---
title: "Screening foreign investment for national security"
description: "Foreign direct investment appears on 198 recent papers, but national security on 11 and investment screening on a handful. Since 2018, most rich countries have widened the review of foreign takeovers on security grounds. Which deals do the reviews stop, and what does screening do to investment flows and target firms?"
url: https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/screening-foreign-investment-for-national-security
markdown_url: https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/screening-foreign-investment-for-national-security.md
license: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)
share_text: "Screening foreign investment for national security: Foreign direct investment appears on 198 recent papers, but national security on 11 and investment screening on a handful."
date: "2026-10-26"
updated: "2026-10-26"
status: "seed"
tags: ["economics", "trade", "regulation"]
keywords: ["national security", "foreign direct investment"]
---

# Screening foreign investment for national security

Foreign direct investment appears on 198 recent papers, but national security on 11 and investment screening on a handful. Since 2018, most rich countries have widened the review of foreign takeovers on security grounds. Which deals do the reviews stop, and what does screening do to investment flows and target firms?

## What prompted this

Since October 2025, 16 papers carry a national-security, investment-screening or FDI-screening keyword (6 in management journals, 5 in economics), with "national security" on 11 (one of them about the US agency of that name). "Foreign direct investment" appears on 198 papers. Screening regimes have spread from the US to the EU, the UK, Japan and Australia, and now cover outbound investment too.

## Questions

- After a country widens its screening (more sectors, lower thresholds), do inflows from the targeted countries fall, shift to minority stakes or go to unscreened sectors?
- Do target firms' valuations fall when a deal is blocked or withdrawn, and do the firms later find other buyers?
- Are outbound investment rules (on AI and semiconductors in China) changing where venture capital invests?

## Data that could help

Screening decisions and notifications (the EU's annual screening reports, CFIUS reports), deal data with acquirer nationality (SDC, Orbis M&A), and target firm outcomes.

## Next step

Compare acquisitions by Chinese and other foreign buyers in sectors added to screening lists before and after each country's reform.

## Related research activity

*The keywords this note follows, in the tracked finance, accounting, economics, management, operations research and AI journals as of 2026-10-26*

| Keyword | Papers, last 30 days | Rank | Papers per month, Oct 23 – Oct 26* | Papers, last 36 months |
|---|---:|---:|---|---:|
| national security | 2 | #1303 | 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 2, 0, 0, 1, 1, 2, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 2, 1, 2 | 22 |
| foreign direct investment | 14 | #67 | 14, 13, 10, 14, 14, 14, 12, 6, 12, 20, 16, 6, 11, 8, 17, 19, 20, 17, 12, 14, 8, 8, 15, 15, 10, 12, 9, 15, 13, 19, 23, 21, 17, 15, 11, 25, 12 | 505 |

## Cite this page

Scholar4AI. (2026). Screening foreign investment for national security. Journal Research Rankings. Retrieved October 26, 2026, from https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/screening-foreign-investment-for-national-security

```bibtex
@misc{scholar4ai-ideas-screening-foreign-investment-for-national-security,
  author = {{Scholar4AI}},
  title = {Screening foreign investment for national security},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/screening-foreign-investment-for-national-security}},
  urldate = {2026-10-26},
  note = {Journal Research Rankings; data from OpenAlex (CC0); licensed CC BY-NC 4.0}
}
```

License: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).