Vetting Collaborators as Research Surveillance

A new administrative pattern is emerging where scientific collaboration is transformed into a surveillance workflow: agency scientists are now asked to Google every foreign co‑author and forward names flagged for 'subversive or criminal activity' to internal national‑security teams. That practice centralizes security review inside research operations and risks chilling visa‑dependent trainees, fracturing international networks, and shifting research governance toward suspicion rather than peer review. — If replicated, converting routine academic collaboration into mandated security checks will reshape science diplomacy, slow discovery, and force new legal standards for when national‑security screening is appropriate in civilian research.