Trend Global science and technology governance fragments into a regime complex of rival technology blocs

Summary

The clash between transformative norms and techno-nationalist realism is causing serious fragmentation of global STI governance and shows how fragile international norms are in the face of one country's deviation. Beyond diluted trust between states, the essay warns of possible domino retreats and a functional paralysis of science in tackling shared problems. Global cooperation is expected to become a deeper regime complex in which blocs with different rules and values, each putting national interest first, coexist instead of a single public-interest norm. Within the former US-EU value alliance, the United States is rapidly forming a separate technology-security bloc through selective technology prosperity deals and exclusive supply chains, while China and Russia consolidate an alternative bloc by drawing in Global South countries through BRICS. Such fragmentation raises the risk of transformative failure, in which individual national efforts do not add up to system-wide change.