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CIGI Papers No. 364 — November 2026

Beyond Dichotomy: Rethinking the Concept of Dual-Use Technologies Sabrina Chen, Tracey Forrest and Barry C Sanders

CIGI Papers No. 364 — November 2026

Beyond Dichotomy: Rethinking the Concept of Dual-Use Technologies Sabrina Chen, Tracey Forrest and Barry C Sanders

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Table of Contents vi

About the Authors

Acronyms and Abbreviations

Executive Summary

Introduction

Evolution of the Dual-Use Concept

Multi-faceted Nature of the Dual-Use Problem

The Dual-Use Spectrum

Summary

Outlook

Works Cited

About the Authors Sabrina Chen is a research assistant in transformative technologies at CIGI. Her research focuses on the governance, development and deployment of emerging dual-use technologies. She holds a master’s in management sciences from the University of Waterloo and a bachelor’s degree in sociology and data science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Tracey Forrest is the research director of transformative technologies at CIGI. She is a professional engineer and adjunct professor at the University of Waterloo, with domain experience across quantum, energy and technological innovation. She has held senior leadership roles with organizations and initiatives that support the impactful development and deployment of technology. Barry C Sanders is a professor at the University of Calgary. He is a senior fellow at CIGI and a leading figure in quantum science and technology, with research spanning quantum sensing, communication, computing and optics. He is scientific director of the University of Calgary’s Quantum City, where he co-leads efforts to build a quantum innovation ecosystem in Canada.

Acronyms and Abbreviations AG

Australia Group

artificial intelligence

BWC

Biological Weapons Convention

CoCom

Coordinating Committee on Multilateral Export Controls

DIANA

Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic

DUR

Dual-Use Regulation

DURC

Dual-Use Research of Concern

EAR

Export Administration Regulations

European Commission

EIC

European Innovation Council

ESG

environmental, social and governance

HBP

Human Brain Project

MCF

Military-Civil Fusion

MIT

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

NATO

North Atlantic Treaty Organization

NGOs

non-governmental organizations

NPT

Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons

NRC

National Research Council

NSABB

National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity

NSG

Nuclear Suppliers Group

OTA

Office of Technology Assessment

STS

science and technology studies

TRLs

technology readiness levels

WHO

World Health Organization

WMD

weapons of mass destruction

CIGI Papers No. 364 — November 2026 • Sabrina Chen, Tracey Forrest and Barry C Sanders

Executive Summary “Dual-use technology” has traditionally referred to technologies that can be used for both military and civilian purposes. Yet as emerging technologies increasingly move across scientific, commercial, security and policy domains, the term has become more expansive and contested. The authors’ research examines the evolving meaning of “dual use” beyond the military-civilian dichotomy and develops a conceptual framework for assessing different degrees and forms of dual-use potential. Through reviewing historical and contemporary official documents, regulations and academic literature, the authors trace how dual use has developed across time and how it has been interpreted by different actors and disciplines. They argue that dual use should not be understood as a binary category that simply separates technologies into civilian and military uses. Rather, dual use operates along multiple dimensions. Beyond the conventional military-civilian distinction, technologies may also be dual use in relation to benevolent and malevolent applications, or legitimate and illegitimate purposes. Moreover, they propose a “dual-use spectrum” as an adaptable tool for helping stakeholders assess where a technology sits in relation to dual-use concerns, what kinds of risks may emerge and when anticipatory governance should be enacted. Grounded in science and technology studies (STS), their approach treats dual use not as a fixed technical category, but as an evolving concept shaped by institutional and social forces. As dual use is becoming increasingly central to national defence and innovation strategies, this paper offers conceptual clarity on its multi-faceted meanings and provides a foundation for more responsible development and governance of emerging technologies.

Introduction Dual-use technology is a topic of paramount importance, especially recently, with dualuse technology featured in strategies (North Atlantic Treaty Organization [NATO] 2026a) and national budgets (Department of Finance Canada 2025). As the topic has increasingly

become politically and economically important,1 it has also become more pressing to clarify the concepts and assumptions underlying the term before it serves as a basis for policy and investment decisions. The purpose of this paper is to provide a brief yet comprehensive survey of these issues through a variety of perspectives. A meaningful discussion of dual use depends on how we conceptualize technology itself. “Technology” encompasses not merely the physical objects or tools but also the immaterial knowledge and systems through which humans pursue their purposes and transform the material world (Brooks 1980; Schatzberg 2018). Technology can be understood in terms of “hardware” — the artifacts themselves — and “software” — the knowledge required to design, produce and use those artifacts — and also “orgware,” the institutional settings that enable the creation of both knowledge and artifact.2 Therefore, technology has an inherently social dimension wherein the artifacts, knowledge and system are both shaped by and shape social relations (MacKenzie and Wajcman 1999). Taken together, these conceptualizations suggest that technology is a broad socio-material concept encompassing artifacts, know-how, practices and institutional arrangements that make possible the development and deployment of material objects for human ends. “Dual use” traditionally refers to a set of technologies that are used, or can be used, for both military and civilian purposes.3 Whereas the formulations of contemporary export controls still adhere to the rigid “civilian-military” framing of dual use, the boundary between what is civilian and what is military is increasingly ambiguous with the rapid diffusion and changing dynamics of technologies, as well as states’ growing uses of civilian and military capabilities across greyzone and hybrid activities (Morris et al. 2019). The binary label also fails to address the varied levels of technological maturity and risk that can exist within a single technology category, such as quantum technologies (Ten Holter and WolfBauwens 2026). The conventional categorization of

See https://research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/research-area/ industrial-research-and-innovation/dual-use-technologies_en.

