Controlling Tomorrow: Explaining Anticipatory Restrictions on Emerging Technologies

Abstract

Emerging technologies with potentially harmful outcomes are challenging to contain once developed. If so, why are international efforts to control these technologies predominantly reactive, rather than proactive? This paper argues that states face a circular dilemma: the only way to identify a technology’s implications is to develop it in the first place, but this action provokes rival states to reciprocally counterinvest. Because innovation disparities that could promote negotiated settlement are rarely observed until competition intensifies, harm inevitably results from attempts to hedge against it. I show (formally) that states will double-down on competition when they are evenly matched, even when totally agnostic about technological viability, and regardless of whether R&D is informative. In contrast, anticipatory control is politically feasible only when negative feedback about competitiveness is privately transmitted to all states before the object of competition is defined. The theory is validated with six historical cases and original data on all arms control agreements since 1850. As a political (as opposed to technical) explanation for why emerging technologies are difficult to control, the contributions of the paper extend beyond international security.

Keywords: emerging technologies, technological surprise, anticipatory arms control, military acquisition, disambiguation