Search: battlefield robots
15 Aug Does the Establishment of Specialized Space Military Corps Ipso Facto Violate International Law?
...of Defense Report further outlined objectives, such as “deploy[ing] next-generation capabilities to support the warfighter”. While the reference to the ‘warfighter’ here does not necessarily allude to the USSF, the Report, in latter halves, blames the congestion and accumulation of rival militarization capabilities in space, specifically that of Russia’s directed-energy weaponry and China’s recent and recurrent anti-satellite (‘ASAT’) testing, for the need to militarize. It constantly refers to space as a ‘battlefield’ and advocates for the military leadership of a new independent armed corps. Additionally, the creation of the USSF...26 Sep In Celebratus: M. Cherif Bassiouni (1937-2017)
...the establishment of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the evidence it gathered proved invaluable to the tribunal’s prosecutors as they commenced their investigations. One aspect of the commission’s work that has received relatively lesser attention was its role in shedding light on the use of rape as a weapon of war. The commission conducted interviews with hundreds of female and some male victims of rape, and documented patterns of sexual assault that were undertaken by belligerents to achieve tactical gains on the battlefield, to realize the...
03 May Apartheid-Era Crimes: Indeed “Justice Delayed is Justice Denied”
“The story of Ahmed Timol is rooted in our brutal past. He was not cut down on the battlefield while in the line of fire. He was detained under pernicious security laws and sadistically tortured for more than 4 days. Timol’s tormentors were police officers who were meant to serve and protect, particularly those in their care. While in an utterly incapacitated and defenceless state, and to cover up their crimes, Timol was thrown from the 10th floor of John Vorster Square. Even though he survived the fall the police...
01 Jun What Lies Beneath: Broadening the Debate on the Military Use of Artificial Intelligence and Ensuring Respect for IHL
...developed to regulate the conduct of States and individuals might extend to the use of AI as it starts assuming the tasks that human beings traditionally performed on the battlefield.’ (p.135). Whilst the general consensus of the international community, at this time, is that IHL should continue to be the applicable legal framework to regulate LAWS, given the additional concerns and difficulties associated with regulating artificial intelligence generally, revisiting how IHL will apply to the military use of this technology will very much remain a work in progress. In line...08 Nov Berkeley Conference: The Internet in Bello: Cyber War Law, Ethics, and Policy
...focused on how cyber warfare might require new rules, or new interpretations of rules, regarding the conduct of hostilities, or the jus in bello, once armed conflict has begun. The Internet in Bello seminar will provide an opportunity for scholars and practitioners to explore issues such as intelligence-gathering and other means of ‘preparing the battlefield’; neutrality before and during cyber war, starting with how to interpret in the Internet era the traditional requirement that neutral States not participating in a given armed conflict not allow the movements of troops or...21 Oct My Thoughts on the (Robert) Bernstein Editorial (Slightly Updated)
...profoundly skeptical of HRW’s ability to effectively investigate them: In Gaza and elsewhere where there is no access to the battlefield or to the military and political leaders who make strategic decisions, it is extremely difficult to make definitive judgments about war crimes. Reporting often relies on witnesses whose stories cannot be verified and who may testify for political advantage or because they fear retaliation from their own rulers. Bernstein is talking here about the problems HRW faces in investigating Israel’s war crimes in Gaza, not Hamas’s war crimes. But...13 Jun What Comes Next?
...in relatively short order). See, e.g., Slip. Op. at 51, 52-53. This is at the heart of the mess that Roberts and Kennedy stumble into as they talk past one another in their discussion of direct vs. collateral review. Where the pre-habeas process is battlefield interrogation by U.S. soldiers, as the Solicitor General came close to suggesting in Hamdi, habeas courts will be searching and skeptical. Where the pre-habeas process offers a legitimate chance for innocent detainees to prove that innocence to an independent decisionmaker, the procedures and standards applied...13 Sep The Legality of a U.S. Space Force
...when speaking at the Pentagon, Vice President Pence backed the President’s view, asserting, “…our adversaries have transformed space into a warfighting domain already. And the US will not shrink from the challenge.” The pivot to use of force becomes clear when you compare the 2011 and 2018 DoD reports. The former report advocates for interagency cooperation while the latter calls for military leadership of a new military branch. Perhaps most striking is the 2018 DoD report’s repeated references (some two dozen) to the “battlefield” of space or “warfighting” in space....22 Jul Does the U.S. Need a Declaration of War on Al-Qaida?
...world we live in, not the world we wish we lived in. Such rules should not provide greater protection than we would provide to American citizens held as enemy combatants in this conflict; and they must assure that court proceedings are not permitted to interfere with the mission of our armed forces. In other words, soldiers fighting the war on terror, for example, should not be required to leave the front lines to testify as witnesses in habeas hearings. Affidavits prepared after battlefield activities have ceased should be enough. And,...