Key Dimensions in Technology Impact Assessment for Peace and Stability
Citation: G. Austin et al., "Key Dimensions in Technology Impact Assessment for Peace and Stability: Australia and India," in IEEE Transactions on Technology and Society, doi: 10.1109/TTS.2026.3718558.
Open Access Paper: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/11668631/
Photo by ABHIJEET SINGH
Abstract—The development and diffusion of new technologies into society requires technology assessment (TA) for their diverse social, political, ethical, legal, environmental and economic impacts. Using Australia and India as case studies on the diffusion of critical emerging technologies, we find that the broad “critical technology” framing adopted by both governments offers no clear direction as to methodologies for conducting technology impact assessment (TIA) of specific technologies or their strategic impacts, and that it frequently conflates peace and stability objectives with economic and industrial policy goals. Currently, there are no best practices for TIA that articulate a defined approach and methodology among scholars or officials. This ambiguity stems from the fact that TIA can be used for many different purposes while focusing on the concerns of different groups of stakeholders. Since 2022, several stakeholders, inclusive of leading intergovernmental organizations, think tanks and specialists, have called for increased attention to TIA and more disciplined approaches, particularly emphasizing effective stakeholder engagement, and consistently ethical, democratic and transparent processes. This paper defines TIA for peace and stability, defines critical emerging technologies, and identifies key dimensions of technology impact assessment together with proposed benchmarks across three tiers of practice: basic, intermediate and advanced. Drawing on nuclear-safety case studies from Australia (nuclear-powered warship visits and AUKUS submarine safety) and India (civil nuclear cybersecurity), together with a comparative analysis of the two countries’ practices, the paper finds that TIA for peace and stability is consistently a lower priority than TIA for national defense or domestic security, and that neither country has a standing mechanism for conducting it to a high standard. The paper proposes a hybrid model for balancing transparency and legitimate secrecy in future assessments and sets out options for locating a dedicated institutional home for TIA—drawing on parliamentary, statutory authority and national academy models—in support of peace and stability studies between one or more nation states, toward multi-stakeholder joint impact assessment.
Index Terms—Technology impact assessment, technology assessment, peace, stability, Australia, India, critical technologies, emerging technologies, social implications.
I. Introduction
Since 2020, Australia and India have committed to coordinating policy on critical technologies to promote peace and stability. This is part of a deepening political, economic and strategic relationship across many sectors. One of the policy tools for managing technology policy in both countries has been that of technology impact assessment (TIA), a process that has been in existence internationally for more than five decades. TIA is the systematic analysis of the impacts arising from the use of technologies. This includes both specialist assessment of their technical performance characteristics and cost-benefit considerations as well as consultations across diverse stakeholder groups (such as government, industry, academia, and society) to determine broader social, political, legal or economic consequences. In both Australia and India, there is only a modest record of impact assessments for critical emerging technologies affecting peace and stability. We could not easily identify cases of best practice by either country. This paper makes a case for greater use of such assessments and the adoption of more credible and more comprehensive evidence-based approaches. It has had to draw on global experience to arrive at lessons for Australia and India.
The peace and stability agenda of most countries is, in essence, the diplomatic face of national security policy—the practices of shaping, implementing or contesting international regimes or cooperative measures to enhance national security. This includes issues related to deterrence as well as common or collective security, such as conflict prevention, protection of global critical infrastructure, arms control, or plurilateral regimes for technology development. These issues may not lend themselves to the sort of expansive public consultation that most specialists have regarded as an essential element of modern TIA. Voters in Australia and India have not traditionally placed a high priority on the diplomacy of peace or cooperative security, where single technologies have been the main focus. In countries where TIA is most developed, its focus has been on domestic policy concerns, such as health or the environment.
The global practice of TIA in support of peace and stability has emerged in various forms, with varying degrees of secrecy or transparency, and at different stages of technology development and deployment. Moreover, there are many distinctions between TIA focused on stability (e.g., as in the stability of cyberspace or shared space situational awareness) and those intended for the protection of peace (e.g., diplomatic aspects of deterrence or maintaining a geostrategic balance of technological power). In addition, in the global practice of TIA, we see a tension between analyses that start with a technology first approach and those that set out to address specific policy problems, with clear implications for systemic risks and opportunities. The bias toward technology first approaches has been aggravated by the increasing political attention paid to TIA as a tool of geopolitical competition between the US and its allies on the one hand, and China on the other hand for leadership in R&D for dual-use technologies. The critical technologies agenda of Australia and India is more focused on that ‘tech war’ than on the positive contributions that new technologies might make to cooperative security, that is, the peace and stability agenda. This situation has arisen in large part due to escalating operations in cyberspace and the escalating confrontation between the US and China.
One of the notable recent examples of TIA of a class of technologies affecting peace and stability has been the US National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence [1]. Over several years, this commission addressed issues of deterrence, peacetime technological competition with other countries, and the domestic foundations of US technological power. The Commission also analyzed important military applications of AI, highlighting the grey areas and overlaps between a peace and stability agenda and issues of military power.
II. Conceptual Approach and Methodology
A. Aim and Outline
Governments, businesses and communities around the world are becoming more concerned by how technological innovations and their implications affect their interests. To address such concerns, beginning around 2020, Australia and India set in train a stream of policy initiatives under the heading of “critical emerging technologies affecting peace and stability”. An important but underutilized tool for the development of these policies is technology impact assessment (TIA). The practices, principles and methodologies for this stream of policy development are still evolving in both countries.
The aim of this article, funded by the Australia India Cyber and Critical Technologies Partnership (AICCTP), is to strengthen consensus among key stakeholders in the two countries by building a strong public case for more credible and comprehensive evidence-based approaches for TIA to address risks to peace and stability.
The study was conducted by nine personnel who each brought their niche expertise to technology impact assessment such as academics, consultants, non-government organizational representation, former government agency representatives, law and public policy specialists and more. An environmental scan in the context of artificial intelligence (AI) for Australia and India was conducted. Predominantly, publicly available (government) documents on the topic of TIA were found pertaining to AI in the context of peace and stability. An integrative approach to understanding the documents found was used to synthesize perspectives using the secondary sources of evidence. To validate the data collection and synthesis participants attended 4 webinars and two workshops divided into four half-days. Attendees to the webinars and workshops responded both through an open call on LinkedIn and targeted invites based on expertise and relevance to Australia and India. There were 244 registrants to the 4 webinars, 86 registrants for the 4 half-day workshops, and 50 individual interviews (Figure 1).
Figure 1. AICCTP research design. Data Collection: Professional Expertise (Australia / India) → Global Literature Search. Data Validation: Webinars (1–4); Workshops (1 & 2); Interviews (1–1).
It is important to note that this paper does not quote verbatim from transcripts we have assembled from each of the primary stakeholder engagements but rather uses the webinars and workshops to validate the data collected and to probe deeper into the comparative analysis. The philosophical approach to TIA by this group of researchers was seeing technology impact assessment as a process and not solely the publication of a single artefact that is prescriptive and linear, but rather a lifecycle. Our approach was qualitative and rooted in ethical frameworks for technology assessment, developed in Sweden as early as 2005, addressing such topics as: control, influence and power, impact on human values, international relations, and gender, vulnerable communities and justice [2]. This project is steeped in the broader context of peace and stability, which also incorporates human security [3], as well as interstate security [4]. Section III of this article addresses the definitional issues around critical and emerging technologies that impact the domain of peace and stability. Section IV presents an overview of the global practice of TIA, including best practice for conducting TIAs. Section V identifies the key dimensions of TIA without being prescriptive, and Section VI translates these into a practical set of design questions for operationalizing a TIA. Section VII examines TIA for peace and stability in more depth, including the US National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence as a case study. Section VIII presents two nuclear-safety case studies, for Australia and India respectively. Section IX offers a comparative overview of Australian and Indian practice and proposes a hybrid model for balancing transparency and secrecy, before a conclusion in Section X.
III. Peace and Stability: Australia and India Context
Peace and stability sit as one of three organizing pillars in national security policy as illustrated in Figure 1. We limit our view of peace and stability to the diplomacy of international and national security, addressing political aspects of deterrence and issues of common or collective security among states, such as protection of global critical infrastructure, arms control, or plurilateral regimes for technology controls. We exclude issues of national military security and defense preparedness, military aspects of alliance building, and defense diplomacy. We also exclude domestic security areas like counterterrorism or protection of civil rights, but we include international regimes for countering violent extremism or terrorist financing. Policy for peace and stability therefore addresses issues such as peacekeeping, arms control, international cybersecurity, countering disinformation, conflict prevention, space situational awareness, counter-terrorism regimes, and the security of civil sector international interactions, such as air safety.
Figure 2. Pillars of national security policy. National Security Policy comprises: National Defence (includes military preparedness and defence diplomacy); Peace and Stability (diplomacy and non-military policies to protect against international threats; includes peace and stability regimes such as arms control, international cyber security, countering disinformation, space situational awareness, peace keeping and conflict prevention); Domestic Security (includes law enforcement and policies for countering domestic threats or foreign subversion); and Intelligence and Counter-intelligence.
