Part of the ongoing debate about the lawfulness of autonomy in military systems in the manner in which the technology integrates with and interacts with its human masters.  The term Meaningful Human Control (or MHC) has garnered particular relevance in this debate. Today we speak with Dr Lena Trabucco about her upcoming OpinioJuris Symposium on Military AI and the Law of Armed Conflict, co-edited with Dr Magda Packholska, on this issue, as well as her work on legal challenges associated with emerging technology more broadly.

Lena is a research fellow, a visiting scholar at the Stockton Center for International Law at the US Naval War College, and research fellow at the Technology, Law and Security Program at American University College of Law and the University of Copenhagen. Her research focuses on the intersection of international law and emerging military technology, particularly autonomous weapon systems. She has multiple projects examining human control throughout an autonomous weapon system life cycle. Previously, she was a post-doctoral researcher at the Centre for Military Studies at the University of Copenhagen. Lena received a PhD in law from the University of Copenhagen and a PhD in international relations from Northwestern University.

Additional resources:

• Opinio Juris Symposium on Military AI and the Law of Armed Conflict
• Kevin Jon Heller, 'The Concept of 'The Human' in the Critique of Autonomous Weapons', 14 Harvard National Security Journal (2023)
• Magdalena Pacholska, 'Military Artificial Intelligence and the Principle of Distinction: A State Responsibility Perspective', Israel Law Review (2022), 1–21
• Rebecca Crootof, 'A Meaningful Floor for 'Meaningful Human Control', Temple International & Comparative Law Journal, Vol. 30, 2016
• Kenneth Payne's Substack
• Killer Robot Cocktail Party (Lena and Brad Boyd's substack)

In this episode, Dr Lauren Sanders speaks with Professor Stuart Casey-Maslen about Directed Energy Weapons. They traverse the existing legal controls on these weapons, and speak about the potential for future regulation of novel uses of energy weapons in armed conflict. 

This conversation preceded a presentation by Dr Casey-Maslen, Dr Sanders and  Dr Altman for UNIDIR, which was a side event to the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons Meeting of States Parties, held in November 2023. 

Stuart Casey-Maslen is an international lawyer and Professor at the University of Pretoria, specialising in the use of force and the protection of civilians, and he has published numerous books and articles on this topic. He is also an Associate Fellow within the Global Fellowship Initiative of the GCSP. 

Additional Resources: 

• United Nations Human Rights Guidance on Less-Lethal Weapons in Law Enforcement, 01 June 2020.
• ICRC Expert Meeting on Legal Reviews of Weapons and the SlrUS Project.
• A/78/324: Thematic study on the global trade in weapons, equipment and devices used by law enforcement and other public authorities that are capable of inflicting torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, 24 Aug 23.

As part of our ‘futures’ mini-series, in this episode we are looking specifically at Algorithmic Futures, with hosts of the podcast of the same name: Dr Zena Assaad and Dr Elizabeth Williams, both from ANU. Today we are going to specifically focus on the breadth of the design and uncertainty problem for capabilities augmented by algorithms.  

Elizabeth T. Williams is an Associate Professor in the School of Engineering at the Australian National University (ANU).  She has a PhD in experimental nuclear structure from Yale University. Since joining the ANU in 2012, Liz has held an ARC DECRA Fellowship, mucked about with accelerators, code, and superheavy elements, and explored complexity in real-world technological systems. She also led the creation of the hands-on half of the Masters of Applied Cybernetics, convened the School of Cybernetics 2021 PhD cohort program, and will soon convene the newly created Nuclear Systems major and minor for the School of Engineering’s Bachelor of Engineering programs.

Zena Assaad is a senior research fellow within the School of Engineering at the Australian National University (ANU). Zena studied a Bachelor of Aerospace Engineering and completed a PhD exploring decision-making under uncertainty to support strategic air traffic flow management. Zena currently holds a fellowship position under the ethics uplift program with trusted autonomous systems, exploring human-machine teaming; and is also a fellow with the Australian Army Research Centre researching autonomy in swarms and human-machine teams.

Additional Resources:

• Algorithmic Futures - podcast by Zena Assaad and Liz Williams
• Klara and the Sun - K Ishaguro, 2021
• The Ironies of Automation - L Bainbridge, Automatica, Vol. 19, No. 6. pp. 775 779, 1983 

Continuing our future of war series, this episode dives into the legal implications of increasing transparency of the battlespace as a result of technological change; and looks at developments in biological warfare that challenge the long-standing prohibition on biological weapons at international law. We speak with Rob Lawless from the Leiber Institute, at the Westpoint Academy to hear more. 

Robert Lawless is an Associate Professor in the Department of Law at the United States Military Academy, West Point. He teaches various courses, including military law and the law of armed conflict. He is also the Research Director of the Lieber Institute for Law and Warfare and one of the editors of Articles of War.  

