Arms Control and International Security Papers 

Volume 11 Number 21 

November 5, 2020 

Strategic Stability and the 

Global Race for Technology 

Leadership 

by Christopher A. Ford 

The Arms Control and International Security Papers are produced by the Office of the Under Secretary of State for Arms 

Control and International Security in order to make U.S. State Department policy analysis available in an electronicallyaccessible format compatible with "social distancing" during the COVID-19 crisis. 
Arms Control and International Security Papers Volume I, Number 21 I November 5, 2020 

Strategic Stability and the Global Race for Technology Leadership 

Strategic Stability and the Global Race for 

Technology Leadership 

by Christopher A. Ford1 

This edition of the ACIS Papers series looks at the challenges involved in 

preserving strategic stability in a modern environment of technology-fueled 

great power competition, arguing the importance of meeting these challenge

through a mix of traditional nuclear arms control, the enforcement of norms 

responsible behavior in new conflict domains such as cyberspace and outer 

space, and the development and implementation of effective, coordinated 

approaches to technology competition among the "likeminded" states of the

non-authoritarian world. 

s 

of 

The concept of "strategic stability" is one that many "loosely analogous to a military 'Nash 

policymakers feel that they understand, but which is, in Equilibrium' between the principal players in the 

fact, sometimes surprisingly difficult to define. It can, in international environment (i.e., the 'great 

fact, be interpreted in various ways, to the extent that _ a powers') as it pertains to the possibility of their 

book on the topic to which I once had the honor of using force against each other. [This view] 

c

____ ontributing seemed to contain as many different defines strategic stability as being a situation in 

definitions as it had contributing authors. which no power has any significant incentive to 

try to adjust its relative standing vis-a-vis any 

Some, for instance, prefer to interpret "strategic other power by unilateral means involving the 

stability" primarily through a nuclear lens, as it pertains to direct application of armed force against it. 

nuclear weapons use incentives and crisis stability factors. General war, in other words, is precluded as a 

I have always, however, seen it more broadly, as relating means of settling differences or advancing any 

to the incentives or disincentives that the major powers particular power's substantive agenda. The 

feel about the prospect of using any kind of military environment is thus strategically stable if no 

coercion directly against each other - that is, of trying to player feels itself able to alter its position by the 

change the geopolitical status quo (whatever it may be) by direct use of military force against another player 

force of arms. In this respect, as I outlined as a without this resulting in a less optimal outcome 

contribution to the aforementioned book, I have tended to than the alternative of a continued military 

view "strategic stability" as being 

1 Dr. Ford serves as U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Nonproliferation, and is additionally performing the Duties of 

the Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security. He previously served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior 

Director for Weapons of Mass Destruction and Counterpro/iferation on the U.S. National Security Council staff. 
Arms Control and International Security Papers Volume I, Number 21 I November 5, 2020 

Strategic Stability and the Global Race for Technology Leadership 

stalemate and the pursuit of national objectives 

by at least somewhat less aggressive means." 

This definition offers an important window on the role 

of technology competition in the modern geopolitical 

environment - and thereby also into the critical 

importance of ___________ technology transfer diplomacy and controls 

in preserving international peace and security in our 

world today. 

I. Strategic Stability: Costs and Benefits 

As a preliminary matter, while most discussions begin 

with the assumption that strategic stability is desirable, it 

can also entail costs. To some degree, for instance, 

strategic stability can perhaps have costs if it leads one 

country to feel that it has leeway to engage in aggressive 

behavior below the strategic level, on the assumption that 

a higher-level standoff will ensure that low-level 

provocations cannot be decisively countered. (I will 

address this problem in more detail below.) Strategic 

stability might also help "immunize" a tyrannical regime 

against well-deserved foreign efforts to replace it or press 

it to change its abusive internal behavior if that regime is -

or is closely allied to - one of the great powers existing in a 

strategically stable balance. Strategic stability among the 

great powers might also perhaps facilitate aggression by a 

great power against a smaller one, at least to the degree 

that such violence could take place without implicating 

alliance structures that might pull in another of the larger 

states. Strategic stability is thus a descriptive term rather 

than a normative term: it less a per se good than 

something that is good or bad, desirable or undesirable, 

depending upon the circumstances and upon the values 

that one prizes. 

