The decision to use lethal force

Weapons that select and engage a target without further human input exist, and the technical trend runs one way. What states argue about is not whether a machine can do the selecting. It is whether the decision may be left to it. The position the ICRC published in May 2021 names the danger as the substitution of human decisions about life and death by sensor, software and machine processes, and in October 2023 the Secretary General of the United Nations and the President of the ICRC jointly asked states to conclude a binding instrument by 2026. The argument keeps returning to persons for a reason. The law of armed conflict requires that someone judged proportionality and distinction in the circumstances, and requires someone to answer if the judgment was wrong. Automating the trigger does not move that decision. It conceals it.