WG4 Peace & Emerging Technologies
Current developments in emerging technologies are moving at a rapid pace, spreading across geographies, stakeholders and actors, and increasingly driven by the private sector and academia. Most, if not all, of those developments have both civilian/peaceful uses but also the potential for military application or for misuse such as human rights violations. The abrupt technological advances in artificial intelligence, offensive cyber capabilities, quantum computing, 3D printing, and nanomaterials present both challenges and opportunities to global and regional efforts of building peace and stability. On the one hand, some of these emerging technologies threaten to undermine crisis stability by providing new means for preventive strikes and shaping the dynamics of conflict escalation through the entanglement of conventional and unconventional capabilities. On the other hand, they also provide states with new tools for monitoring and verifying arms control and disarmament agreements, safeguarding sensitive dual-use capabilities, early warning and detection of potential threats and post-war justice. This raises broader questions about consequences for peace and security, and about technology governance. The Action will unpack this double-edged nature of emerging technologies and their impact.
Co-leadership:
Prof. Dr. Malte Göttsche is a Professor for Peace Research in Natural Sciences at PRIF and TU Darmstadt, co-speaker of the Cluster for Natural and Technical Science Arms Control Research (CNTR), and Head of the Research Group Science for Nuclear Diplomacy. He researches nuclear non-proliferation, arms control and disarmament with a focus on the development of verification methods and technologies.
Zakir Rzazade is a Ph.D. researcher at the Institute of International Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University, and at Peace Research Center Prague. His research interests lie within security studies, emerging technologies, and military innovation, particularly focusing on public opinion and perceptions of military technologies. Zakir is a member of the MICROCODE project funded by ERC. He is also involved in a research project, INTERFER, exploring the issue of foreign interference in the context of geopolitical and technological changes.
Michal Smetana is an Associate Professor at Charles University, Director of the Peace Research Center Prague (PRCP), Head Researcher at the Experimental Lab for International Security Studies (ELISS), and a Principal Investigator of the European Research Council (ERC) project “Microfoundations of Collective Defence” (MICROCODE). His main research interests lie at the intersection of security studies, international relations, and political psychology, with a specific focus on nuclear weapons in world politics, arms control and disarmament, norm contestation, frozen conflicts, and public opinion.