Professor Lawless previously spent ten years as an active-duty military officer in the U.S. Army JAG Corps., serving in several positions advising commanders on legal issues. He also spent almost three years as an Army litigator, representing both the U.S. government and individual soldiers in courts-martial and other military justice forums. 

Additional resources:

• Lieber Studies Series
• Articles of War Blog
• Professor Nasu's works on nanotechnology
• 1925 Geneva Protocol
• Biological Weapons Convention
• Sean Watts, Law-of-War Perfidy, 219 Mil L. Rev. 106 (2014)

In this third episode in our futures mini-series, we continue our scoping of the utility of seeking to predict the future of war; before deep diving into emerging and disruptive technologies. Recorded in late September 2023, we are speaking with Artur Gruszczak about the Future of War, and his recently edited Handbook on the same topic, released by Routledge this September.

Artur Gruszczak holds a PhD in Political Science from Jagiellonian University in Krakow. Currently he holds an appointment there as an Associate Professor of Political Science, Chair of National Security at the Faculty of International and Political Studies.  Since 2014 he has been Faculty Member of the European Academy Online run by the Centre international de formation européenne in Nice. His academic interests and research areas include: security studies, EU area of freedom, security and justice, intelligence cooperation in the European Union, and the evolution of modern warfare.

Additional resources:

•  Handbook of the Future of Warfare, Edited By Artur Gruszczak, Sebastian Kaempf, Routledge, 2023
• The Weaponisation of Everything, Mark Galeotti, Yale University Press, 2023
• New and Old Wars, Mary Kaldor, Stanford University Press, 2012
• Pearl Harbour: Warning and Decision, Roberta Wohlstetter, Stanford University Press, 1962
• Theorising Future Conflict, Mark Lacy, Routledge 2024.
• War Transformed, Mick Ryan 2022. 
• The Future of War: A History, Lawrence Freedman 2018.
• Warrior Geeks, Christopher Coker, 2013.

Recorded in early September 2023,  this episode continues our futures mini-series, where we speak with Dr Ian Langford and Professor David Killcullen about the future of war in the Indo-Pacific region. In this episode we will be getting a download on what the change in geopolitics in the Indo-Pacific means for Australia, and how that might impact choices relating to technology, acquisitions and their subsequent use and regulation; as well as discussing what the future of proxy warfare and modern counterinsurgency might look like.

Dr Ian Langford, DSC and Bars, is a member of a member of UNSW’s Future Operations Research Group and is a strategic adviser with UBH Group, a leading Sovereign Information Domain (SID) company. Dr Langford is a regular contributor to the Australian Army Research Centre, and in addition to being a Distinguished Graduate of the United States Marine Corps Command and Staff College and the School of Advanced Warfighting, he has recently retired from the Australian Army as a Brigadier where he filled multiple senior roles including – relevant to our discussion today – as the Army’s Director General of Future Land Warfare and the Head of Land Capability.

Dr David Kilcullen is a former soldier and diplomat, and a scholar of guerrilla warfare, terrorism, urbanisation and the future of conflict, who served 25 years for the Australian and United States governments. During the Iraq War, he served in Baghdad as a member of the Joint Strategic Assessment Team, then as Senior Counterinsurgency Advisor, Multi-National Force Iraq in 2007, before becoming Special Advisor for Counterinsurgency to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on counterinsurgency; and in addition to holding senior academic roles across a number of institutions, he has written six books on counterinsurgency.

Additional resources:
-  Australian Defence Strategic Review
- USMC Stand-In Force Concept
- UK Future Commando Force Concept

In this episode, we conclude our interview with Dr Charles Adeogun-Phillips, discussing guilty pleas and their development in international criminal law.

Dr Charles A. Adeogun-Phillips is an accomplished international lawyer and former lead international prosecutor. He founded the cross-border law firm of Charles Anthony LLP, following a distinguished legal career at the UN, wherein he successfully led teams of international prosecutors in 12 precedent-setting genocide trials before the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, making him arguably one of the most experienced and successful genocide prosecutors in history. In 2021, he was called to the Bar of England and Wales as a transferring Solicitor, by the Honourable Society of Lincoln’s Inn, and practises as a Barrister from the prestigious Guernica 37 (International Justice) Chambers in London and The Hague. In 2022, he was awarded the degree of Doctor of Laws (honoris causa) by his alma mater, Warwick University, in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the development of international criminal law. He contributed to the book International Criminal Investigations, Law, and Practice—“The Challenges of International Investigations and Prosecutions: Perspectives of a Prosecutor” published by Eleven International, The Hague in 2018. He is the focal point for Nigeria at the ICC Bar Association.

