to it for sure. I think, hopefully, there’d be more and more high-level decision-makers in government, at the local and the global level, who will be science diplomats. It will be great if the next secretary-general is a science diplomat, or thinks that she or he is a scientist diplomat. Of course, there are many other things that they have to think about. And today, the multilateral organizations are under a lot of challenges. But there, I will argue that science diplomacy can help. Like with culture, probably they need to do both science diplomacy, cultural diplomacy, and probably economy as well. But certainly science should be part, one key part of this type of job.

Amna Habiba: I want to just go back to when you mentioned Horizon Europe. Where do you see AI and technology advances showing up in newer projects? And is it starting to influence how scientific advice is generated or used?

Dr. Rémi Quirion: Scientific advice is generated most likely, used probably by us and by different colleagues. I will give a talk tomorrow on AI and democracy. And certainly there is science advice, science diplomacy included in there. So I really believe that AI will help science advice and science diplomacy. But you have to be careful also not to go to the other extreme, that basically all your suggestions or recommendations to elected officials come from algorithms. So I think there is a lot still in the culture, as I mentioned before, and the successful delivery of science advice and science diplomacy. There are still a lot of human traits behind science advice and science diplomacy. I see AI, like in other fields, as a tool that can help us, but it should not become what will rule science, science diplomacy, or diplomacy altogether. But it has challenges. So we’re still in the learning phase. It’s still new. It’s still changing very, very rapidly. And probably, although it’s challenging, there will be kind of guidelines or rules that will be established over the next year, led by various countries, and it’s probably a good thing.

John Heilprin: Since you are a neuroscientist, and the fields of neurotechnology, with things like brain-computer interfaces, AI — all of these things are converging in really exciting and terrifying ways. I’m wondering, how do you handle that? What kind of advice do you give on that? Can science diplomacy help find ways to govern or to create solutions to these? How does that work?

Dr. Rémi Quirion: I think ‘solution’ probably would be a big word, but of course, UNESCO, for example, they had a think tank on neurotechnology over the past little while. I think there is a lot of opportunity in them on AI and the brain, neurotechnology there, repairing the brain, people that suffer from spinal cord injuries, for example. So I think there is a lot of opportunity. Where you have to be careful is, again, at the other end of the spectrum, the negative side of it, that when you start to control the brain with various types of devices that control learning and memory for different purposes. So I think the field that we need to focus more on is neuroethics. What are the ethics of brain functions? And come with general guidelines globally on that — a bit like we did with genomics — and making human beings, in a sense, with technology. So I think we need probably fairly quickly to come up with some kind of a resolution on that at the global level.

Amna Habiba: I wanted to move to this moment of wonder. You’ve reached the heights of global policy and you continue to break that ceiling, but you still talk about that moment of wonder when a student shows you something under a microscope that maybe no one has ever really seen before. After 14 years, do you still find that wonder in, let’s say, a cabinet meeting?

Dr. Rémi Quirion: A good question. Probably a bit more challenging, I would say. There’s something hard to reproduce in terms of feeling, maybe just because as a scientist, when you’re with your student or a colleague and you see something for the first time in the history of mankind, this is quite a unique moment. Then it takes 10 years to convince anyone it’s important. That’s a part of science as well. When you deal with elected officials, with high-level policymakers, I think probably the moment of wonder for me, it’s probably more when you improve on the rules, regulations, improve on the laws. Then this has impact on your fellow citizen. That’s not exactly the same feeling that I would express, but it’s very satisfactory as well. And it’s rare that you are alone there. It’s more as a team, I will say, to make things like that move and to improve on laws, for example, but it can be quite satisfactory.

Amna Habiba: Well, Dr. Rémi, thank you so much for joining us on The Science Diplomat and for reminding us that in science, “I don’t know” is often the most important thing you can say.

S1E3: Rémi Quirion on Science Advice, Trust, and Building Systems That Last

Scientific advice is often described as a bridge between knowledge and policy. In practice, it depends on networks of institutions, funding structures, and relationships that must be built and maintained over time.

In this conversation, Rémi Quirion, Québec’s chief scientist, head of the Fonds de recherche du Québec (FRQ), and president of the International Network for Governmental Science Advice (INGSA), reflects on what it takes to construct those systems and make them function under political pressure.

Drawing on his experience in government and a career in neuroscience, Quirion describes science advice not as a single intervention but as a continuous process of translation, repetition, and trust-building. Scientific evidence, he emphasizes, does not determine decisions; it informs choices made by elected officials balancing competing priorities. Maintaining credibility in that environment requires clarity about what is known, what is uncertain, and where evidence remains incomplete.

The discussion returns repeatedly to the role of trust — between scientists and policymakers, across institutions, and within international collaborations. That trust, Quirion argues, cannot be assumed. It must be established through consistency, independence, and an ability to adapt to different political and cultural contexts.

The conversation also examines structural features of Québec’s model, including the institutional independence of the chief scientist role and its integration with research funding through the FRQ. That dual position, Quirion suggests, enables both strategic coordination and rapid response, particularly during crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

Beyond the national level, Quirion reflects on the expansion of science advice systems globally through INGSA, now spanning more than 130 countries. He highlights the absence of a single model, noting that effective systems must be adapted to local conditions rather than exported wholesale. Efforts to build capacity, particularly in the Global South, are framed less as transfer than as partnership.

The episode also addresses mounting pressures on scientific collaboration, including geopolitical fragmentation, shifting U.S. engagement in research, and the need to build new partnerships across regions. In that context, Quirion positions science diplomacy as a practical mechanism for sustaining cooperation where traditional diplomatic channels are under strain.

Finally, the conversation turns to technological change, including the growing role of artificial intelligence in shaping how advice is generated and used. While acknowledging its potential, Quirion cautions against overreliance on algorithmic outputs, emphasizing the continued importance of human judgment, institutional context, and ethics in decision-making.

Themes covered:

• Science advice as institutional infrastructure

• Trust, credibility, and repetition in policymaking

• The boundary between scientific evidence and political decision-making

• Designing and sustaining science advice systems

• Global variation in science advice and capacity-building

• Science diplomacy under geopolitical strain

• Artificial intelligence and the future of scientific advice

Recorded on April 6, 2026.

Co-hosted by Amna Habiba, Bupe Chikumbi and John Heilprin.

When the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was established in 1988, it did more than launch a study. It shifted power from negotiation to those who define the terms of negotiation itself.

The groundwork had been laid three years earlier, in Villach, Austria, where climate scientists, under the leadership of Bert Bolin, synthesized mounting evidence that human activity was altering the atmosphere, establishing a shared scientific baseline that underpinned decades of climate governance.

The United Nations General Assembly directed the panel to regularly assess the “scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant for the understanding of the risk of human-induced climate change,” with the explicit aim of informing government response.

From the outset, the panel’s reports became the reference point for climate diplomacy. Emissions targets, adaptation strategies, and investment pathways were debated within parameters defined by scientific assessment. That marked a structural shift: authoritative knowledge began to precede negotiation, narrowing the range of politically viable outcomes before discussions began.

After his election as IPCC chair in 2023, Jim Skea pledged to uphold that model, prioritizing “improving inclusiveness and diversity, shielding scientific integrity and policy relevance of IPCC assessment reports, and making effective use of the best available science on climate change.”

During the Cold War, science diplomacy functioned primarily as a tool of restraint; verification enabled survival. In the decades that followed, scientific assessment evolved into a form of infrastructure — not simply informing globalization, but structuring it.

The Montreal Protocol provides a clear example. Its success rested not only on political agreement, but on the ability of atmospheric science to establish a causal baseline that constrained disagreement. Once the relationship between chlorofluorocarbons and ozone depletion was established with sufficient confidence, the space for political disputes narrowed, and technological substitution became a matter of implementation rather than debate.

Climate was only the beginning. Biodiversity assessments and global health surveillance systems expanded, while chemical regulation regimes came to rely on shared monitoring frameworks. Standards governing telecommunications and digital networks began to underpin economic integration, embedding technical definitions into market structures.

Science was no longer adjacent to diplomacy; it became embedded in the terms through which diplomacy operates.

In 2010, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Royal Society formalized the language of the field, distinguishing between science in diplomacy, diplomacy for science, and science for diplomacy.

“Scientific values of rationality, transparency and universality are the same the world over. They can help to underpin good governance and build trust between nations. Science provides a non-ideological environment for the participation and free exchange of ideas between people, regardless of cultural, national or religious backgrounds,” the report noted.

While the framework described practices already underway, the act of naming the field altered it. Science diplomacy became teachable, fundable, and institutionalized. Dedicated units appeared within foreign ministries, and international organizations expanded science advisory mechanisms, embedding expertise more formally into decision-making structures.

That professionalization occurred during a period when multilateralism appeared durable and scientific consensus broadly stable. Those conditions did not hold.

As globalization matured, scientific cooperation became entangled with economic and technological competition. Research ecosystems were increasingly tied to national competitiveness. Data emerged as a strategic asset. Standards began to shape markets as much as they enabled interoperability. The infrastructures that facilitated collaboration also revealed new forms of dependency.

Trust in expertise fractured unevenly as scientific consensus, once treated as a stabilizing baseline, entered more contested terrain. Artificial intelligence systems scaled rapidly while governance frameworks lagged. Semiconductor supply chains exposed geopolitical vulnerabilities. Digital platforms expanded globally within months, while regulatory systems struggled to keep pace.

In response, a new emphasis emerged: anticipation. Institutions began to invest in foresight, horizon scanning, and early warning systems — structured efforts to examine plausible futures before they harden into crises.

Anticipation, however, is not neutral. Which technologies are prioritized, which risks are elevated, and whose expertise is considered authoritative all shape the outcomes of those processes. The capacity to define future baselines extends the same logic that governs present ones.

As U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres argued earlier this year in the context of emerging technologies, “we need facts we can trust and share across countries and across sectors — less noise, more knowledge” — a formulation that underscores the continuing centrality of shared baselines in systems of global governance.

The Cold War discipline of restraint relied on the measurement of known risks. Today, accelerating technological change compresses the time available to establish shared measurements without eliminating the need for them. The question is no longer whether science can stabilize international relations, but whether systems of coordination can operate at the speed required to remain effective.

Science diplomacy “can play an important stabilizing role” in the world, but for it to be effective “it must be grounded in practical policy instruments,” Tateo Arimoto, a prominent Japanese science policy architect, wrote in the latest issue of India’s Science Diplomacy journal, emphasizing the need to integrate foreign policy with research funding, innovation partnerships, and scientific advisory systems.

“Science diplomacy,” Arimoto wrote, “is therefore becoming not merely a supplementary activity, but a core capability for managing geopolitical uncertainty and governing technological change in the 21st century.”

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In August 1955, scientists from East and West gathered in Geneva for the first Atoms for Peace conference. The Cold War was entrenched. Nuclear weapons defined global power.

Yet physicists from rival blocs sat in the same hall exchanging data about reactor design, radiation measurement, and atomic theory. They may not have called it science diplomacy, but that is what it was.

In December 1953, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower addressed the United Nations and proposed “Atoms for Peace,” arguing that “the miraculous inventiveness of man shall not be dedicated to his death, but consecrated to his life.”

The speech was both strategic and idealistic, acknowledging nuclear danger while proposing scientific cooperation as partial antidote. What followed reflected an insistence on discipline more than harmony.

Science diplomacy during the Cold War was about containment of risk, escalation and misunderstanding. Scientific exchange functioned as a controlled channel of communication between rival blocs. It allowed limited transparency without requiring political alignment. The restraint was deliberate. Science could cross borders precisely because it did not pretend to dissolve them.

The idea that science diplomacy began in 2010 — when the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Royal Society published their influential report defining “science in diplomacy,” “diplomacy for science,” and “science for diplomacy” — obscures a much longer history.

