An article published in the New York Times (March 9 2013) gives great insight into the targeting of US citizens abroad. For the first time we get details of intelligence gathering and the enormous resources that the CIA used to track down and kill US citizen Anwar al-Awlaki. The article talks about one bungled attempt [...]
If the US president can order the assassination of Americans overseas, what are the limits to his power?
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Job adverts point to the US planning drone strikes controlled from the UK
The Mail on Sunday has found two job adverts from the US Air Force asking for a communication systems administrator analyst and a systems administrator with operational experience with Predator Drones. Nothing odd about this until you find out that they are to work at RAF Waddington in the UK – ouch! The adverts say [...]
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Code Pink brings chocolates and flowers to the tea party.
When drone extremist John Brennan’s appointment to Chief of the CIA was delayed by 13 hours by filibuster, Senator Paul Rand, accolades came from an unexpected source. As pointed out by the New York Times, ‘In Washington, Code Pink, a leftist group of antiwar activists, showed up with flowers and chocolates at Mr. Paul’s Senate [...]
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Moral Machines Guru takes moral high ground on autonomous weapons
Wendell Wallach is well known for co-authoring the important book ‘Moral Machines’ with Colin Allen. It presents the best state of the art description and discussion of how computers could or might make moral decisions about humans in the future. Now Wendell has come out strongly against the whole notion of autonomous weapons. He sees [...]
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Robot warriors: Lethal machines coming of age
The BBC News Magazine published an article that pits Nobel Peace Laureate Jody Williams and Peter “Wired for War” Singer against Henric Christensen and Ron Arkin from Georgia Institute of Technology. Henrick Christensen’s project funded by defence contractor BAE systems is used as an example of how autonomous robots may be used in conflict. The [...]
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Killer robots must be stopped, say campaigners
The Campaign to Stop Killer Robots was announced by Tracy McVeigh in the Sunday Newspaper the Observer on 24th February. This has created large positive media interest ahead of our the campaign to be launched in April this year. From the Observer: “Killer robots must be stopped, say campaigners A new global campaign to persuade [...]
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The rational approach to the inhumanity of automating death by machines
Three days after the publication of the Human Rights Watch Report: Losing our Humanity: The case against killer robots, the US Department of Defence issued a directive that gave clearance for the development of autonomous weapons: weapons that once launched can select and engage targets without further intervention. Here is my response on the relationship [...]
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Drone race will ultimately lead to a sanitised factory of slaughter
This is a link to an article that I wrote for the Guardian Newspaper in August 2012 which I think is becoming more relevant as we progress towards a campaign to stop killer robots. It describes the progression from current drone technology to the new fully autonomous weapons that are described in the Human Rights [...]
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DoD Directive on Autonomy in Weapon Systems
On Nov. 21, as news of Human Rights Watch’s (HRW) “Losing Humanity” report was spreading, the Department of Defense quietly released Directive 3000.09 “for the development and use of autonomous and semi-autonomous functions in weapon systems”, making the United States the first nation to have an official policy statement on autonomous weapon systems (AWS). The [...]
The Principle of Humanity in Conflict
I want to share a personal perspective, which has not been endorsed by ICRAC. I hope to stimulate further discussion on the foundations and framing of the nascent global campaign against autonomous weapons (AW, or systems, AWS). This essay is written to be constructively provocative. Two years ago, in presenting the first version of what [...]
ICRAC supports CSKR
