Arms Control and International Security Papers 

Volume 11 Number 2 

Apri I 20, 2020 

Al, Human-Machine 

Interaction, and 

Autonomous Weapons: 

Thinking Carefully About 

Taking "Killer Robots" 

Seriously 

by Christopher A. Ford 

The Arms Control and International Security Papers are produced by the Office of the Under Secretary of State for Arms Control 

and International Security in order to make U.S. State Department policy analysis available in an electronically-accessible 

format compatible with "social distancing" during the COVID-19 crisis. 
 

Arms Control and International Security Papers Volume I, Number 2 I April 20, 2020 

Al, Human-Machine Interaction, and Autonomous Weapons: Thinking 

Carefully AboutTaking "Killer Robots" Seriously 

Al, Human-Machine Interaction, and Autonomous 

Weapons: Thinking Carefully About Taking "Killer 

Robots" Seriously 

by Christopher A. Ford1 

This second in the T series of papers offers thoughts on the public policy 

challenges presented by the prospect of Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems 

(LAWS). In this paper, Assistant Secretary Ford offers his perspective upon 

these issues, urging readers not to be seduced by sensationalized 

simplifications, and calling for careful, sustained attention to the complexities 

they raised - such as through the work already being done by the LAWS Group 

of Governmental Experts. 

It is hard not to be impressed by all the work being 

done and innovative approaches being pursued in the 

realms of Artificial Intelligence (Al) and human-machine 

interaction. Such initiatives have the promise of enriching 

human life in a vast number of ways, and it is an 

extraordinarily exciting field to follow. 

At the U.S. State Department's Bureau of International 

Security and Non proliferation, however, we are concerned 

with protecting against the potential "dark side" of such 

innovation - that is, with ensuring that such creations are 

not manipulated into doing the dirty work of despots or 

violent non-state actors to harm the innocent, silence the 

weak, or destabilize the global balance of power. This too, I 

have come to learn over my years in public service, is no 

small or easy task. In order for the public policy community 

to get these answers right, and that we must, we must ask 

tough questions and not settle on purported solutions just 

because they seem simple or easy. Like the scientific and 

technical fields with which they interact, such policy 

challenges are multi-disciplinary and complex. In order to 

create a lasting and effective policy for dealing with such 

dynamic technologies, international policy makers and 

technology experts will need to work together as perhaps 

never before. 

I. Temptations of Sensationalism 

For something as new and thought-provoking as the 

technological, ethical, legal, and political implications of 

Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS), the subject 

has wasted no time in acquiring its shopworn cliches and 

armchair experts. Who, at this point, doesn't approach a 

discussion of LAWS without thinking, even inadvertently, 

of the villainous "Skynet" artificial intelligence system of 

movie fiction and the robot-assassins it dispatches against 

the noble but hard-pressed remnants of humanity in 

Hollywood's Terminator franchise? 

There is, of course, a reason that public policy debates 

over LAWS have to struggle through endless Terminator 

1 Dr. Ford serves as U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Non proliferation, and is additionally performing the Duties of 

the Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security. He previously served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director 

for Weapons of Mass Destruction and Counterproliferation on the U.S. National Security Council staff 
Arms Control and International Security Papers Volume I, Number 2 I April 20, 2020 

Al, Human-Machine Interaction, and Autonomous Weapons: Thinking 

Carefully AboutTaking "Killer Robots" Seriously 

tropes: activists concerned about the possibility of LAWS 

have built their public messaging around evocative 

"Skynet" imagery of "killer robots" precisely because this 

presses the kind of emotive buttons that tend to 

presuppose conclusions and short-circuit debate. If that's 

what is meant by "killer robots," who wouldn't be opposed 

to them? 

The issue certainly seems simple at first glance, 

anyway. The self-described "Campaign to Stop Killer 

Robots," for instance, decries a future in which "fully 

autonomous weapons" would "decide who lives and dies, 

without further intervention." This, the campaign says, 

"crosses a moral threshold" because machines "lack the 

inherently human characteristics such as compassion that 

are necessary to make complex ethical choices" and "lack 

the human judgment necessary to evaluate the 

proportionality of an attack, distinguish civilian from 

combatant, and abide by other core principles of the laws 

of war." As a result, it is declared, such machines "would 

make tragic mistakes with unanticipated consequences" -

errors for which it is "unclear" who could be held 

responsible. 

