No emerging tech.

Yet the history of technological revolutions counsels against alarmism. Extrapolating from current technological trends is problematic, both because technologies often do not live up to their promise, and because technologies often have countervailing or conditional effects that can temper their negative consequences. Thus, the fear that emerging technologies will necessarily cause sudden and spectacular changes to international politics should be treated with caution. There are at least two reasons to be circumspect.

First, very few technologies fundamentally reshape the dynamics of international conflict. Historically, most technological innovations have amounted to incremental advancements, and some have disappeared into irrelevance despite widespread hype about their promise. For example, the introduction of chemical weapons was widely expected to immediately change the nature of warfare and deterrence after the British army first used poison gas on the battlefield during World War I. Yet chemical weapons quickly turned out to be less practical, easier to counter, and less effective than conventional high-explosives in inflicting damage and disrupting enemy operations.6 Other technologies have become important only after advancements in other areas allowed them to reach their full potential: until armies developed tactics for effectively employing firearms, for instance, these weapons had little effect on the balance of power. And even when technologies do have significant strategic consequences, they often take decades to emerge, as the invention of airplanes and tanks illustrates. In short, it is easy to exaggerate the strategic effects of nascent technologies.7

Second, even if today’s emerging technologies are poised to drive important changes in the international system, they are likely to have variegated and even contradictory effects. Technologies may be destabilising under some conditions, but stabilising in others. Furthermore, other factors are likely to mediate the effects of new technologies on the international system, including geography, the distribution of material power, military strategy, domestic and organisational politics, and social and cultural variables, to name only a few.8 Consequently, the strategic effects of new technologies often defy simple classification. Indeed, more than 70 years after nuclear weapons emerged as a new technology, their consequences for stability continue to be debated.9