Search: battlefield robots
21 Feb The Ethics and Economics of Asteroid Mining (and the Role for Law)
...the economies of resource-exporting nations. What would happen to most of Africa? What would it do to the cost of iron ore? And what about refining and manufacturing? If we spend the money to harvest iron in space, why not outsource the other related processes as well? Imagine a future in which solar-powered robots toil in lunar or orbital factories. “On the one hand, it’s great,” Brother Consolmango said. “You’ve now taken all of this dirty industry off the surface of the Earth. On the other hand, you’ve put a...03 Jan Some Thoughts on Negotiating a Treaty on Autonomous Weapon Systems
...informative discussion had run its course, and that the time was right to proceed with a more formal mandate, to “explore and agree on possible recommendations on options related to emerging technologies in the area of LAWS”. Once confirmed, this raised expectations amongst some non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that a ban on ‘killer robots’ may follow. However, as other commentators noted at the time, the formal mandate made no reference to negotiating a LAWS treaty, and this was clearly a result of divergent views within the CCW’s membership over how best...30 May Pentagon Concludes Cyber Attack Can Be Act of War
The Wall Street Journal reporting on un-classifed portions of a report anticipated for release next month. I concentrate on robots, not cyber, so I leave it to others to comment, but I do recall that this report and its conclusions have been discussed a fair amount in academic circles, and as far as I know this will not surprise people following those discussions. (Here’s a good new piece on the topic from Matthew Waxman, in YJIL) Though this is not my speciality, I wanted to flag it for people’s attention....01 Jun Ken also Blogging at Volokh, but not Leaving OJ
...areas not really related to law, but raise topics appropriate to CTLab. You should check out CTLab – it has wonderful academic symposia, an active blog, and many fascinating features that go far outside of the usual international law frame on group violence. Anyway, I am devoted to OJ, and want to be clear that joining up with Volokh is not at all about leaving OJ. Alas, there will be many, many a post devoted to robots and war, and I’ll start talking about microfinance and development finance again. So...14 May Brookings Conference on Legislating Counterterrorism
...framework for counterterrorism – which is to say, a framework of domestic law for things like detention, interrogation, FISA, etc. My paper, which I’ll post up if Brookings will let me once complete, is forward looking with respect to the tactics of counterterrorism, specifically targeted killing, particularly by Predators and advancing robotic technologies. (Yes, dear readers, you knew I would work around to robots eventually.) My fundamental observation to the Obama administration is that, to judge by Campaign Obama and Administration Obama, it embraces targeted killing as a useful method...02 Oct Many Generalizations about International Law Professors …
...recession had gone worldwide. The full text of the blog post, as it happened, was pretty nearly, ” The recession has gone global.” It linked to a news article of about three paragraphs. This gives me pause. And yet there are plenty of blog posts that I do think citable, including some of my stuff on proportionality and the laws of war, just war theory, theorizing about Michael Walzer’s work, and, of course, robots. Many bloggers, including folks here at OJ, are much more academic in their approach to blogging...01 Oct The Folly of Comparing Al-Awlaki to Admiral Yamamoto (Updated)
It appears the right-wing has settled on a shiny new historical comparison to justify the targeted killing of Anwar al-Awlaki. Here is Jack Goldsmith in the New York Times: An attack on an enemy soldier during war is not an assassination. During World War II, the United States targeted and killed Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto, the architect of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. And here is John Tobin in the American Spectator: Anwar al-Awlaki was actively recruiting terrorists to attack the U.S. He was, in effect, a battlefield commander, and...