Political scientists talk about the ‘securitisation’ of public policy: the process by which organisational or political actors use security rationales to support claims for funding particular activities or where the ‘security state’ uses the rhetoric of external (or internal) threat as a pretext for entering into new policy fields or for developing new powers.1 Such ideas should be familiar to historians of science and technology (S&T) policy because the very notion that governments should intervene to fund and direct science was largely a product of the Cold War security environment. Since 9/11 a new threat has been constructed: the threat of international terrorism. We are said to be living in ‘a new anti-terrorism era’ that has widespread implications for public policy — including S&T policy.2