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Collectively solving problems shared by many nations requires a new global science and technology commons, which could be modeled on successful past experiences. 

The global challenges now facing all nations transcend national boundaries. Summoning the global talent and resources necessary to addresses these problems will require global science, technology, and innovation (STI) collaboration. Whether climate change, global poverty, or the threats from cyber technologies, effectively dealing with these challenges and opportunities will increasingly require advanced industrialized nations to move beyond their historical techno-nationalist STI policies. Currently, STI policies being proposed in the US and elsewhere assume a " zero-sum " competition where one nation's STI successes are assumed to come at the expense of other nations. They seek ways to outcompete other nations in the production of new STI and restrict foreign access to their STI. History suggests that such policies had, at best, limited success, and the current environment for them seems even less promising. When China was a global STI leader, its tecno-nationalistic policies failed to prevent the spread of its advanced technologies and the rise of other nations. England was unable to use techno-nationalist policies to monopolize the skills and technology it pioneered during the industrial revolution. America pursued its own techno-nationalist polices in the post-World War II years, attempting to maintain the leadership it enjoyed as other countries recovered from World War II devastation. Today new centers of STI development are rapidly emerging and expanding in China, India, Southeast Asia, and other parts of the world. In response, many US policy makers and business leaders harken back to prior failed strategies and advocate intensifying the techno-nationalistic STI policies. This paper proposes a more techno-globalistic approach through the development of a global STI commons, an approach that holds the promise of benefiting people all over the world, including those in currently dominant nations. 

Abstract As a cold war with China heats up, the U.S. and other members of the G7 need new approaches to their science and technology innovation (STI) policies. Dominance on the innovation frontier is no longer possible through traditional techno‐nationalist policies that view nations as ‘competing’ through exclusive STI development. Instead, we must recognise that talent and intellectual property are globally distributed, and thus build global collaborations that draw on the world's greatest talent while providing benefits equitably in a global STI commons. We need to recognise this new reality, not only for the benefits this would confer on humankind, but also to contend with China's growing STI capabilities and, eventually perhaps, integrating China into a system of global collaboration. Additionally, and importantly, national policies must recognise the geographically untethered operations of multinational enterprises that are the developers and/or repositories of STI but have weak ties to any one nation, thus blunting policies that try to contain STI within a country's borders. In this paper, we suggest approaches to advance these goals for global STI based on theories and cases of collective action. 

Technology has advanced through global exchanges, with different nations technologically ascendant at different periods. Nations’ perceptions of and policies about achieving and maintaining technological leadership have been based on zero-sum assumptions that ultimately have proved futile and may lead to their decline in the face of emergent technology powers. In the first fifteen or so centuries BCE, China led the world in the development and use of the world’s most consequential technologies, including printing, gunpowder, the compass, and the production of superior iron and steel. These technologies spread as far as Western Europe, especially as the network of trade routes known as “the Silk Roads” were brought under the control of the Mongol empire in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The Mongols radically reduced travel and trade barriers over the four thousand miles from the Sea of Japan to the Mediterranean, spanning widely diverse countries and cultures. In effect, they developed the first global technology trade system. The roads were blocked by the Ottoman Empire in the fifteenth century, and China’s technological dynamism stagnated. From the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries, the West became the primary center for the development and use of military and industrial technologies that enabled a substantial Western domination of the world. The Western domination may now be coming to an end as China and other Asia countries have achieved new levels of technological strength and, as emerging economies, are increasingly challenging the Western domination of the rules of intellectual property rights and technology trade. This article describes the China- and Western-centric eras of technology diffusion, noting prevailing zero-sum assumptions about sharing technology and the perceived need for nations to maintain technological “superiority” over other nations. The article concludes with suggestions for the development of a global commons of technology development and sharing.