Technology and Cyber ♦ Spring 2026

Personal Data as a Dual-Use Technology: Critically Assessing the New Alliance of Privacy and National Security

Peter Swire and Samm Sacks

In the recent past, particularly since early 2024, national security has been used as the rationale for multiple significant U.S. legal measures to limit the transfer of data about individuals to so-called “countries of concern,” especially China. This Article is the first to consider these legal measures as a unified topic—in each of them, personal data is being treated for the first time in U.S. law as a “dual-use” technology that has both military and civilian applications.