Nevertheless, in an environment of great power 

competition in which several powers possess nuclear 

weaponry capable of rapidly killing many millions of 

people in a nuclear war, it is not hard to see strategic 

stability as highly desirable, insofar as it means a reduced 

likelihood of direct military engagement between those 

powers and thus a lessened risk of escalation to a nuclear 

exchange. Notwithstanding strategic stability's potential 

costs, therefore, U.S. policy has long taken its 

maintenance to be a very important objective. Most 

nuclear powers understandably share this perspective. 

But there is a vital wrinkle. For a state that seeks 

fundamental change in the strategic environment - a state 

dedicated, in a sense, to instability in the broader, existing 

balance of power - strategic stability is likely to be 

unwelcome, for it imposes sharp limits on whether and 

how such self-aggrandizing systemic change may be 

sought. Significantly, it is this very possibility that points 

us to the challenges to international peace and security 

that are presented by great power competition for 

mastery of militarily relevant areas of cutting-edge 21st 

Century technology. As we will see, moreover, this 

realization also points us in turn to the need for improved 

multilateral coordination and cooperation among 

"likeminded" non-authoritarian states in meeting 

technology-transfer and technology-diversion threats. 

Even though most "strategic stability" discussions 

focus upon nuclear weaponry and its impact upon power 

balances and crisis stability, it is important to realize that -

under contemporary circumstances, at any rate -

"technology control" questions are likely to be at least as 

important for strategic stability over time as traditional 

approaches to arms control. It is thus one of the most 

important national security challenges of our time to see 

the importance both of arms control and of technology 

control, to understand their complex relationship, and to 

find ways effectively to advance both of them in order to 

preserve strategic stability and prevent global war. 

The difficulty of this task is heightened by the fact that 

"arms control" approaches - if one thinks of them merely 

in stereotypical Cold War ways that relate to defining a 

type of "weapon" as being potentially problematic and 

then seeking to impose limits on its possession - are quite 

poorly suited to mitigating the security challenges 

presented by emerging technologies, especially (but not 

exclusively) in non-traditional domains such as 

cyberspace and outer space. So with a gap thus existing 

between the strategic stability risks inherent in hightechnology geopolitical competition and our ability to 

mitigate those risks through traditional rule-prohibitive 

formulae, we must find new approaches to thinking about 

what risk-reduction and the preservation of strategic 

stability require in a high-technology mid-21st Century 

environment. The following pages will explore these 

dynamics a bit further. 

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Arms Control and International Security Papers Volume I, Number 21 I November 5, 2020 

Strategic Stability and the Global Race for Technology Leadership 

II. Technology and Strategic Stability 

To begin with, it is becoming increasingly clear that 

the global race for technology leadership - or at least for 

leadership in whatever sectors of the technological arena 

can be leveraged into general military and indeed 

geopolitical power - may be at least as important for the 

future of strategic stability as are developments in the 

better-understood arena of nuclear weapons competition. 

Especially at a time in which new and potentially 

disruptive technologies emerging at a dizzying pace, we 

ignore this at our peril. 

As the ___________ 2017 U.S. National Security Strategy (NSS) 

made clear, after being dismissed for too long as a 

phenomenon of an earlier century, great power 

competition has - unfortunately, but unavoidablyreturned to the center of modern geopolitics. Moreover, 

as the NSS indicated, this competition has powerful 

technological valences, raising "strategic" issues 

irrespective of any connection to nuclear weaponry: 

"The spread of accurate and inexpensive 

weapons and the use of cyber tools have allowed 

state and non-state competitors to harm the 

United States across various domains. Such 

capabilities contest what was until recently U.S. 

dominance across the land, air, maritime, space, 

and cyberspace domains." 