See https://iiasa.ac.at/what-is-technology.

See Miller (2018); Michel et al. (2020); see also https://research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/research-area/ industrial-research-and-innovation/dual-use-technologies_en.

Beyond Dichotomy: Rethinking the Concept of Dual-Use Technologies

dual use might no longer be meaningful, as almost anything could become dual use (Vaynman and Volpe 2023). In areas such as life sciences, dual use involves ethical judgments of whether the research or technology could be misused for malevolent purposes (Miller 2018). The definition of dual use is being contested in scholarly literature as well as in existing regulations, and the understanding of dual use is fragmented across stakeholders (Rath, Ischi and Perkins 2014; Charatsis 2017). A holistic understanding of dual use is needed as contemporary dual-use challenges no longer fall neatly within a single discipline or regulatory domain. Emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), biotechnology and quantum technologies spread across civilian and military spheres, and their risks arise not just from technical capabilities but also from social, economic and institutional dynamics (Lupovici 2021; Miller and Selgelid 2007). As various actors, including academic and government researchers, regulators and industry, operate with incompatible assumptions about what dual use is, these definitions can lead to inconsistent decision making and gaps in oversight (Singer, Mueller and Kraus 2025). A holistic conceptualization of dual use will enable clearer communication across sectors and set the foundation for further work on assessment mechanisms and governance approaches that better respond to the complex nature of modern technological development.

Evolution of the Dual-Use Concept Tracing the historical evolution of the term “dual use” reveals that a variety of events, legislation and policy documents have continually shaped and reshaped the concept. From the empirical analysis of these sources and relevant literature, three major framings of dual use emerge: civilian-military, benevolent-malevolent and legitimate-illegitimate. Within the conventional civilian-military framing, the authors further identified three application contexts: military capability, commercial strategy and resilience. Figure 1, a layered timeline mapping key events and documents from the 1940s to 2026 that have shaped contemporary

understandings of dual use, offers a visualization of how these framings have evolved over time.

Civilian-Military Framing The conventional characterization of dual use focuses on a technology’s capacity to operate across civilian and military domains. The first application context, military capability, which includes weapons development, national security and competitiveness, is central to this characterization. The second is the commercialization of dual use, where the term is employed as a strategy to appeal to defence and civilian markets rather than as a technical category (Keselman and Murray 2025). Finally, the authors discuss how civilian-military framing has been extended to encompass the concept of resilience, including efforts to strengthen civil preparedness (NATO Allied Command Transformation 2026).

Military Capability Early discussions that foreshadowed the concept of dual use emerged from postwar concerns about technologies moving from military to civilian applications and from civilian to military applications. On the one hand, technologies that were developed or accelerated for military purposes during the Second World War began to be redirected toward civilian and peaceful applications. Nuclear technology, for example, was diverted from atomic bombs to nuclear energy and reactors (Harris 2016). In a report to the US president in 1945, the director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, Vannevar Bush, urged that the wartime mobilization of scientific research be carried into peacetime, for stronger economic and social growth (Bush 1945). On the other hand, the lasting geopolitical tensions after the war ignited concerns about the risk of civilian technologies strengthening military capabilities or weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs if transferred to adversarial states (Oltmann 2015; Pustovit and Williams 2010). Established in 1949, the Coordinating Committee on Multilateral Export Controls (CoCom) restricted exports of military items and strategically sensitive commercial goods from Western Bloc countries to the Soviet Union and its allies (US Office of Technology Assessment [OTA] 1979). Although the term “dual use” was not explicitly referenced, CoCom served as a precursor of the later Wassenaar Arrangement that specifically regulated exports

CIGI Papers No. 364 — November 2026 • Sabrina Chen, Tracey Forrest and Barry C Sanders

of dual-use items (Cupitt and Grillot 1997). As the same wartime technologies and materials could be used for unwanted military purposes, similar concerns shaped various non‑proliferation and export-control regimes, such as the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), the Australia Group (AG) and the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) (Rath, Ischi and Perkins 2014). These regimes tried to address the dual-use problem of preventing diversion toward non-peaceful military applications while allowing peaceful scientific and commercial uses. Although Johannes Rath, Monique Ischi and Dana Perkins (2014) identify “peaceful-nonpeaceful” as a distinct framing, in the postwar WMD context this distinction remains tied to the civilian-military framing. Non-peaceful use primarily refers to weaponsrelated activities (Michel et al. 2020), and thus largely overlaps with military purposes. The term “dual use” did not formally appear until 1993 in a report by the OTA titled Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction: Assessing the Risks, where dual use was referenced as “technologies that can contribute both to military and civil objectives” (OTA 1993, 16). From the mid-1990s onward, dual-use items became increasingly regulated through multilateral and national export control regimes, including the Wassenaar Arrangement, the US Export Administration Regulations (EAR) and the EU Dual-Use Regulation (DUR) (Wassenaar Arrangement Secretariat 2025; Rath, Ischi and Perkins 2014). The scope of military applications expanded beyond weapons and wartime uses. In the contemporary context, as reflected in the expanded control lists of the updated US EAR and EU DUR, dual-use control encompasses a wide range of technologies that could enhance strategic competitiveness or contribute to defence and military capability (Michel et al. 2020). This broadened civilian-military framing is also illustrated by China’s Military-Civil Fusion (MCF) strategy. As a state-led effort to integrate civiliansector technological innovation with military modernization, MCF demonstrates how civilian innovation systems can become institutionally linked to defence objectives and strategic competition (US Department of Defense 2024).

