Description
The Trump administration is argued to have shifted the direction of American foreign policy through its strategic prioritization on great power competition. We know comparatively little about how this key aspect of Trump’s presidential legacy has impacted the use of the strategic practices associated with remote warfare and what this may mean for the continuing development of scholarship in this area. This paper consequently has two aims: first, to examine the impact of the Trump administration’s focus on great power competition on US’ policies regarding the development and use of autonomous weapon systems; and second, to assess what implications this may have for the study and conceptualization of remote warfare. Although some existing research has pointed to a connection between remote warfare and great power competition, as with the study of artificial intelligence as a remote warfare practice, this relationship remains underexplored and theoretically underspecified. To develop new insights in this area, this paper returns to the earlier debates on the Pentagon’s Third Offset Strategy championed by former Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work and the character and drivers of technological competition in world politics. In doing so, it provides new insights into how we study Trump’s complicated presidential legacy, remote warfare, and contemporary American foreign policy.