As was also made clear in the Defense Department's __ 2018 

Nu________ clear Posture Review (NPR), building upon this insight, 

we have begun to extend nuclear deterrence to such 

realms. While our declaratory policy emphasizes that the 

United States would only consider the employment of 

nuclear weapons in "extreme circumstances to defend the 

virtual interests of the United States, its allies, and 

partners," for example, those circumstances "could 

include significant non-nuclear strategic attacks," which 

"include, but are not limited to, attacks on the 

U.S., allied, or partner civilian population or 

infrastructure, and attacks on U.S. or allied 

nuclear forces, their command and control, or 

warning and attack assessment capabilities." 

The strategic stability challenge, however, goes far 

beyond the degree to which specifically nuclear 

deterrence can be applied in responding to 

technologically facilitated non-nuclear threats. In the 

current environment, we must cope more broadly with the 

many ramifications of high-technology military progress 

on strategic stability more generally. In an era of great 

power competition, the dynamics of technological 

competition - and its military ramifications - are, for 

better or worse, ever more important in the preservation 

of international peace and security. 

This is, certainly, what Chinese strategic planners 

believe. As I have repeatedly detailed in this ___ ACIS Pap_ ers 

series and in various ___ speeches and ______ public engagemen~ ts 

officials in the People's Republic of China (PRC) clearly 

concluded, long ago, that the development or acquisition 

of cutting-edge technology- and Beijing's strategy to 

ensure its incorporation into systems and weapons for the 

People's Liberation Army and the Chinese security services 

- are central to the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP's) 

___________ revisionist geopolitical agenda of bringing about China's 

"national rejuvenation" in ways that position the PRC at 

the hegemonic apex of the international food chain. The 

CCP has, in fact, built an entire nationwide bureaucratic 

structure around achieving this, with the strategy of 

" _______ Military-Civil Fusion " (MCF) dedicating itself over the last 

decade to systematically breaking down barriers between 

China's civilian and military sectors, en route to an 

ultimate end state in which there remains no distinction 

between them whatsoever - a totalitarian vision in which 

all applications of technology are devoted, one way or the 

other, to the greater glory and power of the Party-State. 

As PRC planners have made all too clear, they see 

geopolitical outcomes as being powerfully determined by 

the military aspects of technological application. Various 

states throughout history have ridden to global 

prominence and power by positioning themselves at the 

leading edge of successive" _________ Revolutions in Military Affa_ irs " 

(RMAs) that have disruptively transformed the prevailing 

balance of power - with each such state often only 

thereafter, in time, losing that primacy as some other state 

seizes the reins of the next RMA. 

For strategists in Beijing, China's own late-imperial 

history provides a painful example of this historical 

dialectic. The Qing Dynasty rode to power at least in part 

on the basis of its ability to muster the then-advanced 

technologies of gunpowder and cannon. But after a few 

hundred years of East Asian hegemony, the Qing ran 

headlong into the self-aggrandizing dynamism of a British 

Empire then full of a power and exuberance born of its 

position, by that point, at the forefront of the Industrial 

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Strategic Stability and the Global Race for Technology Leadership 

Revolution. Technologically based economic weight and 

(then) cutting-edge military power had created a new 

reality- one in which the tiny British Isles had become far 

more effectively powerful than the once-mighty Qing 

Empire - and regional hierarchies and broader geopolitics 

adjusted accordingly, giving London a globe-spanning 

empire and the ability for some time to lead the 

imposition upon China of a series of "unequal treaties" 

that Chinese nationalists have neither forgotten nor 

forgiven in all the years since. 

Simply put, therefore, the PRC's MCF strategy is 

designed to marshal the forces of modern-day 

technological change to place China in an economic and 

military position in the mid-21st Century not entirely 

unlike the one in which Britain found itself in the mid-19th. 

The development in the PRC - or the purchase or theft 

abroad - of advanced technology capabilities in areas 

such as Artificial Intelligence (Al) and machine learning, 

quantum computing, aerospace engineering, 

semiconductor manufacturing, "Big Data" analytics, civilnuclear technology, and biotechnology, all of which the 

MCF strategy expressly targets, is central to this vision. 