Commercial Strategy On the commercial side of the dual-use story, private actors are increasingly prominent in the growing dual-use ecosystem. With increasing commercialization of military applications (Svetlicinii and Su 2025), the main actors shaping the civilian-military narrative of dual use are no longer only states or multilateral bodies. Dual use as a strategic attribute opens opportunities for private actors to exploit strategic ambiguity for profit. This ambiguity is present in narratives promoted by private actors, such as “winning the war,” that may conflate with winning contracts, business or an advantage (Schwarz 2026). A commercial solution that bridges civilian and military applications “complicates legal definitions, blurs intent, and embeds civilian systems within military architectures,” but also increases the likelihood that disruption in one domain spills into another (West 2026, para. 13). In 2024, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) released its Dual-Use Readiness Model, including its MIT Dual-Use Readiness Levels, to “guide early-stage startups in dual-use strategy, fostering communication between commercial and mission-driven sectors” (Keselman and Murray 2024). By assessing readiness across multiple dimensions, maturity can be determined for technology, commercial and mission-driven progress. Beyond conventional commercial or dilutive funding (for example, venture capital and angel investments) and mission non-dilutive funding (for example, government contracts and grants), multilateral bodies such as NATO and the European Union have begun to play a role in investing in private commercial actors. In 2021, NATO established the Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA), a program connecting industry, universities and governments to support innovations for emerging dual-use technologies through non-dilutive funding and testing facilities (NATO 2026b). In March 2025, the European Innovation Council (EIC) announced that it would permit investments in dual-use technologies (excluding ammunition and weapons), despite having earlier restricted eligibility to technologies with civilian applications (Greenacre 2025a). Later, in July 2025, the European Union’s Horizon Europe, the world’s largest research and innovation fund, opened eligibility to dual-use technologies (Greenacre 2025b).

Beyond Dichotomy: Rethinking the Concept of Dual-Use Technologies

This commercial emphasis takes a unique state-led approach in China’s MCF strategy, where the state utilizes and incentivizes commercial innovation for military modernization. Key technologies including AI, quantum information, semiconductors and aerospace are now explicitly governed as dual-use assets. President Xi Jinping is seeking to achieve “compatibility and synchronous development of the two [dual-use] systems” (Xinhua 2014). For dual-use founders that navigate across missiondriven and commercial opportunities, dual use is no longer merely a category but a market strategy; this market strategy enables firms to position products for both civilian and defence markets, resulting in enhanced scalability, resilience and investment potential (Keselman and Murray 2025). Dual-use founders also stress dual use as the adaptability of innovations, where the product’s underlying systems and architecture allow for robust adaptation to changing contexts, from “civilian logistics to military supply chain” and from “peacetime efficiency” to “wartime survival scenarios” (Balnord, Polski Fundusz Rozwoju and Casimir Pulaski Foundation 2025). Commercial actors — including start-ups, venture capital firms and accelerators — are strategically using dual use to help shape the success of their businesses as they see the opportunities for both military and commercial markets (Keselman and Murray 2025).

Resilience Beyond market scalability, dual use has also been applied in resilience contexts, where it addresses civil preparedness, vulnerabilities and integration across civilian and defence systems. Within the defence context, resilience is a multilayered concept. Its principle is rooted in article 3 of the 1949 North Atlantic Treaty, which says, “In order more effectively to achieve the objectives of this Treaty, the Parties…will maintain and develop their individual and collective capacity to resist armed attack.”4 The concept later evolved with NATO Standard AJP-3.19, which defines resilience as a “combination of civil

North Atlantic Treaty, 4 April 1949, 34 UNTS 243 at art 3.

preparedness and military capacity.”5 Resilience was explicitly referenced in the context of the five percent NATO investment commitment agreed to at the 2025 Hague Summit, which includes investments that “protect critical infrastructure, defend networks, ensure civil preparedness and resilience, innovate, and strengthen the defence industrial base” (NATO 2026a). Contemporary usage of resilience can take many forms: human security, psychological defence, climate change, critical infrastructure, economy, supply chain and community.6 This broad scope is reflected in NATO’s seven baseline requirements for national resilience, agreed upon at the Warsaw Summit in 2016, with requirements that cut across continuity of government, essential services to the population and civil support to the military (NATO 2016; Blatny et al. 2025). Resilience serves not only to enrich the civilian conceptualization within the civilianmilitary dichotomy but also expands it further to incorporate a broader societal dimension, often referenced as “civil preparedness” (NATO 2018). By integrating the societal dimension, resilience further deepens civilian-military interlinkages across the dual-use spectrum. “Civil preparedness” and addressing vulnerabilities in civilian infrastructure have become urgent issues with the rise of hybrid warfare (including cyberattacks), Russia’s escalating sabotage of NATO civilian and logistics infrastructure in Europe, increasing adoption of commercial solutions for military objectives (Ferris 2026), and the increasing targeting of civilian infrastructure, even from members within the NATO alliance (Beaumont 2026). This multi-layered concept of resilience is further interwoven with dual-use technology at the systems level, where risk management is incorporated throughout the stages of technology development and deployment. The European Commission (EC) recognizes the role

