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Search: battlefield robots

19 Dec

...of Artificial Intelligence systems for targeting operations in Gaza by Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) has shocked many and reignited fears of a dystopian future of AI warfare. As the Guardian wrote on December 1, 2023, the IDF’s likely deployment of an AI platform in the current conflict, evocatively named the ‘Gospel’, “has significantly accelerated a lethal production line of targets that officials have compared to a target production ‘factory’”. The volume and character of such violence raises important questions about Israel’s increasingly criticized approach to battlefield targeting. It should also,...
19.12.23 | and |

16 Jul

...interpretations, and value judgments into their hardware, software, and user interfaces.” These embedded decisions shape how a tool will operate under battlefield conditions—and, more troublingly, whether it can be audited or constrained when it veers off course. If, as Rebecca Crootof and BJ Ard have suggested, technology “regulates through its ‘architecture’,” then the Code must shift upstream. It should impose obligations not merely on how technologies are used, but how they are conceived, developed, and trained throughout the lifecycle of a product or service. The existing text already offers a...
16.07.25 | |

21 Jul

...Winston Churchill famously noted during World War II, “In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.” And as recent conflicts have demonstrated, combat effectiveness, let alone battlefield survivability, depends increasingly on technology-driven deception, camouflage, and multispectral concealment. Absent effective countermeasures, in an age of sensor-soaked battlefields and data-centric warfare, forces can be “instantly detected, targeted, and destroyed” by traditional, and now AI-driven sensor systems. As Christian Brose, the Head of Strategy at Anduril Industries noted presciently several years ago: “in a world that...
21.07.26 | |

26 Mar

...“He should remove himself when there is a reasonable doubt of his impartiality,” said Father Robert Drinan, a professor of law at Georgetown University and long-standing human rights campaigner, who teaches judicial ethics. “It should logically be a reason for his recusal but I don’t think he’ll do it … he’s so stubborn” said Drinan. Scalia is also reported as saying: “If he was captured by my army on a battlefield, that is where he belongs. I had a son on that battlefield and they were shooting at my son,...
26.03.06 | |

11 Dec

...“Losing Humanity: The Case Against Killer Robots,” the same weekend that the Defense Department issued a DOD Directive, “Autonomy in Weapons Systems.” We’ve talked about the HRW report here at OJ some – it is both a report and a set of recommendations calling for a multilateral treaty that would prohibit the “development, production, and use” of autonomous weapons systems. To judge by its reception in the international NGO community, it seems to be a call for the landmines ban campaign of the 1990s, redux. The DOD Directive, for its...
11.12.12 | |

22 Nov

Former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno and a number of other former U.S. Department of Justice officials filed an amicus brief yesterday in Al-Marri v. Wright, a case currently before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit (see the WPost article here). As a legal argument, the amicus brief offers little that is new or surprising. It argues that the “enemy combatant” designation cannot be used against civilians capture outside the battlefield – this is quite likely to be the next front in the legal war over “enemy...
22.11.06 | |

14 May

...administration. But as we’ve noted, the domestic and international law relevant here is immensely complicated and hardly clear cut. I agree that U.S. citizenship doesn’t give you carte blanche to wage war. But, as one critic quoted in the article points out, it does protect you from being wiretapped without a warrant or interrogated without your Miranda rights. So isn’t it weird that the U.S. Constitution doesn’t give you due process before you die in a drone attack, away from any conventional battlefield that is launched by an non-privileged combatant?...
14.05.10 | |

26 Jan

...security and counterterrorism, articulated the notion of a global NIAC when he stated “[t]here is nothing in international law that…prohibits us from using lethal force against our enemies outside of an active battlefield, at least when the country involved consents or is unable or unwilling to take action against the threat.” When we look at this statement from the perspective of the consenting State rather than from the perspective of the attacking State, two things become obvious. The first is that the attacking State’s claims to IHL targeting authorities are...
26.01.16 | |

20 Jan

...Law of Naval Operations provides that incidental injury or collateral damage must not be “excessive in light of the military advantage anticipated by the attack.” The concept of proportionality appears in somewhat different terms in Articles 51(5)(b) and 57(2)(a)(iii) of Additional Protocol I. Proportionality is at issue not only in battlefield applications, but in the strategic context as well, as reflected in Daniel Webster’s letter to Mr. Fox concerning the Caroline incident (noting that Her Majesty’s Government would have to show that the Canadian authorities did nothing “unreasonable or excessive”?)...
20.01.07 | |

07 Aug

...it is an entirely legal one. Rather, it reflects the political tension inherent in achieving “just peace.” I agree, as a principle, that the international community cannot condone agression to aggrandize territory. Yet the allocation of geographic territory under permanent ceasefires or peace agreements has frequently “rewarded” — or recognized the reality of — gains on the battlefield. The international community should be concerned with the voluntariness of the agreement, the practicability of enforcement of ceasefires, and whether maintenance of the agreement conforms in all respects with principles of international...
07.08.06 | |

30 Jul

...the United Nations, evidence enough that protecting civilians is not the primary purpose of warnings? International law here asks us to make assumptions about the motivations of a belligerent, which is difficult enough in a court room. On a battlefield what we are left to do is look to a belligerent’s general concern for human life and commitment to international law. We tend to grant those to Israel and deny them to Hamas. When Hamas advises civilians to ignore warnings the IDF asks us to believe that the motivation is...
30.07.14 | |

16 Sep

...right to kill an American citizen allegedly associated with Al-Qaeda who is living in Phoenix? 2. Standing aside, if word leaked out that the Obama administration intended to kill that American citizen living in Phoenix, should the judiciary should invoke the political-question doctrine to avoid litigating a challenge to the planned attack? I have been waiting a long time for someone who defends the targeted killing of Americans away from the battlefield (i.e., in a situation that is not covered by IHL) to answer the “inside America” hypothetical. It is...
16.09.10 | |