By the time that framework appeared, scientific knowledge had already shaped relations among nations for centuries. Long before the label, there was the practice.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, scholars exchanged manuscripts and observations across borders that were politically hostile but intellectually porous. Astronomers compared measurements from different latitudes to refine navigation. Physicians shared accounts of epidemics that ignored territorial sovereignty. These networks, often described as the Republic of Letters, created shared reference points that no single court or crown controlled.

Science was transnational before diplomacy learned to manage it.

The nineteenth century formalized that reality. International commissions were established to regulate rivers, telegraphs, postal systems, and standards of measurement. Coordination was practical. Railway gauges had to align. Telegraph codes had to interoperate. Cholera outbreaks demanded shared reporting systems.

What bound these efforts together was measurement: Shared standards reduced friction where politics alone could not.

Scientific collaboration between the United States and Cuba illustrates how technical cooperation can persist even amid political rupture. Institutional ties date back to the mid-19th century, including specimen exchanges beginning in 1857 between the American Museum of Natural History and Cuban researchers. In 1900, the U.S. Army Yellow Fever Commission worked with Cuban scientist Carlos Finlay to confirm mosquitoes as the vector for yellow fever, reshaping global public health.

Even after formal diplomatic relations were severed in 1961, scientific engagement continued through nongovernmental channels and federal licensing. Organizations such as AAAS facilitated joint research in hurricane tracking, marine biology, and biotechnology. The pattern is consistent: technical exchange can endure where formal diplomacy freezes.

Science also operated in less benign contexts. Imperial expeditions mapped territories, catalogued resources, and gathered medical intelligence that enabled extraction and administration. Knowledge consolidated power. Yet even in asymmetrical settings, scientific data often outlasted empires, becoming part of global baselines later generations inherited.

The moral dimension of science as a diplomatic channel emerged most clearly in humanitarian medicine. The founding of the International Committee of the Red Cross in 1863 embedded medical expertise within wartime conduct. Scientific knowledge created minimal spaces of cooperation in contexts otherwise defined by violence. Wounded soldiers were patients before they were combatants. Disease was indiscriminate.

Science constrained brutality by authority grounded in method. That logic hardened under existential threat.

On August 5, 1963, the United States, the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom signed the Partial Test Ban Treaty in Moscow. The treaty prohibited nuclear tests in the atmosphere, outer space, and underwater. Its viability depended on verification. Atmospheric radionuclides could be measured. Seismic disturbances could be detected. Compliance could be inferred from physics.

Scientific method imposed discipline where diplomacy alone would have faltered. This was the Cold War’s discipline of restraint. Scientific cooperation made rivalry survivable.

Seismic monitoring networks, satellite observation, and inspection protocols created shared baselines. Data could be contested; if it was fabricated, that could have consequence. Verification anchored fragile agreements in measurable reality.

Scientific institutions built in this era reflected that logic. CERN, founded in 1954, was part of postwar Europe’s reconstruction. Cooperation was intentional. Shared infrastructure signaled that knowledge production could bind former adversaries.

Swiss writer and cultural theorist Denis de Rougemont, who directed the Centre Européen de la Culture, saw that linkage clearly. “I understood,” he wrote, “that one should absolutely link the ideas of a European union and of control of nuclear energy: two things that in this particular moment were as striking in their novelty as in their mutual utility.”

None of this was described as science diplomacy at the time. The term had not yet crystallized. But the essential pattern was clear: scientific knowledge became diplomatically consequential when it created reference points political systems could not ignore. By the late twentieth century, the driver began to change.

As nuclear confrontation receded and globalization accelerated, the central scientific risks confronting countries became increasingly transnational. Ozone depletion, climate change, biodiversity loss, and emerging infectious diseases did not respect ideological blocs. The logic shifted from deterrence to interdependence.

The Cold War had demonstrated that scientific cooperation could function under pressure — bounded, technical, and insulated enough to survive ideological division. What changed after 1990 was the scope of science diplomacy; the discipline of restraint would give way to something broader and less contained.

Next: When science stopped merely managing danger and began structuring globalization itself.

A set of questions is becoming central to global debates on artificial intelligence: who builds the systems, who governs them, and whose interests they reflect?

At the Just AI Conference in Johannesburg this week, policymakers and researchers gathered for discussions that began with ethics and bias but quickly moved to something more structural: control.

“The question is not whether AI can govern our infrastructure, but whose justice will be entrenched into its architecture,” said Lavina Ramkissoon, an adviser to the African Union on science and technology. “Efficiency without equity is merely the automation of exclusion.”

The concern is shared across much of the Global South. But while the framing is shifting, control over AI systems remains concentrated elsewhere.

Participation without control

For policymakers within the A.U. system, the challenge is not only how to regulate AI but how to reposition the continent within the systems that make it possible.

“Africa largely participates at a consumption layer,” said Pamla Gopaul, who leads economic analysis and foresight at the A.U. Development Agency and heads the Africa Policy Bridge Tank. “We don’t participate at an infrastructure or governance layer.”

The imbalance is stark. Despite accounting for roughly a fifth of the world’s population, Africa hosts less than 2% of global data-center capacity, the physical backbone of AI. Much of that infrastructure is owned or financed by external companies, reinforcing dependence not only on technology but on the systems that sustain it.

That creates a clear imbalance: growing regulatory ambition alongside continued dependence on systems built and controlled elsewhere. “There is a risk,” Gopaul said, “that Africa becomes a well-regulated system within designs made elsewhere.”

In India, the response has been to build. A recent AI summit drew 250,000 registered attendees and saw more than $200 billion in commitments tied to data centers, computing capacity and digital infrastructure. Prime Minister Narendra Modi framed the country not as a user of AI systems, but as a builder of them.

The shift is from participation to production, but it remains uneven.

Competing systems

In Brussels, artificial intelligence is increasingly framed as a geopolitical contest. The United States leads on innovation speed, China on state-backed scale, and Europe on regulation and standards.

Other approaches are taking shape in Asia. Taiwan, for example, is pursuing what it describes as “sovereign AI” — combining domestic investment in infrastructure with integration into technology ecosystems aligned with the United States and Europe.

The Global South is often positioned as a market. That risks reproducing older patterns of dependency, said Baratang Miya, a United Nations consultant on digital public infrastructure and founder of GirlHype Coders Academy, a South African nonprofit that provides coding and digital literacy training to women and girls.

She warned that Africa’s role in global technology systems has long been externally defined. Whether treated as a market or a consumer, she argued, the continent risks reproducing a “perpetual history of colonization” in AI.

At the same time, she pointed to a quieter shift: African researchers and developers are modifying imported systems, including adapting language models to African languages and local data contexts, embedding knowledge into models not originally designed for their societies.

One year after UNESCO’s Global Science Ministerial Dialogue called for stronger science diplomacy frameworks, a concrete response has emerged — not from a major power, but from a province.

Quebec has launched one of the most structured investments in science diplomacy to date: a network of university research chairs funded by the Fonds de recherche du Québec and the Office of the Chief Scientist.

The announcement comes as international scientific collaboration remains central to major projects such as NASA’s Artemis II mission, which is sending a multinational crew of American and Canadian astronauts around the Moon.

The initiative reflects a shift in how science diplomacy is understood. It is no longer framed primarily as informal collaboration across borders, but as a capacity that can be built and sustained.

The 2025 UNESCO dialogue highlighted a changing landscape in which science diplomacy increasingly helps manage tensions between openness and security, advances national interests, and addresses shared risks from emerging technologies like artificial intelligence.

Quebec’s initiative, announced this week, reflects that shift. The research chairs are designed to train scientists to act as advisers, negotiators and intermediaries between governments, research institutions and international organizations, all roles that have become more central as scientific issues move to the core of global governance.

Projects funded under the program must involve international partners and secure external funding, embedding cross-border collaboration into their structure. The funding model is modest but structured: each chair receives provincial support matched by universities and international partners.

Rémi Quirion, Quebec’s chief scientist and president of the International Network for Government Science Advice, has argued that recent geopolitical shocks and the experience of COVID-19 exposed gaps in the capacity to integrate scientific expertise into decision-making.

“Research on science diplomacy has gained momentum over the past 20 years,” he and two strategic advisors, Charles Morissette and Laurent Corbeil, wrote. “In addition to mitigating the disruptions caused by geopolitical events, science diplomacy addresses crucial global issues including the rapid development of artificial intelligence; climate change; global health; food insecurity; democratic crises; and global governance of emerging technologies.”

Science diplomacy as influence

The initiative, officially launched in Montreal last week, also reflects a broader evolution in framing science diplomacy as more of a tool of influence than as a neutral bridge between countries.

In Europe, efforts are under way to balance open scientific exchange with research security and strategic interests. In Anglo-American contexts, institutions such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Royal Society have similarly reframed science diplomacy as a practical instrument for advancing national or organizational priorities.

At the same time, new groups are entering the field. Technology companies engage directly with governments, and some countries have established “tech envoys” or embedded scientific expertise within foreign policy structures. The boundaries between science, commerce and statecraft are becoming less distinct.

Building the interface

Quebec’s network is designed to operate at this intersection, with partnerships spanning multiple regions.

The chair on artificial intelligence, based at Université de Montréal, includes collaborators from Italy, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Switzerland, Colombia, Cameroon, Senegal and Benin. Another, focused on Arctic and space governance at Polytechnique Montréal, connects institutions in Canada, France and the United States.

Other chairs extend into Asia and Africa, including partnerships with the University of Tokyo on fisheries governance and institutions in South Africa and Rwanda on food systems and development.

The geographic spread reflects a deliberate design: science diplomacy as a distributed network rather than a single national capability. Across themes, from Arctic governance and AI to food security and Indigenous knowledge, the chairs are structured around problems that require both scientific expertise and international coordination.

By tying research to policy engagement and international collaboration, the initiative aims to build a pipeline of professionals capable of working across scientific and diplomatic systems. Quebec’s approach shows how regional governments can invest in science diplomacy through institutions and personnel, even if their scale remains modest.

Governments are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence companies themselves to help govern systems that regulators are still struggling to understand.

Anthropic’s new memorandum of understanding with the Australian government on calls for collaboration on AI safety, sharing information on how its systems are used and providing insight into model capabilities and risks.

Similar arrangements are already in place with government-linked safety institutes in the United States, United Kingdom and Japan.

The agreements reflect a shift in how artificial intelligence is being governed. Rather than relying solely on legislation or multilateral frameworks, governments are seeking direct access to the technical knowledge concentrated inside a small number of firms.

“This MOU gives our collaboration a formal foundation,” Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said on Tuesday.

Artificial intelligence is often described as unregulated. In practice, multiple governance systems already exist. The European Union’s AI Act, which begins full enforcement of most provisions in August, imposes obligations on high-risk systems and applies beyond the bloc’s borders.

The Council of Europe has adopted a binding AI treaty, while the United States has relied on executive measures, voluntary commitments and export controls. China regulates algorithms, generative models and cross-border data flows.

These frameworks are developing in parallel, with different priorities and timelines and little coordination between them. The result is not a lack of governance, but a fragmented system.

The agreements with Anthropic introduce a more operational layer. By giving governments insight into how systems perform in practice, they allow oversight to be informed by real-world use rather than external assessment alone. At the same time, they give companies a role in shaping how safety and risk are interpreted.

Collaboration needed to ‘see the full picture’

Evidence suggests that governance inside companies remains uneven.

A new report released by UNESCO and the Thomson Reuters Foundation, based on data from 3,000 companies, found that while many firms report having AI strategies, far fewer can demonstrate how risks are managed in practice or who is accountable when systems fail. The limits of the current approach are already visible.

