This is a proposal to fund research efforts on “creative arms control,” or non-treaty-based international governance mechanisms. Traditional arms control—formal treaty-based international agreements—has fallen out of favor among some states, to the extent that some prominent policymakers have asked whether we’ve reached “The End of Arms Control.”[1] Treaties are difficult to negotiate and may be poorly suited to some fast-moving issues like autonomous weapons, synthetic biology, and cyber operations; by the time traditional arms control is negotiated, the technology may have outpaced the regulations. Partly for this reason, states and private actors alike have increasingly turned to informal “norms” processes (e.g. on cyber), codes of conduct and technical agreements, or confidence-building measures (CBMs). How well does such “creative arms control” work? Is it a suitable instrument for regulating emerging technologies this century? How hard is it to turn a norms process into a verification-based treaty regime? Research on these questions is still thin, and greater funding could therefore be very valuable for future regulation on GCR/X-risk-related technologies.
For a while, it seemed like the 2021 extension of New START had invalidated Ambassador Brooks’s points in that 2020 article. I think Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine is going to make agreement on formal arms control very difficult again.
Creative Arms Control
Biorisk and Recovery from Catastrophe
This is a proposal to fund research efforts on “creative arms control,” or non-treaty-based international governance mechanisms. Traditional arms control—formal treaty-based international agreements—has fallen out of favor among some states, to the extent that some prominent policymakers have asked whether we’ve reached “The End of Arms Control.”[1] Treaties are difficult to negotiate and may be poorly suited to some fast-moving issues like autonomous weapons, synthetic biology, and cyber operations; by the time traditional arms control is negotiated, the technology may have outpaced the regulations. Partly for this reason, states and private actors alike have increasingly turned to informal “norms” processes (e.g. on cyber), codes of conduct and technical agreements, or confidence-building measures (CBMs). How well does such “creative arms control” work? Is it a suitable instrument for regulating emerging technologies this century? How hard is it to turn a norms process into a verification-based treaty regime? Research on these questions is still thin, and greater funding could therefore be very valuable for future regulation on GCR/X-risk-related technologies.
For a while, it seemed like the 2021 extension of New START had invalidated Ambassador Brooks’s points in that 2020 article. I think Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine is going to make agreement on formal arms control very difficult again.