2023

Algorithmic Warfare: Taking Stock of a Research Programme

This article by Ingvild Bode, Hendrik Huelss, Anna Nadibaidze, Guangyu Qiao-Franco & Tom F. A. Watts takes stock of the ongoing debates on algorithmic warfare in the social sciences. It seeks to equip scholars in International Relations and beyond with a critical review of both the empirical context of algorithmic warfare and the different theoretical approaches to studying practices related to the integration of algorithms (including automated, autonomous, and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies) into international armed conflict.

Ingvild Bode, Hendrik Huelss, Anna Nadibaidze, Guangyu Qiao-Franco & Tom F. A. Watts

Towards Intelligence Accountability as a virtue

Melanie Hartvigsen's first academic journal article, titled 'Towards Intelligence Accountability as a Virtue,' has been published in the Intelligence and National Security journal. In it, she argues that to fully understand the controversies surrounding intelligence accountability, we must comprehend the institutional logics and power struggles within and between intelligence agencies and oversight bodies.

Melanie Hartvigsen

"Great Powers and War in the 21st Century: Blast from the Past" in the Routledge Handbook of Future Warfare.

Olivier Schmitt, Ph.D, along with Dr. Vicky Karyoti and Amelie Theussen, Ph.D., just published a chapter "Great Powers and War in the 21st Century: Blast from the Past" in the Routledge Handbook of Future Warfare.

Olivier Schmitt, Vicky Karyoti and Amelie Theussen

Constructing Expertise: The Front - and Back-Door Regulation of AI’s Military Applications in the European Union

The article investigates how the EU as a multi-level system aims at regulating military AI based on epistemic authority. It suggests that the EU acts as a rule-maker and a rule-taker of military AI predicated on constructing private, corporate actors as experts. As a rule-maker, the EU has set up expert panels such as the Global Tech Panel to inform its initiatives, thereby inviting corporate actors to become part of its decision-making process through the front-door. But the EU is also a rule-taker in that its approach to regulating on military AI is shaped through the backdoor by how corporate actors design AI technologies. These observations signal an emerging hybrid regulatory security state based on ‘liquid’ forms of epistemic authority that empowers corporate actors but also denotes a complex mix of formal political and informal expert authority.

Ingvild Bode and Hendrik Huelss

Loitering Munitions and Unpredictability - Autonomy in Weapon Systems and Challenges to Human Control

A new report by Dr. Ingvild Bode and Dr. Tom F.A. Watts highlights the immediate need to regulate autonomous weapon systems, or ‘killer robots’ as they are colloquially called. The report’s central argument is that whilst most existing loitering munitions are operated by a human who authorizes strikes against system-designated targets, the integration of automated and autonomous technologies into these weapons has created worrying precedents deserving of greater public scrutiny.

Ingvild Bode and Tom Watts

Practice-Based and Public-Deliberative Normativity: Retaining Human Control over the Use of Force

In this article, Dr. Ingvild Bode exposes the concealed dynamics driving the discourse on lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS). As autonomous technologies seamlessly integrate into weaponry, redefining nations' understanding of human control, the article embarks on a two-step journey. From covert design practices to public discussions within the Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) on LAWS, it uncovers the transformation in human roles and decision-making norms. These revelations, informed by international practice theories, critical security studies, and Science and Technology scholarship, introduce fresh perspectives on the collective shaping of normativity and normality.

Ingvild Bode

The Need for and Nature of a Normative, Cultural Psychology of Weaponized AI (Artificial Intelligence)

The motivations for this project by Rockwell Clancy, Ingvild Bode, and Qin Zhu include the increasingly global, cross-cultural and international, nature of technologies, and counter-intuitive nature of normative thoughts and behaviors. The nature of this project consists in developing standardized measures of AI ethical reasoning and intuitions, coupled with questions exploring the development of norms, administered and validated across different cultural groups and disciplinary contexts.

Rockwell Clancy, Ingvild Bode, and Qin Zhu

Prospects for the Global Governance of Autonomous Weapons: Comparing Chinese, Russian, and US Practices

In this article the authors Ingvild Bode, Hendrik Huelss, Anna Nadibaidze, Guangyu Qiao-Franco, and Tom F.A. Watts argue for the necessity to adopt legal norms on the use and development of AWS. Without a framework for global regulation, state practices in using weapon systems with AI-based and autonomous features will continue to shape the norms of warfare and affect the level and quality of human control in the use of force.

Ingvild Bode, Hendrik Huelss, Anna Nadibaidze, Guangyu Qiao-Franco, and Tom F.A. Watts

Weaponised Artificial Intelligence and Chinese Practices of Human–Machine Interaction

This article by Ingvild Bode and Guangyu Qiao-Franco unpacks China’s understanding of human–machine interaction to find that it encompasses many shades of grey. Specifically, despite repeatedly supporting a legal ban on LAWS, China simultaneously promotes a narrow understanding of these systems that intends to exclude such systems from what it deems “beneficial” uses of AI.

Ingvild Bode and Guangyu Qiao-Franco