On the same day it announced its agreement with Australia, Anthropic confirmed that part of the source code for its Claude Code system had been exposed through a publicly accessible file. The company said the incident was caused by human error and did not involve sensitive data, but it highlighted the operational risks that remain even as firms take on a greater role in governance.

Efforts are also underway to introduce a shared evidentiary foundation. The United Nations has established an Independent International Scientific Panel on Artificial Intelligence to synthesize research on AI capabilities, risks and societal impacts.

“No country, no company and no field of research can see the full picture alone,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres told the panel last month.

Geneva is positioning itself as a center for coordination. The International Telecommunication Union convenes governments, companies and researchers through its AI for Good platform, and Switzerland is preparing to host a global AI summit in 2027.

For now, however, the central challenge remains unresolved. Artificial intelligence is not ungoverned. It is governed through overlapping systems that have yet to be aligned. The question facing policymakers is whether those systems can be made to work together as the technology continues to advance.

“AI is no longer a niche technical topic – it is a core governance issue,” Thomson Reuters Foundation CEO Antonio Zappulla said. “Without robust oversight of how businesses are adopting AI, we risk causing significant downstream harm to the environment and wider society.”

Editor’s Note: This weekly series explores how science is governed globally in the absence of a world authority, beginning with the myth and reality of coordination without control.

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In Hanoi last October, senior officials lined up to sign what U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres called a “historic occasion” — the launch of the Convention against Cybercrime, the first new global criminal justice treaty in more than two decades.

Sixty-five nations became initial supporters. The U.N. General Assembly had adopted the text by consensus months earlier. “In cyberspace, nobody is safe until everybody is safe,” Guterres said at the ceremony. “One vulnerability anywhere can expose people and institutions everywhere.”

Unlike advisory panels or technical standards bodies, this instrument is legally binding once ratified. It establishes mechanisms for cross-border investigations and digital evidence sharing, along with extradition cooperation and asset seizure.

Ghada Waly, who heads the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, described it as “a paradigm shift” that “fills urgent gaps in the global response to cybercrime and provides a practical launchpad for collective action.”

Here, science and technology governance crossed a threshold from coordination to law, but that threshold is not where most science diplomacy operates.

A Spectrum of Authority

At the International Telecommunication Union, countries negotiate technical standards that shape how mobile networks function worldwide without being legally binding. At the World Health Organization, expert committees assess evidence that can trigger emergency declarations but cannot compel governments to act. At the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, scientists evaluate research that frames negotiations without dictating outcomes.

In June 2025, nations meeting in Punta del Este, Uruguay, created yet another model: a new global panel on chemicals, waste and pollution under the auspices of the U.N. Environment Program. The panel is expected to conduct “global assessments, identify knowledge gaps, communicate complex science in policy-friendly formats, and integrate capacity for national decision-making.”

“This is the first step in delivering meaningful action to address our global waste and pollution crisis,” UNEP Executive Director Inger Andersen said at the conclusion of the negotiations. The new body joins the IPCC and the biodiversity panel IPBES as part of what UNEP views as a scientific “trifecta.”

Unlike the cybercrime convention, which regulates, the new pollution panel assesses. Between those poles lies the space most commonly occupied by science diplomacy: coordination without command.

How Law Emerges From Consensus

The cybercrime treaty begin not as an enforcement mechanism but as a proposal introduced in 2019 and negotiated for five years through committee rooms marked by procedural disputes and geopolitical tension. Its adoption by consensus in December 2024 did not eliminate disagreement. Civil society groups and technology companies warned about surveillance powers and cross-border data risks.

Yet consensus mattered. Without it, the convention would have lacked legitimacy as a universal framework. With it, countries that disagreed on specific provisions still accepted the institutional architecture.

Science diplomacy relies on this procedural norm. It allows countries to remain inside frameworks they might not design alone, converting negotiated compromise into institutional continuity.

Only occasionally does that continuity crystallize into binding law.

When Science Remains Advisory

By contrast, the new chemicals and waste panel reflects a different institutional choice.

Rather than negotiating treaty obligations, countries opted to create a science-policy body that can assess risks, synthesize evidence and support national decision-making. Its authority will depend on credibility, transparency and the uptake of its findings rather than ratification thresholds or enforcement clauses.

This mirrors the structure of the IPCC and IPBES, whose reports routinely anchor climate and biodiversity negotiations without carrying legal force.

It also resembles the U.N.’s evolving approach to artificial intelligence. The Independent International Scientific Panel on AI, launched under the Pact for the Future, must produce technical assessments ahead of a global policy dialogue. Guterres has framed the effort as part of a “practical architecture” designed to move countries “from philosophical debates to technical coordination.”

The AI initiative adds another layer: capacity building. Guterres proposed a $3 billion fund to expand computing power and technical expertise in developing countries, arguing that “the future of AI cannot be decided by a handful of countries or left to the whims of a few billionaires.”

Here again, authority is structured around knowledge and participation, not coercion.

Three Modes of Governance

Taken together, these cases reveal a spectrum. At one end: advisory science bodies that define evidence but do not negotiate policy. At the other end: treaties that transform negotiated text into legal obligations. In the middle: coordinative mechanisms that align standards, share information and set non-binding expectations.

Science diplomacy operates across all three modes, but is mostly situated toward one end and the middle of the spectrum — defining evidence and setting expectations. In a recent Science editorial, Vaughan Turekian, a prominent U.S. leader in science diplomacy and international policy, and Sir Peter Gluckman, president of the International Science Council, described the shift bluntly.

“Of late, there has been a shift to a transactional model, which takes on a more business-like approach with a focus on dealmaking, and near-term returns for the players within broader national strategy,” Turekian and Gluckman wrote. “Science’s value now is seen as not just a tool of cooperation but also as a currency of negotiation. Agreements are contingent, driven by near-term benefit, and increasingly aimed at advancing national interests.”

That distribution reflects political reality. Binding agreements are difficult to negotiate and harder to ratify. Advisory and coordinative institutions require lower thresholds of agreement. They can function amid rivalry, resource disparities and shifting alliances. The dynamic reflects political constraints rather than institutional failure.

The Limits of Legal Authority

Even when science diplomacy reaches the level of treaty law, enforcement remains contingent.

The cybercrime convention will enter into force only after 40 nations ratify it. Its implementation depends on domestic legislation, prosecutorial cooperation and political will. Countries can interpret provisions narrowly or broadly. Civil society oversight will shape how surveillance powers are exercised. That tension is not confined to cybersecurity law.

“Regulation versus innovation ... they don’t stand in opposition, but rather creating an environment that gives scientists and industry predictability and certainty that their products will not be misused can spur innovation in a safe space,” Izumi Nakamitsu, the U.N. undersecretary-general and high representative for disarmament affairs, told UNESCO’s Global Ministerial Dialogue on Science Diplomacy last year.

The same is true in reverse. Advisory panels do not compel action, but they can shape expectations so powerfully that deviation becomes costly. IPCC findings, for example, frame climate negotiations even when countries contest mitigation targets.

Authority in global science governance is layered rather than hierarchical. Legal instruments, expert assessments and technical standards interact; none alone governs the system.

Closing the Series

Across five parts, this series has examined standards committees, expert panels, consensus negotiations and institutional lag in the face of accelerating technology.

No global science authority sits above them. Instead, governance emerges from procedure: repeated meetings, documentation, adopted frameworks, ratified treaties, published assessments. Authority accrues through participation and persistence.

Sometimes it becomes law, but more often it stabilizes expectations.

The cybercrime convention demonstrates that consensus can harden into binding rules. The UNEP chemicals panel shows that countries still turn first to assessment when confronting complex risks. The AI architecture suggests that expertise and capacity may be assembled in parallel to regulation rather than after it.

Global science governance is distributed across institutions that vary in mandate and strength. When authority hardens into law, it depends on national implementation. When it stays advisory, it depends on credibility and uptake.

In both cases, science diplomacy functions less as command than as maintenance: sustaining channels, defining baselines and preventing fragmentation in domains where no single country can govern alone. The system works because enough participants continue to reproduce it.

Whether it will keep pace with accelerating technologies, ranging from AI to bioengineering to next-generation networks, remains the open question.

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After decades at CERN, one of the world’s largest scientific collaborations, physicist Archana Sharma sees global science as something more than a technical enterprise.

It is a system sustained by relationships as much as by technology.

“Collaboration is not just cooperation. It is interdependence and co-dependence as well, which is based on a strong sense of trust and transparency,” Sharma said on The Science Diplomat podcast.

That distinction becomes more consequential as scientific projects grow in scale and complexity. Experiments at CERN, including those leading to the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012, involve thousands of researchers across dozens of countries working within a shared system.

As geopolitical competition intensifies and science becomes more strategically important, the conditions that sustain such collaboration are coming under greater strain.

“Competition has to be replaced in our minds as collaboration. Take away the competition, bring the collaboration,” she said. “What does it mean? That you consistently contribute to solutions, to shared problems, because we have problems every single day.”

Science as a system of relationships

For Sharma, the challenge is not only technical coordination but maintaining trust across institutions and countries that differ in resources, capacity and political priorities.

“Progress depends as much on reliability and trust as on brilliance or intelligence,” she said. “If people know you will deliver what you promise, on time, with transparency, the doors will open. And if not, even great ideas can stall.”

Large scientific discoveries are often presented as singular breakthroughs. In practice, Sharma says, they depend on sustained coordination and incremental progress across distributed teams.

“CERN itself is the largest example of science diplomacy in action,” she said.

During the period leading up to the Higgs boson discovery, she recalls, the work depended less on a single moment of insight than on ensuring that teams working on detectors, data analysis and calibration functioned “like a big beehive.”

Inequality inside collaboration

Within collaborations of that scale, participation is shaped by unequal access to resources and infrastructure.

Researchers from countries with fewer resources may face additional barriers to long-term involvement. But Sharma argues that material capacity alone does not determine meaningful contribution.

“Inclusivity does not mean identical roles,” she said. “It means meaningful roles for all participants. And I do feel that everyone can contribute.”

She has worked to expand participation from South Asia, helping create pathways for younger researchers to gain visibility through leadership and coordination roles.

“I worked very hard on that, too, to create channels by which visibility can be given to younger people,” she said.

Science diplomacy in practice

CERN’s collaborative model operates at the intersection of science and diplomacy, but not primarily through formal negotiations or policy frameworks.

By Sharma’s account, science diplomacy is embedded in practice — in the routines, expectations and relationships that sustain collaboration over time. Influence is earned through reliability and contribution, not formal authority.

“Then everybody wants to work with you and they want to bring you to their project,” she said. “That’s the way I think somebody can gain influence and visibility.”

This perspective contrasts with efforts to define science diplomacy primarily through institutional frameworks. In large-scale scientific systems, it is often enacted informally, through day-to-day coordination across borders.

Sustaining collaboration

Despite rising geopolitical tensions, Sharma does not see large-scale scientific collaboration as inherently fragile. But she argues that sustaining it requires continuous investment — not only in infrastructure, but in relationships.

“Large science will depend on the long-term trust between nations, and that trust, unfortunately, cannot be taken for granted,” she said.

Facilities such as CERN function as shared infrastructure, but they are also built on human relationships that require ongoing maintenance.

Science diplomacy is not just an episode that you do it today, and tomorrow you forget about it,” Sharma said. “This is a continuous maintenance of the collaboration and cooperation.”

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Pressure is building across diplomatic, political and security arenas to establish guardrails for artificial intelligence, as competing approaches to governance emerge and the gap between technological capability and oversight widens.

A group of former heads of government, Nobel laureates and leading scientists, convened by The Elders, called on governments “to manage artificial intelligence with an urgency that reflects both scientific evidence and public concern,” warning that current governance frameworks are falling behind rapid advances in the technology.