In full, the standard defines “resilience” as “a society’s ability to resist and recover easily and quickly from [emergency situations (crisis, armed conflict or peacetime emergencies)], combining civilian, economic, commercial and military factors. Resilience is a broad concept focusing upon continuation of basic governmental functions. Resilience is the combination of civil preparedness and military capacity” (NATO 2018, para. 4.24).

See Panda et al. (2024); International Military Council on Climate and Security (2019); NATO Science & Technology Organisation (2025); Civil-Military Cooperation Centre of Excellence (2026); see also www.rand.org/topics/community-resilience.html.

CIGI Papers No. 364 — November 2026 • Sabrina Chen, Tracey Forrest and Barry C Sanders

dual-use technology can play in advancing strategic objectives related to resilience, emphasizing sustainability and the linkages between resource efficiency and strategic autonomy (Directorate-General for Research and Innovation et al. 2025) For nations with vulnerable communities and sovereignty concerns (for example, Indigenous communities in the Arctic), resilience is strongly associated with dual-use infrastructure (Zimmermann 2025).

Box 1: The Ambiguity of Dual Use for Life Sciences The WHO finds that dual use can be a restrictive term when policy implementation only focuses on a narrow range of concerns. Dual-use risks can arise not just from the research itself but also from practices and facilities enabling the research and other non-bio domains that are intersecting with biotechnologies. The WHO also recognizes that “different understandings of the term dual-use can lead to the creation of different governance mechanisms” (WHO 2022). Thus, how the term is framed is critical, as emphasis on aspects such as responsible conduct could better involve relevant communities while reducing concerns about potential limitations on scientific research.

Benevolent-Malevolent Framing A second way of framing dual use emerged from the life sciences community, driven by growing concerns about research intended for benevolent purposes being misapplied for harm (Miller and Selgelid 2007). The United States’ National Research Council (NRC) released the “Fink Report” in 2003 to propose oversight for dual-use biotechnology that “can be used…for human betterment and misused for bioterrorism” (NRC 2004, 1). A few years later, the United States’ National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity ([NSABB] 2007, iv) introduced the Dual-Use Research of Concern (DURC) framework, defining research as dual use if it can provide “knowledge, products, or technologies that could be directly misapplied by others to pose a threat to public health and safety, agricultural crops and other plants, animals, the environment, or materiel.” Europe’s Human Brain Project (HBP) in 2013 also addressed dualuse considerations in neuroscience, highlighting risks that were not strictly military but still ethically questionable, such as using brain imaging and stimulation to evaluate political attitudes (Mahfoud et al. 2028). The life sciences community continues to struggle with the ambiguity and limitation of dual use in practice, as reported by the World Health Organization (WHO) (see Box 1). The risk of malevolence is reflected in international arms-trade agreements. For example, the international Arms Trade Treaty was enacted in 2013 to promote responsibility and transparency in the global arms trade by prohibiting certain kinds of arms transfers and establishing specific criteria for making arms transfer decisions.7 The treaty was designed to stop deadly weapons from getting into the hands of those who would use them to commit human-rights violations, including genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. 7

Arms Trade Treaty, 2 April 2013, 3013 UNTS 269 (entered into force 24 December 2014).

Further reference to the “benevolent-malevolent” framing may be found in the use of the term “dual purpose.” Some sources in the space-security community have invoked the term to refer to those objects that are designed to fulfill a benign objective (such as debris removal or on-orbit servicing) but could potentially be repurposed to harm other space objects (Azcárate Ortega 2022). The concept of “dual purpose” draws from the law of targeting, where “purpose” is concerned with its intended future use.8 This benevolentmalevolent framing also migrated to the domain of AI. Researchers suggest that the DURC principles apply to AI research as well, since the advancement of AI can inadvertently harm “public safety, privacy, or national security” (Brenneis 2025, 308). OpenAI’s report The Malicious Use of AI highlighted the inherent dual-use nature of AI systems, which can be deployed for beneficial innovation or repurposed for automated cyberattacks, surveillance, targeted manipulation and other harms (Brundage et al. 2024). The benevolentmalevolent framing therefore extends the dual-use discussion beyond material items to encompass research practices and technical knowledge, such as AI algorithms. Rather than a narrowly defined civilian-military divide,

See https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treaties/api-1977/article-52/ commentary/1987.

Beyond Dichotomy: Rethinking the Concept of Dual-Use Technologies

this framing incorporates a broader ethical consideration focusing on the responsible development and deployment of technology. Instead of treating dual use as a matter of prohibition or ex post regulation, the emphasis on responsibility supports more proactive and anticipatory mechanisms, such as codes of conduct, trainings and technology assessments at earlier stages of research and development (Stilgoe, Owen and Macnaghten 2013; Brenneis 2025; Li et al. 2023). These mechanisms can help identify and mitigate risks of malevolent misuse that conflict with social and humanitarian values (Ulnicane, Mahfoud and Salles 2023; WHO 2022).