This all matters for strategic stability. If the PRC hopes

for world-beating, RMA-empowered capabilities in the 21st

Century environment analogous to those Britain enjoyed 

in the 19th, it would seem that Beijing envisions the United 

States filling in for the Qing - that is, in being upended and 

defeated by a rising power that disrupts the global power 

structure and reshapes international affairs around itself. 

Such a vision of strategic succession is inconsistent with 

strategic stability, for at the core of this strategy is the 

aspiration to use military power to upend the existing 

order of things and displace the dominant power of the 

era. It is possible that PRC strategists imagine that they 

can accomplish such strategic disruption by overawing 

potential opponents and using coercive suasion short of 

actually employing force. Yet there is no escaping the 

fundamental incompatibility of this geopolitical ambition 

with anything that could genuinely be described as 

"strategic stability." This is why dynamics of technology 

competition - and hence questions both of ___ technolo_ gy

cultivation (for oneself) and technology denial (for 

a

____ dversaries) - lie near the core of the problem of great 

power competition in the modern era, and why getting 

one's policies right on these points is critical for the 

maintenance of international peace and security. 

Ill. Deterrence and Disruption 

One might wonder, of course, what these dynamics 

have to do with more traditional "strategic stability" issues 

involving nuclear weapons. And, in truth, any answer to 

that question can still only be speculative, inasmuch as 

the relationship between traditional deterrence and 

emerging technologies in new "battlespace" domains such 

as cyberspace and outer space, the potential "strategic" 

application of non-nuclear capabilities, and the aggregate 

impact of modern technological advancement upon 

overall geopolitical power are all essentially matters of 

first impression for global leaders. Nevertheless, one can 

perhaps discern a few points. 

The first relates to the degree of strategic stability 

traditionally provided by nuclear weapons - that is, both 

(a) the fact that all other things being equal, nuclear 

weapons-possessing states have some incentive not to 

war against each other precisely by virtue of their 

reciprocal possession of the ability to inflict incalculable 

harm upon the other, and (b) the fact that even a state 

with a preponderance of conventional military power may 

have to think twice before attacking a weaker, nucleararmed or-protected adversary. This is the phenomenon of 

nuclear deterrence and extended deterrence. However 

imperfect and potentially fallible it is - and whatever the 

degree that other factors may impinge upon its 

effectiveness in preventing conflict between nuclear 

weapons possessors (e.g., accident, inadvertent 

escalation, miscalculation, irrationality, or indeed rational 

and deliberate choices made in extremis) - the logic of 

such deterrence is compelling. 

Yet the interplay between technology competition 

and strategic stability also suggests the possibility that 

nuclear-based stability could have structural limitations. 

To begin with, the nuclear standoff of a dyadic deterrent 

relationship can still allow a fair amount of "warring" to 

occur between its participants, even if this conflict is not of 

a direct and maximalist sort. During the Cold War, for 

instance, the U.S. and Soviet alliance systems had fairly 

stable geographic frontiers when it came to their actual 

armed forces facing off against each other in Central 

Europe and East Asia. Nonetheless, a great deal of 

bellicose rivalry was "displaced" to other areas of the 

world in indirect conflicts such as the Korean War and the 

Vietnam War, proxy struggles pitting Communist-backed 

guerrillas and terrorist groups against Western-friendly 

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Strategic Stability and the Global Race for Technology Leadership 

governments, and warfare between Third World states and 

factions each backed by opposing sides. 

Perhaps analogously, in South Asia today, the 

existence of a nuclear weapons standoff and arms race 

between India and Pakistan has not precluded a degree of 

low level, simmering conflict between them, involving 

cross-border terrorist groups operating out of Pakistan 

against India and - most recently- a limited exchange of 

air strikes. Even this past summer, moreover, nucleararmed rivals China and India engaged in fatal border 

skirmishes in their competition for territory in the high 

Himalayan peaks between Ladakh and Aksai Chin. As the 

Korean War, the Yorn Kippur War between Egypt and Israel 

in 1973, and the February 2019 India-Pakistan crisis all 

illustrate, even geographically displaced or "merely" lowlevel engagements can run grave risks of escalation to war 

between nuclear-armed principals. And even if such 

horror is avoided, "strategic stability" is hardly always 

peaceful; the very higher-level "stability" it creates 

between its main protagonists can create seemingly safe 

"space" for lower-level coercive self-aggrandizement that 

nonetheless can give rise to dangerous escalatory 

pressures. 

