The Future of Military Virtue: Autonomous Systems and the Moral Deskilling of the Military

Autonomous systems, including unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), anti-munitions systems, armed robots, cyber attack and cyber defense systems, are projected to become the centerpiece of 21st century military and counter-terrorism operations. This trend has challenged legal experts, policymakers and military ethicists to make sense of these developments within existing normative frameworks of international law and just war theory. This paper highlights a different yet equally profound ethical challenge: understanding how this trend may lead to a moral deskilling of the military profession, potentially destabilizing traditional norms of military virtue and their power to motivate ethical restraint in the conduct of war. Employing the normative framework of virtue ethics, I argue that professional ideals of military virtue such as courage, integrity, honor and compassion help to distinguish legitimate uses of military force from amoral, criminal or mercenary violence, while also preserving the conception of moral community needed to secure a meaningful peace in war’s aftermath. The cultivation of these virtues in a human being, however, presupposes repeated practice and development of skills of moral analysis, deliberation and action, especially in the ethical use of force. As in the historical deskilling of other professions, human practices critical to cultivating these skills can be made redundant by autonomous or semi-autonomous machines, with a resulting devaluation and/or loss of these skills and the virtues they facilitate. This paper explores the circumstances under which automated methods of warfare, including automated weapons and cyber systems, could lead to a dangerous ‘moral deskilling’ of the military profession. I point out that this deskilling remains a significant risk even with a commitment to ‘human on the loop’ protocols. I conclude by summarizing the potentially deleterious consequences of such an outcome, and reflecting on possible strategies for its prevention

A virtuous combination of structural and skill analysis to defeat organized crime

The paper proposes the implementation of new and more effective policies to contrast organized crime. In particular, it develops a simple algorithm to estimate the resilience of criminal networks and to compare the effects of different attack strategies used by police forces. Obtained results show the high resilience ability of criminal organizations, suggesting a virtuous combination of structural and skill analysis. Moreover, the paper suggests public policies and legal instruments to discourage and fight all kinds of mafia contiguity currently pursued with toothless weapons

Künstliche Intelligenz und Daten: Eine Evaluation softwarebasierter militärischer Informationsgewinnung

Künstliche Intelligenz ist mittlerweile fester Bestandteil rüstungskontrollpolitischer Diskussionen im internationalen Raum. Doch das Aufkommen von künstlicher Intelligenz (KI) als Teil militärischer strategischer und taktischer Überlegungen stellt einerseits lang geltende Gewissheiten in Frage und offenbart andererseits eine tiefe Unsicherheit, was mit KI in Zukunft möglich sein wird. Um zu einer stabilen Grundlage dieses Diskurses beizutragen, analysiert dieser IFSH Research Report den derzeitigen softwaretechnologischen Entwicklungsstand - und zwar nah an den technologischen Realitäten, welche die militärischen Einsatzmöglichkeiten bestimmen. Zentrale Triebkraft von Software sind dabei Daten, die im Einsatzgebiet generiert werden und anschließend eine Vielzahl an Stationen durchlaufen, bis sie letztlich in die militärische Entscheidungsfindung einfließen. Anhand dieses Weges analysiert dieser Report die involvierten Algorithmen, Sensoren und weitere Technologien, die zur Informationsgewinnung in der digitalen Kriegsführung beitragen. Der Report schließt mit einer ersten Einschätzung, mit welchen militärischen Trends die internationale Gemeinschaft in den kommenden Jahren konfrontiert sein könnte und wo sich ein genauerer Blick, auch mit Bezug auf Rüstungskontrolle, lohnt

The Mexican drug “war”: an examination into the nature of narcotics linked violence in Mexico, 2006-2012

This thesis examines incidences of violence in Mexico related to the trade in illegal narcotics from the election of President Felipe Calderón in late 2006 to the election of his successor, Enrique Peña Nieto, in mid-2012. The thesis, which is arranged methodologically as a single case study, begins with an examination of the state of literature on violence, crime and warfare. The theoretical basis is specified by subsequent inquiry into the role of illegal narcotics as a driver of violence, and together, these theoretical chapters form the basis of the hypothesis, that under certain circumstances, the drugs trade can create a market of violence, in which non-political actors are incentivised by their constraints to engage in acts of violence not normally associated with criminals. The next three chapters comprise an empirical examination of the hypothesis – the first on historical inflection points in Mexican history and the US/Mexican relationship along with the geographic and historical challenges, as illustrated by the border region around Ciudad Juarez and the violence in Guatemala, the second on the divergent structures and strategies of selected Mexican drug trafficking organisations as a window into the nature of the overall conflict, and the third on the effects of Mexican and American governmental strategies to control the violence. The thesis concludes that while drug violence in Mexico does have the overall shape of a market of violence, developments toward the end of the period studied give some hope that the constraints will change and markedly reduce the incentive for violence. Policy ramifications and the overall future of drug violence given the uncertain future of prohibition are considered in the conclusion as well