From SINners to SaiNTs – Shifts in UK Science and Tech Diplomacy

Late last month the Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO) relaunched the Science and Innovation Network (SIN) as the Science, Technology and Innovation Network (STN).

As well as bringing ‘technology’ into the network’s name, the change reflects wider pressures on the UK to compete and collaborate in a rapidly changing global science and tech landscape.

SIN was first created in the 2000’s and is made up of UK diplomats posted abroad and other experts hired locally who work at the intersection between science and diplomacy. The network was one of the first concerted efforts by a government to establish a cadre of experts focused within embassies and consulates on science and innovation work. Widely cited as a best-in-class example of how to do ‘science diplomacy’, today the network is some 130 people strong and based across 65 locations.

The press release for the relaunch last month noted that the network had a Star Trek-esq mission to ‘forge deeper international partnerships on science and technology, and seek new opportunities for British sci-tech pioneers’, all in support of the Labour government’s Plan for Change. So, will the new network boldly go in search of new technologies? Or is the change just a new name for the existing work promoting UK science and tech to an international audience, providing insight on science and tech trends, and facilitating future collaborations for the UK?

The answer is likely a bit of both. The FCDO and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (the two ministerial departments that co-own the network) said that the relaunch ‘recognises the huge role technologies like AI, quantum and engineering biology can play in global growth’. That is undeniably true. But technology and science have always been two sides of the same innovation coin and there was always a bit of a silent ‘T’ in the way SIN operated, so the new name perhaps simply better reflects the growing importance of diplomacy in supporting everything from the most basic fundamental science to its most advanced technological applications.

Science and Tech Diplomacy

It is not just the network that is changing. Science and tech are having an ever-greater impact on both the myriad issues diplomats need to work on and on how diplomacy itself is conducted. That means the UK, and the rest of the world, need to shift how they approach the practice of science diplomacy.

Science diplomacy has a long history, and the UK has been an active player throughout that time. Examples of ‘scidip’ stretch from track 2 dialogues between UK, US and Russian nuclear scientists during the Cold War, to the role eminent scientists – and Fellows of the Royal Society – Dorothy and Joseph Needham played in normalising the post-WWII UK-China relationship through the Sino-British Science Co-operation Office.

Today, science diplomacy is practiced in tumultuous geopolitical circumstances. Responding to this new climate, the Royal Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) have just published a new report, Science Diplomacy in an Era of Disruption, which reflects on how science is ever more central to foreign policy, and how the current political climate therefore calls for a practical and clear-eyed approach to the practice of science diplomacy. Similarly, the EU has proposed their own European Framework for Science Diplomacy, and UNESCO are holding a Global Ministerial Dialogue on science diplomacy.

So, What Now?

In this ‘era of disruption’ there are two key challenges that the diplomats in the relaunched Science and Technology Network will need to grapple with. First, is the rise of non-state actors who are now major players in fields once reserved only for nation states. How, for example, should we form multilateral agreements around the use of AI when the key actors are now multilateral companies rather than individual countries? How too should diplomats respond to corporations who control technologies critical to a country’s ability to wage war or to defend itself?

Second, the network’s diplomats will need to navigate the increasingly complex and interconnected relationship between national security and scientific cooperation. Previously, the idea of a ‘dual use’ technology, one with both civil and military applications, was relatively easy to define and control, with clearly articulated exclusions for basic science to allow free international collaboration with a wide range of partners.

Today, that binary has almost completely broken down, and it is increasingly hard to find any technology that is not at least potentially dual use. The STN teams around the world will likely find themselves torn between ministers who are keen to explore new technological partnerships and long-standing export control restrictions which are firmly set against such ideas. The 20th-century legislative frameworks governing scientific cooperation are mostly black and white tools increasingly asked to regulate a very greyscale set of circumstances.

The launch of STN is a positive move. The ministerial and diplomatic ambition for the UK to play a leading role in global science is clearly there. But ambition alone will not be enough to see the UK succeed. To ensure STN is properly equipped to build the partnerships the UK needs, HMG will also need to think hard about the domestic and international legislative frameworks and make sure they, like STN, reflect a 21st-century view of science and technology.

© Ian Wiggins, 2025, published by RUSI with permission of the author.

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