Very. So we've got Professor Marcus Gardiner, who's an associate professor at the University of Miami School of Law.
It's good to have you come all the way from Manhattan and speak to us on the topic that he's been up there.
He works in international law in this in this field, as well as, in fact, he has worked at the Israeli Supreme Court,
where he worked for perhaps the most distinguished president of that court,
Aaron Barak, who's making numerous judgements on the international humanitarian law and of course, was there in 2003 the Supreme Court.
I thought, Marcus, yesterday that I am, you know, the admiration of his academic work, but for me,
his most distinguished accomplishment and I'm not sure he took this as a compliment, but I intended as a compliment.
The most distinguished accomplishment was that in 2008, just before we met, actually,
the flight crew all the way from Germany to China, how many thousand miles?
Just under just under 10,000 miles. And I asked him back again and he said, no, just one way.
But thank you very much for coming back over to kill you.
Well, thank you for for inviting me. And let me thank you and for the great privilege.
At some point, I hope you will you will see that some kind of accomplishment is also my writing.
And I know what it's like. And but but let me just jump right into this.
The title of my talk is The Battlefield From Afar Independent The Operating Weapon System and the Law of Armed Conflict.
So the military landscape, I think, has undergone a considerable number of changes.
We see asymmetric warfare.
The traditional paradigm of protracted interstate war with large armies on both sides has to a certain extent at least been replaced by opponents,
which are much more flexible.
And and finally, the means with which armed conflict is being carried out has undergone significant modifications already.
One of which I'm going to be talking about today, namely what we know as drones,
quote unquote, and what we see in the future, namely autonomous weapons systems.
And so this is a brief overview after this introduction with us to talk very briefly about the current state of technology and future trends,
and then go into what I call dehumanisation in two dimensions, namely the legal and the moral dimension before offering some concluding remarks.
So the the the phenomenon that we're most familiar with are probably the unmanned aerial vehicles,
the fly reconnaissance mission to a very large extent. And a number of smaller missions are carried out.
They are carried out are armed attacks. The operator sits thousands of miles away, depending on whether it's carried out by by the Air Force.
It's in Nevada or in Virginia, in the case of the CIA.
But regardless of whether an unmanned system operates in the air, on land or on or under the water, they share one characteristic.
They're visible piece of a network that operates, at least to this point, with direct human input.
The next generation, however, of humans, are designed to operate fully independently from human input.
That means target selection, target acquisition,
and a decision whether to employ a weapon system and what type of weapon system at any particular moment in time will be done by an unmanned system.
The technology's either in place or in the process of being developed are the
military leaders and political leaders repeatedly claim that this will not happen,
that the human will remain in the loop, so to speak.
I think that mantra is starting to wane off and certainly the last report by the Department of Defence of the United States is is
very much indicative of that when it speaks of a completely autonomous weapons system being deployed in about 20 years from now.
Now, let me go back very, very briefly with the history.
There are certain vehicles before and during World War Two that operate remotely.
They did not operate autonomously, but operated remotely. The first one that I'm going to show you is this.
Nikola Tesla developed this contraption, offered it to the US and UK navies, which both.
Declined for various reasons. Partially because they were blue water navies.
The German military in World War Two took this took this machinery on very handily.
It also created what's called the Goliath. Basically a bomb strapped onto or strapped onto this contraption, driving on with a connected by a line,
not remotely operated by by other means, but with through through a wire and then would explode next to a tank.
All of these were single use and and didn't do much in terms of extending extending
human capabilities as far as as as what we're going to be talking about today.
But at this time, already, what we saw were statements to the effect that this war may have been fought by heroes flying around in planes,
the next maybe fight by aeroplanes with no men in them at all.
That statement may have been true premature, but we're slowly coming to see this reality.
Now, let me just offer a very brief definition.
What I'm going to be speaking about, I'm going to follow the Department of Defence again and say that it's an electromechanical system
that is able to exert its power to perform design missions and includes no human operator aboard.
