Kosal on Catastrophic Risks of Emerging Tech

Posted June 16, 2017

Margaret Kosal, associate professor in The Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, gave an invited plenary panel talk on “Emerging Technologies and Existential / Catastrophic Risks” at the 5th Annual Conference on Governance of Emerging Technologies: Law, Policy, and Ethics” 17 - 19 May 2017 at Arizona State University. The panel on which Kosal spoke was organized by Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER) at the University of Cambridge, UK.

 Kosal’s talk explored the potential for new biotechnologically-enabled weapons to compete with nuclear weapons as far as effect on strategic stability. She explored whether the assumptions in traditional strategic stability models are still valid when applied to such scenarios, and how changing capabilities and adversaries shape approaches to arms control, verification, and monitoring. From the domain of the life sciences, traditional biological weapons do not fulfill such a scenario that challenges nuclear-based strategic stability, weapons. To do so would require something different than the kinds of biological weapons that dominated 20th century programs.

Organized and hosted by the Center for Law, Science & Innovation at ASU’s Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law, the Governance of Emerging Technologies (GET) program has hosted its annual conference every spring in Arizona since 2013. This distinctive event consists of presentations and discussions on the regulatory, governance, legal, policy, social, and ethical aspects of emerging technologies. The conference is premised on the belief that there is much to be learned and shared from and across the governance experience and proposals for various rapidly emerging new technologies. It is a truly interdisciplinary conference of scientists, lawyers, regulators, philosophers, ethicists, and more.