Any university professor following the normal practices of science, collaborating with colleagues from abroad, could have his career destroyed by what the NIST bureaucrats construe to be a violation of these elastic rules. The only safe course will be to “over-comply” deep-sixing many an innovation.

Readers of this letter will recall our celebration of what may turn out to be the most significant advance in microelectronics in 70 years: the first graphene semiconductor. This spectacular achievement was announced simultaneously, in January of this year, by a team of researchers from Georgia Tech and Tianjin University, China’s oldest. The discovery was the fruit of almost a decade of collaboration.

Today, neither the Chinese nor the American researchers would dare work together on such a project. Doesn’t that make you feel safe?