WIREDGOV

Without fundamental cultural change among academics, research security will become a box-ticking exercise for universities

Three Chinese officials threatened employees of a UK university in April 2024, demanding that the university halt an ongoing research project. These physical visits were accompanied by interference with the university’s digital infrastructure and apparent attempts to access online meetings without permission.

The case of Sheffield Hallam University, reported by the BBC and The Guardian on 3 November, highlights the threat Chinese state actors pose to the security of research in the UK.

The details of this case are shocking but will not be surprising to observers of the threat posed by state actors to the UK’s universities. What is more surprising is that this case has become public at all. A combination of government and university sensitivities mean that public reporting on research security incidents and near-misses remains limited.

This underlines a key problem with research security. Research at UK universities is under sustained and serious threat, and yet the government’s alarm bell is not cutting through. Warnings are issued, but without powerful, immediate examples of the threat these go unheeded.

Reports such as State Threats and Universities by Coventry University’s Protective Security Lab are a valuable resource. However, anonymised case studies in specialist reporting are not going to cut through with the public or academia more widely.

The result is a persistent gap in the perception of the threat between security practitioners and many academics. A recent RUSI report found that academics and the national security community remain divided on the security risks posed by research collaboration, with ‘little incentive for academia to consider national security concerns’.

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