Introduction
Scientific progress is often portrayed as an objective march of discoveries, but in reality every breakthrough is embedded in a social and political context. Governments, military needs, economic incentives, and cultural values shape which problems are funded and how research is conducted. During World War II and the Cold War, nations poured vast resources into physics, engineering, and medicine to gain strategic advantages. These campaigns not only solved immediate military problems but also created lasting institutions and innovations.
Science in Total War
War has repeatedly accelerated science and technology, while wariness and ideology have sometimes distorted it. In World War II, the Manhattan Project epitomised this: a secret, multinational effort to build the atomic bomb. The United States inherited “what Germany had turned its back on – scientific leadership and knowledge” by recruiting refugee physicists and building Los Alamos as a, “nursery for future Nobel laureates”. Allied collaboration was also critical. Britain’s early atomic research (the Tube Alloys project) and shared scientific reports prompted the US to start the Manhattan effort. In this crucible, science became a public project: tens of thousands of researchers worked under government direction to solve urgent war problems.
The war drove practical advances in biology and medicine as well. For instance, penicillin was developed and mass-produced at unprecedented scale to treat wounded soldiers, fundamentally transforming pharmaceutical R&D. Similarly, radar, rocketry (V-2 rockets led to both intercontinental missiles and space rockets), and early computers (like the ENIAC for artillery calculations) emerged from wartime laboratories. These projects were justified by immediate military necessity, but their spillover effects reshaped civilian life. Notably, the Manhattan Project “took on a complex of government, academia, and industry” that created a model for postwar “Big Science” investment. In sum, total war lifted science to a national endeavor: funding surged, research agendas were set by generals and statesmen, and the ethical fallout of weapons development entered public debate.
Cold War: Rivalry and Cooperation
After 1945, the Cold War heated the scientific competition between superpowers. Physics and engineering led the way. The USSR and US raced to build larger nukes and rockets, culminating in the space race. The Soviet launch of Sputnik spurred the U.S. to found NASA and dramatically expand science education and funding. Concurrently, the U.S. Defense Department funded DARPA, which created the ARPANET in the late 1960s. This network was designed to be decentralised – “with no central core” – so that it could survive attack. In effect, the internet’s progenitor was a product of Cold War military strategy.
Yet ideological politics also hampered science. In the Soviet Union, Stalin promoted Trofim Lysenko’s politically favoured but scientifically dubious agriculture theories. From 1948 to 1965 the USSR officially banned “classical genetics,” severely retarding biology research. This case of Lysenkoism shows how political doctrine can override empirical truth. By contrast, American universities embraced refugee scientists from Europe even under anti-immigrant sentiment, building a diverse community of physics and chemistry experts. Through these years, science often served as a proxy battleground, each superpower funded leading-edge projects (rockets, computers, nuclear fusion, etc.) to prove its system’s superiority. At the same time, some cooperative threads survived, even the ARPANET would eventually link to global networks, but they were always shadowed by distrust.
Global Collaborations and Peacetime Projects
The end of the Cold War in the early 1990s opened new paths for international science, even as the structure of research remained shaped by past conflicts. Two notable examples of mega-projects illustrate this shift:
The Human Genome Project (HGP, 1990–2003) was “a large, well-organised, and highly collaborative international effort” to sequence the human genome. Planned in the US but joined by teams in Europe, Japan, China and elsewhere, the HGP exemplified cooperative science across borders. It was even co-opted by competing interests, the public project versus Celera Genomics, but ultimately emphasised open data: Clinton and Blair unveiled the draft genome together in 2000. By pooling global funding and talent, the HGP accelerated biomedical research and set new standards for data sharing, showing how a peaceful scientific goal can unite countries once divided by ideology.
The International Space Station (ISS) likewise marked Cold War rapprochement. In 1993 the United States invited post-Soviet Russia to join its planned station, turning two rival space programs into one cooperative venture. The ISS’s modular design is literally “two stations — one Russian, one American — attached at the hip”. Russia built living and propulsion modules, while the US and its partners (Europe, Japan, Canada) provided labs and life support. The first ISS crew launched in 2000, and 240 people from 19 countries have lived in orbit since. The station is often hailed as “a triumph of diplomacy” and an unprecedented experiment in science as soft power. Yet even this project bore Cold War baggage: security constraints meant the Russian side remained opaque, a “truce rather than a partnership”. Today the ISS stands as a rare example of former enemies collaborating, even as geopolitical tensions grow anew.
