CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Autonomous Weapons and Killer Robots: New Warnings, Old Habits

Another bleak warning, another round of Cassandra calls about humanity’s immaculate sense of destructive self.  This month, the UN Secretary-General António Guterres and the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross and Red Crescent (ICRC) Mirjana Spoljaric Egger issued a joint appeal stating that, “We are now dangerously close to crossing a moral red line: the autonomous targeting of humans by machines.”  Both insist that two types of autonomous weapons – unpredictable autonomous weapons and anti-personnel weapons – be prohibited.

In Geneva, the chief of disarmament affairs at UN Geneva, Mélanie Régimbal, held up the fort by reiterating the position taken by the UN that systems selecting or engaging targets and taking human lives in the absence of control and judgment “are politically unacceptable, morally repugnant and should be prohibited under international law.”

Laurent Gisel, head of the arms and the conduct of hostilities division at the ICRC, also spoke from Geneva, describing conflict as “not a story of precision, distinction and restraints” but one “of civilians killed, families displaced, hospitals, schools and homes destroyed at ever greater speed and scale.”  In the thick fog of conflict, many variables could come into play.  “A combatant can surrender or be wounded and therefore be protected from attack; civilians can enter the area of operations of the autonomous weapons systems; the weapons may encounter a situation that would not have been anticipated.”  The dangers of unpredictability in such autonomous systems was hugely problematic.  “If it’s not possible to predict it, then how is it possible to limit it?”

These are not remarkable warnings.  The UN and ICRC had issued a joint appeal on the subject in 2023, calling upon States to negotiate a legally binding document by 2026.  At the level of civil society, the Stop Killer Robots coalition was formed in October 2012 and publicly launched in........

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