Additional Resources 

• Nancy Combs
• Kosovo Specialist Chambers 
• Special Panels for Serious Crimes (East Timor).
  
  

In this interview, we are speaking with Dr Charles Adeogun-Phillips about the history of guilty pleas in international criminal law, as an author of a chapter on the same topic, as part of the edited works, Contemporary International Criminal Law Issues - Contributions in Pursuit of Accountability for Africa and the World. The challenges associated with the running of international criminal trials are extensive, and establishing a process for plea bargaining, to satisfactorily address some of the legal challenges associated with atrocity crimes, is an even more delicate one.  

Today we are talking with Dr Adeogun-Phillips about how this process has evolved over the course of the ad hoc tribunals, and what plea bargaining means in terms of accountability for international criminal offences. 

Dr Charles A. Adeogun-Phillips is an accomplished international lawyer and former lead international prosecutor. He founded the cross-border law firm of Charles Anthony LLP, following a distinguished legal career at the UN, wherein he successfully led teams of international prosecutors in 12 precedent-setting genocide trials before the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, making him arguably one of the most experienced and successful genocide prosecutors in history. In 2021, he was called to the Bar of England and Wales as a transferring Solicitor, by the Honourable Society of Lincoln’s Inn, and practises as a Barrister from the prestigious Guernica 37 (International Justice) Chambers in London and The Hague. In 2022, he was awarded the degree of Doctor of Laws (honoris causa) by his alma mater, Warwick University, in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the development of international criminal law. He contributed to the book International Criminal Investigations, Law, and Practice—“The Challenges of International Investigations and Prosecutions: Perspectives of a Prosecutor” published by Eleven International, The Hague in 2018. He is the focal point for Nigeria at the ICC Bar Association.

We continue this international criminal law mini-series by speaking with Natacha Bracq, who wrote a chapter on gender and sexual-based violence in Contemporary International Criminal Law Issues - Contributions in Pursuit of  Accountability for Africa and the World, which deals with a range of issues impacting contemporary ICL practice in Africa and around the world. 

Her chapter, Sexual and Gender-Based Violence: What Legacy for the New ICC Prosecutor?  focuses on the International Criminal Court specifically,  highlighting that the court still struggles to effectively address such crimes and continues to repeat the errors of the past.

Natacha works as a Legal Advisor with Dignity, the Danish Institute against Torture, and is also the founder of the first blog entirely dedicated to ICL in the French language (www.blogdip.org). Previously, amongst other roles, she worked as a lawyer at the Paris Bar and as the  Senior Officer for Training and Capacity Building at the International Nuremberg Principles Academy. She has worked with Wayne Jordash QC before various international tribunals including the ICJ, ICTY, and ICC. 

Additional Resources: 

• Prosecuting Sexual and Gender-Based Crimes in the International Criminal Court,  Rosemary Grey, 2019 
• Prosecuting Conflict-Related Sexual Violence at the ICTY, edited by Baron Serge Brammertz and Michelle Jarvis, 2016 
• International Protocol on the Documentation and Investigation of Sexual Violence in Conflict, June 2014, from the United Kingdom's Foreign and Commonwealth Office
• The Hague Principles on Sexual Violence
• The Murad Code 
  
  

We start our futures mini-series by speaking with an eminent military historian on the future of warfare. In this episode we are delighted to be joined by Sir Lawrence Freedman. Recorded in September 2023 he joins us to talk about the future of warfare, having regard to his approach to predicting future war, as outlined in The Future of War: A History; and the update to this commentary, taking into account the lessons to be learned from the ongoing conflict in the Ukraine.: Modern Warfare: Lessons from Ukraine.

Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman is Emeritus Professor of War Studies, King's College London. Elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1995 and awarded the CBE in 1996, he was appointed Official Historian of the Falklands Campaign in 1997. In 2003, he was awarded the KCMG. In June 2009, he was appointed to serve as a member of the official inquiry into Britain and the 2003 Iraq War. He has written widely on international history, strategic theory and nuclear weapons issues, as well as commenting on current security issues.

Among his books are Strategy: A History (2013, OUP) and Command: The Politics of Military Operations from Korea to Ukraine (2023, Penguin).

You can read more of Freedman's commentary on his substack, Comment is Freed.

Additional resources:
Lawrence Freedman: Modern Warfare, Lessons from Ukraine (2023, A Lowy Institute Paper/Penguin)
David Patreus and Andrew Roberts: Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Ukraine (2023, Harper Collins)
Mick Ryan: War Transformed (2022, Naval Institute Press).
Mick Ryan's substack: Futura Doctrina
Phillip O'Brien's substack: Phillip's Newsletter

We start this international criminal law mini-series by speaking with Mr Takeh Sendze, who is the editor of a recently published book, Contemporary International Criminal Law Issues - Contributions in Pursuit of Accountability for Africa and the World, which deals with a range of issues impacting contemporary ICL practice in Africa and around the world.  

