5th – 6th November 2020 CONFERENCE READER BERLIN, NOVEMBER 2020 3 2020. CAPTURING TECHNOLOGY. RETHINKING ARMS CONTROL. BERLIN, NOVEMBER 2020 Message from Heiko Maas, Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs © Auswärtiges Amt / photothek.net New technologies are changing our lives. The Covid-19 pandemic has further illustrated their As in 2019, this years’ conference will apply a wide lense in analysing the promises and perils of new importance: Modern biotechnology provides the basis for a vaccine against the virus. Information and technologies for existing and future arms control regimes. We will again provide a forum for exchange communication technologies help us trace infections. They also allow us to stay in touch and to work between politicians, military, academia, civil society, and the private sector. The virtual format of the from home. In the fight against the pandemic, technological progress has certainly been a blessing for conference this year allows us to reach out to even more participants from all across the globe. us humans. This conference reader contains cutting edge analysis by renowned experts from leading research But there is also a dark side to new technologies: Their military use in future conflicts could threaten and policy institutes. I would like to thank the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP), strategic stability and lead to devastating consequences. On the one hand, militaries can make the Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique (FRS), the Institute for Peace Research responsible use of new technologies – for example to increase the accuracy of weapon systems and and Security Policy at Hamburg University (IFSH), the International Institute for to protect civilians. But they can also use new technologies in potentially destabilising ways, beyond Strategic Research (IISS), the United Nations Institute for Disarmament human control and in breach of international legal standards. We therefore need to find ways to Research (UNIDIR) and the Stockholm International Peace Research manage the risks emanating from new technologies, while at the same time harnessing their full Institute (SIPRI) for sharing their analyses and recommendations. potential to avoid human suffering. I look forward to very productive discussions! Germany has launched a series of initiatives to strengthen arms control in our new technological age. The Missile Dialogue Initiative we started at last year’s Conference has provided innovative answers to the challenges posed by new missile technology and proliferation trends in the post-INF world. Yours, Our inaugural conference “Capturing technology. Rethinking arms control” in March 2019 has lifted the debate on such crucial questions to a political level. Since then, we have refined the results of this first conference through a series of workshops the German Foreign Office conducted with experts and stakeholders. In these discussions, we have emphasised that emerging technologies also bear great potential for existing arms control mechanisms, for example for verification or confidence and security building measures. Heiko Maas, Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs We have at this point captured many of the challenges posed by new technologies. It is now time to come up with ideas on how arms control can tackle them. We Europeans should spearhead the search for global standards on the military use of new technologies. In doing so, we will need to engage with a multitude of stakeholders and build an inclusive multilateral approach that takes on board the perspectives of all the players concerned. 4 CONFERENCE READER 5 2020. CAPTURING TECHNOLOGY. RETHINKING ARMS CONTROL. BERLIN, NOVEMBER 2020 Content Strategic Stability and the Global Race for Technological Leadership 9 The Military Use of AI: Artificial and Real Challenges for Arms Control 17 New Opportunities to Build Trust and Ensure Compliance: Using Emerging Technologies for Arms Control and Verification 27 How on Earth Can We Trust Each Other? Confidence and Security Building in New Domains 35 Multi-stakeholder Approaches to Arms Control Negotiations: Working with Science and Industry 47 Europe, Arms Control and Strategic Autonomy: Understanding the Equation for Effective Action 55 About the Authors 64 About the Institutions 66 Imprint 68 6 CONFERENCE READER 7 2020. CAPTURING TECHNOLOGY. RETHINKING ARMS CONTROL. BERLIN, NOVEMBER 2020 Strategic Stability and the Global Race for Technological Leadership James M. Acton Carnegie Endowment for International Peace War is not always the result of a series of calculated and intentional decisions. While it only ever occurs when interstate relations are stretched almost to the point of breaking, the actual decision to use force can result from misinterpreting an adversary’s intentions—in particular, from concluding that the adversary may be planning to act in a more aggressive way than it actually is. Technology can exacerbate this risk by increasing the danger of waiting for those intentions to clarify. Thus, once the major continental European powers had begun to mobilize in 1914, each worried that its adversaries intended to start a war and that delaying its own mobilization would leave it dangerously unprepared. The result was a process of competitive mobilizations that contributed to the outbreak of World War I. The advent of nuclear weapons increased the danger of a similar process between the Cold The USS Porter launches a Tomahawk Land Attack Missile against Iraq on 22 War superpowers producing civilization-ending March 2003. Today, various nuclear-armed states fear that cruise missiles and other high-precision conventional weapons could be used to attack their nuclear consequences. The ill-defined term “strategic forces. stability,” which originated in that era, can be used to describe a situation in which the danger of inadvertent escalation—that is, escalation sparked by an action that is not intended to be escalatory— is minimized. The development of long-range nuclear weapons—intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), especially—increased the likelihood of one particular escalation mechanism, crisis instability, by leading each of the superpowers to fear that its nuclear forces were vulnerable to being preemptively destroyed in a nuclear attack. In a deep crisis or major conventional conflict, this fear could have created pressure on the Soviet Union or the United States to launch nuclear strikes on its adversary’s nuclear forces while it still could.[i] Indeed, at times, both superpowers felt this pressure even if, thankfully, it was not strong enough to lead to nuclear war.[ii] The end of the Cold War saw fears of inadvertent nuclear war ebb—but only because war itself seemed less likely. Improvements in military technology have created new potential threats to nuclear forces and their command, control, communications and intelligence (C3I) systems. Many of the most significant developments—in offensive and defensive weapons, and in information-gathering and data analysis capabilities—concern nonnuclear technologies. Nuclear-armed states are often at forefront of these developments; indeed, there is frequently a strong element of competition between them (the development of hypersonic missiles is a case in point). 8 CONFERENCE READER 9 2020. CAPTURING TECHNOLOGY. RETHINKING ARMS CONTROL. BERLIN, NOVEMBER 2020 Now that war between nuclear-armed states no longer seems so unthinkable, increasing “entanglement” New risks and new technologies between the nuclear and nonnuclear domains is exacerbating the danger of inadvertent escalation once again. (Unlike during the Cold War, such escalation is unlikely to result in an immediate all-out Developments in nonnuclear technologies are also exacerbating dangers besides crisis instability. In nuclear exchange; more likely are escalation spirals, featuring increasingly aggressive conventional fact, inadvertent escalation could result from nonnuclear strikes even if the target—like the United operations, nuclear threats, and limited nuclear use.[iii]) This risk is growing even though the extent to States today—were confident in the survivability of its nuclear forces. which nonnuclear technologies actually threaten nuclear forces and C3I capabilities is uncertain. Few of these technologies were specifically developed for so-called damage limitation and it is unclear Attacks on nuclear C3I systems are one particularly acute risk.[vi] The term “nuclear C3I system” is whether nuclear-armed states—the United States, in particular—really plan to use them for that really something of a misnomer since many key C3I capabilities support both nuclear and nonnuclear purpose. Moreover, technological change is a double-edged sword since it can also enhance the ability operations. In a conventional conflict between two nuclear-armed states, this form of entanglement of nuclear-armed states to protect their nuclear forces. Yet, this skepticism is somewhat beside the could catalyze escalation. Specifically, in such a conflict, one belligerent might attack its adversary’s point. Perceptions—whether states believe their nuclear forces and C3I capabilities are under threat— C3I assets for the purpose of undermining the target’s ability to wage a conventional war. Such attacks, can drive escalation. China, Russia, and Pakistan all worry about nonnuclear threats to their nuclear however, could have the unintended consequence of degrading the target’s nuclear C3I capabilities, forces today or in the near future. The same is most likely true