n FFRDC operated by the RAND Corporation under contract with DHS
OPERAT IONAL ANALYSIS CENTER
RESEARCH REPORT
DANIEL M. GERSTEIN, ERINN. LEIDY
Emerging
Technology and
Risk Analysis
Additive Manufacturing
A
dditive manufacturing (AM) or three-
dimensional (3D) printing—which is a
subset of the broader advanced manu-
facturing revolution—has reached a
level of technological maturity, accessibility, and
availability in the past decade that contributes
to an exponentially increasing proliferation of the
technology across a wide variety of licit and illicit
use cases. This growth has been fueled by com-
plementary technology advancements in materials
science, computer-aided design, and artificial intel-
ligence (AI), to name a few. The fact that more 3D
printing materials and techniques are available has
contributed to more sophisticated use cases.
Although AM technology has been maturing
for more than four decades, the 2013 printing of a
3D printed gun brought the issue to the forefront
and illustrated the potential for illicit use cases that
could threaten national security. The distributed
nature of 3D printing allows development of made-
for-purpose technologies to support a wide variety
of uses. It facilitates decentralized manufactur-
ing, rapid prototyping, and proliferation of basic
designs that can be tailored to meet user speci-
fications. These user specifications can include
“violent actors [who] might be able to replicate
more sophisticated weapons systems, print lethal
drones, and even produce jamming devices or
cheap decoys that disrupt intelligence collection.”
1
The lower costs and growing availability of
“manufacturing hardware (printers), raw materi-
als and software (intellectual property [IP])” will
lead to a growing use of 3D printing as a replace-
ment for traditional manufacturing uses, as well
as for illicit purposes.
2
AM—which will lead to
order-on-demand manufacturing—will also affect
supply chains, potentially making them less global
and more localized. These changes will create
new challenges in countering the proliferation of
potentially dangerous products and technologies
because the focus will likely need to change from
interdicting end products and physical technolo-
gies to software and IP. Regulatory and export
control regimes will likely also be affected as
attempts are made to stop the proliferation of
computer-aided designs for products and counter-
feits, as well as subpar products that could affect
consumer safety.
We assessed that attempts to limit the pro-
liferation of printers will also likely be challenging
