Washington, Apr 18 (PTI): Former US National Security Adviser H R McMaster has called for a Hippocratic oath — an ethical vow taken by medical practitioners — for corporate leaders making investments in research of cutting-edge technologies in foreign countries such as China.
General McMaster, who served as the National Security Adviser in the first Trump administration, said such an oath was necessary to ensure that potential enemies of the US do not develop weapon systems and other capabilities using American investments.
“I think if you’re making a business or a finance decision related to technologies and technological development and investment in maybe research enterprises abroad, you ought to take a Hippocratic oath in every boardroom,” McMaster said in an interactive session at the THRIVE 2026 Summit organised by Global Science Innovation Forum at Stanford University in San Francisco Friday.
The retired lieutenant general, who served in the Gulf War in 1991 and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, noted that unchecked globalisation in the post-Cold War period had granted primacy to free and open societies and free-market economies based on the belief that the great power rivalry was a relic of the past.
“We became complacent and supply chains prioritised efficiency over resilience. So we’re behind in competition in critical technologies that China in particular has weaponised,” McMaster said, referring to Beijing’s squeeze on the supply of critical rare earth minerals in response to the US tariff imposition last year.
McMaster argued that China’s status as a mercantilist economic model against the US’ free-market economies affects the whole range of technologies that have a military or security application.
“The revisionist powers China and Russia are doing their best to pull others into the fold, what I would call an axis of aggressors. Each of them has distinct objectives in mind, what they share in common is a desire to tear down the existing rules of international discourse in trade, security and finance, and replace it with a new set of rules that are sympathetic to their authoritarian form of government and, in China’s case in particular, its status as a mercantilist economic model,” the former US NSA said.
McMaster stressed the need for a new set of rules for the development and application of technologies that are competitive in nature, such as artificial intelligence, supercomputing, energy-related technologies, materials science technologies, genetics and genomics.
He said it was unrealistic to assume that the Chinese Communist Party leadership will sign up for the rules that the US would think are in its interests.
McMaster suggested that an oath of ethics, along the lines of the Hippocratic oath taken by medical doctors, should be taken by board members of companies dealing in such critical technologies.
He said the Hippocratic oath for board rooms should have three components: do not help potential enemies develop weapon systems that could be used to “kill our children and grandchildren”; do not help authoritarian regimes extinguish human freedom or commit cultural genocide; and do not compromise the long-term viability of American companies in exchange for short-term profits or access to the Chinese market.
McMaster said China may offer cheap manufacturing and access to markets, but companies falling for such attractions may end up losing intellectual property to Chinese companies, which eventually put the companies out of business.
According to the GSIF, the THRIVE-2026 Summit is a global convention where scientific innovation meets ancient wisdom in pursuit of a better world. PTI SKU RUK RUK
(This story is published as part of the auto-generated syndicate wire feed. No editing has been done in the headline or the body by ABP Live.)
