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A
dditive manufacturing
(AM) describes types of
advanced manufacturing that are used to create three-
dimensional structures out of plastics, metals, poly-
mers, and other materials that can be sprayed through
a nozzle or aggregated in a vat.1 Tese constructs are added layer by
layer in real time based on a digital design. Te simplicity and low
cost of AM machines, combined with the scope of their potential
creations, could profoundly alter global and local economies and
afect international security. Te following speculative narrative
describes some of the potential security implications of this emerg-
ing technology.
In August 2039, the U.S. cell of a radical group from
a South Asian megacity hatches a plan to force the
United States to pay attention to its plight. Te South
Asian country had once been a mecca for low-cost
manufacturing. Its rock-bottom labor costs and
favorable maritime location had attracted Western
and Chinese companies for decades. And while it
continues to produce the most inexpensive garments
and mass-produced items, it has seen unemployment
in manufacturing jobs rise to 55 percent as factories
that once assembled more-specialized goods have been
replaced by local AM printers in the markets to which
those goods were once exported. Meanwhile, rising
oceans threaten the 12million people trapped in the
megacity as the low-lying surrounding lands are fooded
much of the year. Te United States and Europe refuse
to admit the shiploads of emigrants attempting entry
each week. Desperate radical cell leaders based in
San Francisco decide to attack the U.S.Coast Guard
and Navy ships that are preventing their countrymen
from landing at the newly recommissioned and vastly
expanded immigration and refugee facilities. Tey use a
large printer and advanced design templates purchased
on the Dark Web to manufacture dozens of aerial and
underwater drones carrying improvised explosives.
Obtaining some of the required materials is a challenge,
but they have no shortage of technical expertise: Many
in the megacity are now engaged in AM of everything
from circuits and small electronics to custom
prosthetics and even human organs. Te frst gun was
printed back in 2013 (Walther, 2015; Greenberg, 2013);
by May 2017, researchers at the U.S. Army Armament
Research, Development, and Engineering Center had
successfully designed, printed, and fred a grenade
launcher (Hodgkins, 2017). After downloading freedesigns from the web, the terrorists begin printing a
multitude of swarming unmanned drones.
Such a bleak future scenario might not be likely in 2040, but
the vignette illustrates how the increasing access to and capabilities
of AM have the potential to dramatically disrupt the prevailing state
system and international order. Te possible transformation has been
compared with the jarring efects of the Industrial Revolution and
the emergence of economies of scale in the 18th and 19th centuries.2
Tese earlier changes in manufacturing ushered in a new economic
era and drove military industrialization, transforming warfare at
acatastrophic cost to humanity while simultaneously bringing about
incalculable benefts. Once mature, AM could play a role in reduc-
ing employment when coupled with artifcial intelligence (AI) and
automation, changing the balance of power between developed and
developing nations, and reshaping global trade. It will not only exac-
erbate many of today’s most pressing socioeconomic challenges but
also unleash new kinds of security threats.
Some of the security implications are not difcult to imagine. As
it becomes easier and cheaper to print weapons, the threat of kinetic
attacks (i.e., violence through lethal force) could grow signifcantly.3
Trough the internet, foreign terrorists and other violent extremists
will likely have ready access to printable designs of new and more-
dangerous weapons. AM will also make it easier for homegrown dis-
sidents and “lone wolves” to print weapons quickly in locations where
they previously would not have had access to them (e.g., schools,
government buildings, airports). Even these secure sites might be
vulnerable to insider threats if a would-be attacker can access an AM
printer and the internet.
Other security threats are more difuse and could be more
difcult to monitor or efectively counter. Consider, for example,
the potential relationship between AM and cyber. In 2017, small-
scale and nonstate cyberattacks were typically nonkinetic events
(e.g., hacking an online vendor’s sensitive customer information).
Te hacked information was then sold for a proft or used to com-
mit fraud. But with AM, the stakes of cyberwarfare could increase.
Hackers might not stop at just stealing personal or fnancial informa-
tion but go on to gain access to designs for sensitive technologies.
With access to a printer, a hacker might be able to reproduce home-
made jamming technology and disrupt surveillance, compounding
the threat of cybersabotage. Tis threat is especially severe if hack-
ers are able to introduce design faws into critical parts (such as an
airplane fuselage or an autonomous car) by infltrating a printer or
corrupting digital designs. As digital designs are increasingly embod-
ied in physical things, these attacks will begin to have real-world
consequences beyond the digital space and will increasingly blur the
lines between kinetic and nonkinetic threats.
Along with weapon proliferation and cyberwarfare, AM has
the potential to disrupt economies and the prevailing international
order. Like the jarring efects of the Industrial Revolution before
it, AM could upend traditional economies of scale while mak-
ing highly customizable and complex products widely available to
consumers. It also might allow nonstate actors to develop items that
previously required expertise and industrial capabilities exclusive to
more-advanced states. While it is still not clear how many and which
types of products will be additively manufactured in the future, the
proliferation of AM machines, ready access to raw materials, and the
free fow of digital plans—coupled with automation and AI—could
profoundly alter the global economy, international security, and the
organization of society (Campbell and Ivanova, 2013).By decentralizing manufacturing, individuals and frms might
choose to produce locally, weakening the tie between consumption
and globalization that currently connects disparate parts of the
globe through complex, multicountry supply chains.4 Digital
technologies, service-based industries, and intellectual property
(IP) resources could become increasingly important, displacing
traditional manufacturing and labor across an ever greater number of
industries.5 In particular, rapid prototyping, along with the creation
of highly specifc and technical par