The three pillars in the context of national security policy are far from equal in terms of priority and urgency (Figure 2). This is reflected in the relatively low priority attached to funding of TIA for peace and stability compared with the other pillars. More attention is paid to TIA for peace and stability issues only if they overlap with significant aspects of national defense or domestic security. In a similar vein, TIA impacting the intelligence function can often provide coverage of important peace and stability issues that might not otherwise receive attention.
A. Bilateral Cooperation
In the case of both countries, the expressed national interests in cooperation on critical and emerging technologies appear to extend beyond the normal scope of the concept of peace and stability to economic policy, social policy and public administration. The 2020 bilateral agreement on cooperation between Australia and India includes a long list of objectives and principles that address unambiguously core issues of peace and stability, alongside others that might be considered peripheral to the commonly held meaning of these words [5]:
1. open, free, safe and secure internet for citizens;
2. cyberspace as an economic enabler supporting the goal of prosperity and national development, especially through trade promotion;
3. countering cyber-crime or malicious state activity in cyberspace;
4. treating the increasing frequency of malicious state activities in cyberspace as having the potential to undermine national security and prosperity, and in turn, undermine international peace and stability;
5. protection of fundamental human rights and freedoms online;
6. opposing cyber-enabled theft of intellectual property;
7. ensuring that these technologies are used in a secure and ethical manner; and
8. cooperation in the protection of national critical information infrastructure.
At the same time, Australia and India also agreed to a Joint Plan of Action specifically targeting (1) the innovation economy; (2) cyber security; and (3) cyber-enabled critical and emerging technologies [6, pp. 5-7]. The last of these three sections concerned the economy, making specific mention of 5G, quantum computing, AI and machine learning. In relation to AI, the agreement mentioned the need to work bilaterally to build safe, trusted and ethical practices in its use. The Action Plan also referred to the importance of international norms for controlling AI.
In the years since 2020, the focal points of interests of the two governments in their international policy on critical technologies have broadened and vary according to the forum of discussion. In Australia, one view sees critical technologies as those that impact economic stability, national security, and social cohesion [7, p. 47]. India has referred to an equally broad set of ambitions: to ensure that technology is used in a manner consistent with “democratic values and respect for universal human rights” and “future security and prosperity” [8].
Australia has on occasion included the following technologies under the rubric of critical: (1) advanced manufacturing and materials technologies, including semiconductors; (2) artificial intelligence; (3) advanced information and communications technologies (such as 5G and 6G); (4) quantum technologies; (5) blockchain; (6) autonomous systems; (7) robotics; (8) positioning, timing and sensing; (9) biotechnologies, such as synthetic biology; (10) clean energy generation and storage technologies; and (11) digital public goods, such as digital identity and digital payments systems [7]. In a bilateral context with the US, and in a national security context, India has noted the following: (1) space; (2) semiconductors; (3) advanced telecommunications; (4) artificial intelligence; (5) quantum; (6) biotechnology; and (7) clean energy [8]. The Australian and Indian governments have not yet published a process by which critical and emerging technologies are defined, classified and organized.
While Australia and India have strengthened bilateral cooperation on AI and critical technologies through 2026 PACTS agreements—establishing institutional structures, thematic pillars, and working groups, along with commitments to shared standards and joint R&D—a fully institutionalized, binding Technology Impact Assessment (TIA) mechanism specifically for national security AI systems has not yet been created. This remains at the proposal stage rather than functioning as a formal, operational tool for joint assessment [79].
B. Defining “Emerging Technologies”
The OECD has defined emerging technologies as those “characterized by rapid development and uncertainty in trajectory and impact” (OECD n.d.). These features present policymakers with the challenge of enabling innovation for economic and social benefit while simultaneously addressing “governance imperatives that anticipate risks, protect established rights and human agency”. This perspective is supported by policy researchers. Rotolo et al. [9] characterized emerging technologies as having the attributes of radical novelty, relatively fast growth, coherence, prominent impact, and uncertainty and ambiguity of use and risks. The classification of a technology as “emerging” is not a permanent label since “[a]s the technology matures, its novelty fades, and its uncertainty and ambiguity also reduce” [10, p. 5].
For the purposes of TIA, an essential difference between a technology that is mature or established (e.g., nuclear fission) and one that is only emerging (e.g., quantum computing or 6G wireless) are the known or observed documented consequences. In the case of mature technologies, the tangible and intangible impacts are demonstrable, while in emerging technologies, the impacts are still being predicted, anticipated, or characterized. This distinction affects TIA in the degree to which foresight, estimation or assumptions need to be used in assessing likely social, political or economic impacts. More assumption-based analysis is needed for emerging technologies than for mature technologies. Where a mature technology is itself now changing as the result of rapid innovation (e.g., integration or convergence), the distinction between mature and emerging is quite blurred, implying a spectrum for the term rather than a precise or discrete categorization.
While policy statements in Australia and India regularly refer to critical and emerging technologies, the candidate technology they refer to can be either established or emerging. There is also considerable ambiguity around the scope of “critical and emerging”, for example, do both characteristics need to be present, or just some combination thereof? Therefore, the term “critical and emerging” has not itself been adopted operationally for this paper; rather, we focus on the level of criticality in the context of an established or emerging technology, while understanding that the issue of pace of innovation can shape the degree of assumed or potential criticality.
C. Defining “Critical Technologies”
Schatzberg [11] suggests that for a technology to be “critical” it must be the result of either: (1) a more involved elevated standard of science being applied, or (2) the technology’s criticality, as a function of the importance that it accrues on its exposure to or diffusion in society. Bimber and Popper [12] also approached the topic in this way, albeit from the lens of technologies that existed more than three decades ago. Their report defines four possible policy lenses for critical technology:
• As “high” or “advanced” technology, which “represents state-of-the-art, and is therefore the locus of innovation and an indicator of the industry’s or nation’s level of technical sophistication” [12, p. 15];
• As a component of State self-sufficiency, such that “technologies are deemed critical for ensuring security of the means for sustained economic growth and development—and in a complicated world economy, for ‘competitiveness’” [12, p. 17];
• As a limitation or enabler for the delivery of some other beneficial outcomes, such as some manufacturing, service, or system capability which is in the interests of the State to acquire or develop [12, p. 20]; and
• As a “generic and pre-competitive” quality, because early iterations of critical technologies are often multi-variate in use, where “development efforts are believed likely to produce a wide array of returns not tied to any specific product application” [12, p. 23].
Their analysis highlights the challenge of constructing a robust definition of critical technologies.
The first step in defining a critical technology is determining the precise level at which it is no longer “divisible” from similar technologies that constitute separate academic or industrial fields. As an example, one might consider the complex, but nebulous, field of quantum technologies, which incorporates fields across computing, cryptography, sensor design, atomic clocks, communication, simulation and metrology [13]. Within each of these subfields are numerous other forms of technology. Continuing with the quantum computing example, it can be divided into quantum hardware, software, and applications from cryptography to large-scale computation [14]. Advances in quantum technology in sub-fields, such as atomic clocks or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), can be much more mature than other subfields, such as photonics.
The second step in determining an appropriate standard of criticality can be a determination of whether one technology or a subfield of it becomes critical when compared to another technology or sub-field, or by reference to its social, economic, legal, and/or geopolitical impacts. The emergence of the trade war in semiconductors between the United States and China after 2018 is an example of that last consideration [15], [16], [17].
More recently, the Critical Technology Tracker created by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute [18] produced an initial list of 44 key areas, subsequently updated to 64 key areas. This Tracker adopts the Australian Government definition [19] that critical technology is “current and emerging technologies with the capacity to significantly enhance, or pose risk to, a country’s national interests, including a nation’s economic prosperity, social cohesion, and national security.” It includes a far wider selection of technologies such as metamaterials, distributed ledgers (i.e., blockchain), machine learning, directed energy, and electronic warfare to name a few. It is unlikely that even the wealthiest countries could afford to undertake in-depth TIA or even effective monitoring of 44 or 64 technologies from the point of view of their effect on peace and stability.
We take the view that a critical technology will have some mix of the following four characteristics:
• Novelty. This characteristic has two aspects. First, it can refer to technologies that have emerged within the last 5 to 10 years and are considered to be critical [18], [19]. Second, it can refer to mature or existing technologies that have new critical impacts because of changing geopolitical considerations or technical innovation (e.g., semiconductors).
• Uncertainty. A critical technology is often one where there is significant or substantial uncertainty about its potential implications for peace and stability, i.e., its military and/or dual-use possibilities at various levels of maturity or readiness.
• Priority. Critical technologies generally will have a strong connection to a national interest [20]. More often than not, critical technologies are linked to defense interests. How a State determines that boundary—and the measures that it uses to do so—is outside the scope of this paper. However, the State does need to have a clear mechanism for determining when and where a given critical technology is in priority order; otherwise, the State risks proscribing or capturing every form of technology because it has an interest in what occurs within its sovereign territories. This is an extension of the well-known analogy that “if everything is national security, nothing is” [21], [22].
