Part 3: Conceptualising dual-use technologies and companies

Elena Simon - Independent Researcher, formerly of the Department of Politics & IR, University of Sheffield

Dual-use technologies are much broader and capture not only the applications, but also materials and technologies capable of producing them. The analysis of the circulation of the drone brings into sight the semi-conductors, the electronics and the communications infrastructure required for the drone to operate. The shipping companies that deliver the drones into warzones, the banks that finance investments, and the analytics centres that process the data: all these enable the drone and its violence to circulate. They are part of the drone system.

More recently, the ‘dilemma of dual-use’ has led to the responsibility of life and material scientists to identify dual-use capacities in their research which was not traditionally associated with arms production. While this is meant to regulate knowledge circulation and signpost potential nefarious use early on, it also continues to frame the problem of producing arms as one of proliferation. However, framing the problem of arms, including dual-use technologies in terms of proliferation only, doesn't challenge the production of arms in principle, but merely raises that they may go to the wrong kind of customer. This reproduces the interests of the current strategic alliances in a depoliticised way without considering that these alliances may be subject to change. In this way, the ones tasked with dual-use identification are bound into the strategic narrative of the state. From a business perspective, the early identification of dual-use capacities also continues the trend of identifying military potential of products that were not designed for it. This creates further investment opportunities for traditional arms companies and integrates dual-use production into the sciences. Together with the marketisation of research and universities, increased competition for third-party funding and pressures to identify marketable applications for research, the assumed democratic oversight over publicly funded research agendas is undermined.

A Marxist understanding of technology as including the management and labour systems in which production takes place highlights that dual-use is not an accident but the result of a series of policy choices. Dual-use as an industrial strategy has been promoted since the 1980s, initially as a measure to tackle cuts to defence spending and aimed at stimulating growth in consumer markets. The integration of military and civilian production lines has, so far, successfully co-opted and displaced the agenda of military to civilian conversion, which formulated the political goal to reduce production for violence drastically. This has also increased competition within that market, which has meant that not only are there ‘spillovers’ from military to civilian technologies, but increasingly ‘spill-ins’ from civilian to military technologies and more businesses are pushing into the military sector where wars and crises promise returns. ‘Dual-use’ potentials are thus not something that just emerge, but are driven by at least two factors: private interest facing oversaturated markets pushing into the military sector; and public funding that promises to buy these capacities to keep industries going.

Where the requirements of violence have been designed into the machine, through for example its capacity to create a certain level of heat, or process certain materials that are anticipated to have to withstand ‘war stressors’, there is little duality left in it. This is the case for example for machinery designed to mix hazardous components at certain frequencies that would not be necessary for medical use, which is the case for RAM Resodyn Mixing and their collaboration with BAE Systems; or weaving forms that can sustain stresses associated with active combat, as the Braider at the Advanced Manufactruing Research Centre at the University of Sheffield. The material specification for the load of the drone, the preforms for the aerial body, its lenses, the polymers that withstand certain pressures and heat – all the components have to be designed according to combat requirements. 

Dual-use as a concept also problematically reproduces the distinction between economic interest and political power. Based on gendered notions of ‘civil’ and military, the ‘dual’ implies that the object is applicable in violent and non-violent spheres and thus casts the economy into an unproblematic, ‘innocent’ civilian sector, and a problematic military one. This reproduces a liberal and idealised vision of the ‘civilian economy’ and does not tackle the fact that the ‘civilian market’ depends upon supply chains backed up by private or state military power.

In this sense, most means of violence are much more banal and less eye-catching than drones and associated technologies, and because they lean into the framework of ‘civilian’ they are often overlooked. This means that to capture ‘dual-use’ production aptly, the focus must shift well beyond traditional arms manufacturers, and even shipping companies and universities. When focusing on the labour that goes into the production of the means of violence, we need to throw our net even further. This includes the agencies designing marketing materials, running industry fairs, drawing up and applying for intellectual property rights, and hiring workers outside of union contracts, as well as construction companies building sites safe for military displays and personnel.

When doing so, it becomes clear that it is not a sinister military-industrial complex pushing for more war production, but it is the dynamics of capitalist competition and class society that continuously propel the production for violence rather than societal need. The questions of democratic ownership over dual-use technologies specifically and the means of production more broadly, needs to be back on the agenda.