And the system is designed to return or to be recoverable.
That's an unmanned system. The autonomous element thereof is where in the UMC receives its mission from the
human and accomplish submission with or without further human robot interaction.
The level of that interaction, along with other factors such as mission, complexity,
environmental difficulty, determine the level of autonomy for the unit.
So what you see is already a different type of of autonomy where you talk about remote controlled as of today,
semi-autonomous, also already in existence or really autonomous systems that are still in the future.
Also, were the route worthy of remembering is that there's a spectrum that many of these systems that we're
talking about operate on a spectrum that may go from remote control all the way to autonomous.
The so-called agent system that some of you may be familiar with, which I talk about in a second,
is one of those this particular system which became famous, slightly infamous when shooting down Flight 65 in 1988 off the Iranian coast.
The the system operated in an in semi-autonomous manner could have been interrupted by the crew,
but wasn't because it was indicated that that that the approaching airliner was an F-14.
The system engaged and ultimately shot down the plane, leading to the death of 290 people.
Further systems that operate in a similar fashion are the Patriot missile system that shot down a British tornado in southern Iraq in 2003.
And so what you see is a development towards more autonomy, Naito said.
Currently, at best, this type of autonomy is very ambitious and at worst improbable to achieve.
The US takes a very different stance on this and, and, and moves ahead.
So what we see then are a variety of scenarios.
On the left you see the current system and future systems which operate one operator.
In reality, it's more than one. Far more than one.
At least two for flying and targeting purposes at this point with predator drones all the way to a yet to be determined
determined time where the total number of pilots that you see here only slightly is 154 total number that is in.
Up to over a hundred of drones.
So what are we? This is an Air Force flight.
It's not a site that I made up myself. So what are we talking about?
We're talking about reconnaissance in combat.
And in terms of of aerial vehicles, we're talking about vehicles that have a very long flight time,
that operate from ground bases and communicate over satellites with their ground stations.
Again, this could be half a world away.
They're both reconnaissance and asset, as well as combat firing, the so-called Hellfire missiles, but also laser guided bombs with up to £500.
This is the next generation that that is not yet deployed.
And it's just had its maiden flight not long ago.
On on the ground slash on ships, you see systems such as these installed.
This is the land based version of the around.
And then you have unmanned ground vehicles.
So far at least used for mainly for ordnance detection,
but also designed to carry loads that otherwise would have been would have to be carried by humans.
Military planners like them, of course, because it increases the ability of soldiers to have greater distances.
There is, of course, if you see a platform carrying machinery,
you also see a weapons based system that operates that is designed to operate autonomously in the future.
It's the very same platform that you see. The final pictures are smaller robots that are already and in operation.
All of these are remote controlled still. And then, of course, some some naval based versions.
Now. What are the rationales for the deployment? The force multiplication is an obvious element why these systems are important employed.
The expansion of the battlespace, i.e. combat, can be carried out in a larger area than before.
Reach of military weapons system usually means longer times being spent.
So say in the case of waves over a certain target area, reduction of casualties after 21, this took off in a much,
much larger degree than before because of the need for reconnaissance in asymmetric warfare.
It is being said we no longer have armies standing on both sides, but rather you have asymmetric warfare,
which means that you may have to follow a particular individuals or groups of
individuals for a longer period of time that increased the need for reconnaissance.
So the narrative goes and then therefore increased the need for these for these vehicles.
There also possess higher capabilities in terms of detection.
Some say it's a morale boost. The British army,
there's various interviews with British Army personnel that say it's a morale boost to have ground
vehicles next to you or knowing that there are aerial vehicles above that that watch out over you.
You also, of course, have the rationale for the reduction of costs.
Think about pilots. This is an obvious think about pilots.
The obvious example is it costs a lot to train a pilot.
If that pilot gets shot down and if it passes away, then then you incur costs.
But you also have Social Security and pension pays.
You eliminate the cost associated with upkeep based of keeping recruitment quite apart, of course, from the human costs involved.