The group, which was founded by the late Nelson Mandela in 2007 and includes former leaders such as Mary Robinson and Helen Clark, highlighted risks across security, human rights and environmental domains.

“Militaries are integrating commercial AI systems into weapons prematurely,” the group said on Friday, warning of potential violations of international law and escalation risks tied to autonomous and AI-assisted systems.

Governance gap widens

Their call for regulation comes as the United Nations advances a parallel effort to shape AI governance through non-binding mechanisms rather than negotiated rules.

“People expect their governments to regulate companies so profit is not prioritised over public safety,” the group said. “We reject claims that governments cannot or should not regulate AI.”

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres has proposed a three-part framework combining an independent scientific panel, a global policy dialogue and a funding mechanism aimed at expanding AI capacity in developing countries.

The approach reflects a shift toward building shared technical standards and participation capacity before negotiating binding rules — an acknowledgment of geopolitical divisions that have stalled formal regulation.

Guterres has warned that the future of AI “cannot be decided by a handful of countries or left to the whims of a few” powerful nations, companies or billionaires, emphasizing the need for broader participation in shaping the technology’s trajectory.

Security tensions sharpen focus

At the same time, disputes over the use of AI in national security are moving from abstract debate to operational conflict.

In Washington, a standoff between the Pentagon and AI firm Anthropic over safeguards on military use of artificial intelligence escalated into U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to order federal agencies to stop using the company’s technology.

But on Friday, Anthropic won a legal round against the Trump administration when a federal judge granted an injunction.

“Nothing in the governing statute supports the Orwellian notion that an American company may be branded a potential adversary and saboteur of the U.S. for expressing disagreement with the government,” Judge Rita Lin of the Northern District of California ruled in granting the injunction against a government order that called it a supply chain risk. “This appears to be classic First Amendment retaliation.”

Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had publicly declared the Pentagon was cutting ties with Anthropic after it refused to allow unrestricted military use of its Claude AI model. The restrictions include the use of lethal autonomous weapons without human oversight and mass surveillance of Americans.

The dispute centered on whether private developers can impose limits on how governments deploy AI systems in areas such as surveillance and autonomous weapons — a question that goes to the core of emerging governance models.

While the U.S. government has argued that lawful use should not be constrained by vendors, technology firms and researchers have raised concerns about the risks of deploying advanced systems without enforceable safeguards.

Converging signals

Political leaders and scientific bodies are calling for stronger AI oversight even as governments accelerate its adoption in defense and intelligence systems. Multilateral institutions, meanwhile, are attempting to build consensus through technical coordination and capacity-building rather than binding agreements.

The result is an emerging governance landscape defined less by formal treaties than by overlapping initiatives — national policies, corporate standards and multilateral frameworks shaping how AI is used.

The Elders, which is now chaired by Juan Manuel Santos and Graça Machel, argued that without coordinated action, the trajectory of AI development will be set by a select few in power.

“There is nothing inevitable about how AI develops,” the group said. “Who it benefits and harms is a shared global challenge, not a race between a handful of countries or companies.”

Season 1, Episode 2
Duration: 37:14 minutes
Recorded: 23 March 2026

Dr. Archana Sharma, a senior scientist at CERN and a long-time contributor to international scientific collaborations, joins The Science Diplomat for a conversation on how large-scale science operates as both a technical and diplomatic system.

Drawing on her experience in experiments that contributed to the discovery of the Higgs boson, Sharma describes collaboration not as a singular moment of discovery but as a long-term process built on coordination, governance, and shared responsibility. She emphasizes that large scientific systems function through interdependence, where no individual, institution, or country can succeed independently, and where trust and reliability are as critical as scientific insight.

The conversation explores how scientific collaboration is shaped by unequal access to resources and infrastructure, and how participation depends not only on capability but on the ability to build and sustain trust over time. Sharma highlights the structural challenges of recognition in collaborations involving thousands of contributors, and the mechanisms developed to ensure visibility and career progression within such systems.

She also reflects on leadership and negotiation within international collaborations, including her role in developing the Gas Electron Multiplier (GEM) collaboration across multiple institutions. These efforts required aligning funding cycles, technical standards, and institutional priorities — demonstrating that scientific progress often depends on diplomatic skill as much as technical expertise.

Throughout the discussion, Sharma frames science diplomacy at an institution like CERN as something embedded in the daily practice of large-scale science.

The conversation concludes with reflections on the future of global science, including the need for sustained investment in shared infrastructure and the importance of maintaining trust between nations in an increasingly complex geopolitical environment.

Listen to the full conversation below.

The Science Diplomat Podcast - Season 1, Episode 2

Key Themes

• Scientific collaboration as interdependence rather than coordination

• Trust and credibility as conditions for participation

• Recognition and visibility in large-scale scientific systems

• Inequality in access across countries and institutions

• Leadership, negotiation, and alignment in global collaborations

• Science diplomacy as embedded practice rather than formal framework

Transcript

This is the verified transcript of Season 1, Episode 2 of The Science Diplomat podcast, featuring Dr. Archana Sharma. The text has been lightly edited for clarity and minor transcription corrections. The substance of the conversation has not been altered.

Amna Habiba: Hello and welcome back to the Science Diplomat podcast. I’m your host, Amna Habiba. And today with us we have a very special guest. But before I introduce her, let me talk a little bit more about what we’ll be talking about today. We often hear a lot about major scientific discoveries, but not as much about the people in the years of collaboration that makes it possible. Because behind these moments are thousands of researchers, working across countries and institutions, trying to build something together over time. Dr. Archana Sharma is a physicist who has spent decades working in large international collaborations. At CERN, she has served as a Senior Scientist, contributing to major particle physics experiments, leading the GEM collaboration and helping develop the detector technologies used in global research today. Her work has involved coordinating teams across institutions and countries. And today we’re not just talking about the science but what it feels like to actually work in such environments — how decisions get made and what really holds everything together over time. So, Dr. Sharma, you’ve moved from Jhansi into one of the most international scientific environments in the world. When you first arrived, what were you stepping into?

Dr. Acharna Sharma: Thank you, Amna, for this question. And I must say that it is a humbling moment to reflect on the journey. I indeed arrived from Jhansi, a very small place in India, into an environment that was not just international, but it was very institutional. Because CERN is not just a laboratory. It’s a living system. And that living system will outlast individual careers like mine. All the people who came before me. So what really struck me was the scale of continuity of the experiments that were planned for decades, of the detectors that were the size of buildings, and teams who spent a large portion of their lives here. So indeed coming from India, and from someone outside that ecosystem, you quickly realize that you’re entering a structure which has its own rhythm and its own norms and hierarchies. So yes, it was also another knowledge that comes to the fore, that you are surrounded by extraordinary competencies and expertise. And you have to learn how to function in that machine, being a tiny cog that is already in motion even long before you arrived. So yes, I had no clue what I was stepping into.

Bupe Chikumbi: So what did you understand early on about how that environment actually functions day to day that you wouldn’t have seen from the outside?

Dr. Acharna Sharma: From the outside, you know, large science looks very glamorous. You know, in those days, in the ‘80s, late ‘80s, coming out of a country like India was also quite something that you’re coming to another planet. And large science, it looks like pure intellectual collaboration. But once you’re inside it, then you realize that it’s the logistics. It’s the governance. It’s the negotiation. It’s the patience that you need. And of course, decisions are not made instantly, because they affect thousands of people and millions in public investment. Indeed, progress depends as much on reliability and trust as on brilliance or intelligence, I would say. And if people you know will deliver what you promise, on time, transparency and collaboration, the doors will open. And if not, even great ideas can stall.

Amna Habiba: What made this early period in your career difficult to adjust to or anything that you tried to tackle moving into this new environment?

Dr. Acharna Sharma: Yeah, I would say again it was coming to another planet, but the difficulty was not scientific, if I may say so. It was cultural and it was structural as well. One has to learn how to speak, when to intervene, to find your own voice, in addition, and how decisions are actually made, and how you build your own credibility without overstepping from your role or without being too visible. And clearly, there’s also a psychological adjustment. Because you are moving, for me particularly, I would say that I was the most accomplished in the context when I was in India doing my studies. And then you come to another place where you are one tiny, unaccomplished person among very accomplished scientists. So this transition requires a tenacity and resilience that one was not prepared for, and therefore the difficult period initially. And one needs also a willingness to start again, professionally speaking.

Amna Habiba: So during your time at CERN over the past years, what does collaboration really look like? I know that a lot of these institutions bring together people from many different countries over long periods of time and the projects, they span longer than the people that stay there. But how did the collaborative environment feel for you at least?

Dr. Acharna Sharma: I think the key word I have learned over the last decades, and my only job was working at CERN all my life, so that is collaboration. And day-to-day, it is less dramatic than we can imagine. Mainly it is about meetings, about documentation, controlling versions of software, safety reviews, technical debates, and indeed coordination across time zones, as we are doing today as well. I mean, large experiments must have a process, must have a system. And at the same time, there’s a very strong sense of shared ownership, because we all have a common goal. And indeed, no single person, or no single institution, or no single country can build or operate these detectors, nor the facility for that matter. One has to depend on other people. And this creates both solidarity and also some tension. So I would say collaboration is not just cooperation. It is interdependence and co-dependence as well, which is based on a strong sense of trust and transparency.

John Heilprin: So, I just want to thank you again for joining our podcast. It’s really exciting to talk to you. And I feel like we would be remiss, obviously, if we didn’t talk about the Higgs boson, and your experience during that time. And I feel like I have to preface that by saying for me, I joined The Associated Press in Geneva in 2010, and I knew that it was really an exciting time to be reporting on CERN, knowing that something was up. And my father was a physicist, and, you know, I knew that there was a big story out there. And so I spent a lot of time working the story and managed to break the story for The Associated Press, which I was very proud of. But I also got to be in the room for the formal announcement. I somehow wound up seated pretty near Peter Higgs. And I know that you were there. I think what struck me was just the scale of it. I think I had had a tour privately of some of the facilities and it was amazing to me just the number of people who were involved and across all these countries. So can you talk about what was that like for you? What exactly was your role and your team’s role? And how did that work?

Dr. Acharna Sharma: Thank you, John. First of all, congratulations that you chose very well the time to come to Geneva, because the Higgs discovery was around the corner when you came, and I’m so glad that you got to cover that story. And I might say that when we are working within an experiment, this discovery was not just a single moment. Because in 1964 came the equation which described what could a Higgs boson and what would be its role in understanding the origins of the universe, namely completing the standard model. So while we are working like a big beehive, everybody’s working and doing their job, my work was working in detector development initially. And then to build those detectors, to install them, to calibrate them, collecting data, and then analyzing that data. And once again, I will highlight collaboration, because it was not my work, it was our work. And this work, together with my colleagues, this involved ensuring that the instrumentation performed reliably and that the data were trustworthy. Everyone in the collaboration could trust and look at the data and analyze the data. In addition, there were two experiments. One was CMS, that was my experiment, the Compact Muon Solenoid, and the ATLAS experiment that you certainly know and you must have visited. That was a sister experiment, but both of them were healthily competing with each other for the Higgs boson. And of course, nature is the same wherever you are. You know, gravity is the same in New York or in Geneva. In the same way, the Higgs boson, if it were to be seen in the Large Hadron Collider, it should be seen in both experiments. So yes, when the announcement came, it represented thousands of incremental contributions. Many of them were invisible. Many people were not there to see. We were so fortunate that Professor Peter Higgs was there to see in his lifetime the result of this large number of thousands of people working together and finally converging into a result that the world could see. And I must say that the Higgs boson discovery also gave life to this little less-known laboratory called CERN to the rest of the world. So this was a very important point in the life of all the scientists, engineers, technicians that were involved and students too, myself included. And then the life of CERN as well, which came into the limelight and everybody, and it became — the Higgs boson and CERN became the topic of discussion in drawing rooms and on the TV, you could see what’s happening at CERN. So very proud moment also for me.