Legitimate-Illegitimate Framing After the coordinated al-Qaeda attacks against the United States on the morning of September 11, 2001, dual-use discourse began to address not only harmful intent but also the legality and political legitimacy of technological applications. Under the legitimate-illegitimate framing, technologies could be developed for legitimate purposes but could possibly be repurposed to enable unlawful activities, human-rights violations or terrorism (Rath, Ischi and Perkins 2014). In 2016, the EU Commission proposed to recast its DUR to incorporate considerations for human rights and cyber surveillance, marking a recognition that dual-use challenges include political misuse, not just traditional military threats (Riecke 2023). The legitimate-illegitimate framing could apply to “dual-use” objects in war. Whereas not formally recognized by international law, the meaning of “dual-use” objects derives from the Geneva Conventions of August 12, 1949, which separates “military objectives”9 “that are considered legitimate targets of military force, and…‘civilian objects’ (which are to be strictly protected)” (Hathaway, Khan and Revkin 2025, 2645). The classification of an object as dual use could have the effect of increasing the range of targetable objects that are critical to civilian life and yet

According to Article 52 of Protocol Additional I to the Geneva Conventions, “military objectives” are objects that “by their nature, location, purpose or use make an effective contribution to military action and whose total or partial destruction, capture or neutralization, in the circumstances ruling at the time, offers a definite military advantage.” See Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol I), 8 June 1977, 1125 UNTS 3 art 52 (entered into force 7 December 1978); online: <ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treaties/api1977/article-52>.

are lawfully targetable for military objectives. This has prompted calls for states such as the United States to clarify that objects that are merely “war-sustaining,” including industries that indirectly contribute to military activities, are excluded from lawful targeting (ibid.). Although this framing conceptually can overlap with the benevolent-malevolent framing, it introduces an important distinction whereby legitimacy is determined by legal and political norms, not by ethical judgments. Scholars of responsible innovation emphasize that responsible innovation needs to go beyond legality (Ulnicane, Mahfoud and Salles 2023). Indeed, some applications might be viewed as illegitimate without necessarily being malevolent, such as digital civil disobedience in the form of hacktivism and online protest (Loh 2023). These grey-area applications could be unlawful or politically contested even if not driven by malicious intent. Conversely, certain malevolent outcomes may occur within legally legitimate systems, such as biased AI in hiring or predictive policing (Raub 2018; Berk 2021).

Multi-faceted Nature of the Dual-Use Problem “Dual use” is often employed today as a convenient term in policy and legal discourse inter alia. Yet, as this analysis on its evolution has shown, the dual-use concept is not adequately captured by a simple dual-use framework. Across different periods and contexts, dual use has carried multiple and shifting meanings, suggesting that it is a contested category rather than a fixed dichotomy. This lack of consensus points to the need for an interdisciplinary approach informed by STS for understanding the complexity of dual use. Moreover, the term “use” carries layered meanings that raise challenges in governance approaches. Although “dual use” remains a practical term embedded in government and policy language, it is also a concept that carries significant theoretical complexity.

CIGI Papers No. 364 — November 2026 • Sabrina Chen, Tracey Forrest and Barry C Sanders

Source: Authors. Note: This figure maps key historical documents and milestones contributing to the understanding of dual-use technologies, showing how the conceptual framings of dual use have evolved across military, ethical and regulatory contexts from 1945 to the present.

Beyond Dichotomy: Rethinking the Concept of Dual-Use Technologies

The Interdisciplinary Foundation of Dual Use To unpack this complexity, this paper draws on STS, an interdisciplinary field that examines how science, technology and society co-shape one another through social, political, cultural and institutional processes (Rohracher 2015). STS provides a critical foundation for understanding why dual use cannot be addressed within a single disciplinary or regulatory framework. Rather than treating technology as neutral or purely technical, STS highlights how social values, political priorities, institutions and imagined futures influence what technologies are developed, how they are used, and who benefits from or is harmed by them. Several core STS arguments are particularly useful for analyzing dual-use challenges. Actornetwork theory shows that agency is distributed across networks of human and non-human actors rather than concentrated in a single point of control (Latour 2007). Innovation studies similarly emphasize that technological development is shaped by interactions among firms, users, researchers, regulators and markets. Thus, innovation studies suggest that responsibility for dual-use risks extends beyond the original developer to include the actors who shape a technology’s funding, diffusion and adaptation (Edquist 2009; Lundvall 2007). This perspective aligns with the framework of responsible research and innovation, which calls on researchers, funders and institutions to anticipate and reflect on the societal implications of emerging technologies throughout the innovation process, rather than addressing risks only after they materialize (Owen, Macnaghten and Stilgoe 2012; Stilgoe, Owen and Macnaghten 2013). As a result of these interactions, no single actor can fully anticipate or manage dualuse risks, which complicates regulatory governance. At the same time, these stakeholders do not operate in a vacuum — their actions are guided by “sociotechnical imaginaries” (Jasanoff and Kim 2009) and expectations about what dual-use technologies could become. These imaginaries are shaped by the “active exercises of state power” where states can filter and stabilize certain visions through policy, resource allocation and official narratives (ibid.). The process of “co-production,” whereby technical knowledge and social orders are produced together, is guided by these visions of the desirable future that society should build through science and technology (Jasanoff and Kim 2015). In the case of

