2 - Military–Civil Fusion

Summary

The advantages of acquiring and exploiting advanced military technologies for increased military leverage is self-evident. At the same time, we must recognize that we live in an era when the notion of what constitutes a “militarily relevant technology” is becoming harder to identify and define. The 4IR – particularly artificial intelligence (AI), autonomous systems, “big data,” and the like – is largely embedded in the commercial high-tech sector; at the same time, the military potential of the 4IR is both vast and mostly self-evident. For all these reasons, therefore, militaries and governments around the world are increasingly focused on how and where advanced commercial technologies, innovations, and breakthroughs might create new capacities for military power, advantage, and leverage. This process of exploiting such civilian-based advanced technologies for military use is increasingly known as “military–civil fusion” (MCF). MCF is essentially about transferring advanced commercial technologies to military use through the joint civil–military development and application of cutting-edge technologies to military products.