• Targetability. This characteristic can otherwise be described as policy tractability. In order to be considered a critical technology, hardware, software, product or process must be physically amenable to regulatory controls by a State (whether by law, policy or other means), thus upholding its interests and controlling the diffusion and distillation of that technology. A technology that has already rapidly proliferated throughout society without regulatory containment makes it difficult to be critical as the state loses its position of primacy over the diffusion of that technology.
From an Australian perspective, definitions of critical technologies have the force of law in some areas, replicating Ministerial and political interest in the subject [23]. For example, the same critical technologies defined by the Department of Industry Science and Resources (DISR) also appear in legislative instruments related to migration [24]. This means that Australian Ministers can regulate the entry of foreign nationals judged to be a net contributor or potential risk to national research. The same DISR technologies also appear in the Migration Regulations 1994 as amended in 2024 [25]. These regulations enable the refusal or cancellation of visas where “the Minister for Home Affairs is satisfied that there is an unreasonable risk of unwanted transfer of critical technology by the visa holder.”
From India’s perspective, it has neither a mandated list of critical technologies nor a strategy for the assessment and classification of them, though some evidence can be gleaned from recent bilateral and plurilateral partnerships on critical and emerging technologies. These include the US-India Initiative on Critical Emerging Technology, the India-EU Technology Trade Council, the UK-India Technology Security Initiative, and the Cyber and Cyber-Enabled Critical Technology Cooperation between India and Australia [26]. India certainly ascribes the critical descriptor to advanced telecommunications, space, quantum and artificial intelligence.
IV. Selecting Critical Technologies That Have a Positive Impact on Peace and Stability
In April 2021, Australia’s formal policy, International Cyber and Critical Technology Engagement Strategy identified three pillars: (1) values, (2) security, and (3) prosperity. The phrase “peace and stability” was used 17 times, in addition to “peace” being used 29 times and “stability” 21 times independently [27]. The strategy document also referred to “international peace and stability” [27, pp. 36-43] under the heading of “Security”. Other headline elements of the security pillar were disinformation and misinformation, cybersecurity, cybercrime, online harms and safety. Within the pillar of “international peace and stability”, the strategy committed Australia to “shape the development and use of critical technology, including cyberspace”. The core premise was that: “[t]he risks of malicious misuse of technologies can contribute to increasing strategic instability that, if unchecked, increases the risk of misperceptions and miscalculations between states that might escalate to conflict” [27, p. 36].
The lines of policy action include:
• setting clear expectations for responsible state behavior;
• deterring malicious activity enabled by critical technologies, including cyberspace, and responding when it is in the national interest;
• cooperating with other states to hold to account those who engage in unacceptable behavior;
• implementing practical confidence-building measures to promote international peace and stability and prevent conflict.
Deterrence, arms control arrangements, and confidence-building measures sit firmly within the peace and stability section of the Strategy. Otherwise, national defense and national security applications of critical technologies, including for the promotion of national defense industry, appeared in the Strategy’s definitions to lie outside of the peace and stability section, for example under “strengthen national security”, “protect our democracy and sovereignty”, and “promote economic growth”. But there is a grey zone, where the peace and stability lens would appear to cross over into interest in hard military application of critical technologies that might contribute to the risk of conflict or strategic instability.
In the years since 2021, the focal points of interest of the Australian and Indian governments in their international policy on critical technologies have broadened and vary according to the forum of discussion. In Australia, the reference point became critical technologies of national interest, as captured in the 2023 policy Critical Technologies Statement [19]. One perspective holds critical technologies as those that impact economic stability, national security, and social cohesion [28, p. 4]. India has referred to an equally broad set of ambitions: to ensure that technology is used in a manner consistent with further diversification of its military dependencies over the next few decades; strengthening lines of “strategic cooperation to deal with the challenge of economic overproduction in China; coproduce and co-innovate technologies to build geo-economic resilience; and potentially co-create new language in the complicated world of standards” [29].
Australia has on occasion included the following technologies under the heading of critical: (1) advanced manufacturing and materials technologies, including semiconductors; (2) artificial intelligence; (3) advanced information and communications technologies (such as 5G and 6G); (4) quantum technologies; (5) autonomous systems, robotics, positioning, timing and sensing; (6) biotechnologies, such as synthetic biology; and (7) clean energy generation and storage technologies [19], [28]. In the case of both countries, the expressed national interests in regulating critical technologies appear to extend beyond the normal scope of the concept of peace and stability to other national interest considerations, especially economics, industry policy, science policy, social policy and public administration.
One of the most important aspects that underpins current Australian and Indian approaches to critical technologies is the concept of strategic technological competition. This is the concept that technology will contribute a greater proportion of national power in the future, and that getting ahead in some of these domains will give a disproportionate advantage that will only increase over time. This is tied up with the concept of ‘tech war’ along various fault lines of international security, most notably between the US and China. Australia has aligned with the US on a broad front, while India has supported the US in several discrete channels, most notably in supply chain considerations and in critical infrastructure investments.
A. Best Practice in TIA for Peace and Stability
This project builds on such calls for significant adjustments in technology analysis processes that have been made by leading organizations and think tanks since 2022. Several key players have called for more discipline in the process of TIA, as well as more effective stakeholder engagement, consistently ethical and democratic processes, and transparency. These include the National Network for Critical Technology Assessment in the United States [30], the European Technology Assessment Group, the Indian Council for World Affairs [31], RAND Australia [32], and the International Institute for Strategic Studies [33].
Based on our assessment of these inputs, we conclude that it is probably not useful to set rigid guidelines for how a country might undertake TIA affecting peace and stability. However, several aspects of how the terms of reference for a TIA might be constructed need attention. We can identify benchmarks for TIA around three tiers: basic, intermediate and advanced, depending on a range of factors:
• depth and granularity of consultation with specialists;
• breadth and depth of stakeholder consultation;
• recognition of the central place of the social, political, legal, and economic impacts;
• comprehensiveness of analysis, including international and alternative views;
• timeliness;
• high relevance to policy for peace and stability;
• a clear ethical framework.
V. Key Dimensions of TIA
In this Section, we first consider key dimensions of TIA. In English usage, the concept of technology impact assessment (TIA) has been traced back to US Congressional discussions in 1966 in reviewing the impacts of supersonic flight. The concepts of environmental impact assessment (EIA) and social impact assessment (SIA) emerged at about the same time, with the former concept being legislated in the US in 1969. In 1972, Congress passed the Technology Assessment Act to equip itself with “competent, unbiased information concerning the physical, biological, economic, social and political effects” of critical emerging technologies [34, p. 797]. The roots of TIA in the parliament of a liberal democracy at the time, in this case the US Congress, reflected the necessary implication of considering social and community inputs, mediated by the parliament, rather than the executive. Based on this history, there is a necessary implication that impacts (social, political, legal or economic) beyond the technical effects must figure in this paper.
The term TIA is often used interchangeably with “technology assessment”, “technology evaluation”, or even “technology testing”. While “technology assessment” (TA) is more prevalent in the literature than “technology impact assessment”, as [35] notes, if ‘consequences’ and ‘impacts’ are treated as synonyms, Technology Assessment (TA) and Technological Impact Assessment (TIA) are equivalent. In this paper, some sources appear to have assumed a common concept, without comment on the centrality—as we see it—of impacts of technology on society. As [36] notes, “No consensual, unambiguous and selective definition of TA has yet been provided”.
The lack of a single definition stems from the fact that TA has many approaches intended to achieve different objectives while focusing on the concerns of different groups of stakeholders. There have been attempts to define TA by highlighting the wide range of activities categorized under the TA umbrella. For example, the TAMI (Technology Assessment Methods and Impact) project, involves several European Technology Assessment (TA) institutions, aimed to understand and improve the impact of TA on policy and society, addressing the definition of TA. Reference [37] defines TA as a “scientific, interactive and communicative process which aims to contribute to the formation of public and political opinion on societal aspects of science and technology”. Reference [38] offers a definition of TA as “a form of policy research that examines short- and long-term consequences (for example, societal, economic, ethical, legal) of the application of technology… to provide policy makers with information on policy alternatives.”
From these definitions, it is evident that even though TA may not reference impact in its label, it is usually not just about assessing the technology, a process largely dependent on technologists, but also about assessing its societal impact, which requires a stakeholder-focused participative approach and processes heavily reliant on social scientists. Even in the early days of TA in the 1970s, the emphasis was rarely exclusively on the narrow technology impacts, a fact that can be attested by reference to the list of OTA reports in 1974, 1975 and 1976 and hearings of the OTA Board on the non-governmental practices of TA in the US [39]. However, one of the main changes has been a growing emphasis on a more participatory approach and the transparency needed to achieve that.
From an ethical point of view, there has been a growing realization that technology is not neutral and is embedded with normative values that can significantly impact society. The ethical questions that arise from adopting technologies necessitate confronting the trade-offs affecting various stakeholders [40]. A technocratic approach with biases ingrained while building the technology may not always be the best suited for the task at hand. A more participatory, stakeholder-focused approach is also essential.
