OUR NEW REPORT OUT NOW!

OUR NEW REPORT OUT NOW!

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Welcome to the accompanying website for our IFSH report  ‘Negative Multiplicity: Forecasting the Future Impact of Emerging Technologies on International Stability and Human Security’.

This report is the capstone of a one-year study with the objective of forecasting the impact of emerging technologies on international stability and human security. It answers three questions:

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1) What impacts are emerging technologies likely to have on arms race stability, crisis stability, and humanitarian principles up to 2040?

2) Which emerging technologies show similarities in terms of impact?

3) When will the impact of these technologies become most acute?

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WHAT WE DID

We asked 30 international experts to forecast the developmental trajectories of twelve emerging technologies in the United States, Russia, and China until 2040 and to score their possible future impact on arms race stability, crisis stability, and humanitarian principles.

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WHAT WE FOUND

The results reveal that, on average, their impact is expected to be negative, with some technologies negatively affecting all three dependent variables.

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We then used a machine learning algorithm to cluster the technologies according to their anticipated impact. This process identified technology clusters comprised of diverse high (i.e., negative) impact technologies that share key impact characteristics but do not necessarily share technical characteristics.

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We refer to these combined effects as ‘negative multiplicity’, reflecting the predominantly negative, concurrent, and in some cases similar, first- and second-order effects that emerging technologies are expected to have on international stability and human security.

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The expected alignment of the technology development trajectories of the United States, Russia, and China by 2040, in combination with the negative environment created by geopolitical competition, points to a nascent technological arms race that threatens to seriously impede international arms control efforts to regulate emerging technologies.

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ABOUT US

This study is part of the research and transfer project ‘Arms Control and Emerging Technologies’ at the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg (IFSH). Find out more here.

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Marina Favaro

Research Fellow

Dr Neil Renic

Senior Researcher

Dr Ulrich Kühn

Head of the Research Programme

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WANT TO LEARN MORE?

Our research report was published in September 2022. The analysis available in two formats:

      • The full research report contains detailed analysis and discussion, and is available online as a PDF
      • The supplementary material includes 3D graphs that we were unable to include in the report

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Read full report

Negative Multiplicity: Forecasting the Future Impacts of Emerging Technologies on International Stability and Human Security
Marina Favaro, Neil Renic, and Ulrich Kühn

Read supplementary material

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