Modern science: geostrategic, technological, and societal drivers of change
Sir Peter Gluckman
President, International Science Council (ISC)
Director of Koi Tū: The Centre for Informed Futures
Published on July 13th, 2026
Modern science is a knowledge system operating through a complex and multi-layered set of national and transnational institutions, public and private sector actors, and diverse pathways that translate research into action—through innovation, policy, and the dissemination of knowledge. But the contemporary science and its institutions are changing under multiple external influences, the impacts of new technologies and an increasingly diverse set of actors. The geographic centre of scientific gravity is moving southward and eastward, with broad implications for how science can work to advance the public good. The role of the private sector and their increasingly autonomous approach to developments in technologies is having enormous impact. Geostrategic tensions are narrowing safe domains for transnational collaboration, constraining opportunities for the next generation of scientists. But why science is being affected and perhaps moulded by outside influences, it is important that science does not respond passively but also looks to itself to what actions it might take to protect the critical role of science as a global public good in a complex and changing world.
The period of growing international optimism following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 saw a period of increased globalization, North-South linkages, and technological progress fostered a relatively positive, albeit uneven, information environment. For science this perhaps reached its zenith in 2015 with the signing of the Paris Accord on climate change, the launch of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the multilateral agreement to the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction Since then, liberal democracies have faced polarization, economic stagnation, disinformation, migration anxieties, and confronted geopolitical tensions as a multipolar strategic environment has emerged. The geostrategic playbook increasingly emphasizes emergent technologies, nationalist sentiment, and transactional, rather than strategic, international relationships. This has undermined commitments to a rules-based order, is redefining the potential of multilateral organizations, and challenges science diplomacy and the commitment to progress on issues confronting the global commons. The blurring of lines between science, innovation, economics, and geostrategic power has intensified the tension between openness and security. Economic pressures on liberal democracies threaten long-term investments in science, redirecting resources toward near-term returns and security concerns, often with limited public backlash.
The relationship between science and society has been impacted by both the changed information environment and by changes in societal dynamics at least in the liberal democracies. As science confronts issues that impact on interests and values such as climate change and vaccination technologies, science has become more a focus of political partisanship. This may lead to selective acceptance of science or its rejection and to science and scientist coming under political attack. Yet despite this science remains relatively highly trusted by most in society.
Critically the production and communication of knowledge are transformed by technologies and in particular artificial intelligence (AI). AI is reshaping what is scientifically possible, who conducts research, and how excellence is defined and rewarded. AlphaFold illustrates how a single breakthrough can rapidly reconfigure a field. AI is now changing every aspect of the science chain from funding allocation to discovery to reporting to use. As AI and big data analytics become central, governance norms for data management and sharing must evolve, with implications for universal applicability and international collaboration.
But the behaviours of the institutions of science itself can also undermine trust. The institutions of public science and the science community itself are still primarily influenced by output incentives related to publication rather than to the underlying purpose of science in advancing knowledge and contributing to society. These incentives can lead to hyperbole by scientist and their institutions in potential impact claims. AI has led to an explosion of suspicious papers and exposed worrisome behaviours within the science community. The financial models for science publishing and the rapid expansion of a highly competitive science community have led to papermills, predatory journals, the misuse of preprints and increasing issues of reproducibility. Traditional peer review is unable to cope. If the record of science compromised, so too is trust in science.
The rapid development of science based technologies, and in particular AI based platforms is largely occurring in the private sector in a rather unconstrained manner outpacing social comfort and with a mix of adverse and positive impacts. Depending on how this technological acceleration evolves it may impact on how societies view the scientific enterprise. This even more so than past technologies like genetic modification may test the social contract between science and society.
Science systems have always been shaped by political and sociological currents and by patronage—whether political, philanthropic, or corporate. As economic and geostrategic conditions shift, public investment in science must adapt to both changing interests of patrons and new priorities and technologies, altering who sets the agenda and how research is undertaken and utilized. It also has major implications for how public science and particularly its key organisations must focus their activities.
