Dic: cut both ways

• This publicity cuts both ways. It focuses on us as well as on them.
• Remember that your suggestion that costs should be shared cuts both ways. Your division will have to reduce its budget as well.
• The Internet cuts both ways–it not only opens borders, it draws boundaries between the people who have it and those who do not.

1. PHRASE : V inflects | If you say that something cuts both ways, you mean that it can have two opposite effects, or can have both good and bad effects.
2. to affect both sides of an issue equally.
3. have both advantages and disadvantages (= work both ways)

... Cobuild, McGraw-Hill Idioms, Cambridge American Idioms