Innovation acceleration, digitization, and the crisis of nonproliferation systems

ABSTRACT Nonproliferation systems comprise agreements designed to work in concert to manage specific security risks. New technologies, however, are exacerbating these risks by perforating controls and evading regulations while revealing limitations in the utility of these tools for managing threats from emerging dual-use technologies. This article first looks at how regime augmentation and control-list modernization have worked as solutions to past challenges for nonproliferation systems. Second, it argues that new drivers of this risk are creating near-unmanageable conditions. These drivers include the increased rate of production of novel technologies; the digital format of newer technologies, as well as the digitization of existing weapons technologies, platforms, and systems; and the diffusion and latency these drivers facilitate. Finally, the article assesses the feasibility of control-list modernization as a solution to risks posed by rapidly emerging and evolving dual-use technologies today. It argues that nonproliferation efforts should endeavor to preserve the control systems currently in place while simultaneously pursuing complementary measures to mitigate the effects of the digital diffusion of dual-use technologies.