{"id":24321,"date":"2019-03-11T19:03:27","date_gmt":"2019-03-12T00:03:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=24321"},"modified":"2019-03-11T19:03:27","modified_gmt":"2019-03-12T00:03:27","slug":"preventing-keith-laumers-bolo-ctd-20","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2019\/03\/11\/preventing-keith-laumers-bolo-ctd-20\/","title":{"rendered":"Preventing Keith Laumer\u2019s Bolo, Ctd"},"content":{"rendered":"

Killer robots<\/a> have been bubbling under the radar of late, but Hayley Evans and Natalie Salmanowitz report<\/a> for Lawfare<\/strong><\/em> on an upcoming meeting in March of the U.N.\u2019s Group of Governmental Experts (GGE<\/strong><\/em>) to discuss developments in the field of lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS), as well as give the reader some background.<\/p>\n

The August meeting was notable for two final reasons. First, according to\u00a0commentary<\/a>\u00a0on the meeting by\u00a0Reaching Critical Will<\/a>\u00a0(the disarmament division of the Women\u2019s International League for Peace and Freedom and a frequent commentator on CCW meetings), the U.S. and Russia shocked other members of the GGE by doubting the relevance of international human rights law to autonomous weapons systems\u2014even though prior GGE meetings appeared to take the applicability of such law as a given. In response, multiple states\u2014such as Costa Rica, Panama, China and Cuba\u2014pushed back, proposing a variety of solutions ranging from maintaining an explicit reference to international human rights law to mentioning the U.N. Charter. The GGE\u2019s report\u2014per the recommendation of China\u2014\u201caffirmed<\/a> that international law, in particular the United Nations Charter and [IHL] as well as relevant ethical perspectives, should guide the continued work of the Group.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

When it comes to denying the applicability of international humans right laws, I’m sort of left with two motivations.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The applicable laws would interfere with deployments of the weapons systems in question. How this might be, I’m not sure, but I’m more or less completely ignorant of the field.<\/li>\n
  2. They’re laying the groundwork for the idea that non-human entities, artificial or not, sentient or not, are not bound by human law. I suspect that, in technical terms, there would be some simplification of the task at hand if there’s no need to even pretend to comply with international law.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Second, much of the GGE\u2019s debate centered on broader messaging concerns. Whereas some states, like the U.S.,\u00a0urged<\/a>\u00a0the GGE to discuss the benefits of LAWS (such as the\u00a0capacity<\/a>\u00a0for greater targeting precision and less collateral damage), others fervently opposed any mention of such benefits absent an accompanying explanation of the associated risks. Similarly, a handful of states\u00a0stressed<\/a>\u00a0the importance of \u201cavoid[ing] the image that states believe\u201d LAWS \u201care already in operation\u201d\u2014or \u201cthat these systems will be in operation one day.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    My impression is that the risks of advanced weaponry are far less well understood than the benefits – and, sometimes, the one is the obverse, or even the cost, of the other.<\/p>\n

    But the entire idea of messaging strikes me as a trifle absurd. Public opinion will have little effect on those who are responsible for the deploy \/ no-deploy decision in the field. The technology is coming available, and, because tools are not moral agents, it’ll continue to be developed for positive social ends – and quietly be co-opted by munitions manufacturers as needed.<\/p>\n

    Will we end up in another MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) world again? I think, given overpopulation and basic human biological urges, the answer will be yeah<\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Killer robots have been bubbling under the radar of late, but Hayley Evans and Natalie Salmanowitz report for Lawfare on an upcoming meeting in March of the U.N.\u2019s Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) to discuss developments in the field of lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS), as well as give the \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24321"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24321\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24322,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24321\/revisions\/24322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}