In developed countries, policies for science are becoming more focused and directional. While mid-20th century science highlighted security, defence, and economic considerations, there was also a growing emphasis on broader societal goals, including stewardship of environmental and social systems. But in the face of economic and geostrategic challenges, policy in these countries risks retreating towards immediate economic and security goals. In turn this is already compromising the norms of international science cooperation.
Public science must deliver actionable knowledge, yet current organizational and funding structures often fail to produce decisions or policies to address the issues confronting the global commons. Political dynamics have meant that much public policy has focused on the short-term while science and much of sustainability science requires long-term thinking. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were conceived in a more optimistic time but were an inevitably complex and confusing construct. They do not clearly elucidate how to address the fundamental challenge of balancing actions needed to maximise human and societal wellbeing with the realities that resource extraction needs to be minimised and managed
The lack of progress on issues of the global commons has spurred calls for promotion of more inclusive models of science—such as transdisciplinary and co-production approaches—that bring in stakeholders from beyond traditional scientific communities. Extended peer review is not often an instrument of science, yet may be key to sustaining its social contract. The incentives and structures within science organizations and philanthropic funding channels remain oriented toward traditional, narrow response-driven models, limiting transformative impact. The need to recognise that society expects science to be embedded within it, not isolated from it is key.
Scientific organisations need to work together alongside public and philanthropic funders and universities and academies to address the issues internal to the institution of science that undermine the social contract for science. The institution of science has largely been self-governing beyond the inevitable and appropriate signals from its patrons but there is a danger that social and political pressures seek to undermine that self -governance. But the incentives in the science system that focus behaviours and cultures in ways that can undermine trust, impede collaboration, disrespect global partnerships and undermine confidence in the record of science all need to be addressed. The interaction between natural and social sciences is yet to be optimised and that between public and private sector science communities requires focus.
Data access and management is rapidly growing to be a core issue for scientific collaboration. The major technopoles have quite different political and practical views of data. But there is an urgent need to strengthen data governance and ensure privacy protections and social license for AI and big data in research and indeed more broadly. The implied tension between data sovereignty and open use can be resolved but the urgent need to find a way to manage cross-boundary digital, biophysical and life science technologies which may have profound impact remains elusive and is a challenge when science and diplomacy must come together.
Modern science is the nearest we have to a global language and science in partnership formally or informally with diplomacy has a major role to play, particularly as we advance towards the need to revisit our approaches to the management of issues of the global commons, where the enthusiasm of prior decades has been replaced in some capitals by cynicism and a loss of focus. But the interaction between science and diplomacy will need to be pragmatic rather than idealistic in what is a very transactional environment.
We need to rethink the training and assessment of scientists in a technological age. It is indeed possible that the capacity for technological sovereignty will be limited by access to compute and technological infrastructure meaning that some forms of science may become less accessible in the global south or small nations – we need strategies that minimize that risk which can only lead to inequitable outcomes. There is a need for institutions to ensure scientists, both social and natural, are trained in areas such as: social licence and contract for science, ethics, science-policy interactions, interactions with other knowledge systems and in science communication
The history of humankind shows that knowledge advances societies’ wellbeing albeit with spillover consequences that are not always positive. Research serves societal needs including those of security, stewardship and economic growth and contributes to sustainable development. But it must remain trustworthy through its conduct, communication transparency and accountability. Science need to not be passive in response to external pressures or its internal complexities. There is a growing role for communication science, social psychology and cognitive sciences in helping inform how science sustains its trustworthy profile. The science enterprise must fundamentally rethink its processes of self-governance, incentives, and collaboration to remain capable of delivering knowledge that is both credible and societally relevant.
The future of science depends on its ability to adapt to shifting geostrategic realities, embrace broader models of knowledge production, and realign incentives and governance to ensure science can continue to serve humanity as a trustworthy, impactful, and globally accessible enterprise.
Copyright: © 2026 [author(s)]. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in Frontiers Policy Labs is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
