Emerging and Readily Available Technologies and National Security--A Framework for Addressing Ethical, Legal, and Societal Issues

摘要

The United States faces a complex array of challenges to its national security. Technology is an essential element of the U.S. strategy for meeting those challenges, and it continues to be U.S. policy to seek technological military superiority over U.S. adversaries. To enhance and expand technological superiority, the Department of Defense and other government agencies invest in science and technology on an ongoing basis. These investments cover a broad range of efforts, from fundamental research that might eventually support national security needs, broadly defined, to specific development and eventual production of weapons and other military materiel intended to address particular national security problems. The U.S. government also adapts technologies originating in the civilian sector, initially without national security purpose, to national security needs. Developments in science and technology (S&T) for military and national security use have often raised a variety of ethical, legal, and societal issues (ELSI). These ELSI-related challenges are accentuated in a context of emerging and readily available (ERA) technologies, that is, new technologies that are accessible at relatively low cost compared to more traditional militarily relevant technologies, such as nuclear weapons, and thus are within the reach of less technologically advanced nations, nonstate actors, and even individuals.