Erik Sand

States often make puzzling decisions when sharing technology. In1985 the United States licensed production of torpedoes to China despite recognizing it might fight China to defend the island of Taiwan. My dissertation asks: Why do states share advanced military technology with other states? In doing so, we gain insight into how states both conceptualize and use their technological power.

I define technology sharing as the transfer of the capability to produce weapons (applied scientific research, designs, manufacturing techniques, etc) not the transfer of the weapons themselves (though this may occur simultaneously).

The key difference between technology sharing and other forms of security assistance (alliances, arms sales, etc) is the persistence of the benefits of the transfer across time even if the relationship between the sharer and the recipient worsens. If the interests of two security partners diverge, an alliance can be cancelled almost overnight, a state which had sold weapons could refuse further spare parts, but shared technology is impossible to claw back.

I create a typology of technology sharing policies based on the ease and breadth of technology transfer they facilitate and explain choices amongst these policies with an original theory called Threats Over Time Theory (TOTT). TOTT predicts decisionmakers share technology when they face severe threats – to either the survival of their state or the organization that they lead. When such threats exist, decisionmakers adjust the liberalness of their desired technology sharing policy based two factors: the likelihood a future adversary may gain the technology because of the sharing – either through a leak or because recipient itself becomes an adversary – and the speed at which the shared technology is likely to become obsolete. 

 I test TOTT using cases during and between the World Wars – the most recent previous period of multipolar international competition. Using more than 40,000 pages of archival documents, I examine British and American decisions to share technology with each other, Japan, and the Soviet Union. In the process, I produce new or updated histories of these technology transfers

Academically, the project both expands the discussion of technology as power and expands the literature on alliances and security assistance. Since sharing technology is non-zero sum and has potentially long-term effects, it also helps us understand how states view absolute and relative gains as well as potential gains and losses across different time horizons. Policy-wise, the United States has historically maintained its dominant position through continued technological innovation as well as its network of alliances. As advanced weapons come to involve more technology that is difficult to “black box,” weapons sales are more likely to involve transferring technology. Understanding the dynamics of technology sharing can help policymakers manage potential tradeoffs.

In a 2020 article in the Texas National Security Review, I challenge the conventional wisdom that economic isolation is an ineffective wartime strategy. Examining Germany’s response to blockade in both World Wars, I identify two mechanisms by which economic isolation induces targeted states to undertake risky strategies - strategies so risky that they often lead to defeat. But this advantage does not come without its own risk for the isolators. Target states’ risky strategies often involve war-widening escalation, which in the nuclear age could prove catastrophic.

images (from top to bottom): Library of Congress Card Catalogue; Schematic of E1189 Cavity Magnetron (credit: radiomuseum.org); Castle Aragonese, Taranto, Italy; Minuteman Missile National Historic Site, Jackson County, South Dakota.