The idea that there is a set truth of the world that scientists must identify, codify, and disseminate in full is literally set in stone at the National Academies. It may come as a surprise, then that the Academies have also spent decades trying to figure out how to restrict or otherwise prevent certain knowledge…
Conferences
Words of Caution on Making Objects of Security Concern
As we continually develop new areas of technology, how do we think about how that technology might cause harm? In this talk, I draw out some lessons that can be learned from how Americans have built scientific cultures and governance mechanisms for constructing and governing security concerns in the life sciences. These cultures and mechanisms are…
Presentation to the BWC Meeting of Experts Side Event
Every year, the United Nations Biological Weapons Convention has a Meeting of Experts to share updates on developments relevant to the Convention. This year, several colleagues and I presented on work we have been doing as part of the ESRC/AHRC/DSTL funded grant on The Formulation and Non-formulation of Security Concerns: Preventing the Destructive Application of the…
Conference Season
Conference Season is now over, and I participated in quite a few this year. Â It began for me in June with three conferences/workshops in the UK. Â At Oxford, I attended the Oxford Intelligence Group‘s discussion of whether the UK needs an intelligence doctrine (notes available on their website). Â In London, UCL put on a workshop…
Ambiguity as a tool for both changing and stabilizing classification systems
Last weekend, I attended a conference at Stanford University on “Uncertainty: Ambiguity and doubt in knowledge production”. At it, I presented a paper on how the Wassenaar Arrangement uses ambiguity to both stabilize and change the classification system. For instance, it was by purposefully creating ambiguity in the areas of concern for Wassenaar that countries…
EGAD International Export Control Conference
Next week may prove to be a precipitous moment in the life of the Wassenaar Arrangement. Brinley Salzmann has organised a two-day conference in Paris called “Export and Security Controls in the Globalised Marketplace of the 21st Century”. The morning of the first day is given over completely to Wassenaar, with talks by Ambassador Sune…