President Donald Trump gave the Pentagon 90 days to update the rule governing autonomy in weapon systems. That window closes this week. The administration’s instruction was not simply to adopt artificial intelligence faster. It was to do so while preserving the chain of command and operational authority.

That gives the Pentagon an opportunity to solve a harder problem than definition alone can reach.

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One influential proposal in the current debate, advanced by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, is to broaden the definition of an autonomous weapon so that it reaches beyond drones and munitions to the software that fuses sensor feeds, selects targets, and orchestrates the kill chain. That makes sense. If software performs the function that makes a weapon autonomous, policy should not stop at the airframe.

But a wider definition is only the first step. A definition tells the military what falls under a rule. It does not tell commanders what........

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