Dual-Use Technologies

GOVERNANCE OF DUAL-USE TECHNOLOGIES: THEORY AND PRACTICE Governance of Dual-Use Technologies: Theory and Practice AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS & SCIENCES Elisa D. Harris, Editor AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS & SCIENCES Governance of Dual-Use Technologies: Theory and Practice Elisa D. Harris, Editor © 2016 by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences All rights reserved. ISBN:0-87724-110-4 This publication is available online at https://www.amacad.org/gnf. Suggested citation: Elisa D. Harris, ed., Governance of Dual-Use Technologies: Theory and Practice (Cambridge, Mass.: American Academy of Arts & Sciences, 2016). Cover images (from left): Interior rack of mounted servers © 2014 by iStock.com/Wavebreakmedia; Bacillus anthracis bacterial spores, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Public Health Image Library (PHIL), added color by Scott Camazine; nuclear power plant cooling towers © 2013 by iStock.com/vencavolrab. This paper is part of the American Academy’s Global Nuclear Future Initiative, which is supported in part by grants from Carnegie Corporation of New York, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, The Flora Family Foundation, and The Kavli Foundation. The statements made and views expressed in this publication are those held by the authors and are not necessarily those of the Officers and Mem- bers of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences or the foundations supporting the Global Nuclear Future Initiative. Please direct inquiries to: American Academy of Arts and Sciences 136 Irving Street Cambridge, MA 02138-1996 Telephone: 617-576-5000 Fax: 617-576-5050 Email: [email protected] Web: www.amacad.org Contents v Acknowledgments 1 Preface Robert Rosner 4 Introduction Elisa D. Harris 8 Chapter 1 On the Regulation of Dual-Use Nuclear Technology James M. Acton 60 Chapter 2 Dual-Use Threats: The Case of Biological Technology Elisa D. Harris 64 Table 1: International Governance of Biological Technology 73 Table 2: U.S. Governance of Biological Weapons Develop- ment and Biological Materials Access and Use 75 Table 3: U.S. Governance of Biological Research 95 Table 4: Biological Technology Governance in Other Countries 112 Chapter 3 Governance of Information Technology and Cyber Weapons Herbert Lin 158 Concluding Observations Elisa D. Harris 160 Table 5: Characteristics of Nuclear, Biological, and Infor- mation Technology 164 Table 6: Governance of Nuclear, Biological, and Informa- tion Technology 172 List of Acronyms 174 Contributors This volume is dedicated to the memory of John D. Steinbruner—teacher, mentor, colleague, friend, and inspiration to generations of students and analysts of global security challenges and responses. Acknowledgments The authors are grateful to the diverse group of experts who participated in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences meeting on “Dual-Use Technology: Current and Future Governance Prospects,” held at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs in March 2015. We are especially grateful to Steve Fetter, David Fidler, the late Roger Hurwitz, R. Scott Kemp, Gregory Koblentz, and Jens Kuhn for their thoughtful comments on the draft papers presented at the meeting, and to Jo Husbands, Susan Koch, and Angela McKay for enriching our meals with their insightful presentations. We would also like to thank Rebecca Lordan and Kristopher Pittard for their assistance in transcribing the meeting discussions. Special thanks are also owed to those who took the time to review and com- ment on subsequent drafts of the chapters published in this volume. In particular, James Acton thanks Togzhan Kassenova for her comments on the draft and Lau- ryn Williams for her research assistance. Herbert Lin thanks Stephanie Forrest, Trey Herr, David Relman, and Adam Segal. Elisa D. Harris thanks Seth Carus, Richard Ebright, Thomas Holohan, Jo Husbands, Gregory Koblentz, and Mil- ton Leitenberg for their detailed comments and suggestions, and Kathryn Harris, David Koplow, and Kathryn Nixdorff for their insights on particular issues. We also are extremely grateful to the leaders of the Academy’s Global Nuclear Future Initiative—Robert Rosner, Steven Miller, and Scott Sagan—for their assistance in developing this project, their input during the March 2015 dual-use technology meeting, and their subsequent comments on this volume. Finally, we want to extend our deepest gratitude to Francesca Giovannini and Kathryn Moffat at the Academy for the extraordinary support and assistance they provided throughout this project. