Technological Contestation in International Law and Arms Control

Speaker: Justin Canfil

For status quo powers interested in stabilizing the security environment, informally adapting existing law is easier and quicker than formally bargaining over new law. But policymakers and pundits routinely bemoan the inability of “thin” international institutions like arms control — where the stakes for war and peace are highest — to keep pace with technological change. Opportunistic actors, it is believed, see technology as both the means and motive to evade their institutional commitments, especially in institutions that lack a standing bureaucracy or dispute settlement mechanism. In practice, however, many of our “thinnest” institutions have proven remarkably resilient to technological breakthroughs that disproportionately benefit certain states. Controversy over emerging technologies is certainly common, but why is it not ubiquitous?

To answer this question, legal professionals in the US and China are commissioned to write long-form advisory briefs about a legally questionable satellite technology. Decisionmakers routinely rely on legal experts to make determinations about what kinds of technologies are compliant with international obligations, though the training and role of these experts varies by country. Technological novelty, the linguistic specificity of a reference law, and fiduciary incentives are randomly varied along 2^3 factorial-controlled conditions. In the US sample, statistical and text analytic results strongly support the theory that specificity, though better at limiting deviations in the near-term, performs worse in environments where technology moves quickly and unpredictably. Since the US has traditionally advocated for more specificity in international law, the findings help explain US behavior toward recent Chinese technological advances. Pending results from a second wave, likely implications for China’s approach are discussed.

Justin is a political scientist (PhD Columbia) whose interests span international security, emerging technologies, and law. My research leverages game theory, computerized text analysis, archival research, and survey-experimental methods to provide empirical traction on questions about how states use legal and foreign policy instruments to get what they want in the technology space. I am broadly interested in security studies, strategic competition, and cyber conflict. At present, he hold concurrent postdoctoral appointments with the Tufts Fletcher Cybersecurity Program, the Harvard Belfer Center, and the Harvard-Columbia China and the World Program. My research on the law and politics of militarily impactful technologies has been supported by the Fulbright Program, the National Science Foundation, the US Department of State (Title VIII), the Department of Education (FLAS), and other major sources.

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