Presentation of the CNTR Monitor 2024 in Political Berlin

Group of people standing in an interior room, some holding up the CNTR Monitor Launch of the CNTR Monitor at the Federal Foreign Office

Launch of the CNTR Monitor at the Federal Foreign Office

Project team in dialogue with stakeholders on dual-use topics

The first issue of the CNTR Moni­tor – Techno­logy and Arms Control was published on Novem­ber 21. The new publi­cation, entitled “Pers­pectives on Dual Use”, summa­rizes the cluster's research fin­dings and provides recommen­dations for dealing with new techno­logies and develop­ments in the natural sciences. As part of the multi-format trans­fer strate­gy, dis­cussions with stake­holders from politics, aca­demia, civil socie­ty and the media took place in Ber­lin on the two days of the launch.

The offi­cial launch of the CNTR Monitor took place on Novem­ber 21 at the Fede­ral Foreign Office, which made the cre­ation of the cluster possi­ble with initial fun­ding for four years. CNTR resear­chers explained the most im­portant findings from the newly pub­lished report on the topics of arti­ficial intelli­gence, drones, additive manu­facturing, biology and biotech­nology. In the dis­cussion that followed, repre­sentatives of depart­ments, heads of division and ad­visors from the Fe­deral Foreign Office were able to ask ques­tions and comment. In the spirit of a dialo­gical knowledge trans­fer, the aim was on the one hand to pre­sent results and on the other hand to take up im­pulses for the fur­ther research work of CNTR.

On Friday mor­ning, the CNTR team invited people from research, pro­fessional prac­tice, civil society, politics and the media to a net­working break­fast in the atrium of the Leibniz Asso­ciation building. In addition to a brief intro­duction of the moni­tor and the resear­chers involved with their topics, the event pro­vided plenty of space for focused and infor­mal dis­cussions in small groups.

The virtual meeting with the Depart­ment for Re­search Security and Invest­ment Review of the Fe­deral Ministry of Edu­cation and Research fo­cused on the topics of research se­curity and the hand­ling of se­curity-relevant research. The focus of the CNTR Moni­tor 2024 on the topic of dual use in research and develop­ment is relevant to the stake­holder pro­cess currently being managed by the BMBF on the topic of research se­curity, in which CNTR co-speaker Prof. Dr. Malte Göttsche is also in­volved. Dr. Una Jakob is also a mem­ber of the Joint Commit­tee of the DFG and Leopol­dina on dealing with se­curity-relevant research.

The CNTR pro­ject team thanks all the dis­cussion part­ners for their inte­rest and pro­ductive ex­change over the past few days.

The CNTR Moni­tor 2024 “Pers­pectives on Dual Use” is an open access publi­cation pub­lished in Ger­man and Eng­lish. It can be read and down­loaded at monitor.cntrarmscontrol.org.