*This article also appears as a chapter in the 2024 KCIS Conference volume that was published in Sept. 2025

Introduction

Over the last three decades, the concept of human security has challenged conventional approaches that centred the state as the primary unit of analysis in security and defence. Employed in practitioner, policy, and academic contexts, human security calls for a deeper understanding of the impacts of a variety of threats on individuals and societies. Although the development of human security as a framework and doctrine was somewhat sidelined by the post-9/11 focus on counterterrorism operations,[1] the concept has nevertheless continued to evolve as a tool for applied and academic analysis. This chapter takes up Clare Hutchinson’s challenge to explore the intersection of emerging technologies and human security.[2] The rapid development of technologies and their diverse disruptive applications can make the topic somewhat overwhelming to trace. The case study of quantum science and technology (S&T) is particularly illustrative in this instance, both for its wide recognition[3] as a future source of unprecedented disruption in the security environment as well as the limited attention paid to understanding potential human impacts. Quantum S&T therefore provides an insightful case study to consider the intersection of emerging technologies and human security.

The first section offers a brief overview of human security, foregrounding Hutchinson’s challenge to consider the cross-cutting impacts of technology. The second section then introduces the case study of quantum S&T by outlining the potential disruption recognized in the security environment, the current DND/CAF quantum S&T strategy, and the importance of integrating quantum S&T within a human security framework. The conclusion reflects on what the analysis offers both for human security and for quantum S&T strategy. Quantum S&T and human security are productive dialogue partners in this context because they share a least-likely logic of applicability vis-à-vis the other. As Hutchinson notes, human security has long overlooked the role of technology, and as such an emerging technology whose direct applications in defence contexts remain largely on the chalkboard would be a highly unlikely starting place for robust dialogue on human impacts.[4] Similarly, the highly-technical nature and specialized discourse concerning quantum S&T has largely resulted in the issue area being left in the hands of technical experts[5] rather than those who might unpack the social impacts of these technologies. Demonstrating that the applicability of human security to quantum S&T is counterintuitive from both perspectives is invaluable,[6] as it implies that technologies with more intuitive connections to human security will also have relevant interdisciplinary impacts.

Human Security and Technology

The landmark document of human security discourse is the United Nations’ 1994 Human Development Report, which devoted a chapter to the notion of human security as a new area of focus. This report criticized former conceptual frameworks that had “interpreted [security] narrowly as security of territory from external aggression or as protection of national interests in foreign policy or as global security from the threat of a nuclear holocaust” on  grounds that the conventional wisdom “has been related more to nation-states than to people.”[7] The multidimensional concept of human security was then pitched as a way to take a more expansive approach to safeguard “human life and dignity” rather than focusing on states and territories. Success could be measured not in terms of territorial integrity but on outcomes resulting in “a child who did not die, a disease that did not spread, a job that was not cut, an ethnic tension that did not explode in violence, a dissident who was not silenced.”[8] The breadth of the concept meant that it almost immediately spurred action in markedly different directions with markedly different levels of success, followed by questions arising as to its utility. As Roland Paris identified in 2001:

As a rallying cry, the idea of human security has successfully united a diverse coalition of states, international agencies, and NGOs. As a political campaign, the human security coalition has accomplished a number of specific goals, such as the negotiation of the land mines convention.  But as a new conceptualization of security, or a set of beliefs about the sources of conflict, human security is so vague that it verges on meaninglessness, and consequently offers little practical guidance to academics who might be interested in applying the concept, or to policymakers who must prioritize among competing policy goals.[9]

The blue-sky vision of the concept is seen as both a strength and a weakness of human security, and the existence of a lively practitioner/scholar debate on the concept reveals the complexity of efforts to formalize human security into a framework.[10]

Ideas of human security are notable for their range of applications.  The “Aberystwyth School” of critical security studies—which emerged from the “broadening and deepening debate” in security studies—argued for security to be rethought from the perspective of the human.[11] Indeed, it  focused on the potential of security to be reoriented away from the absence of state threats towards a focus on human emancipation, understood as “the freeing of people (as individuals and groups) from those physical and human constraints which stop them carrying out what they would freely choose to do.”[12] Critical security studies scholars also called attention to issues in the practical application of human security as a concept, including the essential gendering of the category of “human” to prioritize threats against men[13] as well as David Chandler’s oft-cited rebuke of the human security framework as being co-opted by conventional security policy folks in order to “(1) exaggerate new post-Cold War security threats, (2) locate these threats in the developing world, and (3) facilitate short-term policymaking in the absence of clear strategic foreign policy visions.”[14] Further opportunities remain for policy-focused scholarship to learn from the insights of critical scholarship.