dual-use technologies, the aspirations and fears that governments, industries and communities attach to dual-use innovations influence their development pathways, shaping what counts as beneficial, harmful, strategic or risky. Similarly, the “sociology of expectations” shows that futureoriented narratives guide present-day investment, research agendas and institutional decisions (Borup et al. 2006). Expectations about dual-use technological promise or threat help produce the very socio-technical order they anticipate by directing capital toward military AI, drones and autonomous systems, while also reshaping procurement priorities and public understandings of security. These future-oriented narratives affect not only which innovations receive funding and regulatory attention, but also which technologies come to be framed as dual use in the first place. A contemporary example of the interdisciplinary nature of dual use is the boom in defence-tech investment. Private capital narratives increasingly frame war, geopolitical instability and technological superiority as conditions for innovation and market growth. The rise of firms such as Palantir illustrates how private actors can become embedded in material and institutional arrangements, as technology companies increasingly participate in defining and supplying capabilities central to national security (Bienvenue et al. 2025). At the same time, corporate actors and investors are recalibrating how they define and evaluate dual use in relation to environmental, social and governance (ESG) compliance and their risk appetite for potential applications to weapons systems (Rundell 2025). Technologies that might previously have been avoided because of their association with defence or weapons are increasingly being reassessed through distinctions between national security, resilience, deterrence and offensive military use.

Purpose Versus Use One of the key questions in defining dual use is how to distinguish the purpose of a technology from its actual use. This paper treats dual use as a condition in which a technology can be used toward civilian or military, benevolent or malevolent, and legitimate or illegitimate purposes. The word “can” captures two layers of the meaning of “use”: use is not only a technology’s present application but also its emerging potential to be repurposed toward other ends. This potential is especially important for emerging dual-use technologies, which might possess capabilities

CIGI Papers No. 364 — November 2026 • Sabrina Chen, Tracey Forrest and Barry C Sanders

or features that make military, malevolent or illegitimate applications plausible, even when such applications are not embedded in their original design purpose. Benevolent technologies such as blockchain, designed to remove intermediaries, and cryptography, designed to secure online transactions, could, if combined together, enable ransomware attacks, thereby having been repurposed maliciously.10 These technologies therefore require careful and anticipatory governance that identify possible applications and risks — before they fully materialize — through mechanisms such as foresight, scenario planning and horizon scanning (Guston 2014). Almudena Azcárate Ortega recognizes a similar conceptual complication but proposes a clearer distinction in terminologies. In the context of outer space security, drawing on international humanitarian laws, she argues that “dual-use” space systems should refer to those that presently function for civilian and “non-aggressive military purposes” (that is, are compliant with the “peaceful purposes” principle in outer space).11 The set of space systems that are designed for benign purposes but capable of being repurposed for harmful ends should be classified as “dual-purpose,” since the concern lies in their future, rather than present, applications (Azcárate Ortega 2023). Drawing on this idea of designed purpose, the opposite could hold: technologies designed for military, malevolent or illegitimate purposes could also be redirected toward civilian, benevolent or legitimate ends. The layered meaning of “purpose” and “use” is further deconstructed by insights from STS. Langdon Winner (1980) suggests that technologies are not neutral tools whose social and political effects are solely determined by human users. Designs of technological artifacts can embody political arrangements, social orders or power relations that make certain applications more harmful. The social construction of technology further argues that, instead of having a fixed meaning, technologies could be interpreted differently by various social groups, and the users could reinterpret or resist the “scripts,” the intended purposes and usages, imagined by the designers of the technology (Akrich 1992).

Building on this process of interpretation and resistance, dual use cannot be assessed only by examining either original design intention or subsequent use. Dual use typically involves both the intentions of original developers and the practices of subsequent users, including uses that diverge from the technology’s original purpose (Miller 2018). Technology should therefore not be understood as an autonomous domain outside society (MacKenzie and Wajcman 1999). Its uses and purposes are shaped by social relations among the actors who design and employ the technology.

The Meaning of Dual Use Held by Various Actors As the STS framework points out, technological development and governance are negotiated processes among actors within the dual-use landscape today. Several key actors shape the ecosystem: government, academia, entrepreneurs, corporates, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and investors. Table 1 provides illustrative examples of the objectives pursued by various actors and the frames they might deploy to interpret dual use. The table is not intended as an exhaustive account of all actors’ perspectives. Instead, it offers a starting point to examine the complex and context-dependent ways in which different actors understand dual use differently and might act on divergent objectives when navigating the spectrum of risks and opportunities. The diversity of perspectives was highlighted at a RAND-hosted workshop on dual-use space systems, where participants offered definitions of dual use based on “users of the technology versus owners, capabilities versus applications versus intent, aggressive versus nonaggressive uses, and other constructs” (McClintock and Glickstein 2026, 4). These competing interpretations highlight the need for anticipatory governance to shape dual-use innovations before its social, political and institutional trajectories become settled (Guston 2014).

