Military, War, and Peace Commons^™

Autonomy And Precautions In The Law Of Armed Conflict, Eric Talbot Jensen

International Law Studies

Already a controversial topic, legal debate and broader discussions concerning the amount of human control required in the employment of autonomous weapons—including autonomous cyber capabilities—continues. These discussions, particularly those taking place among States that are Parties to the 1980 Certain Conventional Weapons Convention, reveal a complete lack of consensus on the requirement of human control and serve to distract from the more important question with respect to autonomy in armed conflict: under what conditions could autonomous weapons “select” and “attack” targets in a manner that complies with the law of armed conflict (LOAC).

This article analyzes the specific LOAC rules …

Autonomous Cyber Capabilities And The International Law Of Sovereignty And Intervention, Michael N. Schmitt

International Law Studies

This article explores the intersection of autonomous cyber capabilities and two primary rules of international law—the respect for the sovereignty of other States and the prohibition on coercive intervention into another State's internal or external affairs. Of all the rules of international law, these are the likeliest to be violated through employment of cyber capabilities, whether autonomous or not. This raises the question of whether a cyber operation that involves autonomous capabilities presents unique issues with respect to the application of the two rules. The article concludes that while there are numerous unsettled issues surrounding their application to cyber operations, …

Autonomous Cyber Capabilities Below And Above The Use Of Force Threshold: Balancing Proportionality And The Need For Speed, Peter Margulies

International Law Studies

Protecting the cyber domain requires speedy responses. Mustering that speed will be a task reserved for autonomous cyber agents—software that chooses particular actions without prior human approval. Unfortunately, autonomous agents also suffer from marked deficits, including bias, unintelligibility, and a lack of contextual judgment. Those deficits pose serious challenges for compliance with international law principles such as proportionality.

In the jus ad bellum, jus in bello, and the law of countermeasures, compliance with proportionality reduces harm and the risk of escalation. Autonomous agent flaws will impair their ability to make the fine-grained decisions that proportionality entails. However, a …