Bupe Chikumbi: Amazing. So around that period working on the detectors, the CMS, or the ATLAS experiment, you know, when everything was building toward the Higgs announcement, was there a moment where collaboration became really difficult? And if so, what changed between the people or the institutions.

Dr. Acharna Sharma: Thank you for the question. I will say that collaboration is a challenge and a lot of tenacity is needed to continue these intergenerational experiments. When I came to CERN in 1987, I had zero idea about collaboration or about how things work in this large setup of an international cooperation. And collaboration becomes difficult when priorities will diverge. For example, when institutions face funding pressures, there are technical setbacks or national expectations. Nationally also we want to be in the forefront of the science and the technologies. And then the challenge comes to maintain the collective team goal. You want to have the same goal for every team and still keep acknowledgement of individual constraints, as well as individual contributions and individual careers. So often the solution is not technical, but it’s diplomatic and we need to listen very carefully. We need to find the right compromises, and we have to sometimes even slow down so that everyone can move forward together. So definitely not easy, but doable, as we have demonstrated by doing this kind of diplomacy in our work.

Amna Habiba: You mentioned how there were two experiments happening together, and of course, there’s lots of people across the world that are contributing to this research and even at CERN. So when you said that kind of CERN got into the spotlight after the discovery, how did things, or dynamics, particularly within your team or the collaborations that you were part of change post-discovery?

Dr. Acharna Sharma: So, yes, Amna, indeed, I mean, as I mentioned earlier, that this is rather a management of the large collaboration. It’s a human system that is embedded in political, financial and cultural realities. And these scientists are not only scientists, but they are citizens coming from different countries, employees of different institutions, and different public accountability structures. So pure science is actually science operating within a web of obligations. And therefore, the dynamics is also very different when you’re working at a small scale. So small scale collaboration can rely on personal relationships. And I do remember when I was working in a small group, when I arrived at CERN, we were about 10 people and it’s like a family almost. And when you go to the large scale, and requiring formal governance committees, voting procedures, spokespeople and MOUs, all these things then I would say that coming to the large scale, it absolutely forces to have a structure.

John Heilprin: So, I have just a quick follow up on that. You know I covered, as a reporter I covered diplomacy for years, and then I covered science for years. And until recently, I never actually really heard the term ‘science diplomacy.’ And only in retrospect did I realize that I covered things — like the Iran nuclear deal. Now in retrospect I think of it as a science diplomacy negotiation of sorts. But I’m thinking about what you were just saying and I’m wondering what is the difference between a scientific collaboration and science diplomacy?

Dr. Acharna Sharma: So I would say that CERN itself is the largest example of science diplomacy in action. We did not — just like you, we did not even know the words ‘science diplomacy,’ you know. We were just doing the work. And after the Second World War, when CERN was created in 1954, it was the result of science diplomacy. Where people got together to maintain and consolidate European science. So I think that we are scientists — big science in fact actually are the diplomats. And the future, I think, on the planet also depends a lot on scientists and science diplomacy. So we need to continue to understand how we can stay engaged year by year, because this is a challenge also to remain motivated decade after decade for large teams, which will be on the site. And there are very few individuals who are then carrying an enormous responsibility. So, how do we challenge — how do we somehow overcome these challenges, and how do take these critical responsibilities which take time and visibility, and then the country’s expectations as well have to come in the picture. So science diplomacy in action is what CERN is. We don’t speak about it too much, but we just do it, if I may say so.

Amna Habiba: Thank you for sharing that. I wanted to just go back a bit to the scientific collaboration environment at CERN and any other environments that you’ve observed. Where do you really think that differences in access or visibility appear in a collaboration this large? Are there certain areas where it’s like easier or harder for people to contribute or to be recognized?

Dr. Acharna Sharma: Indeed, I mean, resources are different in country to country, in funding agencies, in priority. And when you have infrastructure in your country that is as good as the infrastructure at CERN, you are coming right prepared to attack and hit the ground running when you come to CERN. But other people, they have to be engaged in an equal manner. But nevertheless they are not able to be up to speed on how they would be able to support, first of all, these teams on site, because institutions can or cannot manage large teams and travel ability for that matter and continuity of personnel. Because if I ask today that I want to have in my experiment, just giving you an example, take two engineers. I want to have two engineers for 10 years from an institution, say in the United States. Can they promise us? They might be able to, because they could be long-term employees of an institution. However, if I go back with the same question to another country that is less stable or less endowed in resources for science funding, it becomes a challenge for them to send people and maintain teams on the site. So, they will not commit to have this or give this resource. So time itself becomes a resource, and the ability to stay engaged becomes these kind of differences that you have asked me about. And you see then in the way people engage, because they pick up responsibilities that they will be able to deliver with you.

Bupe Chikumbi: That’s a really good point. And just staying on that point of access to funding, a lot of people around the world, such as myself, I myself come from Southern Africa. I come from Zambia. And we imagine global science as open and merit-based. But in practice, we get to see that where you come from, especially for researchers from the Global South, what you have access to shapes how you enter and how you are seen in these rooms. So for someone coming in from these kinds of contexts, what is actually hardest to access?

Dr. Acharna Sharma: I think it’s not very simple, I must say. However, there is something which is quite important, and I will call it — the access is not the equipment, but the trust. And building that trust takes time. Sometimes it begins just by a young student who would just come and spend, say, some time here, and starts being trusted, starts taking responsibilities, and then goes back home and continues that responsibility from back home. Then this is a demonstrated reliability and that trust, as I mentioned earlier as well, becomes critical to getting access to what we would like to be doing in the collaboration. So visibility, and visibility comes after being credible, and after being trusted upon for some kind of participation. And certainly without trust, participation definitely remains peripheral.

John Heilprin: And sort of following on that, I guess, trust — you know how are contributions themselves recognized and what determines a person’s visibility?

Dr. Acharna Sharma: This is a very important question and I worked upon this question some years ago in great detail for my experiment itself, because a single person’s recognition is very, very challenging in a large collaboration. Recognition becomes even more complex because the outputs are collective outputs, you know. I am working on a magnet that was designed in 1992 by an engineer, or somebody else who is not even there anymore, you know, and his teams. The Higgs boson was discovered by 10,000 scientists. So the visibility and the recognition becomes an equal challenge. So there are rules and regulations on how long-term contributions that other people rely upon are also recognized. And this has to be the job of a career development committee within a collaboration. And I worked very hard on that, too, to create channels by which visibility can be given to younger people particularly, and that comes through leadership roles or coordination responsibility. Because authorship, you know, there are thousands of people in the publications. So how do to capture the influence of one person in that particular paper? So we have now pre-publications, which are then fewer authors, and they can be cited and referenced by committees that understand the value of the work that has been contributed by individuals in these large collaborations. So indeed, it is a very important aspect of collaborations, and people work very hard to ensure that recognition, even if it is complex, it can be at least made affordable.

Bupe Chikumbi: Dr. Sharma, I know you are also very passionate about young people and ensuring that young people have access as well as visibility. So for young scientists entering today, what would you say has changed and what is still difficult in the same way?

Dr. Acharna Sharma: Well, a lot of things have changed after the three letters that came on the planet. That was WWW, right? Thanks to CERN, as you all know. So communication tools have improved dramatically. Remote participation has become easier. Knowledge seeking has become easier. Any question, you type, you get an answer instantly. But then competition has also intensified. Career paths are less secure. There are less opportunities for qualified students and younger scientists. So the challenge for now is to sustain a long-term engagement in this kind of science that we do at CERN. But I must also remind you of something that 90% of the students or PhDs or young scientists, they go to industry. And there CERN tends to be a very good training ground that is churning out professionals that can go to banks, that can to government jobs, that can go to engineering systems, or you name it, and a physicist can do it all, if I may be allowed to say that.

John Heilprin: So I just want to drill down a little bit more. You were talking about these issues of trust and recognition and the committee role. And I guess I’m wondering, you know how does somebody come to be trusted or listened to? And what determines whose voice carries weight?

Dr. Acharna Sharma: That’s an interesting question, John. And I think that navigation through understanding of how to become visible or how to gain influence is quite important. But again, it has to be lived to be learned. And one thing I learned really at CERN was because when you know in India, I was also part of the competition to other students or other teams wherever I was. And the big thing I learned was, once again, competition has to be replaced in our minds as collaboration. Take away the competition, bring the collaboration. What does it mean? That you consistently contribute to solutions, to shared problems, because we have problems every single day. Whenever you’re working, wherever you’re working, whether it’s at CERN or whether it’s a big, large collaboration inside an experiment, you know, whether you are on the accelerator front, or designing or in the R&D, there are always issues every single day. So when you become known as a troubleshooter — so influence is then earned when others know that involving you will make the project succeed. And then everybody wants to work with you and they want to bring you to their project. And that’s the way I think somebody can gain influence and visibility.

Amna Habiba: I wanted to talk a bit more about your collaboration for the CMS GEM collaboration, the international effort developing the gas electron multiplier detectors. And what were exactly some of the, I’d say, negotiations that kept the collaboration moving, considering it was at such a large scale?

Dr. Acharna Sharma: Thank you for this question, because GEM is very close to my heart, you know, it was an idea that came out of my head and I had to of course work very, very hard to get everyone on board those ideas. But the good thing is that you know I have a lot of young talent around me, which is students. And I’ve been constantly having students with me even for my previous projects. So when I started thinking about the GEM collaboration, I first got a couple of students to help me to create prototypes, test them and demonstrate that what I am saying is actually possible. And then of course there was a lot of negotiation, everything from funding cycles and technical standards to the credit and timelines schedules. And every institution operates under different constraints, different time cycles of funding. So all these alignments then require continuous dialogue, which threw me out of the laboratory and made me into a manager. But I did learn that leadership really is less about authority and more about facilitation. How much can you facilitate what the person sitting in front of you would like to obtain out of the project, you know. And once we align those goals, I feel that negotiation then becomes much easier.

Bupe Chikumbi: So, when you are working across institutions with very different levels of capacity, how do those differences show up in decision-making and what did you have to manage to make that work across those differences?

Dr. Acharna Sharma: I love this question, because when I came to CERN, I was exactly in the same situation. I felt that I knew nothing and obviously my capacity was way below par, as I would expect somebody coming to a premier laboratory like CERN. But I do believe in inclusion, first of all, which means that talent can come from anywhere. It is widely distributed. But the opportunities are not as widely distributed. So what do you want to do? You want to create pathways. You want to create training programs. You create exchanges. You create collaborative projects. Then participation expands rapidly. The point for a good leader is to sustain these pathways so that there is an institutional commitment. What do we do for different, let’s say, readiness? We create work packages so that institutions can see and contribute and commit according to their strengths. So inclusivity does not mean to have identical roles. It means meaningful roles for all participants. And I do feel that everyone can contribute.

Amna Habiba: Just going on from there, what do you see going ahead changing within scientific collaboration? And especially with the rise of how we’re defining science diplomacy. What have you seen work and what do think hasn’t worked, and could potentially change to make scientific collaboration and science diplomacy, as a concept, more accessible to scientists and policymakers?

Dr. Acharna Sharma: Yeah, so I feel that there are complex problems on the planet, lots and lots of different problems, and we need to understand how science diplomacy that is in action at CERN can contribute to society. So once you start looking at international cooperation, and when you combine large science with the development, with education, with people who want to really not just be a scientist but also a bridge or a lever between two worlds. So that’s what has changed now. The focus has pretty much shifted from the technical details into social impact, as you rightly said about, spoke about, the Sustainable Development Goals. But I do believe that we should not look at the fuzzy goals, rather we should look at deliverables. So that’s what I have learned in my career, that when you can define the deliverable to the last detail, you will be able to find a solution to that challenge that you are looking to solve. So CERN and science and the way we do science has definitely shifted a little bit, not only from the details of the science and the models and the equations, but linking them and speaking about them for social impact is what people want to understand. And science diplomacy definitely has a role to play as a translator here.

