KAIST study provides first large-scale empirical analysis of dual-use research and security oversight
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<Professor Seokbeom Kwon>
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A new analysis of approximately 600,000 research papers reveals structural limits to single-country security oversight of dual-use research and identifies trade-offs that policymakers face when strengthening such oversight.
KAIST (President Kwang Hyung Lee) announced today that Professor Seokbeom Kwon of the School of Business and Technology Management has published a large-scale empirical analysis examining the structural limitations of tightening security oversight on dual-use research and its potential cost to scientific progress. The study appears in Science on June 5, 2026.
Dual-use research (DUR) refers to scientific research that has both legitimate civilian applications—such as vaccine and treatment development—and potential security-sensitive applications, such as biological weapons or bioterrorism. Examples include research on viral transmission mechanisms or pathogen behavior.
The United States has been strengthening security oversight of dual-use research. Most recently, Executive Order 14292, signed in May 2025, intensified federal oversight of biological research with potential security implications, including dangerous gain-of-function research. The U.S. government also has extended the policy definition of the dual-use research to include broader categories in addition to the gain-of-function research. However, existing policy dialogues have relied primarily on anecdotal evidence and historical case studies.
U.S. ex-ante security oversight institutions are based on National Security Decision Directive 189 (NSDD-189) and apply when the federal government is involved in research. Therefore, research conducted without federal government involvement effectively falls outside the jurisdiction of this oversight.
Professor Seokbeom Kwon developed a new analytical methodology combining the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s multi-stage security review process with patent-paper citation data, and analyzed approximately 600,000 research papers. The work has been recognized in academia for shifting discussions of dual-use research, which had previously relied largely on case-based analysis, toward large-scale empirical analysis.
The analysis showed that dual-use research consistently has greater scientific impact than comparable research. This means that research subject to the security oversight tends to play an important role in scientific progress and technological innovation.
In addition, the share of dual-use research directly involving the U.S. federal government decreased from about 41% in 1981 to about 22% in 2005, while the share involving foreign institutions increased from 35% to 54% over the same period. This shows that while U.S. security oversight mechanisms based on NSDD-189 have been applied to domestic research, the share of overseas dual-use research has continued to expand.
Professor Seokbeom Kwon explained, “Strengthening security oversight on dual-use research by a single country alone may impose disproportionate costs on domestic science, while having structural limits in preventing the development of equally important research conducted overseas,” adding, “To achieve both scientific progress and national security, international cooperation and balanced policy design could contribute to mitigating these structural tensions.”
This study provides data-based evidence for international policy discussions surrounding dual-use research. In particular, it is expected to serve as an important reference for future discussions on research security regulation and global cooperation systems not only in biotechnology, but also in advanced technology fields that may be connected to security concerns, such as artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum technology.
This study was published as a sole-author paper by Professor Seokbeom Kwon in Science on June 5, 2026.
※ Paper title: “Dual-use research under scrutiny,” DOI: 10.1126/science.aee2479
This research was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea’s Humanities and Social Sciences Young Researcher Support Program (2025S1A5A8009362).
Method of Research
Meta-analysis
Subject of Research
Not applicable
Article Title
Dual-use research under scrutiny
Article Publication Date
5-Jun-2026
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