Takeh B.K. Sendze is a Cameroonian lawyer who received an LL.B. Honours degree from the University of Buea, Cameroon, in 1999 and an LL.M. in International Law from the University of Hull, UK, in 2002. He is an advocate of the New York State (USA) and Cameroon Bar Associations. He is currently a Legal Officer with the Office of the Prosecutor at the United Nations International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals, with almost two decades worth of professional experience in the fields of International Law, International Humanitarian Law, International Criminal Law/prosecution and International Human Rights. He is an experienced public speaker, trainer, mentor, guest lecturer and community leader.

Additional Resources 

• Takeh's most recent publication, Contemporary International Criminal Law Issues: Contributions in Pursuit of Accountability for Africa and the World, edited alongside Adesola Adeboyejo,  Howard Morrison and Sophia Ugwu
• The International Law Series, edited by William A. Schabas
• Contemporary Issues Facing the International Criminal Court,  Richard H. Steinberg
• International Criminal Investigations: Law and Practice, Adejoké Babington-Ashaye, Aimée Comrie, Akingbolahan Adeniran 

In this episode in the BarbieHeimer series, we focus on the history of the Manhattan Project and the accuracy of the Oppenheimer movie. We are speaking with nuclear historian Chris Griffith, about the history, and consequences of the atomic age. As a warning, if you haven’t seen the film we will be talking about the movie’s plot lines and breaking down some of its scenes!

Chris is an atomic historian who has created the online archive AtomicArchive, which is aimed at creating content to help the general public understand the science, history, and consequences of the atomic age. He has recently written for the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists to break down the historical accuracy of the film.

Additional Resources: 

• Chris Griffith, 'A Manhattan Project historian comments on ‘Oppenheimer’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist, 28 Jul 2023.
•  Samuel Glasstone and Philip J. Dolan, The Effects of Nuclear Weapons (3rd ed, 1977)
• The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists 
• National Security Archive - The George Washington University
• Alec Wellerstein's webpage, and 'NUKEMAP' to simulate the effects of a nuclear explosion anywhere on the map. 

 Today we continue our ‘BarbieHeimer’  (or Barbenheimer) series, and are talking today about the meme itself. Is it appropriate to mash these two films together? Is this frivolity making light of the serious impacts of nuclear weapons and the need for a refocus on non-proliferation and disarmament efforts? We speak with a scholar of Visual Politics and Visual Research Methods – Emily Faux - whose doctoral studies focus on what pop culture can tell us about nuclear weapons.

Emily is a PhD candidate at Newcastle University, UK. Her thesis investigates nuclear weapons and war through popular film, television, and video game. She is interested in the contemporary story and popular imagination of nuclear weapons and war, as it exists in the current geopolitical climate. Emily teaches at the University of Leeds and is a member of the FemNukes network, a contributor for HighlyNRiched and has completed both the EU's Young Women in Non-Proliferation and Disarmament mentorship scheme and the University of California's Public Policy and Nuclear Threats course.

Edited by Rosie Cavdarski.

Additional resources:

• Emily Faux: What Barbie can teach us about nuclear weapons, The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, 3 August 2023
• Emily Faux:  The Untold Stories Behind “Oppenheimer” , InkStick, 18 Jul 2023
• Nukespeak: the Media and the Bomb, edited by Crispin Aubrey 
• John Mecklin,  An extended interview with Christopher Nolan, director of Oppenheimer,  17 July 2023, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
• Jenny Johnston, Filmmaker on a Mission, 16 August 2020, N Square.

In this 'BarbieHeimer' special episode, we return to the plastic doll, to talk about materialism, symbolism and the souvenirs in international law.  Emily Crawford and Jacqueline Mowbray walk us through their Souvenirs in International Law exhibit and project; and where Barbie features in their exhibit, as well as introducing us to Doudou Louis, the Louis Vuitton UNICEF Bear. 

To submit your own international law souvenir:  @atthevanishingpoint on Instagram.

Professor Emily Crawford is at the University of Sydney Law School, where she teaches and researches in international law, international humanitarian law and international criminal law. She has published widely in the field of international humanitarian law, including three monographs (The Treatment of Combatants and Insurgents under the Law of Armed Conflict (OUP 2010), Identifying the Enemy: Civilian Participation in Hostilities (OUP 2015) and Non-Binding Norms in International Humanitarian Law: Efficacy, Legitimacy and Legality (OUP 2021)) and a textbook (International Humanitarian Law (with Alison Pert, 2nd edition, CUP 2020)). She is an associate of the Sydney Centre for International Law at the University of Sydney, and a co-editor of the Journal of International Humanitarian Studies.

