At the fourth KEF Forum, which the Joint Committee organised in cooperation with the Bundeswehr Institute of Microbiology at the Historisches Kolleg in Munich, KEF members and other contact persons for handling security-relevant research were once again given the opportunity to exchange experiences and challenges of their advisory work in a confidential setting, particularly with regard to the risks of international research cooperation and the civilian clause debate.
Joint Committee chair Thomas Lengauer began with an introduction to the topic of security-relevant research and the tasks and objectives of the Joint Committee and presented the results of the fourth survey of the KEFs and the Joint Committee’s proposals for strengthening the KEFs’ evaluation competences. The co-chair of the Joint Committee, Britta Siegmund, then presented the DFG’s recommendations “Dealing with Risks in International Research Cooperation”, which encourage a reflective approach to risks in research activities in the sense of a research culture that responds to geopolitical changes. In the second part of the introduction, Roman Wölfel, Director of the Bundeswehr Institute of Microbiology and member of its KEF, described the tasks of his departmental research facility for protection against infectious diseases in the context of national and international outbreaks and for defence against biological weapons. Every project that was processed at the institute underwent a mandatory DURC review and could be advised by the local KEF in case of doubt. A checklist was also available for this purpose. Gain-of-function experiments, for example, were not carried out at the institute.
Five representatives of committees responsible for providing ethical advice on security-relevant research then gave insights into the advisory and structural processes at their institutions. Christoph Rehmann-Sutter presented the preliminary considerations of the still young “Committee for the Ethics of Security-Relevant Research” at the University of Lübeck regarding the definition of security and the role of research and technology. The process of clarifying security could itself constitute ethical behaviour. One of the committee’s main tasks at present – in addition to discussing initial cases – was to raise awareness in all areas of study concerned. So far, the commission had advised on a research project on AI-supported analysis of images from helicopters, which was designed to rescue people in distress, but the results of which could also be misused.
Bernd Eylert from the ethics committee of the TH Wildau presented considerations on analysing genetic patient data using AI against the background of applicable data protection regulations. Using a medical research project as an example, he outlined the risks of misuse that could result from legal loopholes. At the same time, he emphasised the crucial importance of comprehensive patient consent. The German Society for Haematology and Oncology, for which the aforementioned study was conducted, had founded a working group on “AI in haematology-oncology” due to the increasing explosiveness of AI projects.
Ulrike Beisiegel, chairwoman of the KEF of the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY), outlined various topics that the committee dealt with under the title “How political can science be?”. Among other things, the KEF advised the DESY executive board on the extent to which the organisation could establish rules for making political statements. The KEF also dealt with security risks posed by international cooperation in large analytical infrastructures at DESY (e.g. in the BMBF-funded WIKOOP-INFRA project). As a consequence of the politically proclaimed “turnaround”, the KEF was involved in consultations with the Directorate on the possible further development of DESY’s mission statement, in which research had so far served “civil and peaceful purposes”. The central question was whether projects with a military connection should be explicitly permitted in future.
Karsten Weber presented the Joint Ethics Committee of the Universities of Applied Sciences of Bavaria (GeHBa), in which 15 universities and one competence centre were represented. In the early days, ethics opinions and advice were primarily given on health and care projects, but now projects from the engineering sciences on automated driving, digitalisation and artificial intelligence were increasingly being brought to the committee. Members of the GeHBa would convey the basics of ethics in research through lectures at universities of applied sciences. Due to the Hightech Agenda Bayern and the increase in doctorates at universities of applied sciences, an increased volume of applications to the GeHBa could be expected in the coming years.
Jan-Hendrik Heinrichs explained that security-relevant research projects at Forschungszentrum Jülich were subject to mandatory consultation with the local KEF, compliance with which was ensured by the third-party funding department, among others. The objectives of the researchers or cooperation partners and the respective technology readiness level (TLR) were particularly important for the KEF’s evaluation system. He illustrated this with reference to a research project in the field of energy research, in which cooperation was to take place with a military partner from a third country. Against the background of the research centre’s peace clause and unclarified publication modalities, a negative advisory vote had been given, as it could not be ruled out that the product could be developed and used primarily for military purposes. The votes of the KEF would be communicated to the executive board, which would ultimately have to make the decision in favour of or against such a project.
Michael Lauster, head of the Fraunhofer Institute for Technological Trend Analysis INT, provided insights into security research in the Fraunhofer Defence, Prevention and Security Division VVS. Services, technologies and products were developed to industrial maturity in order to identify potential dangers at an early stage, counteract them and minimise consequential damage. The separation of internal and external security was becoming increasingly difficult, e.g. in cyber security. In the meantime, freely available high technologies such as commercially available civilian drones were being misused for military or terrorist purposes. Security research was faced with the dilemma of first having to research and understand risks that you wanted to reduce, even though they may contradict your own ethical ideas. Lauster cited the genetic manipulation of soldiers or the psychological manipulation of the population as examples of this. INT was currently monitoring 50 fields of technology in the context of security research. The executive board of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft could convene an ethics committee if ethical advice was required.
To illustrate the challenges of international research cooperation, Anna Lisa Ahlers from the MPI for the History of Science presented the Max Planck Society’s recommendations for cooperation with China. She explained the context in which the recommendations were drawn up. In the case of China, the currently discussed difficulties of international research cooperation, e.g. with regard to military-linked research, ideas of scientific ethics, political instrumentalisation and censorship, espionage and one-sided knowledge transfer, were growing against the background of a changing foreign science policy and diffuse empiricism. Scientific organisations such as the MPG now wanted to counter these risks by sharpening a sense of responsibility, risk mitigation approaches and the partial reorientation of international collaborations. In particular, the MPG recommendations would provide for the bottom-up definition of security-relevant research fields and systematic support in the initiation of collaborations. She concluded by pointing out that in Germany there were often calls for national advisory centres for research cooperation with China, but that it was not yet clear how these could be administratively linked and equipped with the necessary expertise. The research landscape and policy in China was very dynamic and good advice required a wide range of in-depth knowledge.
In the discussion rounds following the respective presentations, the extent to which a categorical rejection of cooperation between academic research institutions and the Bundeswehr as a defence army controlled by parliament could still be justified from a peace perspective was discussed. It was debated whether other ethical standards could apply to application-orientated security research in the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, much of which was not published. In addition, the assessment framework would have shifted significantly in recent years, meaning that civil and peace clauses could now follow a different interpretation. It was also discussed whether joint KEFs such as the GeHBa could possibly be subject to fewer conflicts of interest than traditional KEFs due to their inter-institutional composition. It was also questioned to what extent commercial providers of research security databases should also be utilised for risk considerations.
In the final discussion, the participants agreed that topics such as the challenges of international research cooperation and research security were an omnipresent issue in the KEFs and their research institutions, also due to the political debates. In some cases, the corresponding requests for advice from the KEFs were also increasing and responsibilities and evaluation standards now needed to be clarified. People were very grateful for advice and information from the Joint Committee and other sources,, as this topic still required a great deal of discussion.
