About dual use technologies

It seems that in 2026, you can’t walk into a meeting in Brussels or a startup event without someone throwing around the term "dual use" with the air of someone who’s just discovered fire. 

Europe has decided that the future of our technological sovereignty hinges on this concept: creating things that serve both civil and military purposes

If you invent an avocado delivery app tomorrow, mention that it can also coordinate the logistics of a tank convoy; otherwise, you won’t catch a grant. We’re experiencing the "dual use" craze as the ultimate geopolitical shortcut for rearming without it looking like we’re just buying bullets

But let’s be honest: the idea of something serving two opposing purposes is brilliant on paper, but in practice, it’s an insult to our intelligence. History is a graveyard of failed attempts at being two things at once

Take 2-in-1 shampoo, the pioneer of deception: a product that neither cleans your hair (because the conditioner makes it greasy) nor leaves it soft (because the soap dries it out). It’s a chemical assault that leaves your head with the texture of a worn-out sponge

Or the sofa bed, that piece of furniture designed to make you hate being awake and hate being asleep equally; a sofa where you can't sit because it’s too rigid and a bed where you can't rest because a Cold War-era spring digs into your liver

And let's not forget the pizza-kebab restaurant, the place where gastronomy goes to die and where the only "dual" thing is getting heartburn and tachycardia at the same time. When something tries to serve two masters, it ends up pleasing neither

So why are they forcing us to love dual use?

The truth is that this isn't innovation, it's Military Keynesianism. In simple terms, using war as an excuse to fund the economy

Under the WTO rules, governments are strictly prohibited from giving direct financial aid to their industries to prevent "unfair competition." However, there is a legal loophole the size of an aircraft carrier: the National Security Exception. If a government claims a product is "strategic" or "essential for defense," all free-market rules are suspended

By calling everything "Dual Use," Europe found a way to break the rules. They can give billions to private companies as long as they pretend the product helps the military

Under this logic, everything becomes subsidizable. We’ll see weird things like Europe funding the car industry because a sedan can technically run an enemy over, or a toaster because you could smash it over someone’s head.

In the end, we’re designing a world where things won't do either job well, but we’ll feel "incredibly safe." We’ll have mediocre appliances, uncomfortable clothes, and technology that constantly fails because its true purpose isn't to work, but to serve as a legal excuse for injecting public money into an economy in decay

They insist that with these measures we are heading towards a sovereign Europe, but with all these market distortions, trust me, in reality we are heading towards the abyss