Other post-Cold War efforts include CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (Europe-wide physics collaboration) and international climate research. These projects benefited from decades of institutional frameworks (like joint treaties and global organisations) that predated them. However, cooperation sometimes yielded to politics. In 2020s, for instance, many nations imposed sanctions and funding freezes on Russian science after its invasion of Ukraine. Agencies like the French CNRS abruptly halted dozens of projects with Russia overnight. Similarly, even collaborators at CERN agreed to phase out Russian involvement by 2024. These cuts show that peace-time science remains vulnerable to political upheaval.
New Rivalries in the Information Age
In recent years, a new set of global tensions has emerged around technology. The rise of the Internet, AI, and advanced electronics has shifted the battleground. The United States and China have entered an intense competition to lead in fields like artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and biotech. Analysts call this contest “this generation’s defining technological rivalry”. The US has enacted sweeping export controls on advanced semiconductor manufacturing equipment, explicitly to prevent Chinese firms from producing cutting-edge chips for AI and military use. In response, China has taken countermeasures, recently it imposed export curbs on certain rare earth elements, materials crucial for electronics and aerospace. Observers warn that Beijing’s rare-earth restrictions will pose “significant risks to US national security, defense manufacturing, and high-tech sectors”.
AI research itself is split by suspicion. A 2025 report from the Center for a New American Security argues that China and the U.S. now see little room for collaboration on AI. The report notes, “Even near-equal AI capabilities between the superpowers become hazardous,” risking a “race to the bottom in norms” over autonomous weapons, surveillance, and bioengineering. In practice, this has led to diverging ecosystems. American tech firms are generally open and commercial, while China’s state-driven approach focuses on surveillance and military utility. Similar splits are visible in 5G networks (e.g. Huawei controversy) and in university partnerships. China’s state has poured billions into strategic tech fields, mirroring past space and arms race spending.
Semiconductors, the tiny microchips that power smartphones, cars, and military systems have become a focal point of these rivalries. The U.S. describes its chip sanctions as a defense measure to prevent Chinese AI and cyber warfare advances. Chinese firms, for their part, are now building massive domestic fabrication plants to offset the restrictions. This shows how deeply geopolitics now penetrates technology supply chains. As one industry analysis warns, semiconductors have become “a battleground for a high-stakes geopolitical rivalry”, fueling a scramble to secure every link of production.
Political Forces in Funding and Collaboration
Beyond direct competition, governments influence science through funding priorities and regulations. During wartime, military agencies often controlled research agendas. Today, that control takes different forms such as, trade laws, investment screening, and data policies. For instance, to address security concerns, three major European science funders (Germany, Sweden, Switzerland) announced in 2025 that they would stop co-funding new projects with China’s National Natural Science Foundation. They cited China’s new data-security law, which makes sharing any “important data” abroad illegal without government permission. Such legal and policy changes effectively freeze academic collaboration in areas from virus biology to AI with Chinese partners.
Countries have also targeted foreign talent flows. After 2022, the US and EU restricted academic exchanges with Russia, and some have scrutinised Chinese students in sensitive fields. Visa policies and even censorship can stifle open science. Meanwhile, lobbying and institutional incentives drive research too. Universities compete for grants (sometimes favouring trendy areas like AI or gene-editing), and corporations fund applied R&D with profit motives. During the Cold War, the U.S. government famously joined with industry in public–private labs; today Silicon Valley and Beijing’s tech giants similarly steer AI and biotech research toward commercial outcomes.
The supply chain is another area where politics seeps into science. Rare earth mining and semiconductor manufacturing have become strategic issues. As noted, China’s export curbs highlighted global reliance on Chinese mines. Likewise, a U.S. “CHIPS Act” is investing tens of billions to rebuild domestic chip factories, in part to reduce dependence on Taiwan and Korean suppliers. These moves are as much geopolitical as economic, driven by fears that a future conflict might sever critical technology inputs.