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS v Preface Robert Rosner Modern concerns about dual-use technologies emerged in concert with fears about the proliferation of nuclear weapons–related technologies in the early days of the Cold War. These concerns focused on obvious targets, such as spe- cialty steels, high-precision computer-aided manufacturing tools and facilities, and high-performance software and hardware; that is, materials and tools that are readily adapted to nuclear weapons–related design and manufacturing. More recently, focus has shifted to nonnuclear technological contexts—including, most prominently, biological and information technology—in which ongoing research and development has dramatically advanced human social and eco- nomic well-being, though at the cost of generating potential for these technologies to be harnessed for nefarious purposes. Of course, the dual nature of technological advances—capable of elevating humanity and unleashing destruction upon it—long predates the total war and scientific breakthroughs of the twentieth century. For example, the chemical advancements underlying the use of fireworks in imperial China were adapted by the tenth century AD to produce “fire arrows” for use in battle.1 What has changed since is not the balance of dual-use technologies, but the ability of modern weaponry to kill on drastically greater scales, affecting vast portions of the earth’s surface—a dynamic captured in J. Robert Oppenheimer’s sobering allusion to the two-thousand-year-old Bhagavad-Gita: “I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,” when describing the Trinity nuclear explosion.2 We are faced today with weaponry that is appropriately referred to as weapons of mass destruction. Given these stakes, how can we create effective international and national governance structures that provide a legal framework for regulating the flow of powerful dual-use technologies, as well as provide for enforcement mechanisms ensuring compliance with it? Technological innovation consistently follows a course of “trickle-down” effects: what is high precision today is run-of-the-mill tomorrow; capabilities once considered rare and extraordinary, and thus condu- 1. One of the earliest recorded uses of such rockets in warfare was the defense of the Chinese city of Tzu T’ung in AD 994. 2. Oppenheimer quoted from Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood, trans., Bhaga- vad-Gita: The Song of God (Madras, India: Sri Ramakrishna Math, 1945), ch. xi, v. 32. The line is elsewhere given as “I am become Death, the shatterer of worlds.” PREFACE 1 cive to control, evolve to become the ordinary, slipping outside any possibility of enforceable regulation. The most obvious example is the evolution of computer technologies: the Herculean effort of the analog computers of the Manhattan Project is today totally eclipsed by the computing power of any budget-model laptop loaded with freely available modeling software. Similarly, computer-aided design and manufacturing has evolved over the past two decades such that the tools for high-precision manufacturing have become commodity products: a complete CAD/CAM (computer-aided design and computer-aided manufacturing) workshop, including extremely high-precision numerically controlled machining tools, can be assembled today at costs easily within the reach of well-funded terrorist groups. In response to these challenges, the American Academy’s Global Nuclear Future Initiative, which I direct alongside Steven Miller and senior advisor Scott Sagan, decided to take a comprehensive look at the range of current efforts to constrain dual-use technologies—that is, efforts to create dual-use governance structures—with a particular focus on their effectiveness in controlling the spread of technologies that can have both beneficial and harmful conse- quences. The modern touchstone of such efforts has, as stated above, been the control of technologies that enable the construction of nuclear weapons; thus, a significant component of our study is an examination of the similarities and differences between the strategies used in the nuclear realm and those proposed for biological and information technology. We began with a series of small workshops in 2012 that sought to intro- duce and explore the critical issues surrounding dual-use technologies; these workshops led to a larger meeting held at Stanford University in January 2013, from which we drew the conclusion that to reach a useful understanding of the dual-use issue, we needed to significantly narrow our focus. Ultimately, we orga- nized our strategic approach around governance: What have we learned about the potential for dual-use technology control from the decades-long efforts to restrict the spread of technology related to nuclear and biological weapons and, more recently, cyber weapons? To this end, we were fortunate to enlist Elisa D. Harris to lead a follow-on effort focused on these questions (and to address the issue of biological technology), and

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