The weaponization of science spans a continuum ranging from overt military applications to subtle instruments of surveillance and social control, revealing how knowledge production, technological systems, and institutional power coevolve. Weaponization is a term that goes beyond the commonly known terms of "dual-use" technologies thatonly differentiate between civilian- and military-use potentials of technologies (e.g., nuclear physics: A-bomb vs. nuclear power plants). Historically rooted in imperial expansion and intensified during the World Wars and the Cold War, weaponization has expanded in the digital era to encompass cyber capabilities, AI-driven surveillance and targeting, and biotechnologies, with an observable convergence of technologies to support weaponization (e.g., the coupling of biotechnology and digitalization, as in DARPA-funded gene-drive initiatives). Crucially, mechanisms of weaponization operate not only through material technologies but also via funding structures, secrecy regimes, standard-setting, and narratives of securitization or innovation. Weaponization becomes entrenched by enrolling certain fields of science and approaches deemed useful while marginalizing and ostracizing others – an epistemic divide-and-rule that channels talent, resources, and legitimacy toward coercive ends.
In the scenic border village and traditional smuggler town of
Gandria, today part of the city of Lugano, where bitcoin dreams now
dig away the resources from local olive tree plantations, we will
meet to discuss the worrisome state of affairs of science amid
polarization and the "weaponization of everything."
Our focus in the two-day workshop will lie on three domains:
- the techno-capture and weaponization of agro-food systems;
- informatics and AI; and
- (international) law.
The Gandria gathering will feature the launch of the recent book by Critical Scientists Switzerland (CSS), “Towards Convivial Sciences: Uniting Strands of Critical Inquiry”, published with Oekom. Synthesizing insights from a series of workshops on the current state of science, this book examines various features of “dominant” science and its often obscured normative, ontological and epistemological premises, which have made it a domain capable of both marvellous insights and horrific destruction. We emphasise its current entanglement with big money as techno-science, whose promise of rapid “progress” sustains its dominance, even though this promise often fails to materialise. When it does materialise, it tends to concentrate power, obscure social and ecological costs, and evade accountability.
At the workshop in Gandria, we will interrogate the dominant model of science and its weaponization for political and economic gains. By uniting a broad range of perspectives and people, we aim to envision and begin practising more democratic, humble, and plural approaches to knowledge and inquiry: convivial sciences. The ‘convivial turn’ in the sciences that we advocate encompasses three central aspects: a relational worldview that focuses on connectedness and cooperation in all life; pluralistic, difference-resilient coexistence and collaboration; and a transformative rather than reformist approach that works towards uniting global struggles and movements to overcome the dominance systems that thrive on the weaponization of science discussed here.