Description
This paper considers what autonomous weapons mean for the ontology of war. Beginning with Clausewitz’ conceptualisation of war as the reciprocity of hostile intentions between two or more groups which results in a “clash of arms”, I ask whether “war”—as we know it—can survive the unfolding revolution in robotics and artificial intelligence: How far and for how long “out of the loop”, for example, can humans be for war to still be war; and at what stage would we regard autonomous weapons as waging “autonomous war” (a feat for which—if we are to preserve the Clausewitzian notion of “war”—they would have to embody/manifest “hostile intentions”)? I argue that these questions point to an impending ontological upheaval: That if, hitherto, only war’s character has changed, then at some future point we will witness its nature morphing into something which escapes conceptual and ontological understanding thereunto. I conclude with a methodological argument: That our difficulty to grasp the ethical, legal, societal, and security implications of autonomous weapons is rooted in this impending ontological upheaval. This paper, as such, clarifies some of the unique ontological/methodological challenges facing the field of war studies as it ventures into an uncertain future.
