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Full-Text Articles in Military, War, and Peace
Autonomy And Precautions In The Law Of Armed Conflict, Eric Talbot Jensen
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
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, …
Will Cyber Autonomy Undercut Democratic Accountability?, Ashley Deeks
Will Cyber Autonomy Undercut Democratic Accountability?, Ashley Deeks
International Law Studies
In recent years, legislative bodies such as the U.S. Congress and the U.K. Parliament have struggled to maintain a role for themselves in government decisions to conduct military operations against foreign adversaries. Some of these challenges arise from constitutional structures, but they are also due to the changing nature of conflict: a shift away from large-scale kinetic operations and toward smaller-scale operations—including cyber operations—that are less visible and that do not require robust legislative support. These modern operations leave legislatures to engage in ex post and sometimes ineffective efforts to hold their executive branches accountable for international uses of force …
Autonomous Cyber Capabilities Below And Above The Use Of Force Threshold: Balancing Proportionality And The Need For Speed, Peter Margulies
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 …