The specific conceptual challenge at issue here was offered by Clare Hutchinson in the Canadian Defence Academy Press volume Evolving Human Security edited by Shannon Lewis-Simpson and Sarah Jane Meharg. Hutchinson suggests that since NATO has accepted five interconnected topics within its human security framework, it is worthwhile to consider three other issues that cut across human security: climate change, health, and technology. Hutchinson recognizes that technological affairs have had important impacts on NATO operations and makes a strong case for greater consideration of technology in human security:

While technology and innovation do not fall under the remit of the Human Security Unit in NATO, the connection to the cross-cutting topics is apparent. It does not seem feasible to address the multitude of technological advancements in defence without recognising the potential harm to civilians that advanced technologies can pose or the potential for enhanced potential of protection of civilians and troops when technology is utilised. The cutting edge of emerging technologies must be spliced with the principles of human security so that innovation and technology can benefit everyone – civilian and military, women, and men, equally.[15]

As technologies develop, their integration into society creates many direct and indirect points of impact on human life. In light of human security’s intentional breadth of conceptual application, it should hardly be a controversial statement that emerging technologies are relevant concerns for human security. And yet, given the decades-long pressure to narrow rather than widen the remit of the concept, technology occupies only a peripheral role in human security discourse.  

Case Study: Quantum Science and Technology

Quantum science emerged in the early 20th century as physicists made a series of discoveries about the behaviour of light and matter at the subatomic scale. Knowledge of these quantum properties permitted the development of a range of technologies such as lasers and circuit boards. Continued research into quantum systems has pushed our understanding further, to the point that a new class of disruptive technologies have been able to make marked gains in efficiency and accuracy by directly manipulating quantum systems. Countries and corporations alike are making major investments into research and development given the attraction of being the first to harness the power of functional quantum systems, which are predicted to be nothing short of revolutionary.[16] Some of the most visible applications include quantum computers, LiDAR and radar sensing technologies, and secure communications networks.[17]

Canada’s strategic positioning in the domain of quantum S&T is informed by three guiding documents: the DND/CAF Quantum S&T Strategy and Quantum 2030 Implementation Plan, as well as the whole-of-government vision offered in the National Quantum Strategy from Innovation, Science, and Economic Development Canada. The Quantum S&T Strategy highlights deployable quantum S&T as a specific priority for DND/CAF, prioritizing cross-government and industrial partnerships to leverage talent and resources, and offers a coherent investment framework for defence-related S&T research.[18] The subsequent implementation plan provides further details on specific missions to achieve deployable quantum technologies in priority application domains within seven years.[19] The government’s National Quantum Strategy takes a broader vision that considers the development of quantum talent across the Canadian economy, research into potential quantum S&T areas of inquiry, as well as substantial support for commercialization of domestic technologies.[20] Scholarly analysis of these documents has recognized the value of setting a government policy direction, while also noting missed opportunities for more ambitious investment or identification of synergies between quantum S&T and existing priority areas, and the increasing use of threat-related language in policy documents.[21] Further engagement in quantum S&T has been identified as an area of opportunity for Canadian leadership on the international stage, given the challenges facing the country and its alliances, existing national strength in quantum S&T, and increasing pressure to rapidly expand defence research and development (R&D).[22]

 A foreboding irony in the quantum S&T policy space is that the recognition of quantum S&T as an area that will certainly result in widespread disruption across virtually all elements of society has been accompanied by an almost total ignorance of what social impacts will result.[23] The documents are uniform in emphasizing the technical complexity of quantum S&T and allocating resources to scientific inquiry. But the documents are also united in what they ignore: the social, societal, economic, and political repercussions of new technologies. We hear plenty about the significance of scientific research and the necessity of state security advantages, but the human angle is distinctly absent. The discourse of quantum S&T policy in Canada lacks a consensus framework for discussing the social impacts of this class of emerging technologies, from the perspective of researchers, policy-makers, or other practitioners.

