Governance of Dual-Use Technologies: Theory and Practice

The term dual-use characterizes technologies that can have both military and civilian applications. What is the state of current efforts to control the spread of these powerful technologies—nuclear, biological, cyber—that can simultaneously advance social and economic well-being and also be harnessed for hostile purposes? What have previous efforts to govern, for example, nuclear and biological weapons taught us about the potential for the control of these dual-use technologies? What are the implications for governance when the range of actors who could cause harm with these technologies include not just national governments but also non-state actors like terrorists? These are some of the questions addressed by Governance of Dual-Use Technologies: Theory and Practice, the new publication released today by the Global Nuclear Future Initiative of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The publication's editor is Elisa D. Harris, Senior Research Scholar, Center for International Security Studies, University of Maryland School of Public Affairs. Governance of Dual-Use Technologies examines the similarities and differences between the strategies used for the control of nuclear technologies and those proposed for biotechnology and information technology. The publication makes clear the challenges concomitant with dual-use governance. For example, general agreement exists internationally on the need to restrict access to technologies enabling the development of nuclear weapons. However, no similar consensus exists in the bio and information technology domains. The publication also explores the limitations of military measures like deterrence, defense, and reprisal in preventing globally available biological and information technologies from being misused. Some of the other questions explored by the publication include: What types of governance measures for these dual-use technologies have already been adopted? What objectives have those measures sought to achieve? How have the technical characteristics of the technology affected governance prospects? What have been the primary obstacles to effective governance, and what gaps exist in the current governance regime? Are further governance measures feasible? In addition to a preface from Global Nuclear Future Initiative Co-Director Robert Rosner (University of Chicago) and an introduction and conclusion from Elisa Harris, Governance of Dual-Use Technologiesincludes:On the Regulation of Dual-Use Nuclear Technology by James M. Acton (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace)Dual-Use Threats: The Case of Biotechnology by Elisa D. Harris (University of Maryland)Governance of Information Technology and Cyber Weapons by Herbert Lin (Stanford University

Clinton and Bush administrations\u27 nuclear non-proliferation *policies on North Korea: Challenges and implications of systemic and domestic constraints

This study compared and evaluated the conduct of US policies towards North Korea in order to address the North Korean nuclear threat under the Clinton (1993--2000) and the Bush (2001--2004) administrations. The capabilities of the two administrations to carry out their preferred policies toward the global threat were evaluated in view of the systemic and domestic constraints that they faced. Domestic constraints identified were the US Congress, American political culture and public opinion and bureaucratic problems. Systemic constraints were the lack of coordination and differences in policy frameworks of South Korea, Japan, China and Russia, and the difficulty of dealing with the Kim regime. These systemic and domestic constraints were deemed by this study as the primary factors in their inclination towards the middle ground in dealing with North Korea hence, becoming similar.;Three major areas were examined: (1) Clinton and Bush administrations\u27 original policy position towards North Korea in terms of the use of bilateralism and multilateralism, carrots and sticks, and the inclusion/exclusion of the international regimes; (2) identification of the systemic and domestic constraints that affected the full implementation of the policies as originally proposed by the Clinton and Bush administrations; and (3) the extent to which Clinton and Bush had to adjust policies towards North Korea in terms of the use of bilateralism and multilateralism, carrots and sticks, and the inclusion/exclusion of the international regimes at the end of their term.;Using a structured focused comparison, this study predicts that, due to the domestic and systemic factors, the Bush administration is inclined to use the carrot strategies, and the exclusion of the international regime as employed in the Clinton administration, but is likely to employ bi-multilateral approach

Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms

The Joint Publication 1-02, Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms sets forth standard US military and associated terminology to encompass the joint activity of the Armed Forces of the United States. These military and associated terms, together with their definitions, constitute approved Department of Defense (DOD) terminology for general use by all DOD components

The Regulation of International Coercion

The most significant discourse about serious threats to U.S. national security in the twenty-first century will likely concern the military capabilities and intentions of non state actors, acting either for themselves, for religious elites, or as surrogates for state sponsors.https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/usnwc-newport-papers/1021/thumbnail.jp

The Limits of Command and Control

This thesis examines the role of the human operator in command and control systems designed and developed for the US Air Force during the 1950s and 1960s. As understood within the discourse of defence research, command and control involved the efficient capture and management of information from the battlefield in the pursuit of a particular military strategy. The digital computer, although then still very much the highly protean object of military-industrial-university research networks, was repeatedly proposed as a crucial technology that would allow for greater and more accurate control of the battlefield. I explore the discursive terrain occupied by the human operator through an analysis of two command and control systems, selected for their significance in employing digital computers to automate previously manual military practices. Firstly, I examine the operational principles established for Air Force crews in the SAGE system deployed in the late-1950s, tracing their elaboration within a series of psychological studies of stress led by psychologists at the RAND Corporation. In the absence of an actual Soviet invasion, SAGE crews fought simulated air wars while the effectiveness of their collective performance was systematically quantified. The second case study turns to the US Air Force's 'anti-infiltration' programme that targeted and bombed convoy routes used by the North Vietnamese Army to deliver supplies into South Vietnam. I focus on the role played by photo interpreters and systems analysts in the collection and verification of data used to confirm so-called 'vehicular activity' and 'truck kills'. In histories of Cold War technopolitics, both of these case studies have frequently been presented as exemplars of the application of a quantitative, computational rationality to the planning and conduct of military strategy. However, for all the extensive discussion in this literature about the central role of digital computers in automating parts of these systems, there still remained human operators who clearly played a significant, if seemingly recessive, role in their day-to-day functioning. My discussion of these case studies is based on close textual analyses of 'grey media'---the technical and administrative writing produced within bureaucratic institutions such as the US military and its defence research contractors. I foreground the effects grey media had on structuring and standardising specific operational practices, and consequently how it delimited the respective roles played by the human operator and the machine in the production of information about the battlefield. Drawing on a Foucauldian understanding of power as it functions through institutional discourse, I argue that the human operator was instrumental in codifying and authenticating information generated by and for the computer. This varied from the regular re-structuring of data in machine-readable forms, to the longer-term tasks of quantifying the strategic effectiveness of the system. Far from simply making the processing of information more efficient, these computerised systems were enmeshed in a vast and contradictory 'regime of practices' in which manual work proliferated. I contend that in order to fully grasp how digital, networked technologies have reshaped the field of possibility in war, foregrounding the grey, recessive role played by the human operator is vital