The process of TIA can be, at the outset, a highly politicized exercise engaging scientific or technical controversies, competitive business interests, and international relations. The breadth of the challenges in TIA, especially on the ethical front, can be seen in the identification of a ‘legitimation trap’ in all TIA [41], giving rise to ethical technology assessments [2], [42]. This is the idea that if a TIA has been conducted, that should be the end of any debate about the consequences of deploying the technology. The assumption is that TIA simply means asking the right specialists the right questions and then providing them with the time and resources to research the answers, allowing for the estimation of technological impacts. This, of course, ignores the fundamental premise that all technologies have a lifecycle and physical lifetime, and context matters.
TIAs can take on a political and social life of their own [74], [75]. The assessments have the capacity to affect the interests, rights and obligations of individuals, communities, businesses, governments, political parties and international entities [35]. TIA can be applied to a single technology (e.g., driverless cars) or a group of technologies (e.g., MRNA vaccines). The process is commonly applied at the level of government regulation within countries, addressing the safety or efficacy of a technology, where the goal is to regulate the safety performance qualities of products, according to national standards. In many cases, TIA is conducted as a precursor to the formation of national standards. But TIA can also be applied at many other levels of social organization across diverse sectors. For example, TIA has been used in the context of human and planetary security, as in the case of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations body for assessing the impacts of the continuing use of hydrocarbon fuels. Table I provides a list of representative examples of publicly available TIA reports by sector and level (i.e., national, international).
TABLE I. Examples of TIA by Sector and Level
Just as TIAs can be undertaken on many levels, TIA is also a process that can be undertaken for various purposes. We favor an approach to TIA that takes as its departure point a policy problem, such as threats to peace and stability from quantum sensing; rather than a technology-centric pathway, such as comparing quantum sensing technologies in the US and China. This means that our approach to TIA includes holistic analysis of systemic risks (e.g., the stability of cyberspace or supply chain disruptions) and, importantly, opportunity and equity considerations [35], [43]. Often, there can be significant crossovers and perceived trade-offs between the purposes of a TIA as a product, and TIA as a process. We can identify several important dimensions that have featured in TIA work related to peace and stability or national security, broadly defined, in the past decade.
A. Geopolitical Considerations
Narratives around technology sovereignty, supply chain security and technostrategic autonomy have become more prominent. Policy efforts are focused on removing bottlenecks, outpacing rivals, or even denying access to crucial building blocks for the technology. For instance, the recently announced AI Diffusion Framework [44] and America First Investment Policy [45] are examples of some such initiatives that aim to sustain and enhance the global AI dominance of the US.
Reference [46] argues that post 9/11, the scope of national security has continuously expanded to include everything from climate change to artificial intelligence to critical minerals. With this expanding scope, Drezner [46] points out that political and market incentives exist to label something as having national security implications, and bureaucratic incentives work against downgrading it. When everything is considered strategic, nothing can be prioritized. A more discretionary approach to what is strategic or critical may be required. This research paper attempts to articulate the approaches towards critical emerging technologies and peace and stability in Australian and Indian policy contexts. But these definitions have a very broad ambit, and further refinement is required.
B. Technology Maturity
Technological progress typically follows an S-curve, moving through the stages of scientific discovery, invention, commercialization, adoption and commoditization. During the early stages of discovery and invention, an understanding of the opportunities and risks of the technology is still evolving. As technology becomes commercialized and adoption increases, the understanding of its impact improves; however, the scale of that impact is also greater. NASA’s technology readiness levels [47] are a type of measurement system used to assess the maturity level of a particular technology. While the system was developed for the assessment of space technologies, the classification is applicable and useful for discussing technology development stages and helps guide decision-making in other technologies as well.
However, when it comes to technologies that have diffused across various segments of society, the TIA should not be limited to a linear dimension of technology maturity but should also include additional dimensions of technology diffusion and temporal evolution of its impact. The impact assessment of a technology could be different when its usage is higher than when it is lower. Similarly, as technologies become more embedded within societal structures and practices, their consequences often unfold gradually. Therefore, effective TIA must be longitudinal, even after the technology has reached maturity. This approach enables a more nuanced understanding of both immediate and latent effects, ensuring that assessments remain responsive to the shifting relationship between technology and society.
For instance, the widespread adoption of semiconductors has led to the emergence of implications that were not evident in earlier stages, even amongst trailing-edge chips. This illustrates that the scale and context of usage can generate new and unforeseen consequences [76]. Similarly, the societal impact of social media usage among children only became apparent over time, as prolonged exposure revealed behavioral, psychological, and developmental effects [48]. These examples underscore the importance of adopting a longitudinal perspective in Technology Impact Assessment, recognizing that certain impacts may surface only after extended periods of interaction with the technology [77].
C. Comparison With Existing Technologies
When a technology is being assessed, it is helpful to compare its impact to its selection environment, i.e., alternatives or what it replaces. This includes practical considerations such as cost-effectiveness, increase in capabilities, long-term potential and environmental impact. However, the subtler effects of the impact on norms and behavior are equally important, as new technologies could have a disruptive impact on them. As Neil Postman [49] posited in his book Technopoly, “Technology is not just additive; it is ecological”, it can fundamentally alter the environment and everything in it. For instance, social media has changed not only how we connect with each other but also introduced challenges like mental health issues, political polarization, misinformation, cybercrimes, a digital divide, privacy concerns and altered societal norms and behaviors.
D. Social and Environmental Impact
The adoption of new technologies may have significant effects on society and the environment. Its adoption might lead to winners and losers, with some groups benefiting from increased productivity and opportunities, whereas others might face reduced opportunities or job displacement. It might also exacerbate inequalities along existing fault lines, such as socio-economic, gender, or digital divides.
Beyond economic impacts, technologies also influence social, behavioral or cultural norms in ways that are not always obvious. This is clearly demonstrated by social media’s impact on society and politics. Similarly, the environmental impact is equally significant. Technology adoption might require raw materials, energy, water and other resources and might generate pollution during its lifecycle. The ecological footprint might disrupt ecosystems and threaten biodiversity. Understanding both the negative and positive impacts of technology is essential for responsible adoption.
VI. Operationalizing Technology Impact Assessment
The discussion in section V identified key dimensions along which any Technology Impact Assessment (TIA) can vary: its scope, its level, its purpose, the kinds of impacts it captures, who is involved, and the ethical and political character of the process itself. The questions below translate each dimension into a practical prompt that a TIA practitioner, commissioning body, or oversight committee can use at the design stage of an assessment, and revisit throughout its conduct.
1. Scope: Technology class vs specific application. Grounded in the distinction between assessing a broad technology (e.g. AI) and a specific application (e.g. facial recognition).
• Are we assessing a broad technology class, a sub-field, or a single application?
• If broad, have we identified which sub-fields or applications carry materially different risks, such that a single assessment risks masking important variation?
• Is the level of granularity chosen appropriate to the decision the TIA is meant to inform?
2. Level: Where does this TIA sit institutionally and geographically? Grounded in the point that TIA operates at many levels, including national regulatory standard-setting, precursor to standards, or international/planetary levels (e.g. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)-style assessment).
• Is this TIA intended to inform a domestic regulatory or standards process, a national security decision, or an international/multilateral one?
• Does the chosen institutional home (parliament, executive agency, statutory authority, academy) match the level and stakes of the decision?
• If the issue crosses levels (e.g. a domestic technology with international peace and stability implications), has that cross-level character been made explicit in the terms of reference?
3. Purpose: Problem first or technology first? Grounded in the paper’s preference for TIA that starts from a policy problem rather than a technology in isolation.
• Does this TIA start from a specific policy problem (e.g. “does quantum sensing threaten strategic stability?”) or from a technology in the abstract (e.g. “assess quantum sensing”)?
• If technology first, can the assessment be reframed or supplemented to address systemic risks, opportunities, and equity considerations rather than simply cataloguing technical capability?
• Have we distinguished between a TIA intended to shape national investment/subsidy priorities and one intended to assess strategic or deterrence related impacts? These call for different designs.
4. Breadth of impact: Beyond technical performance. Grounded in the founding premise of TIA (from the 1972 US Technology Assessment Act onward) that social, political, legal, and economic effects must be assessed alongside technical performance.
• Beyond technical performance and cost-benefit analysis, has the assessment explicitly addressed social, political, legal, and economic consequences?
• Have second order or diffusion effects been considered (i.e., how impacts might change as adoption scales or the technology matures), not just first order technical risk?
• Does the “critical technology” framing conflate economic or industrial policy aims with peace and stability objectives? If so, has this conflation been adequately disentangled?
5. Process character: Participatory vs expert driven. Grounded in the shift from purely scientific/expert driven TA toward participatory, multi-stakeholder approaches [78].
• Who has been consulted: government, industry, academia, civil society? And is that mix proportionate to who will be affected by the technology?