Associate Professor Jacqueline Mowbray also at the  University of Sydney Law School, is the external legal adviser to Australia's Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights. Her work uses critical theory to explore the operation of international law, and focuses on international law and language policy, and economic, social and cultural rights. Her monograph Linguistic Justice: International Law and Language Policy was published by OUP in 2012. Her second monograph, The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: Commentary, Cases, and Materials (co-authored with Saul and Kinley) was winner of the 2015 American Society of International Law Certificate of Merit. 

Additional Resources:
Jessie Hohmann and Daniel Joyce (eds), International Law's Objects, OUP, 2018.
Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, HUP, 1987.
Marcel Mauss, The Gift, Routledge, 1950.

For Barbie about town, see @intlawbarbie on Twitter/X! 

In this, the first of our Special Series on the BarbieHeimer phenomenon, we speak with international law of the sea expert, Professor Don Rothwell to find out what all the controversy was about in relation to the banning of the Barbie movie in Vietnam; the 9-Dash line; and the importance of maps in international law. 

Professor Donald R Rothwell is one of Australia’s leading experts in International Law with specific focus on the law of the sea; law of the polar regions; use of force and implementation of international law within Australia. He is the author of 28 books and over 200 book chapters and articles including, with Tim Stephens, The International Law of the Sea 3rd ed, (IN PRESS). His most recent work is Islands and International Law (Hart: 2022).

Major career works include The Polar Regions and the Development of International Law (CUP, 1996), and International Law: Cases and Materials with Australian Perspectives 3rd (CUP: 2018).

Rothwell is also Editor-in-Chief of the Brill Research Perspectives in Law of the Sea. From 2012-2018 he was Rapporteur of the International Law Association (ILA) Committee on ‘Baselines under the International Law of the Sea’.  Rothwell was previously Challis Professor of International Law and Director of the Sydney Centre for International and Global Law, University of Sydney (2004-2006), where he had taught since 1988. He has acted as a consultant or been a member of expert groups for UNEP, UNDP, IUCN, the Australian Government, and acted as advisor to the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW).

In 2012 Rothwell was appointed an inaugural ANU Public Policy Fellow, and in 2015 elected as Fellow to the Australian Academy of Law. He is a regular media commentator on international law issues and has written over 100 opinion comments, including for all of the major daily newspapers in Australia and ABC Online ‘The Drum. 

Additional Resources:

• Don Rothwell, What is the ‘nine-dash line’ and what does it have to do with the Barbie movie?, The Conversation, 4 July 2023 (images of the Barbie 8-Dash Line and the real 9-Dash Line are embedded in this story).

• Erik Franckx and Marco Benatar, ‘Dots and Lines in the South China Sea: Insights from the Law of Map Evidence’ (2012) 2 Asian Journal of International Law 89-118.

• Z. Gao and B. Jia, ‘The Nine-Dash Line in the South China Sea: History, Status, and Implications’ (2013) 107 (1) American Journal of International Law 98-123.

• Communications received with regard to the joint submission made by Malaysia and Viet Nam to the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf – China (7 May 2009). 

In the second in our 'BarbieHeimer' series, we turn to the Oppenheimer movie and speak with world-renowned nuclear disarmament advocate and expert, Gareth Evans, about the opportunity the movie missed in re-energising efforts to the nuclear disarmament cause. We speak with him about the need for Australia to return to its former position of influence in arms control, to focus on a policy of 4D's:

- Doctrine of no first use;
- De-alerting early launch status of nuclear weapons;
- reducing Deployments of nuclear weapons; and
- Decreasing the number of nuclear weapons.

Professor the Hon Gareth Evans AC KC FASSA FAIIA is Distinguished Honorary Professor at the Australian National University, where he was Chancellor from 2010-19. He was a Cabinet Minister in the Hawke and Keating Labor Governments from 1983-96, in the posts of Attorney General, Minister for Resources and Energy, Minister for Transport and Communications and - from 1988-96 - Foreign Minister. During his 21 years in Australian politics he was Leader of the Government in the Senate (1993-96) and Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the House of Representatives (1996-98). From 2000 to 2009 he was President and CEO of the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, the independent global conflict prevention and resolution organisation. He initiated the Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, co-chaired the Australia-Japan International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament, was founding convenor of the Asia Pacific Leadership Network on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament (APLN), and co-authored Nuclear Weapons: The State of Play (ANU, 2013 and 2015).

