Dual Use 171
self-replicating assembler scenario has accomplished is
to undermine public support of existing nanotechnol-
ogy research by scaring people away.
Although Smalley, who died in 2005, is seen by many
nanotechnology advocates in government and industry
to have won the debate, Drexler nevertheless has staunch
supporters. The Institute for Molecular Manufacturing
and the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology (both
organizations with which Drexler has been affiliated),
and futurist Ray Kurzweil have all come to Drexler’s de-
fense, insisting that no substantial technical critique has
been able to disprove Drexler’s theory because it rests
on well-established physical principles.
Drexler’s vision, as well as the importance Smalley at-
tached to rebutting that vision, is particularly significant
to the nanotechnology discussion. Regardless of wheth-
er Drexler’s manufacturing method as proposed will
come to pass, the debate not only raises questions about
the physical limits of the precise control of matter, but
it has also contributed significantly to instigating dis-
cussion on the ethics, bans, and regulations regarding
nanotechnology.
See Also: Active Nanotechnology; Center for Responsible
Nanotechnology; Drexler, K. Eric; Engines of Creation; Feyn-
man, Richard; Foresight Institute; “Grey Goo” Scenario; Mo-
lecular Nanotechnology; Smalley, Richard.
Further Readings
Baum, Rudy. “Nanotechnology: Drexler and Smalley Make
the Case For and Against ‘Molecular Assemblers.” Chemi-
cal and Engineering News, v.81/48 (December 1, 2003).
Drexler, Eric. “Machine-Phase Nanotechnology.” Scientific
American, v.285/3 (September 2001).
Smalley, Richard. “Of Chemistry, Love and Nanobots.” Scien-
tific American, v.285/3 (September 2001).
Janna Rosales
University of Toronto
Dual Use
In the usual sense, dual use refers to products, services,
and knowledge that can be used for civilian as well as
military purposes. Whereas complete weapons, bomb-
ers, anti-aircraft radars, and the like are completely mil-
itary, many of their components are identical or very
similar to civilian or commercial products. Many civil-
ian high technologies are militarily relevant and some
military technologies have found their way into civil-
ian markets. Countries or firms can save money if tech-
nologies developed in one sector can also be used in the
other; however, such transfer is hampered by different
conditions with respect to the market, secrecy rules, and
export controls. Dual use is an important consideration
when countries seek to control access to military high
technology to potential opponents or competitors.
Because of their devastating consequences, dual use
is particularly relevant for weapons of mass destruction
(nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons). Nuclear en-
ergy is a paradigmatic case: nuclear bombs are clearly
military—“peaceful nuclear explosions” are no longer
relevant due to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty of
1996—whereas large nuclear power plants are clearly
civilian. Uranium enrichment plants can serve both: en-
riching the fissile isotope uranium-235 to 3–5 percent is
required for reactor fuel, rising to 90 percent and above
creates weapon-grade material. Uranium-based reactors
produce plutonium, which can be separated chemically
in reprocessing plants. Plutonium can either be used for
bombs or it can be “burned” in reactors for energy pro-
duction. Thus, enrichment and reprocessing plants and
the special equipment used by them are principally of a
dual-use character. To make sure that declared civilian
plants and fissile material are not converted to weapons
production, the International Atomic Energy Agency
puts them under safeguards. Exports of material and
relevant technology are controlled by supplier states,
who coordinate their practices in international export-
control regimes.
Dual use is relevant in many areas of high technology.
Because even a small advantage can be decisive in battle,
the military urgently wants technological superiority
over potential opponents and thus accepts much higher
development costs than could normally be justified on
the civilian marketplace. Overlaps exist where civilian
applications pose extraordinary requirements—this is
the case, for example, in technologies concerning outer
space. Ballistic missiles share basic properties with space-
transport rockets, and satellites for monitoring or com-
munication are similar between both sectors. Inertial
guidance systems were developed for ballistic missiles,
but are now routinely built into civilian airliners. Radar
is used for air-traffic control as well as for air defense.
172 Dual Use
Structural materials such as carbon-fiber reinforced
plastics have spread from military to civilian aircraft.