Funding, laws, and trade policies serve as modern “wartime” levers for science. They decide not only what research gets done, but who gets to do it and with whom. Even well-meaning initiatives are vulnerable, many vaccine development projects during the COVID-19 pandemic were initially slowed by export controls and nationalism. On the other hand, global problems like climate change still require cross-border cooperation in science, and efforts continue through UN bodies and international institutes. But every collaborative effort now exists in within the context of strategic competition.
Conclusion
Science and technology do not exist in a vacuum. While the methods of science remain objective (experiments, data, reason) the questions asked, the funding available, and the applications pursued are all socially determined. History is full of examples where political and military imperatives shaped the research agenda. World War II gave us radar, rocketry, antibiotics, and nuclear power on a massive scale. The Cold War produced satellites, supersonic jets, computers, and a genre of Big Science funded by national budgets. Today, global tensions channel innovation into AI, quantum computing, and biotechnology while fracturing the once truly international scientific community.
The social implications are profound. On one hand, geopolitics can accelerate progress and foster international goodwill through collaboration projects. The ISS and Human Genome Project show the best of what unified effort can achieve. On the other hand, when science becomes an instrument of power, it risks promoting secrecy, propaganda, and dual-use dilemmas (e.g. gene editing for good or for bioweapons). Moreover, politicised science can undermine trust; when states demand loyalty, public faith in research can erode.
Ultimately, a sophisticated society must acknowledge that science is a human endeavor, shaped by our wars, economies, and values. The challenge is to protect the integrity and openness of scientific inquiry while navigating the very real security and economic pressures of our time. History teaches that neither extreme – an impossible “pure” science nor a purely nationalist science – serves humanity well. Instead, the most productive path lies in fostering broad collaboration where possible, even as nations defend their legitimate security interests. Only by balancing these forces can science truly serve the collective social good.
Sources
Kimber Craine, “What the Manhattan Project Can Teach Us About Scientific Cooperation,” Aspen Institute (Jan. 26, 2017). https://www.aspeninstitute.org/blog-posts/manhattan-project-can-teach-us-scientific-cooperation/
Daniel Oberhaus, “How Cold War Politics Shaped the International Space Station,” Smithsonian Magazine (Sept. 9, 2020). https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-cold-war-politics-shaped-international-space-station-180975743/
National Human Genome Research Institute, “Human Genome Project: Fact Sheet,” Genome.gov (2003). https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/educational-resources/fact-sheets/human-genome-project
Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Human Genome Project,” https://www.britannica.com/event/Human-Genome-Project
Kevin Featherly, “ARPANET” in Encyclopaedia Britannica (updated Apr. 10, 2025) https://www.britannica.com/topic/ARPANET
Michael Gordin, “Lysenkoism,” Encyclopedia of the History of Science and Technology https://ethos.lps.library.cmu.edu/article/id/560/
Bill Drexel (CNAS), “Promethean Rivalry: The World-Altering Stakes of Sino-American AI Competition,” press release (Apr. 22, 2025) https://www.cnas.org/press/press-release/new-cnas-report-on-the-world-altering-stakes-of-u-s-china-ai-competition
Andrew Silver, “China’s data protection rules prompt pause from major European research funders,” Reuters (Apr. 25, 2025) https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/society-equity/chinas-data-protection-rules-prompt-pause-major-european-research-funders-2025-04-25/
Microchip USA, “Everything You Need to Know About the U.S. Semiconductor Restrictions on China,” (Dec. 17, 2024) https://www.microchipusa.com/industry-news/semiconductor-industry/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-u-s-semiconductor-restrictions-on-china?
SFA (Oxford), “China Imposes Export Controls on Key Rare Earths,” Market Analysis (2025) https://www.sfa-oxford.com/market-news-and-insights/china-imposes-export-controls-on-key-rare-earths/
Le Monde, Héloïse Péhéré, “With the war in Ukraine, international research cooperation suffers,” (Aug. 12, 2023) https://www.lemonde.fr/en/science/article/2023/08/12/with-the-war-in-ukraine-international-research-cooperation-suffers_6090688_10.html
Science (AAAS), “Burning bridges: Isolated and diminished, scientists in Russia struggle in a world transformed by its war with Ukraine” https://forum.sparvagssallskapet.se/viewtopic.php?t=42887&start=2380 (reported by forum)