Finally, should the network be taken out, this is then the next step.
You need greater autonomy of any such systems, meaning we're moving away from remote control to fully autonomous.
But consider this. On the other hand,
the current system that operates to distinguish between friends and enemies based on the sound of a weapon system makes for, say, the.
And an AK system sounds very different from an M-16.
I've never been in the military, but I'm being told people can distinguish that very easily.
The program is designed to distinguish based on that those characteristics.
You can easily make up scenarios where that dichotomy may break down.
An Allied soldier may carry a Kalashnikov.
An Allied soldier may have to pick up that Kalashnikov because he or she ran out of ammunition or vice versa.
An enemy comes in, picks up an M-16, and they're not no longer being engaged.
Now, the extent of the use of humans in current conflicts is is dubious at best to to ascertain, because there are no clear numbers.
If if the fiscal side is any indication, then the Department of Defence,
U.S. Department of Defence will spend more than 5.4 billion on unmanned aerial vehicles alone in 2010.
Compare that number with roughly 200 million in the 1990s.
So you see a sharp increase that of money that is being allocated before Congress.
In a hearing, a member of the administration said that every second of every day for the 40 predator, that serious aircraft are airborne worldwide.
While the hours of various waves by the Air Force are in operation, that's more than tripled between 2006 and 2009.
It stands now with 295000 hours per year.
That's still very minuscule compared to aeroplane flight time credits.
The indication is that it's growing exponentially at this point.
The future of the future of autonomous weapons system is complicated and I'm not going
to talk much about it because I am not an A lawyer and I'm not I'm not an engineer.
But there it there's indications that about in about 10 to 15 years,
intelligence experts say technology will have reached a point in which systems will be able to fully act independently.
I simply assume right now that this will happen. And again, the indications are from the Department of Defence that this is absolutely true.
Now let me turn to what I call the humanisation one, the legal dimension, new tech.
Biologists have always posed a challenge to the law of armed conflict. The Lacey rules were designed with an anthropocentric paradigm in mind.
Combatants squaring off face to face is certainly no longer the traditional paradigm.
And regarding UMC, we see roughly two tendencies in two schools of thought over the question how to deal with them, legally speaking.
One is that unmanned systems require the creation of a completely new legal regime, and the existing law is inadequate.
The other school of thought says the existing body of rules is fair, is sufficient to capture these developments,
and it's essential to design unmanned systems that are compatible with the existing framework rather than the other way round.
According to that school of thought, there may not really be a need for additional legislative action if it turns
out that the approach taken by the body of the law of armed conflict overall,
i.e. one that doesn't focus on a single weapon system, at least usually or technology, is adequate to deal with this new development.
Additional protocol one spells out this requirement more detail in Article 36,
which requires that any employment of a new weapon means or method of warfare that a country studies develops or acquires shall be prohibited.
If it runs counter to the principles laid down in an armed conflict.
Now, more concretely, Article 48 of AIP one.
Some of you, I'm sure, are familiar with it. I'll just read that one out loud.
Puts forth some requirements in order to ensure respect for and prosecution of the civilian population and civilian objects.
The parties to the conflict should at all times distinguish between the civilian
population and combatants and between civilian objects and military objects,
and accordingly shall direct their operations only against military objectives.
So what you see is this general rule being fleshed out.
Number one, with regard to the principal distinction, number two, with regard to the principle of proportionality.
And then there's an underlying aspect that I think permeates the law of armed conflict that I will deal with subsequently,
namely that combat be carried out in a humane fashion.
The law of armed conflict, I think, is best described as a tension between two elements,
namely military necessity on the one hand, and humanity on the other.
There's considerable disagreement where on this continuum between those two poles, a balance should be struck.
And there's disagreement to what extent X in circumstances may play a role in finding that balance.
Advances in military technology are the topic of this talk the acceptability of civilian casualties
in the court of public opinion and the role accorded to state sovereignty all play a role in this.
