The Security Governance Challenge of Emerging Technologies

Abstract

In recent decades, governments have been ineffectual at regulating dangerous emerging technologies like lethal autonomous weapons and synthetic biology. In today’s era of great power competition, changing course is difficult but imperative. Four areas of technological development illustrate the generic problem of responding to innovation: the complexity of the analysis required to determine the best governance responses, the difficulties of building a consensus for action, and the urgent need for institutional frameworks that facilitate anticipatory rather than reactive regulation. The international community needs new, standing international governance frameworks to address this growing challenge.