Science, Technology, and Foreign Diplomacy:
The Shifting Political Landscape and US-Japan Relations
John P. Holdren
Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy
Kennedy School of Government
Professor of Environmental Science and Policy
Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences
Affiliated Professor
John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Science
HARVARD UNIVERSITYAssistant to President Obama for Science & Technology andDirector, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy(January 2009 – January 2017)

A U.S. Perspective for the SciREX Webinar
November 9-10, 2020

Outline of these remarks• Context: Science & technology advice in the WhiteHouse• Science, technology, and foreign diplomacy in the
Obama-Biden and Trump-Pence administrations• What can we expect from the Biden-Harrisadministration?
• The U.S.-Japan dimension.

Science and Technology Advice in theWhite House

OSTP and the President’s Science Advisor
The Office of Science & Technology Policy (OSTP) sits in the Executive
Office of the President (“the White House”) alongside other key offices.
Office ofManagement &Budget (OMB)
Council on
Environmental
Quality (CEQ)

National
SecurityCouncil (NSC)

President
OSTP
Council of
Economic
Advisors (CEA)

National
Economic
Council (NEC)

Domestic PolicyCouncil (DPC)

OSTP’s Senate-confirmed Director may be “dual-hatted” as Assistant tothe President for S&T (“the President’s Science Advisor”), with directaccess to the President.

The need for S&T advice in the White House
Given the many capable scientists and technologists in
Executive Branch agencies, why does the President need aseparate S&T advisor and supporting office inside the WhiteHouse?
• Without a capable scientist on the President’s senior staff,
he/she might not recognize the relevance of science to thechoices on the table, thus might not know when to ask anagency a science question…or what question to ask.
• Detailed knowledge of the science missions &competencies in the agencies is needed to know whom toask.
• It’s often helpful for the President to have a trusted sourceof science information independent of agency agendas.

The 3 classes of responsibilities of OSTP and theScience Advisor
1. Science and technology for policy
Independent advice for the President & heads of other White House
offices, providing whatever facts/insights from natural & social science
may be germane to the policy issues with which they are concerned.

2. Policy for science and technology
Analysis, recommendations, and coordination with OMB and otherWhite House offices on: R&D budgets & related policies; S&Teducation and workforce issues: scientific integrity & transparency;
S&T to improve gov’t operations.

3. Serving as the President’s representative on S&T to…
Executive Branch agencies with S&T roles; Congress; thenongovernmental S&T community (nationally & internationally); andforeign governments

OSTP’s specific responsibilities include…
• providing White House oversight for NSF and NASA;• overseeing U.S. S&T cooperation with other countries (inpartnership with the State Department); and• carrying out a range of classified functions in support of national
security communications.

The OSTP Director also…
• serves as Chairman of the interagency National Science andTechnology Council (responsible for all interagency initiatives);• serves as Co-Chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on
Science and Technology (PCAST), the other members of which
are S&T leaders in industry, academia, and civil society who
advise the President on a part-time basis; and• leads US participation in the ministerial-level S&T agreementswith Brazil, China, India, Japan, Korea, and Russia.

Science, Technology, andForeign Diplomacy in theObama-Biden Administration

At the start of his Administration, Obama…
• Appointed 5 Nobel laureates in science and 25 membersof the National Academies of Science, Engineering, andMedicine to key positions in his Administration.
• Issued memoranda and Executive Orders requiring all
Executive Branch departments & agencies to allow their
their scientists to speak freely and to make scientific dataon which decisions are based available to the public.
• Shared with his Cabinet his view about the importance ofS&T in addressing the country’s biggest challenges andasked that they all appoint their own science advisors.
• Instructed me, as his OSTP Director and Science Advisor,
to re-invigorate U.S. S&T cooperation with our mostimportant international partners…including Japan.

Obama and his team subsequently…
• Achieved large increases in Federal support for R&D ingeneral, and biomedical science, clean-energy technology,
and climate science in particular.
• Launched an unprecedented array of S&T initiatives in, e.g.,
brain science, precision medicine, advanced manufacturing,advanced computing, and STEM (science, technology,engineering, & math) education.
• Used Executive Orders, regulations, and other executive
authority to support increases in energy efficiency, reductions
in greenhouse-gas emissions, preparedness & resilienceagainst climate change, climate assistance to countries in
need, and marine & terrestrial protected areas.
• Leveraged international relationships to gain the consensus
that made the Paris Climate Agreement possible.