Additional resources:

• Gareth Evans, 'Nuclear weapons:“Oppenheimer” won’t make a difference, but Australia can', The Interpreter, 27 Jul 2023.
• Other publications by Gareth Evans, available here (see in particular:  Lowering the Nuclear Temperature: Australia's role; Nuclear Weapons: The State of Play;  Revisiting the case for No First Use of nuclear weapons; & Nuclear Disarmament: the global challenge.
• Australia-Japan ICNND Report Eliminating Nuclear Threats , Report of the International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament, Co-Chair Yoriko Kawaguchi, 2009.
• George P. Shultz, William J. Perry,  Henry A. Kissinger and Sam Nunn, 'A World Free of Nuclear Weapons', The Wall Street Journal, 4 Jan 2007.
• John Hersey, Hiroshima, Snowball Publishing, 1946.
• Ward Wilson Five Myths About Nuclear Weapons, Mariner Books, 2014.
• Ramesh Thakur, 'Four Myths about Nuclear Weapons,'  Pearls and Irritations - John Menadue's Public Policy Journal, 4 June 2023.

In this interview, we are continuing our series on legal review of AWS, and speaking with two of the Law and Future of war research team, about an issue that impacts the design approaches to AWS: the alignment problem. In May 2023, there were reports of an AWS being tested, that turned upon its operator, and eventually cut its communications links so it could go after its originally planned mission... this prompted discussion about the alignment problem with AWS, impacting future TEVV strategies and regulatory approaches to this technology.

The conference referred to in the episode can be found in the notes to the attached link,  with relevant excerpts extracted below: - Highlights from the RAeS Future Combat Air & Space Capabilities Summit (aerosociety.com):

'Could an AI-enabled UCAV turn on its creators to accomplish its mission? (USAF)

[UPDATE 2/6/23 - in communication with AEROSPACE - Col Hamilton admits he "mis-spoke" in his presentation at the Royal Aeronautical Society FCAS Summit and the 'rogue AI drone simulation' was a hypothetical "thought experiment" from outside the military, based on plausible scenarios and likely outcomes rather than an actual USAF real-world simulation saying: "We've never run that experiment, nor would we need to in order to realise that this is a plausible outcome". ] 

Col Tucker ‘Cinco’ Hamilton, the Chief of AI Test and Operations, USAF, ... cautioned against relying too much on AI noting how easy it is to trick and deceive.

... Said Hamilton: “We were training it in simulation to identify and target a SAM threat. And then the operator would say yes, kill that threat. The system started realising that while they did identify the threat at times the human operator would tell it not to kill that threat, but it got its points by killing that threat. So what did it do? It killed the operator. It killed the operator because that person was keeping it from accomplishing its objective.”

Dr Brendan Walker-Munro is a Senior Research Fellow with the University of Queensland's Law and the Future of War research group. Brendan's research focus is on criminal and civil aspects of national security law, and the role played by intelligence agencies, law enforcement and the military in investigating and responding to critical incidents. He is also interested in the national security impacts of law on topics such as privacy, identity crime and digital security.

Dr Sam Hartridge is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Queensland. His research is currently examining the interplay between technical questions of AI safety, AI risk management frameworks and standards, and foundational international and domestic legal doctrine. 

 Additional Resources:

• Autonomy in weapons systems: playing catch up with technology - Humanitarian Law & Policy Blog (icrc.org)
• Striking Blind | The Forge (defence.gov.au)Concrete Problems in AI Safety (arxiv.org)
• The Superintelligent Will: Motivation and Instrumental Rationality in Advanced Artificial Agents (researchgate.net)
• The Surprising Creativity of Digital Evolution: A Collection of Anecdotes from the Evolutionary Computation and Artificial Life Research Communities (arxiv.org)

In this episode, as part of our series on AWS, legal review & IHL, we speak with Netta Goussac & Laura Bruun about their recently released SIPRI report on IHL & AWS, asking questions about what IHL permits, prohibits & requires in the design, development & use of AWS.

Netta Goussac is a Special Counsel with Lexbridge (a legal practice & consultancy specialising in public international law). She has worked as an international lawyer for over a decade, including for the ICRC & the Australian Government’s Office of International Law. Netta has expertise in legal frameworks related to the development, acquisition & transfer of weapons. Netta has provided legal & policy advice related to new technologies of warfare, including AWS, military applications of AI & cyber & space security, including as a researcher with the SIPRI.

Laura Bruun is a Researcher in the Governance of AI Programme at SIPRI. Her focus is on how emerging military technologies, notably AWS & military AI, affect compliance with—& interpretation of—IHL. Laura has a background in Middle Eastern Studies (University of Copenhagen) and International Security & Law (University of Southern Denmark). Laura worked at, among others, Airwars in London, where she monitored & assessed civilian casualty reports from US & Russian airstrikes in Syria & Iraq. 