Moreover, the "space" created by a "strategically 

stable" relationship can also breed trouble to the extent 

that this very stability creates opportunities for 

subsequent strategic disruption. An aggressive rising state 

has reason to dislike strategic stability, precisely to the 

degree that it is strategically stable, and to seek to 

undermine that stability in ways that conduce to its 

advantage. In the right circumstances, however, such a 

revisionist might be able to rely upon strategic stability to 

protect it from the power of others while it marshals its 

strength, preparing for a future military (or militarilyfacilitated) challenge to the global order. 

This points to the fact that strategic stability is not a 

static but rather a dynamic concept, as well as to the ways 

in which matters of technology competition can 

potentially have a powerful disruptive effect upon a 

supposedly "stable" system. It thus directs us back to the 

importance of technological competition, and the threats 

presented by the PRC's MCF strategy. Readers who are 

familiar with Deng Xiaoping's comment that China should 

"bide its time and hide its capabilities" - a strategic maxim 

from the years after Mao Zedong's death when the PRC 

began to turn outward to the world again, building its 

economy through initially export-led growth and seeking 

to modernize through the import of Western technology 

and know-how on a massive scale - ought to be able to 

see the potential problem, especially now that the 

dictatorship of Xi Jin ping has decided to stop "biding and 

hiding" and is more inclined aggressively to flex its 

muscles and flaunt the capabilities Beijing built while the 

rest of the world dreamed complacently of a neoliberal, 

democratic end of history. 

So in this context, what might be the impact of a 

hypothesized future RMA-style disruptive transformation 

in the currency of global power, especially were it to arrive 

on top of the already challenging developments in 

potential "strategic" applications of non-nuclear tools that 

we noted in the U.S. National Security Strategy? At the 

very least, one might imagine that despite whatever 

stabilizing effect nuclear weapons may have, the "Nash 

equilibrium" sort of strategic stability I have described 

above can be undermined by dynamics of technology 

competition even in non-nuclear arenas. 

The degree of any such erosion, however, would 

presumably vary. In extreme circumstances of eventual 

military-technological disparity, it is at least conceivable 

that even nuclear deterrence itself, as between major 

weapons possessing powers, could at some point be 

called into question. This dialectic is already well 

recognized. The history of military technological evolution 

makes clear that it is hardly impossible for one era's warwinning superweapon to be rendered ineffective by the 

subsequent development of new capabilities. Within a 

human lifetime from the point at which steam-driven 

ironclads made deathtraps out of the greatest wooden 

ships of the line from the "age of sail," for instance, those 

dreadnoughts themselves ceased eliciting awe and fear 

once it became clear what aircraft and submarines could 

do to a battleship. In more modern strategic terms, a 

rogue regime's small, "entry level" nuclear arsenal - itself 

perhaps having been intended to provide a deterring 

riposte to conventional military mismatch and to create 

"space" in which lower-level non-nuclear provocations 

could be indulged - can in theory already be all but 

obviated by sophisticated missile defenses. And even with 

the largest and most impressive of nuclear stockpiles, 

such an arsenal might be of radically diminished value if, 

in the face of sufficiently effective cyber, space, and 

strategic precision conventional attack, its possessor lost 

the ability to rely upon the national command, control, 

and communications (NC3) capabilities required in order 

actually to employ nuclear weapons in a conflict. 

