•  84
    Just War Theory debates discussing the principle of the Moral Equality of Combatants involve the notion of Invincible Ignorance; the claim that warfi ghters are morally excused for participating in an unjust war because of their epistemic limitations. Conditions of military deployment may indeed lead to genuinely insurmountable epistemic limitations. In other cases, these may be overcome. This paper provides a preliminary sketch of heuristics designed to allow a combatant to judge whether or not…Read more
  •  264
    AWS compliance with the ethical principle of proportionality: three possible solutions
    Ethics and Information Technology 25 (1): 1-13. 2023.
    The ethical Principle of Proportionality requires combatants not to cause collateral harm excessive in comparison to the anticipated military advantage of an attack. This principle is considered a major (and perhaps insurmountable) obstacle to ethical use of autonomous weapon systems (AWS). This article reviews three possible solutions to the problem of achieving Proportionality compliance in AWS. In doing so, I describe and discuss the three components Proportionality judgments, namely collater…Read more
  •  116
    The 2016-17 Iraqi offensive that recaptured the city of Mosul from the Islamic State have demonstrated the inability of contemporary armed forces to retake urban areas from a determined and ruthless enemy without either suffering debilitating casualties or causing thousands of civilian deaths and virtually destroying the city itself. The enemy’s willingness to refuse civilian evacuation via a humanitarian corridor and effectively take the inhabitants hostage is all it takes to impose this tragic…Read more
  •  140
    Beyond Deadlock: Low Hanging Fruit and Strict yet Available Options in AWS Regulation
    Journal of Ethics and Emerging Technologies 2 (32): 1-14. 2022.
    Efforts to ban Autonomous Weapon Systems were both unsuccessful and controversial. Simultaneously the need to address the detrimental aspects of AWS development and proliferation continues to grow in scope and urgency. The article presents several regulatory solutions capable of addressing the issue while simultaneously respecting the requirements of military necessity and so attracting a broad consensus. Two much stricter solutions – regional AWS bans and adoption of a no first use policy – are…Read more
  •  166
    Please contact me at [email protected] if you are interested in reading a particular chapter or being sent the entire manuscript for private use. The thesis offers a comprehensive argument in favor of a regulationist approach to autonomous weapon systems (AWS). AWS, defined as all military robots capable of selecting or engaging targets without direct human involvement, are an emerging and potentially deeply transformative military technology subject to very substantial ethical controversy.…Read more
  •  141
    Spare Not a Naked Soldier: A Response to Daniel Restrepo
    Journal of Military Ethics 21 (1): 66-81. 2022.
    In his recent JME article Daniel Restrepo argues that both legal and ethical rules should protect the so-called Naked Soldiers, combatants engaged in activity unrelated to military operations and unaware of the imminent danger threatening them. I criticize this position from several angles. I deny the existence of any link between vulnerability and innocence, and claim ignorance of deadly threats does not give rise to a morally distinguished type of vulnerability. I argue that actions not contri…Read more
  •  379
    Punishing Robots – Way Out of Sparrow’s Responsibility Attribution Problem
    Journal of Military Ethics 19 (4): 285-291. 2020.
    The Laws of Armed Conflict require that war crimes be attributed to individuals who can be held responsible and be punished. Yet assigning responsibility for the actions of Lethal Autonomous Weapon...
  •  225
    Arguments from human dignity feature prominently in the Lethal Autonomous Weapons moral feasibility debate, even though their exists considerable controversy over their role and soundness and the notion of dignity remains under-defined. Drawing on the work of Dieter Birnbacher, I fix the sub-discourse as referring to the essential value of human persons in general, and to postulated moral rights of combatants not covered within the existing paradigm of the International Humanitarian Law in parti…Read more