The predecessor of the Internet was developed for secure
command and control of strategic nuclear forces. Spin-
off from military to civilian use has sometimes been used
as an argument for military research and development,
but due to the different requirements and military se-
crecy, direct investment in civilian research and develop-
ment (R&D) would have brought faster advances.
For a few decades, there are areas where civilian tech-
nology has overtaken military technology. This occurs
where fast advances in technology have been demanded
by competition, and high research and development
costs could be borne due to the resulting huge mar-
kets. The paradigmatic case is information technology
and microelectronics. From the 1940s to the 1970s, the
military was the biggest customer for computers, and
acquisitioned software development not only for large
programs, but also for programming languages, and
even operating systems. With the advent of the personal
computer and the vastly expanding market, the military
has lost its lead in information and communication
technologies. In many cases it now has to rely on com-
mercial off-the-shelf components and software.
To determine which goods count as dual use and
which exports will be restricted, countries have general
guidelines, as well as detailed lists. Both are discussed
and coordinated among some 40 member states in sev-
eral export-control regimes. These regimes are not le-
gally binding, and the final decision rests with the sup-
plier country. The Wassenaar Arrangement on Export
Controls for Conventional Arms and Dual-Use Goods
and Technologies (founded 1996 as a successor to the
Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Con-
trols [COCOM] regime directed against Russia and its
allies, today 41 members including Russia) contains
the most comprehensive dual-use list. It has nine main
categories: advanced materials, materials processing,
electronics, computers (telecommunications and infor-
mation security), sensors and lasers, navigation and avi-
onics, marine, aerospace, and propulsion. The 142 pages
defining the respective goods and technologies are fol-
lowed by a “sensitive list” of 14 pages and a “very sensi-
tive list” (three pages) containing specific subsets. For
example, the former contains machine tools with better
than 3.6 µm positioning accuracy, radiation-hardened
computers, image-intensifier tubes and focal-plane ar-
rays of infrared sensors. The very sensitive list mentions,
among others, electromagnetic-wave-absorbing materi-
als and sonar components.
With the advances in molecular (and synthetic) bi-
ology the dual-use dilemma is becoming much more
urgent, in particular for research. What can be used for
better therapy, for example, individualized medicine—
understanding infectiousness, targeting individual or-
gans, toxin release only on certain conditions in cells—
could also be used for selective chemical or biological
weapons. Knowledge gained in medical or pharmaceu-
tical research could be misused by terrorists or even
countries, violating the Biological Weapons Conven-
tion. Not carrying out the research or not publishing the
results could mean denying help to future patients. As a
solution to this dual-use dilemma, a raised awareness of
researchers has been recommended, together with the
suggestion of caution being used on the part of scien-
tific journals, along with oversight by the governments
of independent authorities. To address such problems,
for example, the National Science Advisory Board for
Biosecurity has been founded in the United States.
Nanotechnology and Dual Use
Because nanotechnology industry is extremely broad
and often generic, dual use will be relevant in many
areas. To name a few: electronics, structural materials,
energy storage and conversion, biochemical sensors.
Example of nanotechnology-enabled systems are ro-
bots, small satellites and launchers, and body implants.
The dual-use dilemma will be aggravated in those cases
where nanotechnological substances or systems can be
produced in small and cheap installations. Convergence
with biotechnology and information technology will
further increase the problems. Preventing destructive
uses while not overly hampering beneficial applications
may need more stringent regulation and monitoring
within countries as well as internationally.
See Also: Arms Control; Department of Defense (U.S.); Ex-
port Controls; Nanoweapons, Ethical Issues of.
Further Readings
Alic, John A., et al. Beyond Spinoff: Military and Commercial
Technologies in a Changing World. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard Business Press, 1992.
Gummett, Philip and Judith Reppy, eds. The Relations Be-
tween Defense and Civil Technologies. Dordrecht, the
Netherlands: Kluwer, 1988.

Miller, S. and M.J. Selgelid. “Ethical and Philosophical Con-
sideration of the Dual-Use Dilemma in the Biological
Sciences.” Science and Engineering Ethics, v.13/4 (2008).
