Dual-use technology
In politics, diplomacy and export control, dual-use items refer to goods, software and technology that can be used for both civilian and military applications.
Thus, expensive technologies originally benefitting only military purposes would in the future also be used to serve civilian commercial interests if they were not otherwise engaged, such as the Global Positioning System developed by the U.S. Department of Defense.
The "dual-use dilemma" was first noted with the discovery of the process for synthesizing and mass-producing ammonia which revolutionized agriculture with modern fertilizers but also led to the creation of chemical weapons during World War I.
[8] For nuclear power programs to be developed and managed safely and securely, it is important that countries have domestic “good governance” characteristics that will encourage proper nuclear operations and management:[8] These characteristics include low degrees of corruption (to avoid officials selling materials and technology for their own personal gain as occurred with the A.Q.
[8] As more advances are made towards artificial intelligence (AI), it garners more and more attention on its capability as a dual-use technology and the security risks it may pose.
[10][11] With the use of AI, technology has become capable of running multiple algorithms that could solve difficult problems, from detecting anomalies in samples during MRI scans,[11] to providing surveillance of an entire country's residents.
[14] That the July 2007 terrorist attacks in central London and at Glasgow airport may have involved National Health Service medical professionals was a recent wake-up call that screening people with access to pathogens may be necessary.
One of the key mechanisms that have been identified to achieve this is through the education of life science students, with the objective of building what has been termed a “culture of responsibility”.
At the 2008 Meeting of States Parties to the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC), it was agreed by consensus that: States Parties recognized the importance of ensuring that those working in the biological sciences are aware of their obligations under the convention and relevant national legislation and guidelines...States Parties noted that formal requirements for seminars, modules or courses, including possible mandatory components, in relevant scientific and engineering training programmes and continuing professional education could assist in raising awareness and in implementing the convention.
Unfortunately, both the policy and academic literature show that life scientists across the globe are frequently uninformed or underinformed about biosecurity, dual-use, the BTWC and national legislation outlawing biological weapons.
In May 2024, the White House published the "United States Government Policy for Oversight of Dual Use Research of Concern and Pathogens with Enhanced Pandemic Potential",[22] "a unified federal oversight framework for conducting and managing certain types of federally funded life sciences research on biological agents and toxins."
[26] Night-vision devices with extraordinary performance characteristics (high gain, specific spectral sensitivity, fine resolution, low noise) are heavily export-restricted by the few states capable of producing them, mainly to limit their proliferation to enemy combatants, but also to slow the inevitable reverse-engineering undertaken by other world powers.
Competing international manufacturers (European defense contractor Exosens Group, Japanese scientific instrument giant Hamamatsu Photonics, and Russian state-financed laboratory JSC Katod) have entered the American market through licensed importers.
[31] Early 2019, Microsoft announced the HoloLens 2, smart glasses that will allow consumers to experience augmented reality within the real world.
[32][33][34] This contract would have Microsoft create and supply the U.S. Army a separate version of the HoloLens smart glasses called the Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS).