• Is the process expert driven only, or does it include genuine mechanisms (submissions, hearings, deliberation) for non-specialist and affected community input?
• Where expert and community views diverge, has the assessment surfaced that divergence rather than resolving it silently in favor of one side?
6. Ethical framing: Whose values are embedded? Grounded in the recognition that technology is not neutral and carries embedded normative values, and the case for explicit “ethical TA” [2].
• Has an explicit ethical framework been identified and applied, rather than leaving value judgements implicit in technical framing?
• Have competing stakeholder trade-offs been named explicitly, rather than assumed away by a purely technocratic approach?
• Whose interests, rights, or vulnerabilities are most exposed by this technology, and does the assessment give them a clear voice?
7. Political character: Who is affected, and how? Grounded in the observation that TIA processes take on a political and social life of their own and affect the interests, rights, and obligations of many different actors.
• Which individuals, communities, businesses, governments, or international entities have a material stake in the outcome of this assessment?
• Has the assessment been transparent about its own political context and constraints (e.g. alliance commitments, classification requirements, commercial sensitivities)?
• Could the findings of this TIA be used to legitimize a predetermined outcome, and if so, what safeguards are in place against that risk?
8. Guarding against the “legitimation trap”. Grounded in [41] warning that conducting a TIA can wrongly be treated as closing off further debate about a technology’s consequences.
• Is this TIA understood as a single point-in-time exercise, or as part of an ongoing, longitudinal process that will be revisited as the technology matures or diffuses further?
• Has a mechanism been built in for reassessment as usage scales, context changes, or new evidence emerges?
• Could stakeholders reasonably interpret the existence of this TIA as foreclosing further scrutiny? If so, has that risk been addressed explicitly in how findings are communicated?
It is important to emphasize that these eight dimensions and sub-questions are not a scoring rubric but a design and reflection tool (see TIA canvas in Supplementary Materials Appendix 1). A practitioner can work through them before commissioning a TIA to sharpen its terms of reference and return to them mid-process as a check that the assessment has not drifted from its intended scope, purpose, or ethical footing (see TIA canvas worked example on AI / facial recognition in Supplementary Materials Appendix 2).
VII. TIA for Peace and Stability
In general terms, the practice of TIA for peace and stability has emerged in a large variety of types or formats, with varying degrees of secrecy or transparency, and at various stages in the development and maturation of a target technology, for various durations, including a single stakeholder or several. Moreover, there are many distinctions between TIA undertaken with respect to concepts of stability, as in the stability of cyberspace or stability of a technological balance of power, and concepts of peace, that is the dictates of deterrence or a geostrategic balance of technological power.
One of the most notable examples of TIA for peace and stability has been the US National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence [1], which over several years addressed issues of deterrence and warfighting, alongside peacetime technological political competition with great power rivals, and foundational US technological stealth. Set up in 2018 by the US Congress, it was co-chaired by Eric Schmidt (former CEO of Alphabet) and Robert Work (former Deputy Secretary of Defense) and included 15 Congressional appointees, representing technical specialists, business executives, academic leaders, and international security professionals.
The commission championed transparency in its operations, holding five public plenary sessions over 15 hours of deliberations that were streamed live online and archived on the NSCAI website. The commission responded to over two dozen Freedom of Information Act requests and released more than 2,500 pages of material. Additionally, it posted over 700 pages of draft materials for public review and comment. With a view to building consensus on recommendations, the Commission engaged with a wide range of stakeholders, including civil society, private sector, government groups, ethicists, technologists, national security strategists, warriors, diplomats, academics, and entrepreneurs.
Of note, a critique of the Commission published one month after the release of the Final Report identified several shortcomings. The author observed the dominance of the military superiority ambitions of the US, the fact that it is in an “inescapable arms race with China”, and that autonomous weapon systems developed “in the interests of the United States” are inevitable [50]. The author observed that “[t]here is no space devoted to considering alternatives to the expansion of a national security strategy based on US military and technological dominance—for example, through greater investment in humanitarian aid and international diplomacy”. She called on Congress and the US President’s Office of Science and Technology Policy to critically review the Commission’s recommendations and subject them to debate “in a forum that opens the discussion to a broader range of expertise and visions for greater security”.
In the same year the report was published, the chair of the Commission, Eric Schmidt, set up a new bipartisan, non-profit organization to continue the Commission’s work, the Special Competitive Studies Project (SCSP). The focus was to expand beyond national security and support the US in winning the ‘techno-economic competition’ [51]. This is where the notion of dual-use technologies is highly relevant to any TIA-related discussions.
The broad framings we have seen from Australia and India on critical technologies do not grant a clear direction as to methodologies for conducting TIA of particular individual technologies or of their strategic impacts operating in combination with other factors. Key statements involving Australia and India on critical technologies, such as the bilateral statement from MEA [5] and the Quad statement from the White House [52], do not provide any guidance on the sort of TIA that might be used for capabilities affecting peace and stability. The bilateral statement appears to consider security interests that are confined to a “stable and secure cyberspace”. The White House [52] refers in broad terms to “fostering an open, accessible and secure technology ecosystem, based on mutual trust and confidence”. This approach emphasizes transparency and trust as the main criteria for TIA with respect to critical technologies, rather than focusing on definitions of peace and stability.
Neither Australia nor India has the resources to undertake such an assessment for every one of the technologies they have identified as critical technologies. This is an even more important consideration when we consider the numerous and diverse subfields of new areas, such as quantum sensing [33]. Moreover, some TIAs typically have more limited purposes than others. Some are intended to shape national defense industry priorities or choices about national subsidies, such as choosing between high funding levels for quantum sensing or artificial intelligence. Other TIAs have more expansive purposes that include assessments of the impact of interstate deterrence on a set of intelligence-related technologies (space ISR, command and control, combat analysis) that affect decision advantage in wartime or crisis. This latter case would involve the ecosystem impacts of diverse technologies as applied in military posture and readiness levels and not simply assumed advantages of one country in a number of unintegrated and separate technologies. Converging technologies at every level—systems, networks, services, applications, and data play a significant role in determining technology impact assessment in a holistic manner, not piecemeal.
At the outset of the project, the most credible approaches to TIA for a candidate technology affecting peace and stability are: (1) those that are more comprehensive, assessing multi-sector inputs, outputs and outcomes; and (2) those that are more granular assessing sub-fields and applied technologies rather than the basic science of broad categories, such as quantum sensing or artificial intelligence.
VIII. Australia and India on Nuclear Safety
A. Differing Approaches to Nuclear Technologies
For both Australia and India, their cooperative security policies for peace and stability have accorded nuclear issues an extremely high priority according to distinct national interests. Both have given high priority to technologies that can either prevent nuclear accidents or mitigate their impact. The two countries have addressed these quite differently and we have chosen two distinct case studies that are linked by those policy challenges. For Australia, we have chosen the case of technology assessment for safety regimes and detection technologies associated with nuclear powered warships and submarines. For India, since it operates civil nuclear reactors, with 24 in operation and 18 more under construction or being planned, we have chosen the case of cyber security in nuclear plants.
Nuclear technologies have been a topic of cooperative diplomacy in support of peace and stability for at least six decades, as manifested in the creation of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 1957 and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1967 [53]. Australia and India have quite different positions on most of these regimes. For example, a legally binding international treaty on radioactive waste safety, the Joint Convention on the Safety of Spent Fuel Management and on the Safety of Radioactive Waste Management, entered into force on 18 June 2001, with Australia as a party and India not [54]. On the other hand, India has signed a significant number of safeguards agreements with nuclear technology and fuel suppliers, such as the EU India treaty of 2020 [55].
A strong policy foundation for including nuclear safety as a case study in this paper can be found in the nuclear cooperation agreement signed by the two countries in 2014. It is premised on mutual “commitments to achieve the highest standards of radiation and nuclear safety based on a scientific approach, operating experience and best practices, as well as to ensure that the use of radiation and atomic energy in all its applications is safe for the health of radiation workers, members of the public and the environment” [56, p. 2]. In Article II of the agreement, there is specific mention of cooperation in “Technological Advancements”. The text of the agreement recalls the several multilateral treaties on nuclear safety to which both countries are party: the Convention on Nuclear Safety, signed in 1994; the Convention on Assistance in the Case of a Nuclear Accident or Radiological Emergency, signed in 1986; and the Convention on Early Notification of a Nuclear Accident, also signed in 1986.
While nuclear technologies themselves do not figure in the typical lists of critical technologies issued by either Australia or India, the two governments depend on emerging and critical technologies in relation to management and security of nuclear materials. This is a well-researched topic and covers fields like “advanced surveillance and monitoring systems, cybersecurity and digital protection, nondestructive evaluation techniques, physical security enhancements, [and] nuclear material… forensics” [57]. The IAEA International Conference on Nuclear Security (ICONS) in 2024 dedicated a plenary session to the impact of emerging technologies. The head of the Australian Government’s Safeguards office was a lead presenter in that session and later identified emerging technologies, such as “artificial intelligence, autonomous systems and quantum technologies”, as important to nuclear security and relevant international regimes [58, p. 15].