These are strong claims, but unfortunately, we know 

full well how alarmist and demonizing rhetoric can - as it is 

so often designed to do - skew policy debate in reflexive 

and counterproductive directions. Such language is a very 

powerful tool. To be sure, as Cardinal John Henry Newman 

once observed, men will die for a dogma who will scarcely 

stir for a mere conclusion. When it comes to complicated 

and fraught things like how to deal with technological 

change in international security policy, however, I hope 

you'll agree with me that it is best to avoid dogma - and to 

try to hold out for actual conclusions. 

In fairness, of course, it is also quite clear that there are 

some very real issues in play- and that the emergence of a 

functioning LAWS, at such point as it materializes, could 

present all of us with important ethical, moral, and 

governance challenges. Worrying about LAWS is not 

something that should be left entirely to dystopic science 

fiction . There are real public policy questions here. 

II. Emerging Challenges 

To take just one example, the People's Republic of 

China (PRC) already invests huge sums in using artificial 

intelligence (Al) tools as instruments of domestic 

oppression, and it explicitly envisions military Al to be the 

key to revolutionizing Beijing's military potential vis-a-vis 

the United States. Indeed, going far beyond simply talking 

about autonomous individual weapons systems, a senior 

executive at one of China's largest defense companies has 

claimed that Al will be the "brain" of future warfare -with 

an "Al cluster" taking over from actual humans, for 

example, in the national command structure. 

Nor is this senior executive alone among Chinese 

thinkers in predicting that Al will prove to be a crucial 

element of the next Revolution in Military Affairs. 

According to Ministry of National Defense officials, for 

instance, the PRC must "strengthen the research of 

artificial intelligence technology in the military field," in 

order to allow the PRC to "capture the 'new commanding 

heights' of the future battlefield, and ensure that our army 

is built into a world-class military at an early date." Experts 

at the Chinese Academy of Engineering have predicted 

that artificial intelligence will be the most important 

military-civilian dual-use technology in the coming 

decades. 

Even allowing for other strategic powers' ambitious 

goals, there is unquestionably something worth taking 

seriously here. This is of particular interest to the policy 

community and can safely argue it should be of concern to 

those with the skillset and knowledge to create such 

systems. My point is not to single out the PRC per se, but 

rather to make it clear that we are probably only at the 

beginning of mankind's exploration of the intersection 

between Al and warfighting - of which the development of 

LAWS is merely one potential issue. 

The United States has recognized from the beginning 

that the foundation for Al adoption must be guided by 

ethical foundations deeply rooted in our nation's values and 

respect for rule of law. Although technology changes, the 

U.S. commitment to the Law of War and ethical behavior 

does not. That is why we are leveraging U.S. Al innovations 

to build solutions that are aligned with our laws and values. 

For the United States, the Law of War- and basic questions 

of safety- are key considerations with any new capability, 

from first step of requirements development through the 

last day of deployment. 

In sharp contrast to the opacity so far displayed by PRC 

and Russian officials on such subjects, the U.S. Department 

of Defense (DoD) is promoting thoughtful, responsible, and 

human-centric adoption of Al by investing in Al systems 

that are resilient, reliable, and secure. For this reason, the 

Defense Department asked the Defense Innovation Board 

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Al, Human-Machine Interaction, and Autonomous Weapons: Thinking 

Carefully AboutTaking "Killer Robots" Seriously 

(DIB) to propose Al ethical principles for the Department of 

Defense. 

The DIB conducted - in a fully transparent manner- a 

15-month study that included consultation with many 

leading Al and technical experts, current and former DoD 

leaders, and the American public. On February 25, 2020, 

Secretary of Defense Esper adopted the five ethical 

principles proposed by the DIB for the DoD. 

