Responsible Dual Use

Abstract

This chapter addresses the moral dimension of dual-use research. To set the scene, I will begin by explaining what I take dual use to be. I understand a dual-use item to be something that has both a good or neutral (neither good nor bad) use or application and a bad use. Three different categories of dual-use items can be distinguished: research, technologies and artefacts.¹ These are clearly different sorts of things. Research is an activity, while technology is a form of knowledge—knowledge of the techniques for the production of artefacts—whereas artefacts are objects. But it is also clear