John Heilprin: I’m wondering when you think about how all the pieces of science diplomacy or scientific collaboration fit together, working within the institutions and working with other institutions — which parts feel like they work the best, and which parts maybe need some work?

Dr. Acharna Sharma: Well, I think technological connectivity is the easier part. You know you can speak the same language, the scientific language, and collaborations can be easy, of course, if you’re sitting on the science and technology front. But the challenge are the geopolitical tensions and funding pressures. So that makes it very hard. So definitely large science will depend on the long-term trust between nations and that trust, unfortunately, cannot be taken for granted. So we definitely need sustained investment in shared infrastructure. A facility like CERN is a shared infrastructure for Europe initially, and now it is a share infrastructure for the world — and in the human relationships that support it. So, science diplomacy is not just an episode, you know, that you do it today, and tomorrow you forget about it. This is a continuous maintenance of the collaboration and cooperation.

John Heilprin: Just one quick follow on that. I’m just wondering — I feel like the more that we’ve done this project, the more I see, I feel like science diplomacy is a really interesting lens to view the entire world through. Do you feel that way sometimes?

Dr. Acharna Sharma: Well, I think I am very, very privileged in what I do. And global science really is the work of a large, large community. And I feel that we do need to continue, be patient, and wait collectively and just work together in peace. Science can really bring peace, I think, and that’s the way to go forward.

Bupe Chikumbi: Amazing. Just on a lighter note, and I think the viewers will be very excited about this. So I always make it a point to ask a scientist from CERN, you know, two very important questions when it comes to physics and the world of physics. So the first question is, do you watch ‘The Big Bang Theory,’ the TV show? And if not, would you rather talk about dark matter?

Dr. Acharna Sharma: I see. You see how much time I have, because I do not — I have not watched ‘The Big Bang Theory,’ and dark matter is definitely something which is very intriguing, very elusive as well. And this is why we are working so hard, upgrading the Large Hadron Collider, and, you know, having plans to run it until 2042. Can you believe the kind of scale at which we have to work? To have our detectors work for so long, number one, and second, to keep on schedule, so that you know we can keep within the budget as well. So indeed, we have struggles, we our own struggles, we can disagree, but on the other hand, Big Bang theory and dark matter is what takes us forward to continue to build together and take science forward.

Amna Habiba: Well, thank you so much, Dr. Sharma, for taking the time to speak with us and sharing your experiences from inside these systems. This has been a wonderful conversation about how science is not just produced, but organized across institutions, across countries, and over time. And one word to summarize it, which is, of course, something that we picked up from today’s conversation, is collaboration, which is something we hope that continues to happen within the scientific world. Thank you for joining us. This is the Science Diplomat broadcast, and we’re signing off.

Dr. Acharna Sharma: Thank you so much for having me.

Amna Habiba: Thank you.

John Heilprin: Thank you so much for being on it.

Dr. Acharna Sharma: Thank you.

Season 1, Episode 2 — Archana Sharma on Collaboration, Trust, and Science Diplomacy in Practice

Scientific discovery at scale depends not only on ideas, but on systems — large infrastructures, long-term coordination, and sustained cooperation across countries that are not always politically aligned. In this conversation, physicist Archana Sharma reflects on how global science actually functions from inside one of its most complex environments.

Drawing on decades of experience in high-energy physics, including her work on the experiments that led to the discovery of the Higgs boson, Sharma describes collaboration not as abstract cooperation, but as a structured system built on logistics, governance, negotiation, and trust. She explains how large scientific projects depend on reliability and interdependence as much as intellectual contribution, and why progress often hinges on patience and credibility rather than breakthrough alone.

The conversation also examines how scientific collaboration operates across unequal systems of funding and access, and how trust rather than equipment or infrastructure is often the decisive factor in participation. Sharma discusses the challenges of recognition in collaborations involving thousands of contributors, the role of leadership in aligning institutions with different capacities, and how scientific work is embedded within political, financial, and cultural constraints.

Throughout, she frames large-scale science as a form of science diplomacy in practice — an ongoing process of maintaining cooperation across generations, institutions, and national interests. She argues that such systems require continuous negotiation and shared commitment, and that their success depends on long-term investment not only in infrastructure, but in relationships.

Themes covered:

• Large-scale scientific collaboration as a structured system

• Trust, credibility, and interdependence in global science

• The distinction between collaboration and science diplomacy

• Inequality in access, participation, and recognition

• Leadership and negotiation across institutions

• Science as a bridge across geopolitical and cultural divides

Recorded on March 23, 2026.

Co-hosted by Amna Habiba, Bupe Chikumbi and John Heilprin.

Editor’s Note: This weekly series explores how science is governed globally in the absence of a world authority, beginning with the myth and reality of coordination without control.

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The systems were already in place. By the time the United Nations created an Independent International Scientific Panel on Artificial Intelligence last year, frontier models were embedded in search engines, integrated into productivity software, and shaping security debates. Governments were convening summits. Companies were releasing new versions in rapid succession.

Institutional architecture followed acceleration.

Under a mandate from the Pact for the Future, U.N. member countries approved the 40-member panel to establish a shared scientific evidence base. In February, Secretary-General António Guterres proposed a next layer: a $3 billion global fund to expand computing capacity, data infrastructure and technical expertise in developing countries.

“The future of AI cannot be decided by a handful of countries or left to the whims of a few billionaires,” Guterres said at the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi. He warned that without investment, many countries risk being “logged out” of the AI era.

Taken together, the initiatives form what he has described as a “practical architecture” for AI governance: scientific assessment, political dialogue, and capacity-building finance.

The Pace Problem

International scientific institutions are built for deliberation, relying on committees, consultation and consensus. Legitimacy and inclusion take precedence over speed, but AI development has not followed that rhythm.

The panel’s first report is expected in time to inform a Global Dialogue on AI Governance in July. The compressed timeline reflects urgency. The systems under discussion are already shaping markets and public administration.

Guterres has framed the panel’s role as helping countries “move from philosophical debates to technical coordination” by agreeing on how to test systems and measure risk. The sequencing is revealing. The U.N. is attempting to stabilize expectations after the fact instead of attempting to halt or slow AI deployment.

Science diplomacy can convene experts and define baselines, but it is not designed to slow discovery or commercial rollout.

Redistribution as Governance

The capability gap sharpens the problem. A U.N. Development Program report released in December warned that AI could deepen global divides, with benefits flowing fastest to early movers in higher-income economies while disruption hits hardest where digital infrastructure and social protections are weakest. The report described the risk as a “Next Great Divergence,” reversing decades of economic convergence.

“As a general-purpose technology, AI can lift productivity, spark new industries, and help latecomers catch up,” the report said. Yet gains are concentrated. China accounts for nearly 70% of global AI patents, and more than 3,100 newly funded AI companies have emerged across just six Asia-Pacific economies.

“The central fault line in the AI era is capability,” said Philip Schellekens, UNDP’s Asia-Pacific chief economist. “Countries that invest in skills, computing power and sound governance systems will benefit, others risk being left far behind.”

The proposed $3 billion fund is therefore an attempt to prevent structural exclusion from a technology already reshaping economies. Capacity-building, however, expands participation instead of determining more regulation or deployment.

Governance Without Mandate

No global institution holds comprehensive authority over artificial intelligence. Mandates are fragmented across telecommunications, trade, human rights and development forums.

Rather than negotiate a binding convention, the U.N. is assembling parallel functions in scientific assessment, political dialogue and financing for participation. Each operates without enforcement power.

Switzerland’s President Guy Parmelin announced that the 2027 World Summit on Artificial Intelligence will be held in Geneva, calling the city “the epicenter of multilateralism.” India, the United Kingdom, South Korea and France have each hosted global AI summits in recent years.

The geography of convening is expanding. Authority remains diffuse.

Structural Mismatch

The AI episode illustrates a recurring pattern. Innovation advances through distributed research networks and private investment. Deployment precedes consensus. Institutions respond with panels, voluntary frameworks and funding mechanisms.

The lag is not accidental. Global institutions were built to manage nuclear risk, telecommunications standards and climate assessments over multi-year cycles. They were not designed for software systems updated in weeks.

When science outruns institutions, governance becomes provisional. Guidelines are voluntary. Dialogues are exploratory. Financing depends on contributions. Authority remains political and national.

Science diplomacy can create shared vocabulary and testing criteria, but it cannot compel alignment among competing economies.

Speed Versus Legitimacy

The tension is between speed and legitimacy. Faster governance risks exclusion and error. Slower governance risks irrelevance.

The U.N.’s emerging AI framework attempts to balance those pressures by building architecture rather than drafting law: establishing evidence, convening dialogue and broadening capacity before regulatory consensus is achievable.

Whether that architecture will shape technological trajectories or merely document them remains uncertain.

“Traditional policy approaches have proven inadequate to deal with the much larger transformation challenges,” the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development reported in its Science, Technology and Innovation Outlook 2025. “To remain effective, policies must be agile: adaptive, forward-looking, and capable of responding to complex and evolving challenges.”

Artificial intelligence is unlikely to be the last field to expose the gap between innovation and oversight. Biotechnology, climate intervention research and quantum systems present similar challenges.

Looking Ahead

If emerging technologies repeatedly outrun institutional design, the question becomes more precise: what can influence achieve when control is absent?

Part 5 examines authority without enforcement, and the conditions under which science diplomacy can still matter.

Next: Part 5 — Authority Without Control

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For the first time, scientists at CERN successfully transported antimatter outside its experimental setup, achieving a technical milestone in particle physics.

The experiment was designed to answer a fundamental question about matter and antimatter, but it also points to a practical shift: the possibility of moving one of the most fragile forms of scientific material beyond the facility that produces it.

Scientists kept antimatter from coming into contact with actual matter during a four-hour road trip on Tuesday by suspending about 100 antiprotons in a vacuum put within a specially designed portable trap fixed in place with supercooled magnets.

The portable trap designed by the Baryon Antibaryon Symmetry Experiment, or BASE, not only survived the journey intact but also demonstrated that antimatter can be moved without annihilation.

At first glance, the experiment is a proof of concept; its significance is what it enables next. Antimatter is notoriously difficult to store and manipulate, and transporting it opens a door to more precise measurements of its properties, particularly in places with less magnetic interference than CERN’s “antimatter factory.”

The BASE collaboration ultimately aims to deliver antiprotons to external laboratories, including Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf, where researchers could conduct higher-precision experiments than are currently possible at CERN.

That required developing the BASE-STEP project to design an apparatus that could store and transport antiprotons. This marks a departure from a model in which antimatter research is tightly concentrated within a single facility.

“Our aim with BASE-STEP is to be able to trap antiprotons and deliver them to our precision laboratories at a dedicated space at CERN, HHU, Leibnitz University Hannover and perhaps other laboratories that are capable of performing very-high-precision antiproton measurements, which unfortunately is not possible in the antimatter factory,” says BASE-STEP’s Christian Smorra. “We validated the feasibility of the project with protons last year, but what we achieved today with antiprotons is a huge leap forward towards our objective.”

BASE-STEP is small enough to be loaded onto a truck and fit through ordinary laboratory doors, and it can withstand the bumps and vibrations of transport. The current apparatus, combining a superconducting magnet, liquid helium cooling, power reserves and a vacuum chamber, weighs 1000 kilograms: much more compact than BASE or any other existing system used to study antimatter.