Additional Resources: 

• Netta & Laura's report, Compliance with International Humanitarian Law in the Development and Use of Autonomous Weapon Systems: What does IHL Permit, Prohibit and Require?  published by SIPRI
• The SIPRI publication series on AWS, including the development of autonomy, human control & accountability & Article 36 Reviews
• The Asser Institute's podcast, Lethal Autonomous Weapons: 10 things we want to know
• UNIDIR publications, including Gender Bias and the 'Black Box'.
• ICRC's Position on Autonomous Weapons Systems here; see also their factsheet & video
• Dustin Lewis, A Key Set of IHL Questions concerning AI-supported Decision-making, in 51 Collegium
• Jaan Kross, Professor Martens' Departure, 1995

As part of our new, limited series on the Legal Review of AWS, we speak with two researchers from the Asser Institute on what the legal review obligation means for decision support systems, and what technical challenges exist in approaching the review obligation during the design and development phases in the creation of AWS.

Taylor Kate Woodcock is a PhD researcher in public international law at the Asser Institute/University of Amsterdam. Her research, conducted in the context of the DILEMA project on Designing International Law and Ethics into Military Artificial Intelligence, examines the implications of the development and use of military applications of artificial intelligence (AI) for current international legal frameworks governing armed conflict. In particular, this research project explores the relationship between these legal frameworks and the concept of human agency, with a view to considering whether international law can be accounted for in the design of military AI and the military infrastructures in which these algorithms are embedded.

Klaudia Klonowska is a PhD Candidate in International Law at the Asser Institute and the University of Amsterdam. She studies the interactions of humans and AI-enabled decision-support systems in the military decision-making process and the consequences thereof to the compliance of military practices with international humanitarian and human rights law. She is a member of the research project Designing International Law and Ethics into Military Artificial Intelligence (DILEMA).

 Additional resources:

• Asser's DILEMA project - publications on Article 36 and AWS including how to translate legal obligations to code, philosophy of use of AWS, state responsibility and AWS , criminal responsibility and AWS.
• Klaudia Klonowska,  Article 36: Review of AI Decision-Support Systems and Other Emerging Technologies of Warfare, Yearbook of International Humanitarian Law (YIHL), Volume 23 (2020), The Hague: T.M.C. Asser Press (2021)
• DILEMA Statement on the Global Governance of Artificial Intelligence in the Military

The discussion about AI regulation and law has been hampered by a lack of understanding about what AI actually is and what it can do. To date, there is no agreed definition of what constitutes AI; not any likely international consensus, with many states and NGOs adopting their own definitions.  This problem is then compounded when it comes to defining (and confining) what constitutes lethal autonomous weapon systems (LAWS).

In this episode Dr Lauren Sanders interviews Dr Zygmunt Szpak, a computer scientist and executive director of Insight Via Artificial Intelligence (IVAI), to discuss some of these difficult questions. 

IVAI does research, development and deployment of AI, and also educates Defence industry on what AI is and how it can be used. The company is a member of the Defence AI Research Network and is currently working on Science, Technology and Research (STaR) Shots, which are challenging, inspirational and aspirational S&T missions that will align strategic research to force structure priorities.

Prior to co-founding IVAI, Zygmunt spent over a decade working as a Senior Research Associate at the University of Adelaide, in the Australian Centre for Visual Technologies which then became the Australian Institute for Machine Learning. Zygmunt remains an adjunct senior lecturer at the Institute. 

Additional Resources 

• The Prediction Machines website
• The European Commission's report, Shaping Europe's digital future, which includes 'A Definition of Artificial Intelligence: main capabilities and scientific disciplines' 
• The movie, 'Hidden Figures' 
• The  'AI and Deep Learning' collection, created by the Two Minute Papers Youtube Channel.

In this special episode,  members of the Law and Future of War research project discuss two significant events occurring in the week of 17 March 2023 relating to criminal justice for alleged war crimes:

1. The ICC arrest warrant  issued in respect of the situation in Ukraine, and President Vladimir Putin's role in the alleged deportation of children from Ukraine since February 2022; and

2. The Australian domestic arrest of a former Australian Defence Force trooper for the war crime of murder alleged to have occurred in Afghanistan in 2012.

Dr Lauren Sanders is joined by Professor Rain Liivoja and Dr Simon McKenzie to explore what these warrants mean for international and domestic accountability for breaches of the law of armed conflict. 

Note: the views presented in this episode are those of the speakers and do not represent the views of any organisation or any government. 

In this episode, Dr Lauren Sanders speaks to Dr Paul Scharre, Vice President and Director of Studies at CNAS (the Centre for a New American Security), is a leading author on autonomous weapons and the impact of AI in the military. He has an extensive background in the drafting and implementation of policy relating to the current and future use of autonomy and artificial intelligence in the military; and has squeezed us in amid his book launch commitments for his most recent book, Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence.  It addresses the issue of global power in the face of the battle to control artificial intelligence, and how the next industrial revolution will impact the future of war. 