10 Jean-Marc Rickli, private communication, June 2026. 11 Almudena Azcárate Ortega, private communication, June 2026.

Beyond Dichotomy: Rethinking the Concept of Dual-Use Technologies

Table 1: Key Actors Shaping the Dual-Use Ecosystem Actor

Primary Objective(s)

Dual-Use Framing(s)

Government

National security; sovereignty; economic competitiveness; public safety

Civilian-military and its expanded form, civilianmilitary (resilience), and legitimate-illegitimate framings to broaden authority and justify regulation

Academia

Advancing knowledge; ethical research

Benevolent-malevolent framing helps academia assess ethical risk and research misuse

Entrepreneurs

Product development; fundraising; market fit

The commercial application of civilian-military where dual use is a market strategy to attract investment and assess revenue streams for products with multiple potential revenue streams

Corporates

Profitability; market access; risk mitigation

Civil-military (commercial) helps to shape defence partnerships; benevolent-malevolent framing supports ESG compliance and internal ethics and safety

NGOs

Human rights

Benevolent-malevolent framing centred on humanitarian needs and risks of harm; legitimateillegitimate framing of dual-use objects in war

Public and crown corporations

Innovation capacity; technology sovereignty

Civilian-military framing guides public investment in technologies critical for national security; commercial framing mobilizes investment in early-stage companies to strengthen the innovation ecosystem; benevolentmalevolent framing helps assess public risks, especially those posed by emerging technologies

Private

Return on investment; risk mitigation

Civilian-military (commercial) identifies technologies that can scale across sectors; benevolent-malevolent flags reputational and regulatory risks

Multilateral

Collective security and resilience among allies

Civilian-military framing helps coordinate defence across allies and civilian-military (resilience) aids in collective security

Investors

Source: Authors.

The Dual-Use Spectrum With the various interpretations and uses of the term, it is elucidating to view “dual use” and related concepts across a spectrum. To situate the various conceptions of dual use, the conventional civilian-military framing provides an instructive example, whereby civilian and military technology serve as opposing poles in the spectrum (see Figure 2). By the word “spectrum,” this paper refers to a range of possibilities between the binary bookends implied by dual use, and notes that the spectrum of dual-use technologies has been employed but in a different context (Vaseashta and Rocha 2026). The authors also reference the other framings and existing terminology

to the extent possible for ease of integration into existing decision-making processes. At one end of the spectrum are civilian technologies, which are commonly available in civilian settings and primarily developed for commercial, academic or public-oriented purposes. They have limited military significance and pose relatively low risks of malevolent or illegitimate applications. These technologies are often not included in export control lists because they are not considered sufficiently sensitive or strategically valuable. At the other end are military technologies, whose primary purpose is for military and defence capabilities such as offensive operations, intelligence or surveillance.

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As we move from “civilian” technology to “dual-use infrastructure,” potential military or strategic functions become more apparent, either as sources of resilience or vulnerability. Dualuse infrastructure refers to assets, systems and networks that serve civilian and societal needs while also supporting strategic objectives. For example, transportation infrastructure can improve regional connectivity, strengthen supply chains and enhance emergency response capabilities, while also carrying strategic significance in operational readiness for military forces.12 An important part of this spectrum concerns technologies whose dual-use character is not yet fully actualized. “Emerging dual use” refers to emerging technologies that show early indications of dual-use potential, even though their specific applications remain uncertain. Emerging technologies can be understood as technologies located in fundamental research or early conceptual stages, characterized by radical novelty, uncertainty and ambiguity regarding their future trajectories (Rotolo, Hicks and Martin 2015). Their maturity can be assessed through metrics such as technology readiness levels (TRLs),13 where emerging dual-use technologies are likely to fall

12 See https://tc.canada.ca/en/programs/arctic-infrastructure-fund. 13 See https://ised-isde.canada.ca/site/innovation-canada/en/ technology-readiness-levels.

under TRL 1. At this stage, dual-use potential lies in the far future where these technologies may later be developed, adapted or repurposed for dual purposes. This early potential depends not only on technical maturity and applicability, but also on the broader social and institutional contexts in which the technology operates. As emerging technologies with dual-use potential progress, they may eventually drop their “emerging” qualifier and become “dual use,” which encompasses technologies that are used or can be used for civilian or military, benevolent or malevolent, and legitimate or illegitimate purposes. At this stage, dual-use “potential” also exists as a dual-use “capability,” meaning that the potential is more mature than in the emerging stage and is technically plausible, demonstrable or connected to identifiable applications. The boundaries between the categories on the dual-use spectrum are permeable rather than fixed. Military technologies often have an “expiry date” when they no longer provide an edge on the battlefield. As military technologies approach the end of their life, market forces will “pull” these technologies toward the commercial sphere where they may become dual use. A similar inverse diffusion may occur when a commercial technology, emerging or established, becomes “classified” and used solely for military purposes. Technologies can also cycle through the spectrum

Figure 2: Dual-Use Spectrum (Civilian-Military) Civilian to Military Civilian Technologies that are commonly available in civilian settings, developed in commercial, academic or industrial contexts, and have limited significance for military, malevolent or illegitimate objectives

Dual-Use Infrastructure Critical assets, systems and networks that serve civilian and societal objectives, while also having strategic significance and being vulnerable to military targeting

Emerging Dual Use

Dual Use

Military

Emerging technologies in early research or conceptual stages that show initial potential to be developed or repurposed as dualuse technology

Technologies that are used, or can be used, for dual purposes across civilian and military, benevolent and malevolent, or legitimate and illegitimate contexts

Technologies that are designed or primarily used for military purposes, and whose civilian use is limited or restricted on technical, regulatory or normative grounds

Military to Civilian Source: Authors.

