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United States and 16 countries back Kyoto Vision for a golden age of science at STS Forum

United States and 16 countries back Kyoto Vision for a golden age of science at STS Forum

The United States and 16 other countries endorsed the Kyoto Vision for a Golden Age of Science at the 23rd Annual Meeting of the STS Forum in Kyoto.

--- The context --- Kyoto hosted the 23rd Annual Meeting of the Science and Technology in Society (STS) Forum, where science policy leaders set research priorities. The gathering produced a joint international declaration: the United States and 16 countries endorsed the Kyoto Vision for a Golden Age of Science, pledging to renew their science ecosystems and usher in a golden age of discovery and prosperity. The initiative was led by Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. The vision rests on one premise: super intelligence applied to science could enable autonomous experimentation at scale and open entirely new lines of inquiry. --- The facts --- The declaration reflects a shared ambition to renew and strengthen the signatories' science ecosystems. Ministers pledged to advance new institutional models and funding mechanisms so the best and brightest scientists can pursue their most ambitious work. The signatories are Argentina, Bulgaria, Chile, Cyprus, Germany, Greece, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, the Republic of Korea, New Zealand, Poland, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States of America: the United States and 16 other countries. The declaration follows a domestic push: in July 2026, Kratsios delivered to President Trump the report 'Science: A New Golden Age,' described as the most comprehensive rethinking of the American research enterprise in eight decades, setting new directions for federal R&D. --- The positions --- The view that celebrates the initiative holds that the United States and 16 other countries signing a common framework shows international scientific cooperation can rally around the thesis that the way we make discoveries has changed. Kratsios said the Kyoto Vision recognizes that shift as a call to action, and argued that super intelligence applied to science will be, in his framing, the greatest force in history for democratizing research. He also stated that the United States is leading that charge, under President Trump's leadership. --- What remains unknown --- The declaration includes no investment figures or timelines for the promised new institutional models and funding mechanisms. It is also unclear what role public laboratories will play versus private technology firms in large-scale autonomous experimentation, and how the common agenda will be coordinated among countries with very different scientific capacities. --- Unanswered questions --- Which countries will contribute new resources to this vision, and how much? How will the benefits of super-intelligence-accelerated discoveries be shared among the signatories? What safeguards will ensure that autonomous experimentation does not concentrate scientific power in a handful of institutions? --- EPM analysis --- The Kyoto Vision is above all a political gesture with technical potential: it gathers the governments of the United States and 16 other countries around the idea that research must be reinvented, at a moment when automated discovery is becoming plausible. Its real value will depend on whether today's funding and institutional promises become measurable programs. If that happens, the Kyoto declaration could be remembered as the first step of an unprecedented era of scientific cooperation; if not, it will remain a well-lit photograph with no budget behind it. 📌 EPM Take: In EPM's view, the Kyoto bet points in the right direction because democratizing research benefits all of humanity, not only those who fund the laboratories. The United States and 16 other countries signing a common vision is already a diplomatic victory in a fragmented world. The next test is concrete: turning words into funds, shared laboratories and open data. If scientific cooperation manages to institutionalize itself around this vision, the coming decade could bring discoveries that today seem unreachable. Much of future global prosperity depends on science.
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