Ulrich Kühn
With the dawn of the nuclear age, the domestic and international governance of technology gained special attention.Footnote1 Both in terms of cooperation and competition, regulating the horizontal spread of nuclear technology resulted in very different strategies, from friendly assistance for peaceful as well as military programmes,Footnote2 to policies of inhibition,Footnote3 and the establishment of a global non-proliferation regime.Footnote4 In parallel, restricting non-nuclear technology transfers, from missile technologies to increasingly powerful computing machines, became a centrepiece of Western strategy throughout the Cold War.Footnote5 Together, the governance of strategic technologies was driven by the interacting effects of systemic bloc confrontation, an economically increasingly connected globe, and technological innovation.
Today, many of the same or similar patterns are observable. Great power rivalry in the triangle between the United States, Russia, and China fuels strategies of investment, proliferation, and restriction to compete technologically. The U.S.-China dyad in particular has elevated technological competition, be it on novel missile technologies, computer chips, or semiconductors. Globalization, though increasingly overshadowed by great power rivalry, has given rise to powerful private tech giants, operating on a global scale. Technological innovation, spurred by rapid advances in computing power, has resulted in a new generation of dual-use technologies, such as large language models like ChatGPT, employed in generative artificial intelligence (AI). Some of these technologies threaten to disrupt traditional economies and international stability alike. Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine highlights some of these effects, with novel drone and counter-drone warfare, partly enabled by corporate satellite networks, peaking on a highly digitized battlefield.
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