There appears to be a tendency, I would submit, in interpreting this area of the law in a less military centric way than it has been in the past,
and rather one that takes the military considerations into account to a greater extent, at least than it has in the past.
Some claim that this is evident by the change in designation that this legal field as such has undergone.
We spoke of the law of war in the past that moved on to the law of conflict and now oftentimes designated as international humanitarian law.
This is somewhat counterintuitive.
I think if you look at the large scale atrocities that we've all witnessed and seen in Cambodia, Somalia, the former Yugoslavia,
Sierra Leone, Afghanistan and the Congo, all of which have had civilians as the centre of action in many, many instances.
Whether computers which are. I would I would like you to recall, are much better on quantitative analysis rather than qualitative analysis.
You heard me say this a number of times are capable of doing of making this distinction remains an open question.
And while there have been impressive advances in cognitive technologies,
it remains to be analysed whether the principle of distinction proportionality can safely be entrusted to a digital code existing of zeros and ones.
Now, principle of distinction, essentially, in simple terms, it mandates that military attacks distinguish between civilian targets and military ones.
This clear theoretical line of distinction is oftentimes blurred by the circumstances of any particular engagement.
The variety of. Of provisions. In AP one speak to this notion, namely, that indiscriminate attacks are prohibited under Article 51.4.
And furthermore, Article 52.2 tries to take account of the fact that military objectives are only those that by nature, location,
purpose or use make an effective contribution to military action whose total or partial destruction, capture or neutralisation in the circumstances.
Ruling at the time offers a definite military advantage.
The element of use in this particular provision makes clear that the law of armed conflict incorporates a dynamic element
in the in that civilian objectives may become military ones if they are being used by the enemy for military aims.
The same applies obviously, to individuals, though one civilian can potentially be considered to directly participate in hostilities.
However, the flip side, of course, is that even military bases could include non-military targets.
Imagine any military base, and you will see what I mean,
housing of civilians or of military families, for example, being being done on on military bases.
What does all of that mean for purposes of UN deployment?
The system must and it must do so under all circumstances,
be capable of determining whether it can properly engage in such things in accordance with
Article 51 four of the additional protocol for those states that have ratified the Treaty,
of course, and for those that did not, must follow the parallel rule of customary international law.
How do we achieve that?
Well, the sensors, the guidance technology and the ability to react to circumstances they may quickly change are important elements.
In that context, it must also then determine whether a particular weapon that it may carry at any
moment in time is able to to to speak to that distinction through its engagement,
i.e., weapons that are too large or do not discriminate.
What would be prohibited under the law of armed conflict?
And let it be clear that even outside of the the legal system, there is very little clarity in all of this.
Peter Singer describes a situation in which a high ranking general in the US gave orders to destroy a compound despite the presence of civilians.
I consider a large, considerably large number of them because insurgents entered and left openly carrying weapons in Afghanistan.
The presence of insurgents should have been a signal to the civilians.
The general said that the compound was now a legitimate target.
After a few hours, civilians should have realised this should have moved away.
In my mind, this is a good example for the potential shortcomings. If a high ranking general interprets the law of armed conflict.
Provisions pertaining to distinction in and at the very least, dubious manner.
It's not clear that the same mindset does not enter the code that may eventually determine what to do in similar situations.
The machine will not say no to the orders of a commander.
It will simply carry out what has been fed into it. So it all depends on the particular input that we would see.
Now, the principle of proportionality creates similar challenges.
The unmanned systems that we're talking about, autonomous unmanned systems, takes the challenges of UAV are currently facing considerably further.
It removes a combatant entirely from the individual decision making process and shifts the
burden off the decision making process to the programming stage of the system software.
The legal basis for the proportionality principle, as most of you may know, is, again, additional protocol one.
There is no actual mention of the proportionality principle, but it finds reflection in a number of provisions.
Again, I will read some for for those who are not as familiar.
Article 50 15b of different protocol.