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Arms Control and International Security Papers Volume I, Number 21 I November 5, 2020 

Strategic Stability and the Global Race for Technology Leadership 

Less dramatically, but still importantly, a major shift 

in the non-nuclear military-technological balance could 

increase instability and escalation risks by tempting its 

beneficiary into increasingly aggressive moves in the 

"space" that lies "below" an assumed threshold of nuclear 

deterrence. Significantly, this threat to strategic stability 

from non-nuclear technological development would likely 

be most dramatic if it occurred in the context of changes in 

the nuclear balance as well. 

And this is why the PRC's current strategic trajectoryoupled with its baldly revisionist geopolitical ambitions -

s so alarming. It is not merely that Beijing, as we have 

een, is seeking to position itself atop the commanding 

eights of the mid-21st Century RMA its strategists believe 

ill arrive with the incorporation of artificial intelligence, 

uantum computing, and other evolving technologies into 

hat the People's Liberation Army somewhat awkwardly 

erms "intelligent warfare." It is also that the PRC is at the 

ame time rapidly expanding both the size and the 

iversity of its nuclear arsenal. 

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This PRC nuclear buildup is especially worrying on 

account of its objective needlessness. To the degree that 

in the modern era Beijing ever actually worried about 

direct U.S. military attack, the PRC seems clearly to have 

quite successfully "deterred" such attack for all the years 

since China's first nuclear weapons test in 1964. Any 

actual threat to the PRC directly from United States 

nuclear weapons, moreover, has been plummeting since 

the end of the Cold War, with the U.S. arsenal having been 

cut by at least two-thirds since China joined the Nuclear 

Nonproliferation Treaty in 1992. For a country that 

purports (as the PRC does) to have a "no first use" nuclear 

posture - that is, to believe that the "sole purpose" of 

nuclear weapons is to deter the use of other nuclear 

weapons, and to proclaim that it would not use such 

weapons unless others did so - one might have imagined 

that this massive reduction in the U.S. nuclear arsenal 

would allow China to cap or even reduce its own arsenal. 

Despite this huge reduction in the U.S. nuclear threat 

that Beijing claims to fear, however, the PRC has 

embarked upon a huge nuclear buildup. As summarized in 

the most recent U.S. Defense Department report on 

6 

Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s 

-----~ Republic of China "[o]verthe next decade, China's nuclear 

warhead stockpile ... is projected to at least double in size 

as China expands and modernizes its nuclear forces." 

China has steadfastly refused to agree to a policy 

moratorium on additional production of fissile material for 

nuclear weapons, but even without such production it 

probably already has "enough nuclear materials to at least 

double its warhead stockpile without new fissile material 

production." It's anybody's guess where this relentless 

expansion stops, but ostensibly unofficial but 

government-controlled press outlets in the PRC have 

frequently talked about a supposed need for China to have 

a much larger nuclear arsenal.2 Despite a dramatic 

diminution in the nuclear threat facing it, therefore, the 

PRC is engaged in a huge expansion of its nuclear 

capabilities. 

None of this bodes well for strategic stability. This 

grim conjunction signals that the authoritarian Chinese 

Communist Party regime may be trying to procure a sort of 

geopolitical "hunting license" for itself: the ability to 

engage with relative impunity in predatory acts of 

international intimidation, coercion, and aggression using 

new, RMA-facilitated military capabilities, to be carried out 

under a sort of offensive "nuclear umbrella" created by 

Beijing's wantonly ballooning nuclear arsenal. 

These dangerous dynamics thus highlight the 

imperative of finding both an adequate response to the 

technology competition challenges created by the PRC's 

strategy and a way to ___________ ensure that Beijing is brought, fo_ r 

the first time, into some kind of nuclear arms control 

____ framework . Doing exactly this, in both respects, is today a 

key priority for the United States, and much hinges upon 

whether we are successful. For the United States and the 

democracies of the world to fail in finding answers to the 

challenges presented in these regards by PRC revisionism 

could usher in a gravely dangerous new era of strategic 

instability, potential great power conflict, and risk of 

escalation to nuclear warfare. 

