Locating LAWS: Lethal Autonomous Weapons, Epistemic Space, and “Meaningful Human” Control

Abstract

This paper analyzes the excessive epistemic narrowing of debate about lethal autonomous weapon systems (LAWS), and specifically the concept of meaningful human control, which has emerged as central to regulatory debates in both the scholarly literature and policy fora. Through reviewing work drawing on international relations, security studies, international law and ethics, and technology policy, I argue all share a common epistemological position. This draws on a philosophical and analytical tradition that is Western and modernist, and places a “meaningful human” at the center of debates over controlling LAWS who reflects archetypes associated with a Western, rational, white, male. This epistemological location, I argue, excludes epistemological perspectives relevant to communities who both are most likely to experience LAWS, because they live in areas where deployment is most likely, and have the greatest experience of the effects of key LAWS precursors, such as unmanned aerial vehicles. Drawing on insights from decolonial approaches, I establish a research agenda that challenges this epistemological closure and looks to relocate debates about meaningful human control over LAWS in research that makes space for far more diverse perspectives on a crucial issue that may shape humankind's common future.