One prohibits an attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, life injury to civilians,
damage to civilian objects or combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.
Now, excessive is the trigger term here.
It's simply not clear what that term means in the abstract and can only be determined in the specific circumstances of a particular situation.
Again, Article 57 two speaks of damage that would.
Would prove to be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.
Some have suggested that the discrepancy between loss of life, injury,
damage to objects on the one hand and the direct military advantage anticipated must be clearly disproportionate.
The insertion of such a requirement, at least in my mind, does nothing to solve the problem yet,
and if anything adds further confusion, the language simply does not bear that out.
Reference to the Rome Statute, as some authors make to Article eight of the Rome Statute, I think is not very helpful either.
The one good thing I can say for my own purposes right now,
I don't have to cite this particular debate because regardless of where you come out on this, a machine that we're talking about,
an autonomous UMC would have to be able to determine exactly what is excessive and
what is not excessive in a particular circumstance at a particular moment in time.
Now, proportionality obviously plays a part in target selection.
The program would have to be designed to anticipate all potential decisions, either by program, all of them in which is impossible to do,
or by designing a decision making process and decision rules that are capable of making such decisions with a myriad of factors to be weighed.
It also proportionality also plays a role in determining what extent of civilian losses are acceptable in any given situation.
The law of armed conflict does not, as such, prohibit the taking of civilian lives.
I'd also need to take account of which weapon should be deployed.
Namely, this autonomous weapons system in the future would have to know which weapon has what type of effect on what kind of terrain,
under what type of circumstances. All of this may be easy in the abstract,
but the close proximity and the closer proximity compared to the past of
civilians may make this determination much more difficult now and in the future.
Finally, if any of these decisions could not be made, the default in such a system would have to be, I cannot make this decision.
I will then have to revert back to a human decision maker, which would have to have all this information.
Again, we're talking about a network provider that would have to shoot that information back to to a human operator.
Now, all of these rules refer to qualitative assessments rather than quantitative ones.
And what this means is that fully autonomous you amass may be used in situations in which a target is
completely remote and the situation appears with the potential for minimal or no civilian involvement at all,
i.e. in cases of certainty over such circumstances at the beginning of the mission.
This, in turn would preclude the use of fully autonomous rooms in all other situations,
which I submit constitute the very large majority of all the cases that we're talking about.
The case that I just outlined is extremely rare and and can be expected to occur only very, very infrequently.
So this aspect of the legal framework is highly subjective, even more so than the principle of distinction.
It requires military expertise, experience, legal expertise as essential to their decision making.
And even engineers that right in this particular area can see that the principle of proportionality clearly
highlights the difference between quantitative and qualitative decisions and the need for human decision making.
Now, let me very briefly touch on command responsibility.
I will keep this extremely brief. Namely who is to be held responsible in case of a violation of the law of armed conflict.
Conflict work of mine. If I see the machine itself, I hope you will bear with me.
There are proposals out there that the machine itself should be punished.
I don't know how that works. How you establish criminal responsibility when most legal system require intent is beyond my comprehension.
The traditional deterrence factors do not work.
V7 Autonomous Unmanned system, which is a powerful element of criminal law and ultimately the law of armed conflict.
A machine cannot be punished, nor does it possess moral agency.
So there is there are a variety of factors that mitigate against holding the machine accountable, quote unquote.
Now there's a scientist or the programmer who developed the software upon which the robot relied.
The design is ultimately the foundation, foundation upon which the robot makes its determinations.
But as a programmer, I would want to be indemnified from criminal responsibility once I hand that particular system over to the military.
Military officers, finally, who set the parameters for a given engagement are probably the ones that would have to be held accountable.
Again, this is there is no debate and I understand my comments right now and as conversation starters.
Finally, I very briefly in the paper, touch upon state responsibility.
I don't take that as it's highly controversial that the state that employs a particular
weapon system would be held liable under under the rules of state responsibility.
A secondary question that again may flow from this is whether if the software code, for example, was faulty,
whether a state can recuperate any any liability from from the designer of that particular system.
