Innovation with Allies: Practical Paths Forward

May 26, 2021

Cooperation between democratic allies and partners is crucial, and so is the imperative to build science and innovation, but this raises a question: How can democracies practically build science and innovation with allies and partners? China’s emergence as a peer-innovator makes this question urgent. This commentary offers practical paths forward for the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand—the “Five Eyes” nations, not just their intelligence sharing apparatus—in key areas for national security like artificial intelligence (AI) and genetics.

Why now? Deep, tangled connections generate the distributed process of innovation within each national innovation system. But innovation at the scale needed now means bringing ecosystems together to be more than the sum of the parts. It can greatly enhance even U.S. strength: adding the five nations’ global top 100 ranked universities together takes a U.S. tally of 27 to a far more powerful 56 out of 100.

Who should the Five Eyes nations collaborate with? Domestic resilience and deep collaboration with Five Eyes nations does not exclude other networks, but instead lays solid foundations for multiple networks that balance security and the benefits of interchange. They can be considered as concentric circles.

Strategy for the Five Nations

Managed openness across the five nations can enhance the tangled connections—and minimize barriers—for researchers, investors, and entrepreneurs. Five proposals go from the scientific to the business and global spheres.

Recommendation 1: Organize regular meetings between all fivechief science advisers (CSAs), as well as key related government leads (e.g., emerging tech or manufacturing), in order to coordinate activities and develop these offices in interoperable ways. Rotate staff across the five national offices, with safeguards for commercial sensitivities.

Recommendation 2: Create a collaborative, multilateral, trulyfive-nation funding scheme for university-led research (e.g., projects require researchers from at least two nations) in key security or dual-use areas (e.g., AI, space, quantum, genetics) that uses best practice from the five nations to be a model of funding simplicity and speed. National awards will match inputs (i.e., no overall funding of others’ jobs).

Recommendation 3: Reduce barriers and enhance infrastructure for firms collaborating across the five nations on the national security industrial base. For instance:

• Adopt more modular procurement (e.g., the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s “mosaic” methods to combine small, cheap, flexible systems).


• Minimize necessary bureaucratic and legal barriers (e.g., replace the many similar MOUs required by the U.S. DOD’s branches with overarching multi-nation MOUs) and extend U.S. International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) Canadian exemptions to the United Kingdom and Australia. Track 1.5 or 2 can seek to improve all five nations’ rules.


• Mitigate unintended new barriers (e.g., on supply chains) using anticipatory regulatory techniques.


• Map ecosystems so firms can see who they can collaborate with.

Recommendation 4: Map the civilian tech innovation ecosystems across the five nations in key dual-use and strategic tech (e.g., AI), to identify potentially fruitful links between cities, firms, and clusters in this bigger—and still secure—pool.

Recommendation 5: Leverage this community of five nations to help develop international tech standards (e.g., in key standards bodies) and collaborative forms for extension to other allies and partners (e.g., Japan, India, Israel, Sweden) and groupings (e.g., NATO, G7, D-10, the Quad).

Nicholas David Wright is an honorary senior research fellow at University College London, affiliated scholar at Georgetown University Medical Center, and an international security fellow at New America. Geraint Rees is a professor of cognitive neurology at University College London. James Andrew Lewis is a senior vice president and director of the Strategic Technologies Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.

Commentary is produced by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a private, tax-exempt institution focusing on international public policy issues. Its research is nonpartisan and nonproprietary. CSIS does not take specific policy positions. Accordingly, all views, positions, and conclusions expressed in this publication should be understood to be solely those of the author(s).