The five principles - under which Al in defense must be 

responsible, equitable, traceable, reliable, and governable -

apply to both combat and non-combat Al technologies 

used by the DoD. The U.S. system of democratic values 

and transparency, which led to the development of the 

DoD's Al ethics principles, provides a framework for 

likeminded nations to follow as they look to develop their 

own Al principles. 

Ill. LAWS and Their Future 

But whatever the future of Al in general, LAWS 

debates only concern the modest subset of Al-related 

issues that pertain to potential autonomous features and 

functions in weapons. LAWS discussions are frequently 

conflated with broader Al debates, but they are not the 

same, and such conflation makes it needlessly difficult to 

think about either one. 

Identifying what elements to focus on is not an easy 

task in this extraordinarily complicated and fast-moving 

arena, full of potential distractions. Most of us catch the 

"Skynet" references, and some of us who are old enough 

will remember the rogue computer HAL from Stanley's 

Kubrick's masterful film 2001: A Space Odyssey, but it is 

also true that pop culture predictions of the future have a 

notably poor track record. Having discovered that we don't 

actually now live in George Jetson's world - or the world of 

chauffeured craft swimming through the air to and from 

the Paris Opera depicted in that marvelous illustration by 

the 19th-Century French futurist Albert Robida -we should 

have more intellectual humility than to think we can 

understand all that much about our technological future. 

If we can muster that humility, however, I do believe 

that there is real value exploring the public policy 

challenges potentially presented by LAWS. We just need 

to approach it with care, rather than just reflex, as indeed 

such questions deserve. 

As we consider these matters, therefore, I would like to 

offer some thoughts on the issues that seem to be the most 

consequential as we continue to work through the 

challenges posed by autonomous features and functions in 

weapons. 

Problems with the term "meaningful human control" 

Some in the NGO community have said this is really a 

question of"meaningful human control." This is one of 

those phrases that seems very simple until one thinks 

about it carefully. In thinking about this challenge from the 

perspective of future weaponry, it's useful to remember the 

degree to which this may not be a completely binary 

question - "human" versus "no human" - but instead 

something at least a little more like a continuum. 

It's already long been the case, for instance, that some 

weapons systems incorporate autonomous features and 

functions -though they do not make their "own" 

independent decisions but rather respond to preestablished criteria pursuant to rules programmed into 

them by humans. A deep-sea mine, for instance, might 

identify a particular hydrophonic signature associated with 

an enemy submarine, or an anti-tank mine might detect 

the clank of steel treads. An artillery round or air-delivered 

submunition might scan the ground as it falls, employing its 

millimeter-wave sensor to pick up the shape of a tank's 

armored turret before detonating its self-forging fragment 

warhead, or a drone might pick up the distinctive electronic 

emanations of an enemy target-acquisition radar before 

flying itself down that beam to destroy that emitter. Or a 

"Close In Weapons System" Gatling gun -the U.S. Navy's 

so-called CIWS, or "sea-whizz" system - might be set to 

"automatic" so that it is able to shoot incoming cruise 

missiles out of the air faster than a human sailor could 

respond. 

Such things have long been realities, but the sky hardly 

fell upon their adoption, and we are hardly now on an 

inexorable slippery slope to "Skynet." In fact, I expect that 

many can see positive utility in these advanced 

technologies for limiting unintended harm to civilians. 

Furthermore, it is already- and, I think, increasinglythe case that for major weapons systems, human-machine 

interaction in the use of the weapon could actually be 

positive in increasing the degree to which human intent is 

precisely effectuated in the use of force. To be sure, the 

pilot in a first-rate combat aircraft still makes the ultimate 

"fire-versus-refrain" decisions, but the data upon which 

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Al, Human-Machine Interaction, and Autonomous Weapons: Thinking 

Carefully AboutTaking "Killer Robots" Seriously 

such decisions are made is already highly dependent on 

automated software interfaces that characterize, sort, 

interpret, and prioritize the output of a huge range of 

sensors more precisely and more efficiently than any 

human could do, before the pilot knows anything. Without 

the output of those sensors - and the "judgment" 

employed by the software that determines what to tell the 

pilot so that combat decisions can be made -the individual 

pilot would have to make his or her decision about ultimate 

use of force with very little relevant information at all. 

