This report examines emerging and disruptive technologies (EDTs) and their impact on Canadian national security. These technologies include: → artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML); → data, computing and the Internet of Things (IoT); → blockchain and distributed ledger technologies (DLTs); → robotics and autonomous systems; → quantum-enabled technologies; → biotechnology and human enhancements; → additive manufacturing; → battery storage and renewables; and → space-based applications.

The widespread application of EDTs to a vast array of industries and sectors defines many of these technologies as “general-purpose technologies” (GPTs) (Horowitz 2020). Broadly defined, GPTs are technologies with the capacity to reconfigure the shape and development of modern societies, dramatically altering their pace and structure.

Historical examples of GPTs include the steam engine, the printing press, the railroad, electricity and the internal combustion engine (see Figure 1).

Much as mass electrification accelerated the rise of modern industrial societies in the twentieth century, so have technologies such as AI and ML begun transforming the contours of the global order (Araya and Nieto-Gómez 2020). Competition across a changing “geotechnological” landscape (Goodman and Khanna 2013) is inextricably linked to a rising great power rivalry between the United States and China. Areas of competition include cloud technologies, semiconductor chips, hypersonic and new missile technologies, spacebased applications, quantum and biotechnologies, autonomous and electric vehicles (AEVs), battery storage and telecommunications.

Forecasting trends in this uncertain environment is daunting because timelines on various EDTs remain unclear. What is clear is that EDTs will confer transformational advantages to nations that incorporate these technologies into their security and intelligence organizations, military establishments and commercial industries.

Over the coming decade, AI alone is expected to transform the nature of war, altering the speed and scope of military conflict. Indeed, the ongoing weaponization of AI and other frontier technologies is now fuelling a global arms race that promises to reshape the contours of Canadian national security strategy.

In fact, Canadian defence planning1 has already begun incorporating many of these new technology platforms into Canada’s national defence network (a “system of systems”). Together, remotely piloted drones, cyber technologies and space-based surveillance assets represent the emergence of a new generation of defence capabilities. In the decades ahead, spin-off technologies overlapping a global market in software and electronics will proliferate, resetting the conditions for interstate conflict (Roberts 2021).

Notwithstanding the fact that technological innovation has always shaped national security, the scale and velocity of contemporary technological change are unprecedented. Beyond an industrial era rooted in extractive production (coal, oil, livestock and scarce raw materials), we are now moving into a world that is highly dependent on systems of data-driven engineering and design. Together, protons, electrons, quantum bits, DNA and new materials have become basic building blocks in reshaping the fabric of industrialized societies (Schwab 2016).