APS Letter Regarding the SAFE Research Act

The Honorable Roger Wicker
Chairman
Committee on Armed Services
United States Senate
Washington, D.C. 20510

The Honorable Mike Rogers
Chairman
Committee on Armed Services
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, D.C. 20515

The Honorable Jack Reed
Ranking Member
Committee on Armed Services
United States Senate
Washington, D.C. 20510

The Honorable Adam Smith
Ranking Member
Committee on Armed Services
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, D.C. 20515

Dear Chairman Wicker, Ranking Member Reed, Chairman Rogers, and Ranking Member Smith,

On behalf of the more than 50,000 members of the American Physical Society (APS) — the largest physics membership organization in the United States — I am writing to share our concerns with the SAFE Research Act. This provision threatens to curtail the U.S. research enterprise and innovation system, subsequently degrading our defense technology and readiness. We request that it not be included in the final version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

APS recognizes there are legitimate threats related to research security that impact both our national and economic security. The Society has consistently engaged on research security issues with policymakers and the federal science agencies, helping to foster an ongoing dialogue between the scientific community and the federal government. As a result of this dialogue, the scientific community has improved disclosure and transparency with respect to foreign research funding and potential conflicts of interest, while also partnering with the relevant agencies to develop further risk mitigation strategies. The SAFE Research Act, however, represents a sharp deviation from the previously collaborative and productive approach that the House and Senate Armed Services Committees have taken on this issue.

Overly broad security policies have the potential to end advantageous international collaborations, punish honest mistakes with no benefit, and cause long-term damage to our nation’s scientific and technological competitiveness. The SAFE Research Act risks all of this. The act applies to all federal research agencies, not just the Department of Defense. It establishes broad definitions of “hostile foreign entity” and “affiliation,” encompasses any agreement between a U.S. university and institutions in a list of designated countries, includes collaboration with faculty or students who have returned to their home countries as a condition of their U.S. visa, and applies retroactively to agreements that occurred in the last five years. The wide net cast by the bill would lead to U.S. universities and faculty needing to terminate nearly all international engagements with listed countries to remain eligible for federal funding. By severely limiting or severing connections between collaborators, certain federally funded scientific projects ranging from small student-led investigations to large university lab groups — or even participation in international-scale experiments — could come to a standstill, squandering the resources invested by U.S. taxpayers and degrading the benefits of science to the public and to national defense.

The provisions of this bill would mean no longer allowing co-authored publications with certain international partners — collaborations that also serve as a window into the research being done by other countries. In addition, the bill would retroactively penalize researchers for co-publications during the past five years and preclude participation in certain international scientific conferences. Major scientific conferences often rotate locations around the globe annually, meaning that U.S. scientists could be locked out when a conference is hosted in a listed country.

For some fields, especially those dependent on large, internationally shared infrastructure like particle accelerators, fusion reactors, or telescopes, it is nearly impossible to publish without collaborators from dozens of countries. Experiments of this scale and cost cannot be replicated by any single country. Under the SAFE Research Act, the U.S. could be shut out of key infrastructure for leading-edge discovery science. Finally, nearly half of U.S. physics Ph.D. graduates are international, meaning that the U.S. could lose access to collaboration with many of the scientists who were trained here.

The success of our nation’s fundamental research and innovation enterprise relies on a free exchange of ideas in open academic literature and through in-person exchange at scientific conferences. By fragmenting the international research community, we risk engaging in parallel but disconnected efforts, delaying — or outright missing — future scientific breakthroughs. Restricting access to international data, expertise, and facilities can produce blind spots in critical areas such as quantum technology, artificial intelligence, and advanced materials. In the long term, these policies risk weakening the very scientific capacity that underpins our national security, technological competitiveness, and economic resilience.

Existing laws already include prohibitions, training, risk reviews, and safeguards that balance national security with scientific cooperation. The SAFE Research Act ignores or duplicates these established frameworks rather than integrating with them. It would introduce conflicting requirements and require extensive and impractical data collection. Before adding yet more regulation, there should be an examination of the existing prohibitions and safeguards to assess impact and identify any gaps.

Implementing the provisions of this bill will result in a profound loss for Americans. By severely disrupting international research cooperation, the U.S. stands to be left behind in both fundamental research and critical technology fields like quantum information science and artificial intelligence. Existing frameworks already address security risks more effectively through balanced, risk-based management rather than blanket prohibitions. We request that you remove the SAFE Research Act from the NDAA to ensure the United States remains a leading scientific player on the global stage.

Thank you for your time and consideration. If you have questions or would like to further discuss our concerns outlined above, please do not hesitate to contact APS Director of Public Affairs Mark Elsesser (elsesser@aps.org; 202.846.8121).