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Secondary Title
MIT
Abstract

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.

Concluding remarks
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. The findings have implications for scholars’ understanding of how decisionmakers make choices with costs and benefits that vary across time, tradeoff between relative and absolute gains, and prioritize state versus organizational interests. They also provide insight into how policymakers can consider the risks and benefits of technology transfer.

Reference details

Resource type
Miscellaneous
Year of Publication
2021
Publication Area
Cybersecurity and defense

How to cite this reference:

Sharing Vulcan’s Secrets: Why States Disclose Details of Advanced Military Technology to Other States. (2021). Retrieved from https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/140198/sand-esand-phd-polisci-2021-thesis.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y