Three days after the publication of the Human Rights Watch Report: Losing our Humanity: The case against killer robots, the US Department of Defence issued a directive that gave clearance for the development of autonomous weapons: weapons that once launched can select and engage targets without further intervention. Here is my response on the relationship…
This is a link to an article that I wrote for the Guardian Newspaper in August 2012 which I think is becoming more relevant as we progress towards a campaign to stop killer robots. It describes the progression from current drone technology to the new fully autonomous weapons that are described in the Human Rights…
On Nov. 21, as news of Human Rights Watch’s (HRW) “Losing Humanity” report was spreading, the Department of Defense quietly released Directive 3000.09 “for the development and use of autonomous and semi-autonomous functions in weapon systems”, making the United States the first nation to have an official policy statement on autonomous weapon systems (AWS). The…
I want to share a personal perspective, which has not been endorsed by ICRAC. I hope to stimulate further discussion on the foundations and framing of the nascent global campaign against autonomous weapons (AW, or systems, AWS). This essay is written to be constructively provocative. Two years ago, in presenting the first version of what…
… To Ban Autonomous Lethal Robots Computing experts from 37 countries call for ban on killer robots Decision to apply violent force must not be delegated to machines! More than 270 engineers, computing and artificial intelligence experts, roboticists, and professionals from related disciplines are calling for a ban on the development and deployment of weapon…
In the last few years there have been increasing calls for a global regulatory framework to govern robotic weapons. Just yesterday, influential counter-terrorism correspondent Peter Bergen called for a treaty to manage and mitigate drone proliferation. Earlier this year, along with Thomas Nash and Richard Moyes of the advocacy group Article 36, I called for…
In their article “Killer drones: The ‘silver bullet’ of democratic warfare?“, recently published in Security Dialogue, ICRAC’s Niklas Schoernig and Frank Sauer examine some of the questions raised by democracies relying on unmanned systems. The abstract reads as follows: This article sets out to probe the peculiar nexus between democracy and the military use of…
After a month of procedural wrangling, intense lobbying, heavy campaigning and frantic late night negotiations, the Arms Trade Treaty conference came to a frayed inconclusive end last Friday as skeptical states like China, Russia, Venezuela, North Korea and Cuba, joined by the United States, called for more time to complete what they saw as an…
On Tuesday morning, 24 July, the chair of the Diplomatic Conference on the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) released his long-awaited draft of an international instrument to regulate the trade in conventional weapons. Unfortunately, as I explain in my commentary piece for Global Policy today, the draft treaty is…well…drafty. There are several major holes in the…
On July 23 2012, the German public radio SWR2 ran a 45-minute discussion on Obama’s drone warfare with ICRAC’s Niklas Schoernig as one of the experts on air. More information for the German speaking visitors of our site, as provided by the SWR2 website: Hinrichtung per Mausklick – Sendung vom Montag, 23.7. | 17.05…