B. Australia: Safety Regimes and Detection Technologies Associated With Nuclear-Powered Warships and Submarines
Statements by the Australian Government on critical technologies policy first established in 2020 do not make any references to nuclear power or the prevention of nuclear accidents involving nuclear-powered ship visits. On the other hand, the government has always regarded these issues as the highest policy priority, essential or crucial. The 2024 statement from the head of ASNO on critical technologies mentioned above makes an explicit connection between critical emerging technologies and nuclear safety [58].
Between 1985 and 2025, Australia has been engaged in public-facing assessments of nuclear-related technology impacting its own defense policies, as well as the stability of global regimes and regional arrangements. The defining aspect of these assessments was the potential impact on the Australia/US military alliance that has been in place since 1955 under the ANZUS (Australia, New Zealand and United States Security) Treaty. The public-facing assessments, conducted mostly by the national parliament, were complemented by many internal government analyses which have rarely been shared in any detail with the parliament or the public.
The nuclear issues that have forced the pace on national sentiment have been recurring though with less intensity as time wore on: export of uranium; possible development of nuclear power stations in Australia; visits by nuclear-powered warships; creation of the South Pacific Nuclear Weapons Free Zone under the Treaty of Rarotonga (signed in 1985), latest signatory 5 March 2025; and safety aspects of the acquisition by Australia of nuclear-powered submarines under the 2021 AUKUS (Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States) agreement.
This short case study does not address all these reference points but concentrates on community safety aspects of the presence in Australia of nuclear-powered and nuclear armed warships in the mid-1980s and review after 2021 of the community safety aspects of nuclear fuels used in submarines operated by Australia, the US or the UK.
The report from the Australian parliament on contingency planning for safety aspects of nuclear-powered or nuclear-armed warships to Australia [59] has been the most compelling example of stakeholder consultation in Australia for TIA in support of peace and stability. The inquiry over three years by the Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defense and Trade, received 102 submissions from the community, specialists and government. The investigation was not rushed; it undertook extensive stakeholder and specialist consultations, and it was comprehensive, with the report extending to more than 600 pages.
The stated aim of the inquiry when it began in 1986 was to develop standard procedures to apply throughout Australia for safety management during visits of these warships. The Committee proceeded based on a mission to educate the Australian public, since it believed that there was a “widespread lack of accurate information in the Australian community on the subject matter of the inquiry” [59, p. 7]. The real agenda was of much higher strategic significance as discussed below.
Another reason for including this as a case study is that the Committee recommended a continuing process of TIA in support of ongoing emergency planning: “the Commonwealth Government produced a document containing all the necessary scientific background on naval nuclear reactors; the nature of the potential hazards resulting from accidents involving the reactors which the plans have to address; and other background information which is common to all the plans. The document should be suitable for incorporation in, or attachment to, individual port safety plans” [59, p. xiii].
One purpose of the inquiry, from the point of view of the major political parties, was to defuse negative public attitudes in Australia to the nuclear aspects of the Australia-US military alliance. Another purpose, and one that fits the peace and stability focus of this paper very well, was to shore up positive attitudes in the South Pacific region toward the continuation of visits by nuclear-powered warships (NPW) or ships carrying nuclear weapons, or transits of such ships through the maritime areas of the region.
The inquiry established political acceptance of a continuing need for review of nuclear safety technologies, both in support of a stable international order and to address persistent community concerns, around visits by such warships. The “Defense Operations Manual (OPSMAN 1) Visits to Australia by Nuclear-Powered Warships” is still in force though with revisions, having codified the Senate report’s recommendations. These included a 42-day advance notice for NPW visits to allow safety preparations and to regularize mandatory interventions by state-led port safety organizations during the visits. The Environmental Radiation Monitoring Program recommended by the report became mandatory. This involved pre-visit baseline measurements of natural radiation; real-time gamma radiation detection activity during visits; and post-visit seawater and sediment sampling to detect releases. The continuing relevance of this TIA is demonstrated by the fact that in 2023, the Australian Department of Defense re-issued its latest version of the official policy on managing such visits: “Defense Operations Manual (OPSMAN 1)” [60]. The update reflects assessments of improvements in technology for radiation detection.
The main limitation of the inquiry was budgetary. Senate committees had not previously undertaken an inquiry of such magnitude. Each committee only had a staff of around three to five, usually none specialized in the work of most inquiries. Expenses for the work usually only covered a small number of committee hearings, commonly held in selected state capitals and the national capital, and occasional support to one or two specialist consultants with appropriate expertise. To augment the limited expertise on nuclear matters within the small staff, the Committee appointed two technical specialists to assist it: the Head of the Nuclear Plant Safety Unit in the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization (ANSTO), and a naval officer. Both served as channels for the flow of specialist information from their agencies to the Committee.
Their expertise was supplemented by the specialist knowledge available to the Committee through research by the very small Secretariat of 2-3 non-specialist people and by the specialist opinion contained in several of the submissions to the Committee. The quality of the final report was due in no small part to the meticulousness of the small committee staff and the dedication of the small number of Senators serving on the committee in 1988 through to 1989. None of them were specialists in the field. Nevertheless, as mentioned above, the report has shaped Australia’s safety frameworks for visits by these warships to the present day, including through continuous reassessment. Its recommendations led to rigorous risk assessment protocols, enhanced monitoring systems, and institutionalized interagency coordination. There have been several direct and enduring influences of the report. For example, the report probably contributed to the creation in 1999 of the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA), which became the regulatory authority of nuclear technologies, leaving ANSTO to concentrate on missions related to management of the nuclear sector.
The political context of the inquiry helps understand the forces driving it and the need for it to include fine technical detail, which has not been common in parliamentary committee reports. After national elections in 1987, the Australian Senate had two members of the Nuclear Disarmament Party, which was a focal point for opposition to visits by these nuclear related warships. The Committee was under pressure to deliver a report that would neutralize such opposition. Over several years prior, the Australian government had taken a leading role in developing the Treaty of Rarotonga for a Nuclear-Free Zone in the South Pacific, signed in 1985, to try to defuse escalating opposition at home and in the regions to the ship visits. In 1984, Australia’s only formal multilateral military alliance, ANZUS, began to unravel after New Zealand banned nuclear-powered and nuclear-armed warship visits, leading to the suspension by the US of its security guarantee to New Zealand. In 1985, French secret service agents bombed and sank the Greenpeace boat, Rainbow Warrior, in Auckland harbor prior to its planned departure for a protest at the French nuclear weapons testing site at Mururoa atoll in the French territory of Polynesia.
The assessment of nuclear safety became the subject of further parliamentary inquiry several times after 1989 in the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties (JSCT) for the review of several safeguards agreements and other treaties touching on nuclear safety. The inquiries involved some public consultation [61]. JSCT did review the 2014 Australia India nuclear cooperation agreement [62].
The most notable set of subsequent deliberations given the impact of the 1989 Senate committee report came in 2024, also in the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties looking at Australia/US nuclear powered submarines [63]. The time frame for the inquiry was truncated. On 12 August 2024, the Committee invited submissions to be made no later than 2 September 2024. This was an extremely short time frame for review, considering the gravity of the issues being addressed. It received 260 submissions and delivered its report in November.
The 2024 report [63, p. 5] noted the grave sensitivity of some aspects of its inquiry, especially naval nuclear propulsion information and technology, and “therefore the maintenance of mutually determined information security policies”. On the other hand, the Committee called for the government’s approach to nuclear waste to be as transparent and consultative as possible [63, p. 27].
While supporting the conclusion of the AUKUS Treaty, the Committee recommended that the government elevate the priority attached to “community and worker consultation, engagement and public transparency” as it developed plans for managing, transporting and storing nuclear waste from the submarines [63, p. ix]. It also recommended that the government make public “advice published by the Australian Naval Nuclear Power Safety Regulator… within a timely fashion to enhance transparency” [63, p. ix].
In releasing this report, the Committee Chair, Lisa Chesters MP, emphasized the need for continuous public information by the government and continuing parliamentary scrutiny [64]. Chesters said the aim would be “to include expanding and enhancing community education activities to inform the community on how AUKUS will benefit Australia and help to dispel a number of emerging AUKUS myths”.
There is a stark difference between the way in which the Treaties Committee conducts its work, which is normally just a few months in each case, and the ways in which a Standing Committee can operate, usually taking more than a year in more complex cases, as in the 1989 report on visits by nuclear powered warships.
The report also made several references to the international legal commitments of Australia in this field, thereby underscoring the continuing high relevance of the peace and stability diplomacy to management of nuclear materials inside Australia.
Thus, we can conclude that the Senate report of 1989 on safety of nuclear power warships is probably the closest Australia has come to an advanced level of TIA on a critical technology affecting peace and stability. Based on the 2024 report, we can also conclude that the parliamentary committees remain an important reference point for Australian TIA especially regarding stakeholder consultation and foundational ethical approaches.
