284 Just ordinAry robots
will be dicult, because the United States regularly frustrates these
developments. is is illustrated by the fact that the United States
is not a party to arms control treaties and is not party to the Statute
of the International Criminal Court. is court has jurisdiction in
criminal matters in the elds of genocide, crimes against humanity,
and war crimes. Boyle (2013, p. 28) concludes that
[i]t is not realistic to suggest that the US stop using its drones altogether,
or to assume that other countries will accept a moratorium on buying
and using drones. e genie is out of the bottle: drones will be a fact of
life for years to come. What remains to be done is to ensure that their
use and sale are transparent, regulated and consistent with internation-
ally recognized human rights standards.
However, the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons
(CCW) hosted an informal meeting about armed autonomous
robots. Eighty-seven countries participated in this meeting, includ-
ing countries with signicantly advanced robot technology, such as
the United States, China, Russia, and Israel. In November 2014,
all 117 countries participated at the formal conference of the UN
Convention on CCW. e objective of this convention was to ban
or restrict the use of specic types of weapons that are considered to
cause unnecessary or unjustiable suering to combatants or to aect
civilians indiscriminately.* e future will tell whether the outcomes
of the conference will really contribute to the achievement of the
objective.
6.6.2.2 Curbing the Proliferation of Armed Military Robots Curbing the
proliferation of armed military robots by implementing global arms
control treaties is a necessary condition that must be met—before
armed military robots can be further developed in a responsible man-
ner and can be deployed in military operations. e eects of armed
military robots that are in the possession of fundamentalists or ter-
rorists could well be devastating and would, by comparison, pale the
impact of roadside bombs.
*
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=47794#.VDkb8xZAphY.
285Armed militAry drones
In the words of Homan (2011), “as the prices of robots falls and
technology becomes easier, a robotic arms race can be expected, one
that will be dicult to stop. It is of utmost importance that interna-
tional legislation and a code of ethics for autonomous robots at war are
developed before it is too late.”
6.6.2.3 Broad International Debate on the Consequences of Military
Robotics For the development of military robotics technology, a
broad international debate is thus required about the responsibilities
of governments, industry, the scientic community, lawyers, nongov-
ernmental organizations, and other stakeholders. Such a debate has
not been realized because of the rapid development of military robot-
ics so far. Fortunately, as we have seen, a start has been made with
a debate during the informal meeting of experts hosted by the UN
Convention of CCW in May 2014. e necessity of this is shown
by the contemporary technological developments of military robotics,
which cannot always be qualied as ethical.
e deployment of armed military robots aects the entire world,
and it is therefore important that all stakeholders with a variety of
interests and views enter into a mutual debate (see also Marchant etal.,
2011). e starting point for this debate must be the development of
a set of internationally recognized standards or norms governing the
sale and responsible use of armed military robots. Otherwise, these
robots will proliferate without control and will be misused by state
and non-state actors.
Interview with Jürgen Altmann (Physicist and Peace
Researcher at TU Dortmund University, Germany)
“I’m hopeful about a ban on autonomous arms.”
roughout his three-decade long career as a physicist at several
German universities, Jürgen Altmann has been actively committed
to the cause of arms control. In 2009, he was a co-founder, along
with scientists from Australia, Britain, and the United States, of the
International Committee for Robot Arms Control, which was among
the initiators of the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots.
“ICRAC has fundamental objections against autonomous weapon
systems. We think it’s both ethically and legally unacceptable for arms
286 Just ordinAry robots
to choose their own targets and to decide whom to kill. We are con-
vinced that their deployment will lead to an increase in civil war vic-
tims, something which nations are under a legal obligation to avoid.
Personally, I think we should take a wider view of the eects of
autonomous weapon systems, as to my mind they will increase the
likelihood of war. Just imagine two eets of these weapon systems
facing each other across a national border or somewhere on the high
seas. ey may easily misinterpret some small event—a ash of light,
an unexpected noise—as an attack and automatically open re. Such
hair-trigger systems could easily set o hostilities that neither party
has an interest in or a wish for. Moreover, autonomous arms would
lower the threshold for the use of international violence, given that the
attacking side would expect few victims among its soldier. In recent
years, remote-controlled armed drones—which are semi-autonomous
systems—have given us a foretaste of that.”
It has been argued that, quite on the contrary, autonomous arms may make
morally superior decisions, reducing rather than increasing numbers of casu-
alties among civilians. Unlike human soldiers, they always stay rational
and do not run amok under stress.
