Civil Society Responds to the AWS: Growing Activist Networks and Shifting Frames
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12671 |
| Published date | 01 September 2019 |
| Date | 01 September 2019 |
| Author | Şerif Onur Bahçecik |
Civil Society Responds to the AWS: Growing
Activist Networks and Shifting Frames
S
ßerif Onur Bahc
ßecik
Middle East Technical University
Abstract
This article tracks the emergence and growth of advocacy around autonomous weapon systems (AWS). By looking at the ways
in which activists problematize autonomous weapons and at the growing members of the alliance to ban killer robots, the
subtle shifts in issue framing and configuration of the network are outlined. It is argued that the advocacy against AWS
emerged from an epistemic community and grew to include significant non-governmental organizations such as Human
Rights Watch. It is further argued that autonomous weapons were initially conceptualized as ‘killer robots’that threaten inter-
national security and the security of civilians during armed conflict. This framing later came to be supplemented by ideas that
AWS may emerge as a new form of weapon of mass destruction that could be used to threaten citizens living in Western
countries. The changes in the network that seeks to ban AWS and the shifting ways of problematizing them indicates that
transnational activism is in flux. Discordant ways of approaching AWS may risk the formation of a broad-based coalition to
ban AWS. This study complements studies that focus on norms of and government policies towards future warfare.
In an article written in 2007, Noel Sharkey, a well-known
professor of robotics, argued that with the use of the ‘first
armed battlefield robots’in Iraq by the United States,
humanity is entering a new phase (Sharkey, 2007). We are, it
seems, at the beginning of a slippery slope where the intro-
duction by the military-industrial complex of autonomous
vehicles that can use lethal force will have unexpected con-
sequences. The main concern according to Sharkey was that
the robots were assuming the capacity to decide on the use
of force despite the fact that there was no legal framework
to regulate the conduct of these devices. This could also
easily lead to a fundamental ethical problem where machi-
nes have ‘the power of life and death ... without reason or
conscience’. Not everyone agreed with Sharkey. There were
others who thought that autonomous weapons, if properly
regulated and programmed with ‘ethical autonomy’, could
be helpful in reducing civilian casualties and even improving
civilian safety (see for instance Arkin, 2015; McKendrick,
2018, for a critique of these views see Bode, 2018; Garcia,
2015b and Roff, 2016). Sharkey and many others did not
find these arguments compelling enough and their efforts
later led to the formation of the ‘Campaign to Stop Killer
Robots’(CSKR) in the first decade of the new millennium. In
this contribution, I seek to analyze the trajectory of advo-
cacy to ban autonomous weapons systems (AWS).
The threats posed by AWS has generated significant
amount of academic work. My contribution focuses on non-
state actors and shows the ways in which they problematize
AWS. This complements studies (e.g. Haas and Fischer, 2017)
that focus on governmental policies towards AWS or those
that focus on the impact of AWS on international norms
(e.g. Bode and Huelss, 2018). The paper specifically deals
with what Mathur (2011) calls ‘humanitarian practices’,
namely the engagement of humanitarian actors with arms
control and disarmament. As Docherty (2013) shows, mod-
ern disarmament efforts that started in the 1970s have
shifted from being primarily focused on international secu-
rity to humanitarian disarmament where the main concern
is protecting civilians from the scourge of war. The success
of advocacy against landmines was deepened with the ban
on cluster munitions (Borrie, 2009) and a new model of
humanitarian legislation that concerned civilians and reme-
dial action for victims emerged. This new model sought out-
right bans of specific types of weapons rather than just
limiting them. In this vein, the CSKR seeks a preemptive ban
on the AWS.
Below, I argue that there have been two significant
changes in the practices around AWS. ‘Killer robots’were
originally seen as a problem of international security and of
the safety of civilians during armed conflict and the network
relied mostly on an epistemic community. Later ‘killer
robots’were constituted as a technology that could endan-
ger the safety of civilians in situations beyond international
armed conflict. Early advocacy often used the epitome of a
robot mistaking a small child for a soldier. Recently how-
ever, we see an emphasis on scenarios where swarms of
mini-drones kill people on purpose: a shift from erroneous
decision-making to evil intent. At the same time, the advo-
cacy network shifted to include celebrities such as Elon
Musk and the late Stephen Hawking.
An evolving transnational network
The CSKR is currently at the center of the transnational net-
work seeking to ban AWS. Early proponents of the ban were
often scientists and engineers. The campaign traces its
Global Policy (2019) 10:3 doi: 10.1111/1758-5899.12671 ©2019 University of Durham and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Global Policy Volume 10 . Issue 3 . September 2019 365
Special Section Article
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