Beyond Dichotomy: Rethinking the Concept of Dual-Use Technologies

over time. For example, the internet originated in a military research context, moved into civilian applications such as global commerce and communications, and later became central to dual-use activities including intelligence, surveillance, cyber operations and geoeconomic tactics associated with the weaponization of interdependence. The process by which technology diffuses across this spectrum is governed by geopolitics, market opportunities, social acceptance and technology dynamics, where technology is defined as an ecosystem of all related technologies that interact with one another and evolve over time to fulfill human ends (Bonomi 2020). The spectrum can be used as a heuristic by policy makers, investors and funders to assess how dual-use concerns emerge across different contexts before they become fixed within a single regulatory or investment category. In practice, the different framings — civilian-military, benevolentmalevolent and legitimate-illegitimate — can overlap. For instance, facial recognition systems enable military targeting but also raise benevolentmalevolent concerns, where they increase risks of civilian misidentification, and implicate legitimate-illegitimate questions, if the deployment undermines international humanitarian law requirements (Rosenzweig and Pacholska 2025). By positioning technologies along a spectrum rather than treating dual use as a binary category, this paper aims to clarify understanding, improve risk assessment and enhance decision making. In the case of dual-use objects in armed conflicts, for example, this holistic reference can offer guidance on how to more precisely reference dual use to avoid the inadvertent exposing of humans as a legitimate target. In finance use cases, investors can reference emerging dual-use technology and/or confine their investments to a narrow definition of dual use to risk-manage against exposure to malevolent or illegitimate applications. For policy and governance, how dual use is defined and interpreted directly influences which stakeholders are engaged, how legitimate the process is perceived to be and what impacts it can ultimately achieve. This spectrum may also serve as a foundation to further explore the dual-use paradigm and alternative proposals, including in areas such as research security (Walker-Munro 2025).

Summary Dual-use technology should not be treated as a fixed category that can be easily attached to an artifact. Rather, it is a multi-faceted concept that requires careful contextual analysis, as the “dual” in dual use can operate across multiple framings beyond the traditional civilian-military divide. As demonstrated through historical and contemporary discussions, dual use has been framed differently across contexts, actors and time periods. Expanding beyond the conventional civilianmilitary framing, dual use can be understood as a commercial strategy that enables entrepreneurs and investors to navigate between civilian and defence markets. It can also refer to resilience, where certain infrastructures and technologies are understood as critical to both national defence and civil preparedness. Beyond the civilian-military framework, dual use also captures the benevolent-malevolent tension, in which technologies developed for beneficial purposes may be adopted, adapted or redirected toward harmful uses that affect society or the environment. Another important framing is the legitimate-illegitimate distinction, which highlights how technologies may be used to pursue legally or politically illegitimate ends, including violations of rights or political norms. Taken together, these different framings show that dual use spans national security, commercial strategy, politics, ethics and social responsibility. The term “dual use” therefore remains ambiguous unless its specific meanings and contexts are clearly identified. For this reason, an interdisciplinary approach is necessary for analyzing dual use. Using an STS lens, dual use can be understood not as a given or self-evident concept, but as a dynamic term shaped by social forces, institutional contexts, actor interests and power relations that influence the development, interpretation and adoption of technology within a broader dual-use ecosystem. Building on the argument that dual use is not a binary category, the authors propose a “dual-use spectrum” as an analytical tool for assessing technologies according to their technical characteristics, potential applications, actor interpretations and associated risks. This spectrum allows stakeholders to better understand how dual-use concerns evolve

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across different stages of technological development and how anticipatory governance can be enacted before risks are embedded.

Outlook Looking forward, the dual-use spectrum could become a practical assessment tool for policy makers and regulators evaluating emerging dual-use technologies early in their development. Future research should identify its intended users and purposes, while determining whether the criteria need to vary across policy contexts and dual-use framings. Further analysis is also needed to examine the relationships among the three framings. In practice, these framings may be complementary, competing or mutually reinforcing across actors and institutional contexts. Examining these interactions would help illuminate how different understandings of dual use influence its governance choices.

Acknowledgements We acknowledge valuable comments and suggestions provided by Almudena Azcárate Ortega (Secure World Foundation), Jin Hong (Hefei University of Technology), Jean-Marc Rickli (Geneva Centre for Security Policy) and Zeki Seskir (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology), and we acknowledge the first and third of these four for providing us with text to insert verbatim in our paper. Research was undertaken, in part, while Barry C Sanders was a Balsillie Scholar.

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AI Disclosure AI Tool: ChatGPT (GPT-4o and GPT-5), used from November 2025 to August 2026; Information Collection: Assisted in identifying literature sources, which were manually verified for accuracy and credibility; Writing — Review & Editing: Assisted in refining the wording of selected sentences for clarity.

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Beyond Dichotomy: Rethinking the Concept of Dual-Use Technologies

Human Analysis Standard For AI Use in Policy Research

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