C. India: Cyber Security in Nuclear Plants
India’s cooperative diplomacy in the nuclear sphere is multidimensional. For this paper we look at TIA for the cyber security of Indian nuclear facilities as a topical case study. An Indian think tank has assessed cyber technologies, and the emerging innovations in them as “having the highest probability of threat to nuclear security”, just ahead of “insider threats, which can arise from cybersecurity breaches” [65, p. 25]. The report specifically mentioned innovations outside cybersecurity: “radiation detection, and emergency response systems offer capabilities to pre-empt, detect, and mitigate potential risks” [65, p. 49]. Numerous Indian sources, including the government and policy researchers, have highlighted the central role of diplomacy in mitigating the cyber risks to nuclear stability [66].
India participated in the Nuclear Safety Summit in 2014 at the Hague, at which a policy paper was presented on the importance of enhanced cyber security at nuclear power plants, including through a peer review process led by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) [33]. In 2015, India volunteered for an IAEA review of safety of its civil power generators [67]. There is a public report of the assessment, but it does not mention cyber security, though the peer review process at that time certainly had the option of including cyber security assessment. A report from an Indian think tank around that time had paid considerable attention to cyber threats in the nuclear sector [68]. It reported such threats were being “addressed by the Computer Information and Security Advisory Group (CISAG)” [68, p. 50]. There is almost no information in the public domain about cyber security in India’s civil nuclear sector at that time.
The IAEA does not appear to have conducted a peer review or inspection of cybersecurity at Indian nuclear plants. India’s several IAEA peer reviews have focused on physical and operational safety, not cyber threats.
After a North Korean cyber attack on a civil nuclear facility in 2019, the Indian government undertook several reassessments of the cybersecurity of its nuclear systems [69]. We can presume that this would have included the potential of new hacking technologies, including AI-based tools. Measures assessed by the Indian government included “authorization, authentication, and access control techniques, stringent configuration management, and surveillance”, as well as “improving internet and administrative intranet connectivity, restricting the use of portable devices, and limiting access to specific websites and IP addresses”. The agency leading the assessments was the Computer & Information Security Advisory Group (CISAG)–DAE, supported by the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In).
According to the DAE, the cyber security infrastructure in India’s nuclear facilities follows design principles and guidelines set up by the Task force for Instrumentation and Control Security (TAFICS), the CISAG, and CERT-In [70]. These agencies rely ultimately on standards and guidelines that are derived in large part from IAEA standards. The government has undertaken a range of other measures. For example, in 2021, the Ministry of Power issued the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) Guidelines that mandated cyber security plans (CSP) for all power-generating facilities, including nuclear plants [71]. But it has not released a single in-depth report assessing the impacts of cyber technologies on nuclear safety. Its output is mainly through sectoral guidelines, such as the 2021 CEA guidelines, and internal audits. CISAG-DAE conducts audits, but findings remain classified. There have been authoritative reports from elsewhere [72], [73], but few would meet the standards of wide public consultation envisaged in a typical TIA. CEA further issued draft regulations for cyber security in the power sector in 2024 [71] soliciting public feedback. But there is no information available on the Authority’s conducting wide-ranging stakeholder consultations since that time.
There would appear to be considerable room for India to undertake more public-facing TIA for the effects of critical and emerging technologies on nuclear safety given the grave consequences of a major nuclear accident for community safety, national security and India’s peace and stability diplomacy.
IX. Australia and India: A Comparative Overview
In this section we compare Australia and India in its approach to Technology Impact Assessment to provide a feel for areas of potential dialogue toward further collaboration.
A. Similarities Between TIA’s in Australia and India
• Low priority relative to other security pillars. In both countries, TIA for peace and stability receives less attention and funding than TIA tied to national defense or domestic security, it is engaged only when it overlaps with those higher priority pillars.
• Consultative TIA exists but does not extend to this domain. Both countries have mature, multi-stakeholder TIA traditions in sectors like health and the environment, but this capability is rarely carried over into peace and stability assessments of critical technology.
• Definitional scope creep. Both governments’ “critical technology” framings extend well beyond core peace and stability meaning into economic, social, and industrial policy, visible in the 2020 bilateral agreement’s eight point objective list, which mixes security concerns with trade promotion and digital economy goals.
• Nuclear technology as a top tier priority. Both countries treat nuclear-related technology assessment as high stakes, though through different vehicles (Australia: warship visits and AUKUS submarine safety; India: civil nuclear plant cybersecurity).
• Restriction of Chinese 5G vendors on security grounds. Both banned or restricted Huawei from telecom infrastructure based on intelligence agency risk assessments, with the underlying technical reasoning kept largely confidential in both cases.
• Engagement on LAWS as the most internationally visible TIA activity. Both participate actively in UN deliberations on lethal autonomous weapons systems, arguably the most consultative and internationally exposed peace and stability TIA either country undertakes.
• Heavy reliance on academic institutions for technical expertise. Universities and academies (ACOLA in Australia; IITs/IISc in India) function as de facto technical advisors to government in the absence of dedicated in-house TIA capacity.
B. Differences Between TIA’s in Australia and India
• Institutional locus. Australia’s peace and stability TIA is led mainly by parliamentary committees (Senate inquiries, Joint Standing Committee on Treaties), producing public, adversarial reports; India’s is led by executive and security agencies (NSC, DAE, MeitY) with far less parliamentary or public involvement.
• Default transparency posture. Australia defaults toward public disclosure where possible (e.g., the 1989 nuclear warships inquiry, the AUKUS treaty review); India defaults toward confidentiality, such as CISAG-DAE’s nuclear cybersecurity audits remain classified with no public equivalent.
• Formality of critical technology classification. Australia has a legislated, government-endorsed technology list (DISR) with legal force in migration law; India has no mandated list, and its critical-technology priorities must be inferred from bilateral partnerships like iCET.
• Historical trajectory. Australia’s TIA tradition traces to 1970s-80s parliamentary practice tied to alliance politics (ANZUS, nuclear ship visits); India’s emerged later, shaped by Cold War era export controls, non-alignment, and a historically cautious approach to technology adoption.
• Coordinating body model. Australia tried a dedicated coordination office (Critical Technologies Policy Coordination Office - CTPCO) that lost its whole of government mandate once folded into DISR; India instead relies on a dense, overlapping web of standing bodies (NSC, PSA/PM-STIAC, NITI Aayog, ETG/TAG) without one dedicated peace and stability office.
• Character of AI governance. Australia’s approach is oversight-driven, led by parliamentary inquiry; India’s is promotional and innovation-enabling, led by NITI Aayog and the IndiaAI Mission, with documented internal tension between light touch (MeitY) and interventionist (EAC-PM) positions.
• Opposite drone-regulation trajectories. Australia moved from early liberal regulation (2002) toward incremental tightening; India moved from an outright ban (2014) toward liberalization (2018 onward) reflecting different starting risk postures (aviation safety/privacy vs. border security).
• Scale versus depth of public scrutiny. Australian inquiries are comprehensive but rare and resource constrained; India’s assessments are more continuous but individually less exposed to independent or public evaluation.
C. Recommendation: A Hybrid Mechanism
The tension between transparency and secrecy is not incidental to TIA for peace and stability; it is structural. Unlike TIA in domestic sectors such as health or the environment, where public consultation is normally treated as an unqualified good, TIA touching on deterrence, intelligence capability, or military technology routinely involves information whose disclosure could itself create the very risk the assessment is meant to manage. Two examples were presented briefly in Section VII of this paper. The National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI) process in the United States pursued transparency as a design principle: five plenary sessions streamed live, more than 2,500 pages of material released under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), and 700 pages of draft findings posted for public comment before the final report was issued. India’s Computer and Information Security Advisory Group in the Department of Atomic Energy (CISAG-DAE) assessments of nuclear facility cybersecurity sat at the other extreme: audits were conducted, but findings remain classified, and there is no equivalent public reporting to assess whether the process met any of the benchmarks proposed in this paper. Neither extreme is obviously wrong on its own terms; each reflects a different judgement about where the balance of harm lies between public accountability and operational security.
Between these poles, a hybrid mechanism is possible. Australia and India could likely better balance transparency against legitimate secrecy in future TIA for peace and stability by adopting: (1) tiered reporting, in which a classified annex is prepared for government decision makers alongside an unclassified public report; (2) cleared specialist intermediaries embedded within a committee or authority, so that classified input can still inform a fully public conclusion; (3) independent oversight bodies with standing security clearances, that can issue recurring public assurance reports without needing to relitigate classification on every technology; (4) pre-agreed information security protocols, that define in advance which categories of information will be publishable and which withheld, rather than leaving that judgement to be made ad hoc once an inquiry is underway; and (5) transparency of process even where content is classified, publishing the scope, methodology, stakeholder engagement, and high-level conclusions of a TIA even when technical findings cannot be released, so that the public can assess whether an assessment was conducted with appropriate rigor, even without access to its substance. None of these mechanisms eliminate the underlying tension, but each offers a way of preserving some public accountability without requiring the disclosure of information whose release would itself undermine peace and stability.
