Scientists and research advocates in the United States are mobilizing to fight a bill that would essentially prohibit researchers with any ties to China and other countries deemed hostile from receiving federal funding. Nearly 800 academics signed a 29 October, 2025 letter opposing the ban, part of a bill passed recently by the U.S. House of Representatives that sets spending priorities for the Department of Defense (DOD).

The Securing American Funding and Expertise from Adversarial Research Exploitation (SAFE) Act would deny federal funding to any U.S. scientist who collaborates with anyone "affiliated with a hostile foreign entity," a category that includes four countries: China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. The prohibited activities would include joint research, co-authorship on papers, and advising a foreign graduate student or postdoctoral fellow. The language is retroactive, meaning any interactions during the previous 5 years could make a scientist ineligible for future federal funding.

The lack of a clear definition of "affiliation" in the SAFE Act could trigger arbitrary and biased enforcement of the funding ban, warns the Asian American Scholar Forum (AASF) in a letter. It cites the "chilling effect" of the China Initiative launched by President Donald Trump in 2018 to prevent economic espionage, which led to the targeting of hundreds of U.S. scientists of Chinese descent for allegedly failing to disclose their ties to China.

Source https://www.science.org/content/article/u-s-congress-considers-sweeping-ban-chinese-collaborations

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