Strategic Stability in the Technology Domain

The relationship between trade and national security has occupied me for the last ten years of my career, particularly as technology has become a focal point of geopolitical competition. At the World Economic Forum, I led an initiative that brought government officials and business leaders together for closed-door discussions in Singapore in May 2024 and Hong Kong in May 2025. A recurring challenge was how to address legitimate security concerns while preserving some predictability for businesses operating across borders.

This paper grew out of a talk I gave on 18 July 2026 at the 12th International Affairs Summer Forum at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing, where I was teaching Applied Trade Policy on the summer programme. It develops an argument that has become increasingly important to my work: governments need clearer standards for the restrictions they impose in the name of national security.

I propose five criteria that governments should apply to their own trade restrictions, investment screening and export controls: identify the specific security concern; explain how the measure addresses it; consider less restrictive alternatives; provide for review and removal; and publish a rationale that others can scrutinise. These are standards of self-restraint, intended to bring greater discipline and predictability to decisions that can otherwise appear open-ended.

The harder problem, I argue, is not simply governments using security as a pretext for protectionism. It is that sincerely held security fears can keep expanding, until almost any technology, supplier or investment becomes a potential threat. Finding credible limits to that process is the central concern of this paper.

Read the paper

Strategic Stability in the Technology Domain: Disciplining the Use of Trade and Investment Restrictions, Simon Lacey. Working paper, September 2026.

Download the full paper (PDF) · View the paper on SSRN

Photograph: Anne Nygård / Unsplash.