The Missile Technology Control Regime. http://www.mtcr
.info (cited April 2009).
Wassenaar Arrangement on Export Controls for Conven-
tional Arms and Dual-Use Goods and Technologies.
http://www.wassenaar.org (cited April 2009).
Jürgen Altmann
Technische Universität Dortmund
DuPont
E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company (DuPont) is an
American chemical company, the second largest chemi-
cal company in the world by market capitalization, the
fourth in revenue, and somewhat more ignominiously,
the country’s leading air polluter. Founded as a gunpow-
der company, DuPont led the 20th-century revolution
in polymers and has recently entered into a partnership
with the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) to develop
adequate risk assessment for nanotechnology products.
French-born industrialist Éleuthère Irénée du Pont, a
refugee from the French Revolution, imported gunpow-
der machinery from France to Wilmington, Delaware,
to found his gunpowder mill in 1802. The company
expanded when du Pont realized that the United States
was lagging behind Europe in the Industrial Revolution,
and by the time of the Civil War, his company has be-
come the leading supplier of gunpowder to the Ameri-
can military, providing most of the powder used by the
Union Army. Dynamite and smokeless powder followed,
and when three of Éleuthère’s great-grandsons bought
the company from its managing partners in 1902, they
began expanding rapidly. Their acquisition of other
chemical companies triggered an antitrust investigation,
which ruled that they had gained a monopoly over the
explosives industry, requiring the divestment of some
of their assets in the form of the Hercules Powder Com-
pany and the Atlas Powder Company—now Hercules,
Inc., and AstraZeneca, respectively.
Materials science soon eclipsed explosives in impor-
tance, and from the late 1920s to the 1930s, DuPont’s
team, led by organic chemist Wallace Carothers, devel-
oped neoprene (the first synthetic rubber), a polyester
DuPont 173
superpolymer, nylon, Lucite (a hard plastic sold under
brand names including Plexiglas), and nonstick coat-
ing Teflon—substances still common and still house-
hold names today. World War II brought major mili-
tary contracts, not only for gunpowder and explosives,
but for parachutes, tires, and other equipment. DuPont
was instrumental in the Manhattan Project, and in later
decades provided materials to the Apollo space pro-
gram. Mylar, Dacron, Lycra, Corian, and Tyvek joined
the DuPont line of synthetic materials in the 1950s and
1960s, and when Kevlar was developed, DuPont quick-
ly became one of the most important manufacturers
of body armor, supplying military and police forces
around the world.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, DuPont benefited
from its 1981 acquisition of oil and natural gas com-
pany Conoco Inc., which gave it easy access to the pe-
troleum needed to manufacture many of its plastics and
polymers. (Something of the scale of DuPont’s chemical
operations is indicated by the fact that the action that
made it one of the country’s 10 biggest petroleum pro-
ducers was taken for the sake of such ancillary benefits.)
In 1999, the company sold its interest in Conoco, which
subsequently merged with the Phillips Petroleum Com-
pany. Getting out of the petroleum business was part of
then-CEO (and current chairman) Charles Holliday’s
commitment to sustainable development, with the hopes
of producing more materials derived from plants instead
of petroleum. In another shift of focus, the textiles busi-
ness was sold in 2004 to Koch Industries; DuPont textiles
included Dacron polyester, Orlon acrylic, Thermolite
Lycra, and Lycra.
DuPont in the 21st Century
The company now identifies as a science products and
services company, rather than a chemical company,
and organizes its product lines into five areas it calls
marketing platforms: agriculture and nutrition, coat-
ings and color technologies, electronic and communi-
cation technologies, performance materials, and safety
and protection. Headquartered in Wilmington, Dela-
ware, DuPont has over 300 locations in the Americas,
Europe, and Asia. Its annual research and development
budget is over $1 billion, and its active and aggressive
pursuit of new technologies has been a hallmark of the
corporation since the early 20th century.
That DuPont is the country’s largest air polluter
(annually producing pollutants that include 4 million