As a university with strong expertise in ethics and responsible innovation, VU Amsterdam is well positioned to facilitate dialogue on the complex questions surrounding dual-use research.
From a legal perspective, dual-use is understood through the framework of export control and the EU Dual-Use Regulation. While international cooperation and the exchange of knowledge and technology are essential for both the national innovation landscape and the international academic community, the same knowledge and technologies may also be misused. Examples include the development of weapons of mass destruction, unwanted military applications, or technologies that could contribute to human rights violations. Goods, technologies, and related knowledge that present such risks fall within the scope of the EU Dual-Use Regulation. However, in this dialogue session we take a broader perspective on dual-use. Rather than focusing solely on regulatory compliance, we aim to explore the wider ethical, legal, economic, and governance questions that arise when research and innovation can serve both civilian and military purposes.
This is why the Centre Defence and Resilient Society (CDWS) organises a dialogue session on Dual-Use to address how research and technology can serve both civilian and military purposes, raising concerns about responsibility, design, and potential misuse.
In debates at universities, including those at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the dual-use character of research and technology is frequently mentioned as a reason for caution regarding collaborations with defence organizations. The argument is that scientific knowledge developed for civilian applications can be repurposed for military objectives. Or that technology developed in collaboration with defence may fall into the wrong hands. This raises the concern that researchers may become implicated in warfare or surveillance.
CDWS facilitates the debate on dual-use, emphasizing that concerns should go beyond how technologies are used after their development. First of all, many technologies are inherently dual-use. For example, AI can assist in medical diagnosis but can also be integrated into autonomous weapons systems. Drones can support climate change monitoring while also enabling military surveillance or targeting. Secondly, dual-use possibilities are not accidental. Design choices, system architectures, and funding priorities can make the development of certain technologies easier and more likely than others.
Dual-use comes with important ethical questions. If technologies indeed embody particular values and interests, responsibility cannot be limited to end users. Developers, researchers, and funders must consider whether or how specific technologies should be created and whose interests they serve. In the CDWS workshop on dual-use, we aim to explore how the discussion on dual-use can shift from evaluating the consequences of use to examining values in knowledge production and design choices prior to implementation and use.
Next to ethical considerations, dual-use raise economic and legal concerns. Governments increasingly regulate the export of sensitive technologies to certain countries. They do this in order to protect national security, to maintain strategic advantages, and to prevent the proliferation of military capabilities. In this context, law provides the framework that makes these principles enforceable, for example through export controls. However, legal intervention often occurs late in the innovation process. In the dialogue session, we seek to understand how governance can steer this process toward socially desirable outcomes.
Recognizing the non-neutrality of technology, the CDWS dialogue session facilitates a dialogue on how ethics, law, and governance an co-shape knowledge production and technological development in the context of defence and resilient society, from the expertise of VU Amsterdam and other institutions.
We invite VU researchers from all different disciplines together to discuss Dual-Use in a multidisciplinary setting.