Additional Resources:

• Paul Scahrre, Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence.  Norton, 2023
• Paul Scharre, Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War. Norton, 2019.
• ChinaTalk (podcast)
• Epoch AI - Quarterly trend reports and other research reports
•  Anthropic - Frontier AI Safety
• Matthew Sadler and Natasha Regan, Game Changer: AlphaZero's Ground Breaking Chess Strategy and the Promise of AI, 2019
• US State Department Statement on Responsiblee Use of Military AI, 16 Feb 23

In today’s episode we are continuing our holiday season special on entertainment and IHL. Dr Lauren Sanders is speaking again with Professor Shiri Krebs, but this time about targeting and the movies.  In particular they are talking about her paper, Drone-Cinema, Data Practices, and the Narrative of IHL, and how representations of the use of drones in movies (such as the 2015 movie, 'Eye in the Sky'), gets IHL wrong, and how it is being used (or misused) to educate people about ethical decision making in armed conflict and how IHL applies in targeting decisions. Spoiler alert: contains plot details of 'Eye in the Sky'.

Professor Krebs draws upon Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) and post-humanist feminism literature to critically evaluate how drone visuals shape and influence military practices; using  popular culture products, such as drone cinema, to critique military processes of knowledge production and the Western-militarist ethos of objectivity.

Shiri is a Professor at Deakin University’s Law Faculty, as well as the Co-lead of the Law and Policy Theme in the Australian Cyber Security Cooperative Research Centre (CSCRC).  In 2022 she was elected as the Lieber Society on the Laws of Armed Conflict Chair (with the American Society of International Law), and she is an affiliated scholar at Stanford University’s Centre for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). Professor Krebs has written and published broadly on algorithmic bias and drone data vulnerabilities, data privacy, and human-machine interaction in technology-assisted legal decision-making, at the intersection of law, science and technology. She teaches the outcomes of her work in many fora – including to governments and militaries.

Special thanks to Rosie Cavdarski for editing.

Additional resources:

• Shiri Krebs,'Drone-Cinema, Data Practices, and the Narrative of IHL’ , Zeitschrift fur Auslandisches Offentliches Recht und Volkerrecht, Vol 82, 2022
• Shiri Krebs, ‘Law Wars: Experimental Data on the Impact of Legal Labels on Wartime Event Beliefs’, (2020) 11 Harvard National Security Journal 106
• Shiri Krebs, ‘Predictive Technologies and Opaque Epistemology in Counter-Terrorism Decision-Making' in 9/11 and the Rise of Global Anti-Terrorism Law (K. L. Scheppele and A. Vedaschi, eds.
• Donna Harraway, 'Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective',  Feminist Studies, Vol. 14, No. 3 (Autumn, 1988).

In this  episode of our IHL and entertainment series, Dr Lauren Sanders speaks with Dr Shannon Zimmerman about Dr Who and his crimes of genocide.

Talking about the examples of genocide by Dr Who throughout the series, this interview discussed Dr Zimmerman's paper,  'Doctor Who and the Responsibility to Protect: Public Perspectives of Atrocity Crimes', which canvasses the depiction of genocide in this science fiction series, and how the language and treatment of this international crime in the TV show changes along with real-life events over the course of the series' history; and the use of science fiction as thought experiments in the study of political science.

Dr Zimmerman is a Lecturer in Strategic Studies at Deakin University at the Australian War College and Research Fellow at the Asia-Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect at UQ. Her research focuses on norm implementation in United Nations peacekeeping missions, specifically Protection of Civilians (PoC) and counter terrorism in peacekeeping operations. She also studies misogyny motivated terrorism, land the emergency of the involuntary celibates or 'incels'. Shannon received her PhD from the University of Queensland in 2019 and her Masters in Conflict Resolution from Georgetown University in 2012.

Special thanks to Rosie Cavdarski for editing.

Additional resources:

• Zimmerman, S, 'Doctor Who and the Responsibility to Protect: Public Perspectives of Atrocity Crimes', The Journal of Popular Culture, 6 Nov 2022.
• To Boldly Go: Leadership, Strategy and Conflict in the 21st Century, Casemate Publishers, Sep 2021.
• Shepherd, L and Clapman, W, 'Lessons from Westerose:  Gender and power in Game of Thrones', Politics, Vol 3, Iss 1, 2017. 
• Drezner, D, Theories of International Politics and Zombies, Princeton University Press 2014.
• Australian Red Cross, Who is Game of Thrones' worst war criminal? 

Dr Lauren Sanders speaks to one of our regular contributors to the podcast, Professor Dale Stephens and combines two of his specialised areas of expertise: space law and international humanitarian law.  How might this be possible you might ask? Well, as part of our special holiday series episodes, we are going to turn our minds to a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, and talk about war crimes committed in Star Wars.

Take the Australian Red Cross Star Wars Quiz here!

Additional Resources:

• Woomera Manual on the International Law of Military Space Activities and Operations