Fragmented Factories, Hidden Threats - Governance Challenges in Modular Weapon Production

This article examines a growing structural vulnerability in contemporary arms control and export regulation: the capacity for prohibited weapons systems to be produced through the uncoordinated actions of multiple lawful firms, none of which possesses sufficient knowledge, intent, or functional visibility to recognise the prohibited outcome. As manufacturing systems become increasingly modular, specialised, and geographically distributed, long-standing regulatory assumptions—centralised production, identifiable intent, and functionally complete components—are progressively undermined. Drawing on theories of dual-use governance, epistemic fragmentation, supply-chain economics, and regulatory responsibility, the article develops a conceptual account of how “unwitting manufacture” can occur within fully compliant industrial ecosystems. Using qualitative systems analysis and comparative regulatory analysis, it demonstrates how information asymmetries, fragmented intent, and jurisdictional dispersion jointly defeat both preventative compliance mechanisms and ex post accountability frameworks. The article situates this problem within broader regulatory analogues, including financial crime, chemical precursors, and cyber infrastructure, to show that the phenomenon is not unique to arms control but is particularly destabilising in that domain. It argues that existing catch-all controls and intent-based liability models are structurally incapable of addressing these risks without imposing disproportionate burdens on legitimate industry, especially small and medium enterprises. The article concludes by outlining policy and governance implications, including design-neutral risk indicators, shared compliance infrastructures, and alternative responsibility models better suited to distributed production systems. In doing so, it contributes a novel theoretical lens to arms control scholarship and highlights an intensifying governance challenge in an era of industrial fragmentation and epistemic limits.