Search: battlefield robots
11 Feb Platforms on the Frontline: The Rise of the Platform Model in Defense Tech
...careful to distinguish between the promotional visions of these companies and the actual deployment of new military AI tools on the battlefield, the overall direction is clear: towards more datafication, automation, and the further systematization of killing in warfare. The software provided by companies such as Anduril, Palantir, and Scale AI – or developed in collaboration with them – is thereby crucial as they offer the broader infrastructure for collecting, fusing, and analyzing data and making it actionable. These tools, in turn, embed and fixate ideas of perfect knowledge, a...10 Sep ICC’s Ocampo Indicates Probe Underway into NATO Actions in Afghanistan
...deeply interested – and deeply skeptical. Violations of these kinds are frequently asserted by human rights groups, such as Human Rights Watch in its various Gaza and other reports. But in the post-war period, I am not aware (and once a couple of years ago was able to put a squad of highly paid law firm associates to the task of looking up stuff) of any case that specifically claimed, over the traditional “commander’s battlefield discretion,” even to prosecute a violation of proportionality as such, let alone a conviction for...
02 Jul Upstream Harms: OSI, AI Militarism, Big Tech, and Gaza
...late 2023 to early 2024 detailed several AI-driven systems (‘Habsora,’ ‘Lavender,’ and ‘Where’s Daddy?’) that were being used by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) for target identification. Such systems “can ‘generate’ targets almost automatically… essentially facilitat[ing] a ‘mass assassination factory.’” The automation and acceleration of target-generation processes have compressed kill chains, with AI now embedded across military systems. Operating across surveillance, targeting, logistics, and battlefield management, AI is increasingly directly influencing the conduct of hostilities. The imbrication of big tech companies in this emerging ecosystem is increasingly obvious. In 2021,...
15 Nov “How Do You Feel Today?” Exploring IHRL and IHL Perspectives on Law Enforcement and Military Uses of Emotion Recognition Technology
...this sense, possible interferences with privacy rights should also be part of the “legal review” Article 36 AP I requires for the introduction of new weapons, means, or methods of warfare. ERT could be considered as an equipment/system ‘used to facilitate military operations’ – i.e. a means of warfare, whose compatibility with ‘any […] rule of international law’ has to be verified. However, leaving aside these issues for a moment, other reasons could instead justify the deployment of ERT on the battlefield. As suggested by cinematographic advertising videos on advanced...25 Feb Drones as Strategic Airpower and the Light Cavalry?
...the use of a missile fired from a drone in battle significantly different from a missile fired from a manned aircraft, or a helicopter, or some other place. Critics who call the practice extrajudicial execution, however, are frequently focused upon another scenario. The version of it analytically furthest from the hot battlefield scenario is a CIA directed drone missile strike upon a target in a compound far away from any theatre of active fighting, such as AfPak — someone in Yemen or Somalia, to take the obvious examples. From the...11 Aug Frozen Conflicts Unfreezing
...as they are for local, tactical, battlefield use to shred opposing infantry) at villages with large concentrations of the wrong ethnicity, in order to drive them out. On the Abkhaz side, the Russians had supplied plenty of clandestine fighters. We met some of them staying in the Abhaz capital – they described themselves as ex-KGB, which is to say, they had gone out of formal government service and were being paid as private contractors, in dollars into foreign bank accounts. They called themselves defenders of the ethnic-Russian villages in Abkhazia,...
30 Apr AI and Machine Learning Symposium: Humanity-Centric AI for Armed Conflict–A Contradiction in Terms?
...crafting and implementing AI strategies for battlefield use and beyond, and the ICRC is right to include AI and machine learning for use in armed conflict as a key challenge in our contemporary landscape. Those states that have published specific military AI strategies, such as France or the US, typically stress two aspects from the outset: first, that AI is set to change the way wars are fought in a significant manner, and second, that AI will yield tremendous benefits to military organisations across a range of domains, such that...28 Jun That Syria War Power Debate, Continued
...stake (say, protecting the interest of regional stability), and so long as the strikes were limited in scope and duration (i.e. less than “war”), all of these actions could be said to fall within the scope of Article II, whether defense of battlefield allies was among the expressly named interests or not. Yet there are at least three ways in which this ‘third party defense’ notion may be said to go beyond even the broad 2011 OLC conception of presidential power: (1) I am not aware of any previous practice...02 Sep Syria Insta-Symposium: Stephanie Carvin–A Legal Debate Devoid of Consequences (or Bringing Practical Judgment Back In)
...may be held accountable for their actions.) Chemical weapons on the other hand are entirely indiscriminate. It is simply not possible, particularly in an urban environment like the suburbs of Damascus, to use them in a way that is by any standard legal. Further, the risk that the Syrian battlefield may turn into one where chemical weapons in a region that is already incredibly unstable from sectarian rivalries, the fallout of the Arab Spring and, yes, the 2003 intervention in Iraq, raises very real security concerns. Is having open chemical...15 Oct BU Law School’s “Ten Years In” Conference
...version of this Hoover Institution article on the evolution of the debate over whether there is a “legal geography of war.” I extended it a bit to cover the latest twist in the debate, noted by Charlie Savage in his New York Times coverage. This is the internal debate between State and Defense lawyers over whether there is a legal notion of a “hot battlefield,” outside of which not even members of “associated forces,” such as Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, that are belligerent with respect to the United...