An individual human being could not possibly integrate 

all the incoming information in real time - or even sense it 

in the first place, what with radar, infra-red, radiofrequency 

signals, and data-fusion from a broad network of other 

sources all flowing into the cockpit, all being machineprocessed and fused in real-time, and often concerning 

candidate targets far enough away that they cannot be 

personally seen by the pilot in any way. Increasingly, the 

modern combat pilot necessarily understands his or her 

operational environment through software of extraordinary 

complexity. Yes, the human makes the final call, but the 

pilot is hugely challenged or even helpless without machine 

intermediation, unable personally to vouch for what is 

"really" there without trusting the output of machines that 

he or she did not program in evaluating information that he 

or she may not directly perceive, in order to make the best 

and most considered decision possible. 

Given that I'd wager that there are certain pilotinterface outputs that would quite invariably result in a 

macro decision to fire a weapon -something perhaps more 

or less equating to a signal that "that enemy fighter just 

locked on to you, is about to fire, and will kill you unless you 

fire first" - how should we consider the human-machine 

interaction at the time of "trigger pull"? It is certainly true 

that for my hypothetical pilot, it is other humans who have 

programmed the computer to look for certain complex 

signatures that are identified as threats. Yet, we are 

comfortable with the pilot firing a weapon in response to 

information generated by a machine at least in part 

because of the significant human judgment and expertise 

that was involved in programming the software and 

designing the sensors that enable the jet's computer 

systems to identify military objectives in the pilot's 

operating environment. 

This suggests an important lesson. In many 

circumstances, it may be the degree of human judgment 

that is exercised during the development and deployment 

of a weapon, rather than the degree of human control over 

the weapon at any given moment that will be critical to 

ensuring compliance with International Humanitarian Law 

(IHL). 

The importance of context 

Perhaps spurred by periodic media stories about drone 

strikes against terrorist targets in the Middle East- albeit 

ones undertaken by human pilots via remote control 

architectures -those who fret about Terminator-style 

robot assassins seem usually to have in mind contexts in 

which a machine aims to pick out a combatant from a 

civilian standing nearby. The implication seems to be that 

this would inevitably be happening in and among all the 

ordinary moving pieces of life in the civilian world. (The 

Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, for instance, warns that 

"no one would be safe"!) 

But context does matter, and it's worth considering 

whether there are situations in which autonomous features 

and functions might not be quite so frightening . To begin 

with, of course, some autonomous features and functions -

even deep autonomy, rather than merely automation -

might actually be quite beneficial in some areas, with 

machine learning being used to enhance our everyday lives 

and perhaps also providing important advantages even in 

non-lethal military applications such as intelligence and 

logistics. 

And even when it comes to lethal actions, the context 

and environment in which a weapon system is to be 

employed must surely matter a great deal. I mentioned the 

CIWS above, and it's a good example of a system with an 

autonomous feature that is turned on to "automatic" mode 

only by a human, and only in a very specific context of highintensity threat at sea - presumably when there aren't 

aerial targets around other than incoming enemy aircraft or 

cruise missiles. CIWS has been an operational reality for 

decades, and people don't seem particularly unnerved by 

automaticity in that degree and in that context. 

Could one imagine other situations in which 

autonomous features or functions - with systems being 

fixed to unambiguously military signatures and only 

unleashed when a human decides that certain factual 

predicates have been satisfied -would not be terribly 

problematic? Perhaps in hunting for armored vehicle 

silhouettes above a massive tank battle taking place in the 

desert? Or in high-intensity air battles over the front line in 

a conventional war between "near-peer" adversaries where 

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there would be essentially no civilian activity at all? Or in 

defending against incoming ballistic missiles, or where 

underwater vehicles duel each other at sea? In the right 

circumstances, it strikes me that lethal autonomy might 

well be quite defensible and appropriate. 

How precisely does one define the problem? 

It may also be useful to think a little more carefully 

about the fundamental terms of the debate. To what 

degree, for instance, is the crux of the problem the claim 

that humans inherently make more accurate decisions than 

machines? While the unresolved problem of data and 

algorithmic bias are of real concern when evaluating 

weapons with autonomous features and functions, we 

cannot escape the reality that humanity's cognitive biases 

might make us ill suited, by the same measure, to be more 

accurate at some decisions than machines. 

