2022

Unmanned? Military Masculinities in Filmic Representations of U.S. Drone Operators

In this “Men and Masculinities” article, Bjerre examines how U.S. drone operators are constructed and represented in the context of military masculinities in the films Drones (dir. Rick Rosenthal, 2013), Good Kill (dir. Andrew Niccol, 2014), and Eye in the Sky (dir. Gavin Hood, 2015).

Thomas Ærvold Bjerre

Membership has its Privileges: Targeted Killing Norms and the Firewall of International Society

There has been a long-standing debate over the ethics of targeted killing, with many scholars voicing concern over whether technological advancements and normative change are driving the normalization of these operations. Framed through social constructivism, they argue that the persistent use of these operations, combined with a lack of vocal opposition among states, makes a global norm cascade in favor of targeted killing increasingly possible. However, given the increasing number of states that have conducted these operations persistently over the past twenty years, why are these operations still bounded to violent non-state actors? This paper puts forward an alternative perspective that explains the bounded persistence of these operations via a novel construction of the international society/international system distinction found in the English School of International Politics.

Vincent Charles Keating

Cyber Threats - The Dark Side of the Digital Society

A danish book about cyber threats. Major Mikkel Storm Jensen from the RDDC and fellow Ph.D. candidate at Center for War Studies, has contributed with two chapters in the book about the state's role in protecting Denmark's critical infrastructure and the strategic threat from Chinese cyber espionage.

Mikkel Storm Jensen

Autonomous Weapon Systems and International Norms

In this book Ingvild Bode and Hendrik Huelss present an innovative study of how testing, developing, and using weapons systems with autonomous features shapes ethical and legal norms, and how standards manifest and change in practice. Autonomous weapons systems are not a matter for the distant future - some autonomous features, such as in air defence systems, have been in use for decades. They have already incrementally changed use-of-force norms by setting emerging standards for what counts as meaningful human control. As UN discussions drag on with minimal progress, the trend towards autonomizing weapons systems continues.

Ingvild Bode and Hendrik Huelss