2

 See, e.g., "China Cannot Hesitate on Nuclear Buildup," Global Times (December 23, 2016}; "Editorial: DF-41 Reportedly Deployed, China Will 

Gain More Respect," Global Times (January 24, 2017}; "Editorial: Both China's Defense Spending and Nuclear Strategic Capabilities are Not 

Enough," Global Times (December 14, 2016}; Hu Xijin, "China Needs to Increase its Nuclear Warheads to 1,000," Global Times (May 8, 2020). 

Global Times is owned by the People's Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party. 
Arms Control and International Security Papers Volume I, Number 21 I November 5, 2020 

Strategic Stability and the Global Race for Technology Leadership 

IV. The Limits of Traditional Arms Control -

and What Can Yet Be Done 

With nuclear and technology-competition threats 

having pointed us to the critical importance of arms 

control with China, however, we face a special challenge in 

the contemporary world from the fact that traditional 

legal-regulatory approaches to arms control - while they 

thankfully remain viable and indeed indispensable in the 

nuclear weapons arena - are notoriously ill-suited to 

meeting the security threats presented by the 

destabilizing technology-facilitated geopolitical 

revisionism of the PRC and the Russian Federation. This is 

an argument that I have made in more detail ___ elsewher_, e 

especially in connection with novel potential 

"battlespace" domains such as ____ cyberspace and outer 

s__ pace , as well as with regard to fast-moving emerging 

technologies such as that of _________ lethal autonomous weapo_ n 

s__ ystem_, s so I will not belabor the point here. 

In arenas characterized by rapidly evolving and 

ubiquitous dual-use technologies and operational 

concepts, traditional rule-prohibitive arms control 

approaches are indeed today falling short. These 

approaches are unable to come up with intelligible and 

administrable definitions of what is to be banned - at least 

not without being _____________ damagingly over-inclusive, dangerous_ ly 

u

________ nder-inclusive, or both . They are, moreover, largely 

unable to verify and enforce compliance with any such 

prohibition even if one could be developed. 

This is not to suggest that it is impossible to make 

progress in mitigating security threats in such evolving, 

high-technology domains. It is merely to point out that 

the "arms control" reflexes that many members of the 

policy community bring to the table are often not helpful, 

and can conceivably be dangerous - such as when, for 

instance, they tempt policymakers to indulge purported 

solutions, such as __________ recent Sino-Russian outer spa_ ce 

initiatives, that look like arms control but in fact excuse or 

mask destabilizing behaviors on the part of their 

p

____ roponents . While we continue to pursue arms control 

measures wherever they are likely to be effective, to be 

verifiable, and to be complied with by other parties -

including, in particular, with Russia and China with regard 

t

_______ o nuclear weapons - we must also acknowledge the 

limitations of traditional arms control approaches as 

applied in many emerging technology arenas. 

We need different answers. The United States has 

been at the forefront of developing other approaches to 

mitigating risks and meeting security challenges in such 

domains, such as bringing states together to __ articul_ ate 

______________ and defend norms of responsible behavi_, or 3 andto 

establish more effective frameworks for deterring 

irresponsible behavior With respect to the security 

challenges of high-technology competition across the 

board, moreover- in which self-aggrandizing destabilizers 

such as Beijing are unlikely to agree to negotiated limits or 

upon effective codes of conduct - the best available 

answer may be a policy of cautious restriction, and where 

necessary denial, by the collective technology possessors 

of the non-Chinese world. 

To this end, the United States has been leading in 

developing, implementing, and evangelizing for 

appropriate responses that help address the ___ technolo_ gydiversion problems presented by the PRC’s MCF strategy

including by building" _______ coalitions of caution " against 

technology transfer threats and working with partners to 

improve "best practices" in national security export 

control policy, _____ visa screening and other such areas. At the 

same time, we have been working to ____ catalyze mor_ e 

___________________ technological innovation within the United States itself , to 

onshore critical capabilities such as semiconductor 

_____ manufacturing, and to build consortia of trusted partners 

from across the democratic world to provide competitive, 

cutting-edge technology opportunities and solutions vis-avis the state-subsidized or state-owned "national 

champions" of our authoritarian competitors. 