Finally, there are institutional concerns that I want to raise.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has been fundamental in the past to shaping the rules of the law of armed conflict.
There are very few indications until now that the ICRC has recognised the potential future challenges that autonomous movements actually represent.
If, as Singer reports, the response to the phenomenon is there is so much terrible going on these days.
Why waste time on something crazy like that then?
That is deeply disconcerting. And if the developers and manufacturers of today's systems are not tied into a network that gives at the very least,
some rough guidance on the principle that permeate the law of armed conflict.
This development is even more disconcerting because software oftentimes is very
much front loaded because you need to design the software in a certain way.
That takes account of the fact early on.
Now, let me move on to the moral dimensions of autonomous weapons system, namely what I call the Humanisation.
Through the removal of individual from the battlefield. Question Mark Historically, we've always seen military law as an anthropocentric endeavour.
The taking the person out of the equation by relying upon a computer chip or software code could increase the likelihood a state will resort to force,
as its citizens are not necessarily being placed at risk any longer.
Note For example, the increased reliance of developed states on bombing campaigns in the late 20th century,
NATO's bombing campaign in the Balkans and the U.S., UK bombings of Iraq.
As our examines all of this in terms of whether autonomous units ultra pre conflict proportionality call calculations
and and and reverting to war only as a last resort if the loss of human life is an impediment to going to war.
I made a similar argument with respect to to to private military contractors.
If the loss of human life is an impediment to go into war there, the argument is it's not no longer our soldier.
It's no longer the blood of the nation that's being that's being lost.
But the dog of war. If the loss of human life is an impairment to go into war than sending an army of machines to war rather
than friends and relatives may not exact the same physical and emotional toll on the population.
If the cause is just, one could celebrate this new calculus which more readily permits legitimate self-defence.
But this reduced cost may in turn reduce the rigour with which non-violent
alternatives are pursued and thus encourage unnecessary and therefore unjust wars.
Second, there may be a dehumanisation through the decision making taking place through an algorithm based on zeros and ones.
This problem is not quite the same as the one that removal of soldiers has raised
through e.g. being in a plane and not seeing the devastation that any action may cause.
But as this has increases, it oftentimes becomes psychologically easier to deal with the aftermath of one's actions.
And if we remove ourselves one step further by creating a code that carries out that particular action.
You see where where the argument is heading. Now, the question is, does it really take the person out of the equation?
You can say it's the operator or the military personnel which has decided to set the parameters for a particular engagement.
There's also a concern of what I call loss of the battlefield.
Individuals no longer fight on the battlefield, but rather are 20 minutes away from home.
And again, there's this description fairly vividly where the drone operator lives, very close to to where where he works now.
Right. There's no longer a physical or even a physical distance off the flight home.
That used to be the case when engaging. And so 20 minutes after make it an hour after having engaged in combat by a remote control,
he sits down or she sits down with their kids over over dinner.
And for some soldiers, that created a considerable amount of stress.
Now the question then turns to whether we can create ethical robots.
There are a number of researchers that say, yes, that is perfectly possible.
And one author in particular in this area has become fairly prolific wrong.
Arkin argues that the use of unmanned systems will increase the ethical behaviour on the battlefield for the following reasons.
The Economist's unmanned system does not need to protect itself.
Humans are emotionless and nothing can cloud their judgement.
This is very similar to an argument put forth by Walter, namely that fear and hysteria are always latent and combat, often real,
and they press us toward fearful measures taken out the human psychological element of scenario for what's called scenario fulfilment,
which is believed to have contributed to the incident that I mentioned before in the downing of Flight six,
five five by the US has been since in 1988.
The phenomenon leads to distortion or neglect of contradictory information.
In stressful situations,
humans use new and incoming information in ways that only fit the pre-existing belief patterns a form of premature cognitive closure,
autonomous units, so the argument goes, can be developed so that they are not vulnerable to such patterns of behaviour.