Our collective understanding of potential social impacts of quantum S&T developments is impoverished by the habitual overlooking of social factors in conversations around the topic. To ensure that Canada is prepared for the disruption caused by the rollout of this new class of technologies, a framework like human security could serve to focus attention on the social impacts that have to this point received limited consideration (despite serving as a major motivation for engaging in the domain!). Consider, for instance, the radical social impact of broad-based attacks against the encryption protocols used to secure financial transfers, the exfiltration of present and historical email communications, and the sale of decades of highly-sensitive personal health and financial data to malicious actors for use in future manipulation efforts. In the domains of communication and sensing, we may soon see a new asymmetry between some actors being able to communicate via unbreakable means while other entire nations become entirely exposed, and revolutionary sensing capabilities that provide stealth-breaking accuracy even in the noisiest of environments. At a larger scale, existing international inequalities may be exacerbated by orders of magnitude if a bifurcation between quantum “haves” and “have-nots” leads some nations to have full access to new quantum computers with vast improvements in simulation and optimization efforts with an innumerable scope of application in both military and civilian industrial contexts.[24] These radically powerful technological capabilities in computing, sensing, and communications are likely to be unequally distributed around the globe. This means that new forms of asymmetric conflict where one side holds a quantum advantage will compound existing security inequalities around the world. But this will also have a compounding effect, as the simultaneous possibility for many of these technologies to be put to military and civilian uses—for example, simulations on a quantum computer—will provide a compounding economic advantage to the quantum “haves.” Human security has for decades sought to uphold freedoms from fear and want; the pessimistic case of quantum S&T would see these freedoms technically impossible to uphold.

Conclusion

The significance of technology in establishing the conditions of security has long been understood within a conventional analytic frame.[25] Hutchinson’s call for human security to consider the cross-cutting impacts of technology has therefore not only an intuitive plausibility but also a precedent in other approaches to security studies.[26] When we consider concrete examples of specific technologies—in this case, quantum S&T policy—we see that both technologists and human security scholars stand to benefit. Security scholars concerned with quantum S&T gain a powerful framework to guide a more holistic analysis of social impacts, while human security scholars see the potential impact of technology brought to life through the consideration of a precise example. By way of conclusion, this section will outline some of the promises for further dialogue between human security and quantum S&T.

From the perspective of human security, a recognition of the widespread impacts of technology on society must be recognized as a call to directly consider the cross-cutting impacts of technologies on human life. This is the case both diagnostically in terms of analyzing the human security impacts of existing technologies, as well as proactively in the exploratory study of potential human security impacts that emerging or near-term disruptive technologies may create. Indeed, one could readily imagine the positive impact that a pre-launch human security analysis might have in terms of informing preparedness for future technological threats. This research agenda would benefit from interdisciplinary teams comprised of human security and domain-specific technical experts working in collaboration to identify specific concerns that these technologies could raise. Quantum S&T would offer a strong case for consideration, as the potential capabilities of quantum technologies are generally well-understood,[27] and mapping them onto human security could be a reasonably achievable task for a motivated interdisciplinary team.

For those concerned with the social impacts of quantum S&T developments, there is another set of benefits that this dialogue can provide. As a clearly-developed and widely-applicable framework for policy analysis, human security offers the quantum S&T policy conversation a head start on how to structure analysis of the human impact of quantum S&T. Although a more targeted approach may develop over time that reflects the unique features of quantum technologies, the import of a human security framework allows the community to make up for lost time. As noted above, this is important because of the crucial window that we currently occupy, where the capabilities of quantum technologies are reasonably well understood but where actual societal disruption may still be a few years away.