While Australia and India have strengthened bilateral cooperation on AI and critical technologies through 2026 PACTS agreements—establishing institutional structures, thematic pillars, and working groups, along with commitments to shared standards and joint R&D—a fully institutionalized, binding Technology Impact Assessment (TIA) mechanism specifically for national-security AI systems has not yet been created. This remains at the proposal stage rather than functioning as a formal, operational tool for joint assessment.
X. Conclusion
Australia and India have well-established capabilities and processes for technology impact assessment in sectors like health, energy and the environment. Both countries accept in principle the need for multi-stakeholder consultative approaches that have been fundamental to impact assessment in advanced liberal democracies for four to five decades. In the field of critical technologies affecting peace and stability, these assets are rarely applied in the two countries, with variable consistency depending on a range of choices about the priority of the subject and the resources available.
The paper situated peace and stability as one of three main pillars of national security policy where TIA are judged by both countries to be important: national defense policy, especially military capabilities and defense diplomacy; domestic security (e.g., counter terrorism and protection of civil rights); and peace and stability (i.e., the diplomacy of international security regimes, not closely involving the first two pillars). In both countries, the practices of TIA for peace and stability have a lower priority than TIA in the other two pillars. This may help explain why it proved difficult in this paper and the supporting investigations to identify stand out examples of TIA for critical technologies in the peace and stability pillar in either country.
Nevertheless, the policies of both Australia and India in critical technologies for the peace and stability pillar are relatively new and will need time to be further refined. Neither country has committed to a standing mechanism or set of processes for executing high quality TIA, or to greater clarity through a set of best practice standards in the field. This paper suggests that doing this would be beneficial, even as we advise against simply emulating the arrangements for TIA in other countries. At the same time, both Australia and India would probably benefit from the existence of a new center of gravity for TIA for the peace and stability pillar, separately from other aspects of national security—where secrecy requirements mitigate against public impact analysis. There would appear to be a small set of options for locating such a center of gravity with a degree of independence from government: the national parliament, a statutory authority, or the national academies.
Each of these three models carries distinct trade-offs. Parliamentary committees offer the strongest claim to public legitimacy and breadth of stakeholder consultation, since they can compel submissions, hold public hearings, and table findings openly—qualities exemplified by the 1989 Australian Senate inquiry into nuclear-powered warship visits, still regarded as the closest either country has come to an advanced TIA. But parliamentary inquiries are episodic rather than standing arrangements: committees are typically staffed by only a handful of non-specialist secretariat members, budgets are modest, and timeframes can be compressed by political circumstance, as seen in the truncated three-week submission window for the 2024 inquiry into AUKUS nuclear propulsion. Terms of reference can also be drawn narrowly enough to exclude national security considerations altogether, as occurred in the 2020 inquiry into 5G, which limits the utility of this model specifically for peace-and-stability questions.
A statutory authority, by contrast, can offer continuity, dedicated technical staff, and a whole-of-government mandate that a parliamentary committee cannot sustain between inquiries—Australia’s short-lived Critical Technologies Policy Coordination Office is one such example. Its history, however, illustrates the risk: once absorbed into a line department with a narrower industrial or economic remit, a statutory body can lose the cross-portfolio independence needed to weigh peace and stability considerations against competing departmental priorities, and its outputs are often less publicly accessible than parliamentary reports. National academies sit at a different point on this spectrum: bodies such as the Australian Council of Learned Academies can sustain multi-year, specialist-led horizon-scanning programs insulated from short-term political pressure, but they typically have no formal mechanism for translating findings into binding policy or legislative action, leaving impact dependent on voluntary uptake by government. No single model, therefore, secures independence, technical depth, and policy traction simultaneously, a consideration that should inform how Australia and India weigh their options for a peace and stability center of gravity.
The paper proposed benchmarks for TIA around three tiers: basic, intermediate and advanced, depending on the range of factors. We have seen few examples of TIA in Australia or India that might rise above the basic tier. There is a basic mismatch between the scale and scope of technologies regarded as critical by both countries, and the resources available for professionally assessing their impact on peace and stability. Consideration of low resource availability for TIA for peace and stability is sufficient by itself to dictate rigorous priority setting when it comes to the choice of a technology or technology class to be analyzed.
There is also a need to consider burden-sharing between national institutions on a proactive basis. While the process of democratic consultation in an advanced TIA creates an opportunity for that burden-sharing, with stakeholders offering their own detailed TIA, that is not happening in practice. Leading organizations that might be expected to offer their own TIA at an advanced level as part of a national effort do not always rise to the standard. Nonetheless, given the importance of critical technologies, the need for obtaining wider community support for new policy, and the dearth of fully comprehensive analyses, including for peace and stability, some priority for enhancement of the capacity in this area seems clear. In that process, if cross-national collaboration could be agreed, the pay-offs might be very much enhanced.
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Author Biographies
Greg Austin is a Director and co-founder of the Social Cyber Institute. He has held appointments with the International Relations Department, ANU; the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in its Singapore office; the Department of War Studies, King’s College London; the University of New South Wales, Canberra; and the former East West Institute in its Brussels office. He is currently an Adjunct Professor in the Australia China Relations Institute at the University of Technology Sydney.
Karthik Bappanad is a Technologist with a keen interest in public policy and previously a Consultant at InKlude Laboratories, Bengaluru, India. He is currently working as an independent consultant in cybersecurity, advising organisations on strategy and regulatory compliance. He was earlier heading CySecK, Karnataka state’s Centre of Excellence in Cyber Security, prior to which he was heading security engineering at ReBIT - the IT captive unit of Reserve Bank of India.
Adam P. Henry is a Ph.D. candidate with the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) University, where his research focuses on evaluating and mitigating cyber risk in enterprise generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) systems. He is currently a Senior Fellow with the Social Cyber Institute and a Partner with the Social Cyber Group. He is also a Casual Academic with the Professional School of Studies, University of New South Wales (UNSW) Canberra. He is a policy and program specialist in cyber security and AI education, skills and workforce development, governance, risk, and compliance. He has more than 20 years of experience spanning government, industry, higher education, cyber security, ICT governance, digital transformation, and large-scale technology programs. His work focuses on translating complex cyber security, AI, governance, and technology challenges into practical organisational policy, capability, education, and risk management outcomes.
Lisa Materano is the Chief Executive Officer of Blended Learning International, an Australian Registered Training Organisation (RTO), and a Director of both the Social Cyber Institute and the Social Cyber Group. She provides strategic leadership across executive education, organisational capability, and international partnerships, with a focus on cyber policy, artificial intelligence governance, and workforce development. She has played a key leadership role in the Australia–India Critical and Emerging Technology Project (AICCTP), contributing to the development of an open-access curriculum and supporting collaboration between academia, government, industry, and civil society. She works closely with leading researchers, policymakers, and education providers to strengthen capability in cyber security, AI governance, and technology policy.
Katina Michael (Senior Member, IEEE) is currently a Professor with the School of Strategy Innovation and Technology, The University of Sydney Business School, where she is the Program Director of the MBA in Technology and Digital Strategy. She is a transdisciplinary scholar who connects technical, policy, and public audiences, raising awareness of socio-technical challenges and how to address them through human-centered design. She is an advocate of systemic change through the adoption of new business models, such as public interest technology, that are not solely based on economics, but on principled innovation.
Bharath Reddy is currently an Associate Fellow with the High-Tech Geopolitics Program at the Takshashila Institution. His research interests are at the intersections of technology, geopolitics, and India’s national interests, focusing on AI governance, open-source technologies, and telecommunications. Before turning to policy, he spent 12 years as a Telecommunications Engineer Building Software for 4G LTE base stations. That background shapes his work, which aims to bridge the gap between policy and practice in areas such as AI governance, semiconductor supply chains, Open RAN, and digital infrastructure. His recent work has examined the geopolitics of the AI supply chain, US-China AI competition, generative AI and copyright, India’s pathway to AI diffusion, and collaboration on Technology Impact Assessment between Australia and India. He also co-manages and teaches webinars for Takshashila’s Graduate Certificate in Public Policy (Technology and Policy).
Brendan Walker-Munro is currently an Associate Professor (Law) with the Faculty of Business, Law & the Arts, Southern Cross University. His focus is on “research security”—the use of law and policy to protect university research from national security threats, such as espionage, foreign interference, hacking, and unauthorized technology transfer.
Glenn Withers received the Ph.D. degree from Harvard University. AO is currently an Emeritus Professor at the Australian National University and an Adjunct Professor at the University of New South Wales Canberra. He is a Researcher in science and technology economics, including as Director of the Social Cyber Institute. He also researches population, skills, education and arts, and also health including through Board membership of Phenomics Australia. He is known as a Government adviser including for the development of the Australian immigration points system. He is Co-Founder of the Crawford School of Public Policy, Universities Australia, and the Australia and New Zealand School of Government.
Citation: G. Austin et al., "Key Dimensions in Technology Impact Assessment for Peace and Stability: Australia and India," in IEEE Transactions on Technology and Society, doi: 10.1109/TTS.2026.3718558.