Dual-use technology

In politics, diplomacy and export control, dual-use items refer to equipment, machines, goods and technology (both hardware and software) that can be used for both civilian and military applications.

More generally speaking, dual-use can also refer to any matériel or technology which can satisfy more than one goal at any given time. Thus, expensive technologies originally benefitting only military purposes would in the future also be used to serve peacetime civilian commercial interests if they were not otherwise engaged, such as the Global Positioning System developed by the U.S. Department of Defense.

The so-called "dual-use dilemma", where technologies that were initially developed for peaceful applications later undergo weaponization, has long been known in chemistry and physics. It was first noted with the invention of the Haber process for mass production of ammonia, which revolutionized agriculture with modern fertilizers but also led to the creation of chemical weapons during the First World War. The advent of nuclear physics and associated technologies, while first utilized in medicine in the form of radiography and radiation therapy, became instrumental in the development of mass-destruction atom bombs during the Second World War and Cold War, subsequently causing concerns regarding nuclear escalation, proliferation and the threat of nuclear terrorism and dirty bombs. These have led to international conventions and treaties, including the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.