V. Conclusion: Diplomacy "Across" and 

"Against" 

Meeting contemporary challenges of strategic stability 

requires a mix of both traditional and nontraditional 

approaches, and must involve a broader range of 

participants and stakeholders than is usually envisioned in 

discussions of strategic stability. Yes, traditional ruleprohibitive nuclear arms control remains essential, 

negotiated between the major players in order both to 

3 As merely one example- beyond the p

________________________ rinciples of responsible behavior in cyberspace that I have discussed elsewher~ e and the ___ outer spac_ e 

__ norms we also seek to develop - the United States participated in a Group of Governmental Experts in 2019 that by consensus articulated 11 

guiding principles” for helping address the challenges presented by LAWS

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Strategic Stability and the Global Race for Technology Leadership 

prevent the escalating spiral of a new arms race and to 

help prevent the PRC's dramatic nuclear buildup from 

creating a nuclear "overhang" under which Beijing would 

feel increasingly tempted to engage in provocative 

regional behaviors and predatory acts using its 

conventional forces - acts which, of course, would trend to 

create regional conflicts and create terrible nuclear 

escalation risks. 

Even though traditional arms control unfortunately 

still lacks effective tools and concepts for addressing great 

power competitive dynamics in new, rapidly evolving 

high-technology domains such as cyberspace and outer 

space, moreover, we can also do more to reinforce 

strategic stability by developing and promoting 

understandings and expectations of responsible behavior 

there. Both of these tasks - traditional arms control and 

norm development - will require effective multi-party 

diplomacy across the fault lines of contemporary 

competitive geopolitics, and are high priorities for the 

United States. 

At the same time, however, meeting today's 

challenges of strategic stability will require more effective 

measures, both on a unilateral basis and on one of 

likeminded” Western democracies acting, in concert, 

against the dangerous agendas of the authoritarian 

re____ visionists . Expectations of behavior in novel domains, 

for instance, must be "enforced" by resolute steps taken 

by coalitions of responsible states to penalize 

irresponsible behavior, thereby establishing what are in 

essence deterrence frameworks that disincentivize ______________ _ 

d

_________ estabilizing provocations. To prevent (or delay) the 

emergence of technological asymmetries that could 

imperil strategic stability- such as by changes that 

facilitate any one power's conflict-engendering use of 

RMA-fueled military coercion to upend the existing 

international order and restructure that order around 

itself as a new regional or global hegemon - the 

likeminded non-authoritarian countries of the world must 

focus intensively on three critical tasks that derive from a 

clear understanding of the importance of technology 

competition in modern-day competitive geopolitics: 

1) building significantly more prudent, cautious, and 

restrictive approaches to technology control 

and/or denial vis-a-vis great power competitors; 

2) developing and implementing more effective and 

collaborative measures to preclude national 

infrastructures being "colonized," captured, and 

manipulated for coercive advantage by entities 

that report to authoritarian masters in Beijing and 

Moscow; and 

3) taking successful steps to stimulate innovation 

and unleash more creative dynamism in the Free 

World's own technology sectors. 

In sum, a full appreciation for the relationship 

between technology competition and strategic stability 

compels attention not just to traditional arms control, but 

also both to the limits of such arms control and to the 

important steps that can yet be taken by the free nations 

of the world to preserve international peace and stabilitynotwithstanding the challenging environment of great 

power competition we face today - through less 

traditional approaches that involve the admixture of norm 

development and enforcement with coordinated 

approaches to technology management. Strategic 

stability faces new and perhaps unprecedented challenges 

in the modern world. Nevertheless, its preservation, and 

the prevention of conflict between the great powers, is far 

from hopeless ifwe can bring steady, clear-eyed 

determination to the task. In the United States, we remain 

firmly devoted to doing so. 

Arms Control and International Security Papers 

The Arms Control and International Security Papers are produced by the Office of the Under Secretary of State for Arms 

Control and International Security in order to make U.S. State Department policy analysis available in an electronicallyaccessible format compatible with "social distancing" during the COVID-19 crisis.