This series produced in collaboration with Corporate Watch profiles ten companies and their products aiming to demonstrate how technologies developed for the battlefield are now shaping civilian life. We are living through a moment of profound transformation as military imperatives and corporate interests are no longer separate threads in the fabric of technological innovation. Instead they are inseparably interwoven. “Innovation” is increasingly framed not as a response to a concrete human need, but in terms of strategic advantage, deterrence, and national security. States and corporations alike are turning to technology which blurs the line between civilian life and military power to advance foreign policy agendas and to assert geopolitical dominance. And this is what dual-use technology is all about – items that can be used for civilian and military applications alike. Tools and technologies developed for everyday convenience commerce and that can just as easily serve surveillance, repression or warfare. Or military technologies that can also be used in civilian applications. Technologies such as drones, satellites, cloud computing, and various artificial intelligence solutions, are sold to public as solutions that serve productivity, connection and mobility but these very same technologies are being developed, purchased, refined and deployed by military forces…
Investigating dual-use technology and the darker side of innovation