“To reach our first destination, our dedicated precision laboratory at HHU in Germany, would take us at least 8 hours,” Smorra adds. “This means we’d have to keep the trap’s superconducting magnet at a temperature below 8.2 Kelvin for that long. So, in addition to the liquid helium, we’d need to have a generator to power a cryocooler on the truck. We are currently investigating this possibility.”

Nevertheless, the greatest challenge remains on arrival at the destination: to transfer the antiprotons to the experiment without them vanishing.

CERN’s antimatter factory remains unique: it is the only place in the world capable of producing and storing low-energy antiprotons. For decades, that has made it both the center of research and the gatekeeper of access. Experiments have had to come to CERN. Transporting antimatter reverses that logic.

Toward a Distributed Model

Instead of concentrating scientific capability in one location, the technology would allow experiments to be conducted beyond CERN. Labs that cannot produce antimatter could participate in frontier research, provided they have the equipment to receive and measure it.

In practice, this points toward a more distributed research model, in which rare scientific resources are produced in centralized facilities but used across a network of institutions. Access to such infrastructure has long shaped where research happens. The ability to move those resources, whether particles, data, or specialized materials, can reshape who participates.

In the case of antimatter, the question is not just how to transport it but how access will be structured. Which labs will receive antiprotons and under what conditions? How will this capability be integrated into existing European research frameworks?

The technical challenges remain significant. The current transport system can sustain the required conditions for only a limited time, and transferring antiprotons into a new experimental setup without loss remains a major hurdle. Extending transport beyond CERN’s campus to destinations several hours away will require additional engineering advances. Still, the demonstration establishes feasibility.

More broadly, it offers a glimpse of how advanced scientific infrastructure may be organized in the future. As research becomes more complex and resource-intensive, the ability to share and distribute key inputs, whether particles, data, or specialized materials, could become as important as the facilities that produce them.

“Machines and equipment in CERN’s ‘antimatter factory’ where BASE is located generate magnetic field fluctuations that limit how far we can push our precision measurements,” BASE’s Stefan Ulmer said. “The precision of the measurements taken in BASE is such that gaining an even deeper understanding of the fundamental properties of antiprotons will require moving the experiment out of the building.”

Editor’s Note: This weekly series explores how science is governed globally in the absence of a world authority, beginning with the myth and reality of coordination without control.

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At a one-day session in Geneva last month, delegates to the United Nations process negotiating a global plastics treaty elected Chilean diplomat Julio Cordano as chair of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee after months of paralysis. The vote was held by secret ballot because consensus could not be reached.

Cordano prevailed in a second round, restoring leadership to a process that had stalled without agreed text. The session addressed governance without reopening treaty provisions on production caps, chemicals, or financing.

Addressing delegates after the vote, Cordano framed the crisis in universal terms. “Plastic pollution is a planetary problem that affects everyone: every country, every community and every individual,” he said. “If we don’t take concerted action, it will get much worse in the coming decades.”

The election kept the negotiations alive but did not resolve the divisions.

As David Azoulay of the Center for International Environmental Law put it, “While electing a chair keeps the process alive, it won’t fix what’s broken in and of itself.”

The episode illustrated a central feature of global science diplomacy. Most multilateral negotiations are designed to operate by consensus. But when consensus falters, the system has limited tools to prevent collapse. Voting becomes an exception — a procedural instrument used to preserve continuity when substantive agreement remains out of reach.

This is the tension at the heart of international science governance. Institutions without enforcement depend on agreement and the disciplined management of disagreement.

Three negotiations illuminate how this works: the plastics treaty process, the U.N. climate talks, and the pandemic agreement adopted at the World Health Assembly. Each relies on consensus. Each reveals different ways in which consensus holds, strains, or is engineered into being.

The Climate Summit That Ended in a Name

At the close of COP28 in Dubai in December 2023, the conference president, Sultan Al Jaber, framed the final package in collective terms. “It is a balanced plan that tackles emissions, bridges the gap on adaptation, reimagines global finance, and delivers on loss and damage,” he declared, calling it “the U.A.E. Consensus.”

The label did more than describe the text. It signaled that the outcome had cleared the procedural threshold that matters most in U.N. climate diplomacy: no delegation was willing to block it.

Under the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, parties “shall make every effort to reach agreement … by consensus.” Voting is described as a last resort. In practice, consensus has become the operating norm. A single determined delegation can prevent adoption.

That architecture has preserved universality. Nearly every country remains at the table. It has also slowed decision-making.

When the scientific case for action is strong, as it has been for years, the disputes that remain are distributive: who moves first, who pays, what counts as fair. Consensus channels those disagreements into language.

Text is drafted so that governments with incompatible red lines can refrain from objecting. Timelines become conditional. Verbs soften. Phrases accommodate multiple readings. The same sentence can be celebrated as historic and criticized as insufficient because it carries different meanings for different audiences.

At climate summits, the gavel is a signal that no one will stop the outcome.

Plastics and the Visible Limits of Agreement

The plastics negotiations made the fragility of that signal visible.

Delegates had been directed to produce a legally binding instrument that addresses plastic pollution. When talks stalled without consensus on a text, the absence of agreement became the defining fact of the session.

In Geneva, the election of a new chair by secret ballot demonstrated both the flexibility and the limits of consensus systems. Voting preserved the process.

The chair’s role in such moments is partly rhetorical: to maintain the possibility of common ground. Cordano told delegates, “We are not far, either in time or in position, from a successful outcome. But no one in this room can achieve it alone. This must be a joint effort, with national delegations in the driving seat.”

The language was familiar to multilateral diplomacy. It emphasized shared responsibility while acknowledging divergence. Yet the fact that the chair himself was chosen by vote underscored the structural constraint: when consensus fails, there is no higher authority to impose a solution.

Deferral becomes the only option: another session, another round, another attempt to render disagreement non-blocking.

The Pandemic Agreement and the Art of Not Blocking

The pandemic agreement adopted at last year’s World Health Assembly offers a contrasting case.

Member countries voted overwhelmingly in favor. There were no votes against. Eleven countries abstained. The vote occurred because Slovakia requested it, breaking the traditional global consensus typically used to adopt international health instruments.

In consensus systems, abstention performs a specific function. It allows governments to register reservations without preventing adoption; it is a collective decision not to block.

The architecture of the agreement reinforced that logic. WHO emphasized a sovereignty clause stating: “Nothing in the WHO pandemic agreement shall be interpreted as providing the secretariat of the World Health Organization, including the director-general … any authority to direct, order, alter or otherwise prescribe” national laws or policies, or to “mandate or otherwise impose any requirements.”

Such language narrows the scope of objection, making the agreement adoptable.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus framed the outcome in collective terms: “Governments from all over the world are making their countries, and our interconnected global community, more equitable, healthier and safer from the threats posed by pathogens and viruses of pandemic potential.”

Read together, these elements reveal how consensus is managed: affirmative claims about shared interest paired with explicit limitations on institutional authority.

Consensus as an Operating System

From the outside, consensus can appear as a mood, either cooperative or obstructive. In practice, it functions more like an operating system.

First, it creates usable outputs. Text adopted by consensus becomes a common reference point. Even when interpretations diverge, governments, industries, and institutions can cite the same baseline.

Second, it reduces the cost of participation. In systems governed by majority voting, countries with limited capacity risk being routinely outvoted. Consensus offers a guarantee that no state will be formally overruled.

Third, it channels power into procedure. Influence accrues to those who remain in the room, draft language, and shape what becomes acceptable. Legal expertise, technical depth, and negotiating stamina matter.

These dynamics were visible across the three cases. Climate negotiations preserved universality through compromise language. Plastics negotiations revealed how consensus can be used to block. The pandemic agreement demonstrated how abstentions, sovereignty assurances, and staged implementation can produce adoption without resolving every dispute.

Why the Currency is Harder to Spend

Consensus is becoming more difficult to achieve not because diplomats have changed temperament, but because the disputes themselves have shifted.

Science diplomacy increasingly touches distributional questions: intellectual property, industrial policy, supply chains, strategic technology, and financial transfers. These are more than technical disagreements. They implicate economic and geopolitical interests.

Consensus can still produce texts but cannot compel a convergence of incentives. In this environment, much of the work occurs at the margins: narrowing scope, sequencing obligations, deferring annexes, inserting clarifications that reduce perceived overreach.

The pandemic agreement illustrates this technique. It will fully enter into force only after a further annex on pathogen access and benefit-sharing is negotiated and ratified. Adoption was possible because the most contentious distributional question was structurally separated.

Consensus was preserved by staging conflict.

Looking Ahead

Consensus is the procedural substitute for authority in institutions that lack enforcement power.

It can function as a brake, as climate talks demonstrate. It can fail visibly, as in the plastics negotiations. It can also be engineered into an outcome through abstentions, limitation clauses, and careful drafting, as the pandemic agreement shows.

The question for science diplomacy is whether consensus systems can produce shared reference points quickly and credibly enough to matter.

Part 4 turns to the moments when they cannot: when scientific change outruns institutional capacity, and agreement becomes too slow, too narrow, or too contested to hold.

Next: Part 4 — When Science Outruns Institutions

Editor’s Note: This weekly series explores how science is governed globally in the absence of a world authority, beginning with the myth and reality of coordination without control.

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When the World Health Organization convenes an emergency committee, its members are unable to order governments to act. Yet its conclusions can help decide if borders close, vaccines are rolled out, or a public health emergency is declared.

That tension between influence and authority sits at the heart of how scientific expertise functions in global governance. Experts matter because decision-makers choose to rely on them.

Science diplomacy operates through this reliance.

Advice Without Authority

International scientific advisory bodies are deliberately designed to be narrow in their formal power. Their mandates are technical. Their outputs are advisory. Their legitimacy rests on expertise rather than representation.

The World Health Organization provides one of the clearest examples. Its technical advisory groups, ranging from standing expert committees to ad hoc emergency panels, are tasked with assessing evidence, identifying risks, and issuing guidance.

The design is intentional. Scientific advice gains credibility by remaining separate from political negotiation over national policy or compliance.

As Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO’s director-general, has emphasized, the organization’s role is to provide evidence-based guidance, but decisions ultimately rest with countries. “The guidelines and standards we produce,” he said, “ensure that people all around the world receive safe and effective care, based on the best evidence.”

That distinction became highly visible during the COVID-19 pandemic. WHO expert groups assessed transmission risks, evaluated emerging data, and advised on public health measures. Governments responded unevenly, sometimes closely following guidance, sometimes openly rejecting it.

Even if their advice was ignored, the experts never lost their mandate because they never had one to begin with.

How Expert Authority is Constructed

If scientific advisers lack formal power, how do they gain influence? The answer lies in process.

Advisory bodies derive authority from how they work: transparent procedures, clearly defined membership, disclosure of conflicts of interest, and reliance on peer-reviewed evidence. Their credibility accumulates over time through consistency and restraint.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change illustrates this dynamic. Instead of conducting original research, IPCC assesses existing science through a structured, multi-year process involving hundreds of authors and reviewers from around the world.

Its reports are non-binding. Countries are free to ignore them. IPCC assessments, however, have become the baseline reference for climate policy discussions globally.

The panel’s role is to “evaluate scientific evidence regarding climate change and assess the state of scientific knowledge on this issue,” said the IPCC’s then-chair Hoesung Lee. “We bring together scientists and governments because IPCC reports are tools that governments will work with.”

That authority is procedural rather than political. Governments participate in approving summary texts, but the underlying scientific assessments are produced by independent expert teams following established methodologies.

Why Mandates are Kept Narrow

The absence of formal authority is often portrayed as a weakness. In practice, it is what allows expert bodies to function across political divides.

If advisory groups were empowered to compel action, they would immediately become arenas of geopolitical negotiation. Scientific disagreement would be interpreted as political positioning. Trust would erode quickly.

