Description
As humanity rapidly expands into Outer Space, this paper illustrates the pressing need for frameworks to facilitate the ‘handling of legal and juridical specificities of crimes’ in Outer Space and the embedding of responsible behaviours. Within this framework, the doctrine of piracy by international law must play its role. Of immediate concern is the abuse of navigation satellites. Since 2023, multiple civil flights have been misdirected after their navigation systems were spoofed causing pilots to suffer navigation blindness. This is a serious threat to public safety. Such conduct could constitute a piratical robbery of a vessel. However, the ‘pirates’ are situated on dry land. This paper analyses whether the definition of a pirate can extend to piracies committed remotely. It further considers whether Space-based Artificial Intelligence (SBAI) is capable of being a pirate. In the 2018 Boeing 737 MAX incident, an onboard Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), a flight stabilizer, took control of Lion Air Flight 610 crashing it into the Java Sea and killing the 189 people on board. If done in Outer Space, this paper explores whether a finding of piracy relies upon independent agency or is, instead, attributable to the Human-in-the-Loop.
