Universities as the Next Counterintelligence Battleground in Geopolitical Contests

ABSTRACT Globally, universities are increasingly becoming the target of foreign national security actors, engaging in espionage, sabotage, foreign interference and intellectual property theft. Despite that, there has been no examination of the utilisation of counterintelligence approaches by universities to the threats they face from the subordination or manipulation of international collaboration and research partnerships. Tangentially, the concept of research security is underexplored in a global context, despite nations like Canada, the United Kingdom, United States and the European Union having introduced research security frameworks to manage risks to national security and the protection of sensitive information (particularly for places of higher education and learning). Likewise, there has been little focus on potential solutions or mitigations of the threats to national security which arise in higher education settings within the wider context of research security in the Higher Education domain. This article seeks to achieve two purposes. Firstly, to examine the current state of research security through the lens of counterintelligence studies, and to site research security within the current discourse by adopting Prunckun's grounded theory of counterintelligence. Secondly, to propose that universities will need to begin adopting and enacting counterintelligence programmes in their institutions as part of a wider institution‐led move towards research security in Higher Education, while avoiding the negative drawbacks of the securitisation of academic freedoms and synergies. Failing to do so, we argue that the very spirit of academic freedom will be undermined, and the technologies and inventions which universities seek to pursue for the betterment of humanity will be diverted and subverted for nefarious or malicious purposes.