By limiting their mandates, institutions like WHO and IPCC preserve a degree of insulation. Experts are expected to assess evidence, not negotiate outcomes. This separation manages rather than eliminates political pressure.

During public health emergencies, governments frequently seek clearer direction than experts are institutionally permitted to provide. Calls for stronger recommendations or earlier declarations are common. Advisory bodies respond by emphasizing uncertainty, updating guidance incrementally, and documenting the limits of available evidence.

This restraint is often criticized. It is also central to their credibility.

When Advice Shapes Decisions

Expert influence is most visible at decision points where evidence narrows political options.

Declaring a public health emergency, for example, is formally the responsibility of the WHO director-general. In practice, it is heavily shaped by expert committee deliberations. Climate targets, adaptation plans, and risk assessments routinely cite IPCC findings as justification. Scientific advice frames the outcomes.

This framing power explains why governments invest significant effort in participating in expert processes. Shaping the evidentiary baseline can be as consequential as negotiating policy text.

Science diplomacy operates here as well: facilitating expert exchange, aligning assessment methodologies, and ensuring that evidence remains shared even when politics diverge.

The Limits of Expert Influence

Expert authority has clear limits. Scientific advisers cannot resolve value conflicts, determine acceptable levels of risk or compel action when evidence runs counter to political priorities.

During crises, these limits become visible. Governments may cherry-pick findings, delay action, or dismiss advice altogether. Experts may be accused of overreach or irrelevance.

This vulnerability reflects the boundaries deliberately built into it.

During the pandemic, Tedros observed, science could inform decisions but it could not make them. “Countries are using a range of tools to influence behavior,” he said. “Information campaigns are one tool, but so are laws, regulations, guidelines and even fines.”

The line between informing and deciding is where science diplomacy often operates —and where it must stop.

Who Gets to Be an Expert

Expert advisory systems are not neutral in composition. Participation depends on institutional capacity, access to data, and professional networks. Countries with well-resourced research communities are better positioned to contribute authors, reviewers, and committee members. Others participate intermittently or not at all.

These imbalances shape which questions are prioritized and how evidence is interpreted. Efforts to broaden representation have increased, but structural disparities remain.

Science diplomacy acknowledges this challenge through capacity-building initiatives and support for inclusive processes. Expertise without mandates still reflects power. The authority of experts ultimately depends on trust: trust in methods, institutions, and intentions.

That trust is fragile. It can be undermined by politicization, misinformation, or perceived conflicts of interest. Rebuilding it requires transparency and restraint.

Scientific advisory bodies cannot demand trust. They earn it through repeated demonstration of competence and independence. This is why expert authority is cumulative. It grows slowly and can erode quickly.

Looking Ahead

Experts without mandates sit at the core of science diplomacy. They shape how problems are defined, which risks are recognized, and which options are considered viable without directing outcomes.

Their influence depends on institutional design, procedural credibility, and political willingness to listen.

In Part 3 of this series, the focus turns to what sustains that influence across borders: consensus itself, and why agreement has become the primary currency of global science governance.

Next: Part 3 — Consensus as Currency

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Editor’s Note: This weekly series explores how science is governed globally in the absence of a world authority, beginning with the myth and reality of coordination without control.

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The next generation of mobile communications is being designed in meeting rooms most people will never see, by institutions few smartphone users could name.

Inside the International Telecommunication Union, the United Nations agency responsible for coordinating global telecommunications, countries, companies, and research institutions are negotiating the technical foundations for what is widely referred to as 6G. The work takes place through study groups and working parties that meet repeatedly over years, exchanging draft recommendations, performance criteria, and evaluation methods that will eventually define how future networks operate.

The process is procedural and deliberately slow. Drafts circulate for months. Technical contributions are debated line by line. Disagreements are often deferred rather than forced to a vote. Outcomes are adopted by consensus and published openly. None of them are legally binding.

Yet once agreed, these standards shape how mobile networks are built, how devices interoperate, and what capabilities are available to billions of people who rely on mobile connectivity every day. Governments design spectrum policy around them. Manufacturers build equipment to comply with them. Network operators deploy infrastructure assuming global compatibility.

This is global coordination without a central authority, and it is where science diplomacy does much of its most consequential work. Participation in ITU’s standards processes is voluntary, yet its recommendations routinely become global defaults.

“Mobile communications are central to our efforts to ensure that everyone is meaningfully connected,” Doreen Bogdan-Martin, ITU’s secretary-general, said when member countries agreed on the framework for the next generation of mobile technologies. Agreeing on a shared direction, she said, is about ensuring that technical progress is “synonymous with affordability, reliability, and security and resilience, supporting sustainable development worldwide.”

That agreement formalized what the ITU calls IMT-2030, the reference framework for future mobile systems. Work is now underway to define the technical performance requirements and evaluation criteria that candidate 6G technologies will be measured against, with final standards expected toward the end of the decade. Parallel efforts are taking place in industry-led bodies such as 3GPP, which typically translate ITU frameworks into deployable specifications.

No single country controls this process. Influence accrues instead through sustained participation, technical credibility, and the ability to shape consensus over time.

How Coordination Actually Happens

International science and technology governance is often imagined as a hierarchy: global rules negotiated at the top, implemented below. In practice, coordination emerges through accumulation rather than command.

In ITU’s system, study groups are populated by national delegations alongside representatives from industry and academia. Chairs are selected from among participating countries. Secretariats manage continuity, documentation, and process, not outcomes. Decisions are framed as consensus wherever possible, even when agreement reflects compromise rather than unanimity.

Minutes from these meetings reveal familiar patterns: extended debates over wording, careful notation of reservations, and frequent decisions to defer contentious issues to future study cycles. Silence is often treated as assent. Objections must be placed on record to matter.

This procedural architecture is not unique to telecommunications. Similar norms govern scientific advisory bodies across the United Nations system and beyond, from health and environmental assessment panels to technical standards organizations in energy, transport, and data.

Together, these committees form the connective tissue of global science governance. They align expectations, stabilize technical approaches, and create shared reference points without exercising formal authority.

As Mario Maniewicz, director of ITU’s Radiocommunication Bureau, has put it, the development of future mobile systems is expected to drive the next wave of innovative radiocommunication systems, promote digital equity and advance universal connectivity," reflecting what he described as the ITU’s “longstanding multi-stakeholder approach which ensures the development of globally accepted technical and regulatory solutions."

Why Non-Binding Standards Bind

The absence of legal force changes how international standards work. Once adopted, widely accepted standards shape incentives.

Companies build products to conform. Regulators align national frameworks with international benchmarks. Researchers design development roadmaps around anticipated norms. Over time, deviation becomes costly, not because it is prohibited, but because it undermines interoperability.

This is why non-binding technical standards often have effects comparable to regulation. Reversing them requires coordination of a different order. Even powerful countries face friction if they move too far outside established frameworks.

Industry actors recognize this reality. Global mobile connectivity depends on shared technical baselines.

“Our industry connects nearly six billion people, and powers economies worldwide,” Mats Granryd, then-director general of the GSMA, said at the 2025 Mobile World Congress. That scale, he has repeatedly emphasized, is possible only because networks, devices, and systems are built on common standards that allow them to work everywhere.

In this sense, standards function as governance instruments that structure rather than compel behavior.

Authority Without Command

This form of authority is often misunderstood as weak because it lacks enforcement. In practice, it is pervasive.

“Standards are the guidelines that companies use to build their products. They can create a stream of revenue for the holder, funding research, and jobs. The core of the contest remains research, patents, and standards,” James A. Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said of the 5G race and the evolution of telecom. Influence in these systems, he has emphasized, flows through norms and adoption rather than formal mandates.

That observation applies well beyond telecommunications. Climate modeling, public health surveillance, nuclear safety, and data governance all rely on expert consensus and shared technical frameworks rather than binding global law.

Science diplomacy operates most effectively in this space. It maintains channels of communication, aligns expectations, and helps prevent fragmentation. Its successes are incremental and often invisible. Its failures become apparent only when coordination breaks down.

The model has limits. It depends on trust, resources, and sustained participation. When political priorities shift or security concerns dominate, cooperation can narrow quickly. Emerging scientific fields, where institutions lag behind innovation, are especially vulnerable.

But the absence of hierarchy describes a different mode of governance.

Who Benefits and Who Doesn’t

As the 2026 study cycle intensifies, the gap between those driving the AI-native architecture of 6G and those merely preparing to adopt it has become a central tension in Geneva.

Coordination without central authority affect participants differently. Influence in committee-based systems follows capacity. Countries and institutions able to send large, experienced delegations shape agendas early and often. Those with limited resources may struggle to track parallel processes or intervene at critical moments.

Once standards are adopted, latecomers must adapt to frameworks they had little role in shaping. Capacity-building initiatives aim to mitigate these imbalances, but structural asymmetries persist.

The myth is that global coordination implies control, or is inherently equitable.

In reality, global science governance works because enough participants continue to accept its informal rules. They attend meetings, negotiate language, and align practices. The system holds because it is continuously reproduced.

Science diplomacy functions as maintenance within that system.

Looking Ahead

The negotiations shaping the technical foundations of future mobile networks illustrate how global science and technology are governed when no one is formally in charge.

Authority is exercised through expertise, procedure, and consensus rather than command. Influence accrues over time. Coordination is real, but contingent.

In Part 2 of this series, the focus turns to the people who operate inside this system: the experts and advisory bodies that wield influence without formal mandates, and the institutional designs that determine when their authority holds, and when it fails.

Next: Part 2 — Experts Without Mandates

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India is testing a new platform for science diplomacy as emerging technologies increasingly shape international politics.

The inaugural Raisina Science Diplomacy Initiative convened scientists, diplomats and policy leaders in New Delhi on Thursday alongside the Raisina Dialogue, India’s flagship conference on geopolitics and international affairs. The initiative joins a growing number of efforts to link science policy and diplomacy as governments experiment with new forums to keep pace with the implications of new technologies.

The Office of India’s Principal Scientific Adviser, together with the Observer Research Foundation, organized the initiative. Roughly 80 participants from governments, international organizations and research institutions met in a closed-door format intended to encourage candid discussion.

The gathering was chaired by India’s principal scientific adviser, Ajay Kumar Sood, and co-chaired by Sir Peter Gluckman, president of the International Science Council; Marilyne Andersen, director general of the Geneva Science and Diplomacy Anticipator; and Vijay Chauthaiwale, who oversees foreign affairs for India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. Samir Saran, president of the Observer Research Foundation, also participated in the launch.

Discussions centered on a question increasingly confronting governments: how to sustain international scientific cooperation as technologies such as artificial intelligence, biotechnology and advanced computing become strategic assets.

In opening remarks, Sood emphasized that science diplomacy must evolve as scientific research becomes more tightly linked to national development agendas, economic competitiveness and global security. He also pointed to the growing influence of private-sector technology companies in shaping frameworks for anticipating and governing disruptive technologies.

Participants examined how governments pursuing greater technological autonomy are reconsidering the balance between open scientific collaboration and strategic control over critical capabilities.

Another focus was how international institutions might manage technologies advancing faster than regulatory frameworks or diplomatic agreements. Speakers highlighted the need for stronger science advisory systems, improved risk-assessment mechanisms and new forms of cooperation that reduce widening technological gaps between countries.

Additional presentations included remarks by Jahnavi Phalkey on the historical evolution of science diplomacy and a briefing by Steen Søndergaard on NATO’s technology foresight work.

Organizers said insights from the initiative will feed into broader international discussions on science diplomacy and technological governance.

The launch reflects a wider shift in global affairs. As emerging technologies reshape economic competition and security policy, governments and international organizations are experimenting with new forums linking science policy, diplomacy and strategic planning.

India’s new initiative adds another node to that evolving network.