“I can’t rule that out once and for all, but in the foreseeable future,
let’s say for the next 20 to 40 years, that’s extremely unlikely.
Roboticist Ronald Arkin at Georgia Tech is working on software
that will decide, on the basis of simple if-then conditions, whether
an attack is justied or not. But it will be unable to adequately
interpret complex battleeld situations, perhaps with civilians
nearby, and then make ethically correct decisions. It simply can’t
be done without an understanding of the social context, without
having emotional experience, knowledge of local cultural context,
and so on. It’s a very tall order to recreate these articially. I fear
that, without an international ban, military motives might well
lead to the introduction of autonomous systems way before such
conditions are met.”
What have ICRAC and the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots achieved so far?
“e issue has been taken up very well not only by public opinion,
but also by the United Nations. In 2013, many countries raised the
issue in the General Assembly and the UN Special Rapporteur on
287Armed militAry drones
Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions called for national
moratoria. In November of that year, the parties to the Convention
on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) in Geneva began discuss-
ing the need for restrictions or a ban, resulting in an expert meeting
6 months later. In 2015, more detailed discussions are likely to take
place, tackling practical issues such as the denition of what is to be
banned. It looks as if the term ‘meaningful human control’ might
discriminate usefully between what is and what is not to be banned
under the CCW.
e good thing about a ban under this Convention is that all rele-
vant parties are involved. e downside is that an agreement can only
be reached by consensus, so each single country can block anything
it doesn’t like. ere is a risk that negotiations will result in too weak
a compromise. In that case, our campaign may change tack and go
for a stronger separate treaty, even if that means losing some coun-
tries. at was what happened with other similar campaigns, which
resulted in treaties banning anti-personnel mines and cluster muni-
tion. But for the time being, I’m hopeful. Even within the United
States, many people are uneasy about autonomous arms.”
“Even within the USA,” you say. Is there a wide gap between the United
States and Europe when it comes to the acceptance of these arms, and per-
haps even of war in general?
“Well, I’m not a political scientist, but it is evident that the United
States considers war as a potential reality at any given time. Also, its
military-technology strategy states explicitly that it wants to main-
tain a technological lead that will enable it to defeat any enemy on
any battleground. In Europe, with the possible exception of Britain,
we feel very dierent about war, especially in Germany. e poten-
tial willingness to impose a limit on new arms technologies is some-
what stronger here.
In my view, the United States somewhat short-sightedly underesti-
mates the capacity of several other countries to catch up in the autono-
mous-arms race quite fast, as a result of which U.S. citizens will not end
up being safer but rather more at risk, abroad and even at home. I would
advocate that the United States give up its claim to absolute military
superiority and look rather more to a concept of cooperative security.
Not that I think for a second that anyone in Washington will listen to
288 Just ordinAry robots
some obscure scientist from Germany. It’s up to U.S. scientists and U.S.
public opinion to change the minds of military policy makers.”
Talking about risk to ordinary people, do you think autonomous arms could
become part of the terrorist arsenal?
“e smaller varieties, yes, denitely. Model airplanes could be
mounted with bombs and outtted with some degree of autono-
mous target recognition. But I don’t think that any small group of
people, wanted by the law, could build sophisticated weapons sys-
tems. On the other hand, given the arms race between technologi-
cally advanced states, sophisticated systems may well be exported
to regions where terrorist groups are active. On the black or gray
market they may then manage to acquire arms that they could never
hope to build for themselves. is is actually an indirect benet of
preventive arms control agreements: while terrorists cannot partici-
pate in them, the fact that many nations do greatly reduces the risk
of new types of arms falling into dangerous hands. Let me add that
even without arms control, terrorists will not be able to use systems
beyond those launched from the shoulder or a truck. I mean, things
that require a 1000 meter runway or have a 30 meter wingspan are
hardly practicable for them.”
Returning to the negotiations on banning autonomous arms, how do you
see the prospects for enforcement?
“Enforcement is always a dicult issue in a system of states with
equal rights. Only the UN Security Council is entitled to it, and is
often hampered by a veto. But verication of compliance is a neces-
sary precondition, also for the nations entering an arms limitation
agreement. Verication would be much easier—and, to my mind,
peace and security would be greatly served—if all unmanned combat
systems were banned. In that case, we could simply deploy inspec-
tion teams to visit military installations, to check whether all combat
vehicles have a crew department and are manned during exercises.
is would be similar to the practice under some other conventions.
Unfortunately, such a blanket ban is politically unfeasible.
e trouble with enforcing a ban on autonomous arms only is that
nations may well be able to turn a remote-controlled system into an
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