As I noted, the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots argues 

that machines "lack the human judgment necessary to 

evaluate the proportionality of an attack, distinguish 

civilian from combatant, and abide by other core principles 

of the laws of war." Such a claim, however, should surely 

have to be defended, rather than just asserted. Even if 

LAWS never replaces human judgement, we know that our 

own judgment and intuitions can be quite flawed, and we 

should not assume that our collective understanding of 

how human judgement can and should interact with 

machines will not evolve. When and how such judgment is 

exercised in the future may look very different than it does 

today- such as in the proportion of decisions we choose to 

augment by the use of algorithmic tools precisely in the 

interests of accuracy and reliability. 

But this would hardly equate to lawlessness, or any 

lack of accountability. IHL obligations are applicable 

regardless of the type of weapon being employed, as is 

accountability for adhering to those obligations on 

humans, whether a LAWS is in the picture or not. Humans 

and States at all times remain responsible in accordance 

with applicable law for their decisions, whether in the 

development and use of a LAWS or not. A debate on 

accountability is quite different than one focused on 

functionality. 

But more prosaically and less theologically, if the claim 

is simply that machines cannot make correct operational 

decisions, that's a different situation entirely. That is an 

empirical question to which one could imagine actual 

testing could provide an answer. 

Is the solution implementable? 

Humanitarian implications aside, there are those 

advocating for a ban on LAWS for international security 

concerns. Some states warn of a coming arms race, the 

likes of which have not been seen since the Cold War. 

Others, primarily those of the Non-Aligned Movement, 

warn of a world wherein the haves will use autonomous or 

Al-augmented tools force their wills upon the have-nots, 

leading to an unstable shift in the global balance of power. 

Well, maybe. We have all heard the saying "hope is 

not a strategy," and it's true enough. But I would also 

submit that raw fear- however powerful a motivation it 

may be - is not a sound basis for strategy either, 

particularly because it's very good at short-circuiting 

careful analysis. Moreover, even if there's unquestionably a 

pressing set of questions here, we should ask ourselves 

how sure we are that there really is actually a solution 

available to us - at least one beyond emphasizing, as we 

and our likeminded Western friends and allies already do, 

the need for careful law-of-war reviews prior to the 

deployment of any new weapons system and respect for 

international law in their use? 

At least in the United States, such weapon systems 

already undergo careful pre-deployment weapons reviews 

in order to ensure that they can be used consistent with 

obligations under international humanitarian law. U.S. 

reviews consider a broad range of factors, including how 

the weapon will be deployed, its intended operating 

environment, the concept of operations underlying the 

system, the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) 

developed for its employment, and the rules of 

engagement (ROEs) envisioned for it. Should any such 

potential weapon system fail review, it would not be 

deployed, or it would be redesigned until it passed muster. 

I am aware of no persuasive evidence as to why 

weapons reviews by definition are unable to address the 

challenges of LAWS or other future weapons systems. We 

certainly need to be encouraging states to improve their 

practices with regard to these reviews, especially countries 

such as the PRC and Russia, which seem to be moving as 

fast as they can into the development of Al-related military 

applications. We also need to ensure that all weapons can 

be used consistent with international humanitarian law 

obligations- not just LAWS. 

Beyond such common-sense approaches, however, the 

complexities of this environment resist simplistic solutions. 

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Al, Human-Machine Interaction, and Autonomous Weapons: Thinking 

Carefully AboutTaking "Killer Robots" Seriously 

Given the fast-moving nature of the technology in question 

and the protean character of this new field - and in light of 

some of the complexities to which I've tried to draw your 

attention - it is hard to have confidence that the category 

of a "lethal autonomous weapon system" is definable 

enough to be "ban-able" in the first place. And even if you 

could ban it, how effective or enforceable would such a ban 

actually be? 