Due to the increase in censoring abilities. Another argument is UM's will have the ability to observe all relevant aspects in,
if not certainly a greater ability to have a greater ability than humans.
The data can arise from multiple remote sensors and intelligence,
all of which have to work together through what what the US Army develops at this point.
The global information grid, which in itself is, is a technological challenge at this point.
Then there is an argument which I will let you decide what you make of it when working in combination with humans.
So the argument goes you may have the ability to reduce the number of unethical behaviour patterns by humans through reporting mechanisms.
Autonomous humans have the potential capability of independently and objectively monitoring ethical
behaviour in the battlefield by all parties and reporting infractions that may be observed.
There is an anecdote that this actually happened in Iraq whereby a ground based
vehicle was actually filming a US soldier kicking a civilian in the head.
Later reprimanded and punished. So you see where the arguments are coming from.
Finally. Arkin argues that in 2006 the US Army studied the behaviour of its forces and found that
approximately 10% of its forces have knowingly mistreated civilians at some point or another.
Based on that, Arkin suggests that so long as artificial intelligence doesn't attack civilians or friendlies more than the current rest,
namely 10% of the time armed artificial intelligence driven robots would be preferable
to human soldiers because it will lower the new pretence and that potential for harm.
The question that I would simply pose this is really the benchmark that we want to employ in these situations.
There's before I come to to my conclusion, one final concern that I want to raise, namely what I call the feedback loop,
namely the impact that autonomous weapon systems may have themselves on the law of armed conflict.
Now, the indeterminacy of the rules of armed conflict, as you gathered,
hopefully from what I tried to explain, especially as it pertains to the principle of proportionality,
may have consequences that go beyond the immediate decision over whether to attack a particular target or not.
In generally speaking, indeterminacy of legal rules, of course, does undermine their efficacy,
and this may even be more so in the realm of the law of armed conflict,
in which situations oftentimes require expeditious decisions, decisions which may also concern the life of human beings.
Whether, as Thomas Frank posits, the principle of poor personality as truly matured into an advanced degree is, I think, a matter of debate.
But following Frank, the argument would be that an increase in the transparency that virtual technologies brings with
them also increases the compliance pull that is exerted upon decision makers within states.
However, the reverse may also be true, as this material is oftentimes classified and acts highly controlled.
The increase in transparency may not be as great as may be anticipated.
More importantly, even more importantly, even, is the potential that the rules,
as they're being reshaped through the introduction of autonomous ums, may actually be giving less traction to proportionality over time,
namely because the inability of autonomous systems to carry out certain functions could be
brought forth as an argument to circumvent the strictures of the law of armed conflict.
Given that some authors and military lawyers follow a reading of the proportionality principle so that it prohibits attacks in only some cases,
a potential, I think, for a decreasing traction is not wholly without basis.
And now this judgement, a scenario that I hope you didn't get when you heard the title may is may not be a realistic concern,
but I think it would also be foolish to dismiss the legal and ethical issues arising from armed autonomous weapons systems.
The technology to implement such devices is currently either available or is in the process of development.
And in the near future, advanced militaries will have the capability to employ such devices at their disposal.
The path they choose to follow could undermine decades of international humanitarian law and human rights development unless care is taken to ensure,
with a reasonable degree of certainty, compliance with international legal principles by the code that underlies the UMC.
Autonomous UMC. This will, as has become evident, be the.
Difficult or impossible to achieve,
namely because the current design architecture does not build these concerns in at the front end of the projects currently involved.
The law is far from clear, sometimes even indeterminate.
Some would say, in the US parlance, void for vagueness.
Furthermore, attacks that have been carried out may have been approved by high ranking military officers, but their legality may still be questioned.
It may be too late to take a wait and see approach, and maybe the genie is truly out of the bottle.
But sometimes it may be a good thing to be a beaver.
And that refers exactly to the statement by Donald Rumsfeld.
With that, I'll close and thank you for your time.
Thank you for your attention. And.