Science, Technology, andForeign Diplomacy in the
Trump-Pence Administration

President Trump, by contrast, has…
• appointed unqualified ideologues and climate-change deniers tokey Executive Branch S&T positions, and drove out the few
exceptions when they refused to endorse his rejection of science,long-standing U.S. norms & values, and the U.S. Constitution;• failed to appoint a Director of OSTP at all for the 1st two years of
the administration and then failed to give the appointee theAssistant to the President rank;• repeatedly proposed deep cuts in the budgets of Federal scienceagencies (proposals largely rejected by the U.S. Congress);• imposed changes in U.S. immigration & visa regulations andenforcement that have reduced attractiveness & accessibility ofU.S. universities to foreign students and hobbled foreignattendance at international STEM conferences held in the UnitedStates; andPresident Trump has also…
• announced U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and halted all
U.S. measures intended to comply with it (including termination of U.S.
climate assistance to developing countries);• reversed nearly all of the Obama administration’s other climate-change
mitigation & adaptation measures, as well as a huge array of otherenvironmental regulations;• contradicted the advice of the U.S. government’s public health agencies
and leading outside experts on measures to address the Covid-19
pandemic, refused to put forward a national strategy for dealing with it,
and withdrew from the World Health Organization;• intervened politically to demand changes in science-based policies inFederal agencies; and• discontinued or neglected many of the programs for international S&T
collaboration pursued by previous administrations.

What Can We Expect from theBiden-Harris Administration?

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris…
• are science savvy and fact friendly, and understand how & why
S&T matter to practically every issue on the U.S. and global
agendas;• will restore the Obama principles on scientific integrity andtransparency about data in the government’s S&T decisionmaking;• have already developed detailed plans for a comprehensive U.S.
national response to the Covid-19 pandemic and for rebuilding
and expanding U.S. Federal efforts on climate change;• are strongly committed to international S&T collaboration andwill re-invigorate U.S. cooperative activities with key partners;• will immediately rejoin the Paris Agreement and the World
Health Organization and will engage fully in the international
assistance and collaboration programs of both.

The U.S.-Japan Dimension

The Japan-US Science and Technology Agreement• The Agreement was signed in 1988, but it had a number ofpredecessors, for example…
– The Committee on Scientific Dialogue (1961)– The Cooperative Science Program (1963)– The Cooperative Medical Sciences Program (1965)• The agreement is implemented through…
– the Joint High-Level Committee (JHLC), led on the US side by OSTP,
with support from the State Department, and on Japan’s side byMEXT, with support from MOFA and the Cabinet Office; and– the Joint Working-Level Committee (JWLC), led on the US side by theState Department, supported by OSTP, and on Japan’s side by MOFA
and the Cabinet Office, supported by MEXT• JHLC is supposed to meet every two years, JWLC in between.
• The agreement focuses on civil S&T; defense S&T are not included

US-Japan S&T Cooperation Agreement

James Schoff & Satoru Mari, Sasakawa Peace Fdn, March 2020

Focuses of work under the S&T Agreement• There have been more than 160 joint projects between 1988 andthe present, focused on…
– biomedical science, information S&T, automation & process control– global geoscience and environment, Earth observation, space– advanced materials, joint database development• Discussions at the meetings of the JHLC and JWLC touch a wider
variety of topics, including…
– energy and climate change, robotics, sustainable agriculture– government-industry-academic partnerships, the role of national
laboratories, STEM education, support of women in STEM fields• Historically, the meetings have been more frequent and more
broadly focused during Democratic US administrations than underRepublican ones. (Republican administrations have leaned toward“techno-nationalism”, Democratic ones toward globalization.)Differences between Obama and Trump• US-Japan S&T cooperation flourished under Obama because…
– he quickly appointed globalists to the top positions in OSTP, theDepartment of State, the National Institutes of Health, the National
Science Foundation, and NASA;– he gave orders to all of us to rebuild international partnerships;– our Japanese partners were ready, willing, and able; and– the collaboration was cemented by a very high degree ofcommunication and cooperation after the Fukushima accident• The cooperation has been less active under Trump because…
– Trump has been a techno-nationalist and drove out a number ofglobalists from key positions (e.g., replacing Tillerson with Pompeo);– he left the OSTP Director position empty for two years, with theresult that the JHLC met only once in four years; and– his unpredictability and unreliability on matters of foreign policy left
our partners confused and uncertain.

I am confident that President Biden will
work quickly to strengthen and broaden
US-Japan S&T cooperation(starting with appointment of a respectedscientific globalist as Director of OSTP andAssistant to the President for S&T)!

Thank You!