How, for instance, would you verify compliance 

with whatever specific prohibition you ended up deciding 

was needed? I suppose you could imagine a weapon 

system the control architecture of which was somehow 

hardwired to be hermetically sealed-off from the outside 

world and hence physically incapable of non-autonomy, 

and hence hypothetically prohibited. Where systems have 

two-way communications links to elsewhere, however, the 

key to evaluating whether or not there is inescapably a 

"human in the loop" would presumably lie in fully 

understanding the system's software. And that certainly 

seems to present a difficult verification challenge. 

I have personally heard it suggested that one might 

establish a global software declaration process for all 

weapons systems, in which source code would be provided 

to some kind of international verification authority 

analogous to the International Atomic Energy Agency 

(IAEA) or the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical 

Weapons (OPCW), where expert computer scientists would 

vet each software package and certify whether or not the 

system is capable of autonomous lethality. But could one 

ever imagine that countries would agree to turn over all the 

source code for their cutting-edge weapons systems? 

And even if countries did make such disclosures, could 

such an authority possibly vet them properly or keep said 

technologies safe from theft, manipulation, sabotage, or 

proliferation? And how on Earth would you know whether 

or not any given declarer had secretly held something 

back? Or that it hadn't just modified the software right 

after getting an international seal of approval? Or simply 

used another computer algorithm to provide the final 

decision to be beamed back into the device in response to a 

query about whether or not to shoot? The "international 

verification" notion seems to me an entirely unworkable 

idea, incapable of functioning effectively, or being at all 

trustworthy. 

And if one threw up one's hands in frustration at such 

an unworkable idea and opted simply for a convention that 

merely banned LAWS but lacked any kind of transparency 

or verification protocols, who would be constrained by that 

scheme? I would venture to say that some scrupulous 

governments who chose to become party to such a 

convention certainly would be so constrained - just as we in 

the United States are constrained by the terms of the 

Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTW(), even 

though it has never had a verification protocol. 

But it also seems safe to say that some governments 

wouldn't feel constrained by a LAWS ban without a 

verification mechanism, either out of lack of respect for 

international law, or by simply declining to join the 

convention. After all, both Russia and Syria clearly 

maintain, and have even used, prohibited chemical 

weapons even though they are States Party to the 

Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC)- and that treaty 

actually does have declaration and verification rules, as well 

as a specialized international organization to help 

implement them. 

A purely normative LAWS ban, therefore, seems likely 

to have an asymmetric result. The most unscrupulous 

builders and users of high-technology weaponry would be 

the ones least likely to respect obligations undertaken, and 

many of the most sophisticated state users, including 

responsible ones, would simply decline to participate in the 

convention for all the reasons I have already outlined. 

Nor, I suspect, could we rely upon NGO "killer robots" 

activists to mobilize civil society pressures to bring things 

under control, for it is precisely the governments most 

immune to such pressures - such as the high-technology 

police state of the Chinese Communist Party, or the 

autocracy of Vladimir Putin in Russia -who would seem 

most likely to build lethal autonomous systems in violation 

of a ban. In other words, the rules would work best where 

you needed them the least and work least where you 

needed them the most (i.e., in constraining scofflaw states 

such as Russia and China keen to obtain military 

advantages versus the West). 

As I have also observed of the so-called nuclear 

weapons "ban" treaty, the asymmetric impact of 

prohibition activism upon free, democratic states thus 

suggests the possibility that to the extent that such efforts 

actually succeed, they may risk creating a dynamic of de 

facto disarmament by the world's democracies vis-a-vis 

authoritarian states. As you might imagine, I'm far from 

convinced that that's a good idea - especially given the 

degree that Chinese strategic thinkers openly write about 

how they see their road to mid-21st-Century military 

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dominance being driven in large part by pioneering work in 

Al-driven, "intelligentized" weapons systems and 

command-and-control architectures. 

IV. The LAWS GGE Process 

In fairness, it is not quite right to suggest a LAWS ban 

cannot be a policy option, as I suppose it certainly could be 

an option for some states. I posit, however, that it would 

not be an effective option, and that it could itself present 

some very formidable problems - especially as applied to 

the powers one would most like to see forced to behave 

ethically. Instead of fixating upon such simplistic answers, 

therefore, I urge the international community to roll up its 

sleeves, ask the tough questions, and continue to improve 

our understanding of the issues before jumping into the 

deep end of purported policy "solutions." Through deeper 

and more constructive discussions with experts, policy 

makers may better gauge the myriad of connected issues 

instead of creating knee-jerk policy prescriptions that feed 

reactionary fears. 

