The following is an excerpt from “Lethal Autonomy: The Future of Warfare Whether We Like It Or Not,” by former Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall. The book, published by Knox Press, is available to preorder here.
As a humanitarian and a human rights attorney, I’m all for effective arms control, but effective means meaningful and enforceable. Given that lethal autonomy is essentially with us now, as many examples show, I don’t see how an effective arms control regime is possible.
One has to begin with definitions of the things one wants to ban or constrain. I don’t know how to draw a line between the supposedly acceptable types of systems that already exist and those that would be banned. Trying to distinguish defensive (good) from offensive (bad) weapons doesn’t work when an autonomous air defense system can engage a civilian airliner. Most weapons can be used both defensively and offensively; killing is killing. Trying to distinguish degrees of autonomy is problematic as there is no obvious place to draw a well-defined line between permissible and impermissible technologies or capabilities.
The problem here is that there is a great appetite for technologies that automate functions like target detection, enemy intent inference, and optimum engagement planning. These capabilities are continuums with no sharp boundaries. There is a sharp boundary between preparing to engage and actually pulling the trigger, but that boundary is technically trivial and crossing it would be easy to conceal.