On each of these key matters, there may be 

legitimate differences of view. But one thing is clear: these 

are issues that cannot be resolved in politically-charged 

bumper sticker-level debates over "killer robots." 

Fortunately there is already a process in the 

international community aimed at addressing the 

complexities of these issues, with engagement from both 

states and NGOs and other external actors, which is 

making progress as we speak. The Group of Governmental 

Experts (GGE) on LAWS, convening under the auspices of 

the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, is 

working hard to make substantive progress on these 

complex questions. 

Critics of this process, I think, do not appreciate how 

uniquely well-suited to this debate the GGE has been and 

continues to be. It is a standing forum that meets both 

formally and informally for several weeks each year, with a 

mandate devoted exclusively to LAWS-related issues as 

they pertain to IHL. It's worth emphasizing how unusual 

and promising this is. Unfortunately, proposals for even 

standing up such a forum in other IHL contexts -for 

instance, to discuss strengthening protections for IHLhave foundered. In many cases, states cannot even agree 

to meet regularly to discuss complicated issues like this. 

But the LAWS GGE does all this as a matter of course, 

as part of the CCW framework. This in and of itself has 

value. Getting all of these actors - from the United States 

to Costa Rica, from Russia and the PRC to Austria and 

Brazil, and everyone in between - into a room together to 

hash through these issues and speak frankly about them 

ensures that the issue continues to get the attention from 

governments that it deserves, all under the watchful eye of 

responsible civil society. 

Calls to have the discussion moved elsewhere, or 

undue impatience with these deliberations, could make the 

problem worse, not better. At present a de-politicized 

diplomatic process is grappling thoughtfully with the core 

issues that states will have to face. Activists should be 

thankful these matters are being taken seriously, and not 

push for moves that would undermine the good work that's 

going on. 

Jumping into sweeping policy prescriptions without a 

proper diagnosis of the problem or understanding of its 

complexities would be folly indeed. Diplomacy takes time 

and developing a usefully comprehensive understanding of 

such difficult legal and technical issues takes time. The 

GGE should be given enough time to do the heavy lifting of 

discourse, debate, sharing of best practices, and 

understanding. 

The GGE, in fact, has already made real progress -

including recommending the adoption of 11 Guiding 

Principles for the Responsible Use and Development of 

LAWS to the CCW meeting of High Contracting Parties last 

year. These are real, substantive, consensus principles 

adopted through genuine debate and discussion, grounded 

in respect for international humanitarian law. One cannot 

say with a straight face that this is not progress. 

V. Conclusion 

If we in government are to be responsible stewards of 

the security and safety of the civilian populations entrusted 

to our care, we owe these issues care and consideration. I 

am not arguing that these questions are necessarily 

unanswerable, nor that the answer is necessarily that 

LAWS should not or cannot somehow be addressed by the 

international community. I merely contend that answering 

these questions is difficult, that answering them in some 

fashion is necessary, and that we already have a place well 

suited to seeking answers to these questions in the 

international community at the LAWS GGE. 

I can assure you that no one wants to see the 

emergence of something like "Skynet" any less than I do. I 

7 
Arms Control and International Security Papers 

Al, Human-Machine Interaction, and Autonomous Weapons: Thinking 

Carefully AboutTaking "Killer Robots" Seriously 

do hope, however, that this paper has helped illuminate the 

complex nature of the topic. LAWS is an important that 

deserves being taken seriously by policy makers and 

technologists alike, rather than addressed as a policy reflex. 

* * 

Arms Control and International Security Papers 

Volume I, Number 2 I April 20, 2020 

* 

The Arms Control and International Security Papers are produced by the Office of the Under Secretary of State for Arms Control 

and International Security in order to make U.S. State Department policy analysis available in an electronically-accessible 

format compatible with "social distancing" during the COVID-19 crisis.