Abstract The debate about the ethics of uninhabited aerial vehicles (UAVs) is failing to keep pace with the rise of the technology. Therefore, all the key players, including ethicists, lawyers, and roboticists, are keen to offer their views on the use of these drone aircraft. Some are opposed to their use, citing a range of ethical, legal and operational issues, while others argue for their ethically mandated use. B.J. Strawser fits into this latter category. He develops a principle of ?unnecessary (...) risk?, from which he argues that we have an ethical obligation to employ UAVs if we can do so without incurring a loss of capability. Strawser defends his argument against a number of potential objections, most questionably, the argument that the use of distance weaponry such as drones, against another state without distance weaponry, crosses some moral threshold that makes the combat immoral. Utilising Jeff McMahan's work on the inequality of combatants, Strawser essentially argues that there are no grounds for a ?fair fight?. However, this paper will argue that it is not so easy to overturn the doctrine of the moral equality of combatants, nor dismiss the problem with asymmetry. It will demonstrate that if the asymmetry reaches a certain level, the justification for resorting to war may be removed and some sort of policing action may remain the only option. (shrink)

What's wrong with targeted advertising in political campaigns? Are echo chambers a matter of genuine concern? How does data collection impact on trust in society? As decision-making becomes increasingly automated, how can decision-makers be held to account? This collection consider potential solutions to these challenges.

Ethics settings allow for morally significant decisions made by humans to be programmed into autonomous machines, such as autonomous vehicles or autonomous weapons. Customizable ethics settings are a type of ethics setting in which the users of autonomous machines make such decisions. Here two arguments are provided in defence of customizable ethics settings. Firstly, by approaching ethics settings in the context of failure management, it is argued that customizable ethics settings are instrumentally and inherently valuable for building resilience into the (...) larger socio-technical systems in which autonomous machines operate. Secondly, after defining the preliminary condition of responsibility attribution and demonstrating how ethics settings enable humans to exert control over the outcomes of morally significant incidents, it is shown that ethics settings narrow the responsibility gap. (shrink)

Autonomous weapon systems could in principle release military personnel from the onus of killing during combat missions, reducing the related risk of suffering a moral injury and its debilita...

Today, with the advent of unmanned systems, military hopes are attached to the idea that battles can be fought with soldiers pressing buttons in distant command centres. However, soldiers must now be highly trained, super strong and have the intelligence and mental capacity to handle the highly complex and dynamic military operating environment. This book provides the first comprehensive and unifying analysis of the moral, legal and social questions concerning military human enhancement, with a view toward developing guidance and policy (...) that may influence real-world decision making. (shrink)

This article investigates the question concerning moral deskilling in the context of autonomous weapon systems. To this end, it interrogates the appropriateness of deskilling as an analytical tool, the consequences of the conflation of the terms “the warrior” and “the soldier,” and the impact of the dominant, but commonplace, understanding of autonomous weapons that underwrites the concerns that have been expressed thus far. While affirming the critical importance of the question regarding moral deskilling in the context of advanced weapons and (...) technologies, this article argues (a) that the notion of deskilling may not be an adequate or even appropriate analytical tool to investigate the matter on hand; (b) that the conflation of the terms “the warrior” and “the soldier” only serves to obfuscate the critical issues at stake; and (c) that the understanding of autonomous weapons that underwrites the concern is highly speculative. To this extent, the concern regarding moral deskilling in the context of autonomous weapon systems is ill-served. By way of a conclusion, the article calls for a more careful and nuanced approach and makes some preliminary suggestions as to how the question regarding moral deskilling in the context of autonomous weapon systems may be addressed. (shrink)

. VIEWPOINT ARTICLE CLOSING WITH COMPLETENESS: THE ASYMMETRIC DRONE WARFARE DEBATE. Journal of Military Ethics: Vol. 11, No. 4, pp. 353-356. doi: 10.1080/15027570.2012.760245.

Fifteen philosophers look at the deeper issues raised in the highly popular TV drama, including common morality, legal correctness and legal ethics, discussing the gray areas of legal battles and maneuvering. Original.

We must understand that with the possibility of commercial space travel on our horizon, it comes with a number of significant practical and moral challenges. This volume provides the first comprehensive and unifying analysis concerning the rise of private space exploration, with a view toward developing policy that may influence real-world decision making. The plethora of questions demanding serious attention - privatisation and commercialisation, the impact on the environment, health futures, risk assessment, responsibility and governance - are directly addressed in (...) this scholarly work. (shrink)

This volume examines the ethical issues generated by recent developments in intelligence collection and offers a comprehensive analysis of the key legal, moral and social questions thereby raised. Intelligence officers, whether gatherers, analysts or some combination thereof, are operating in a sea of social, political, scientific and technological change. This book examines the new challenges faced by the intelligence community as a result of these changes. It looks not only at how governments employ spies as a tool of state and (...) how the ultimate outcomes are judged by their societies, but also at the mind-set of the spy. In so doing, this volume casts a rare light on an often ignored dimension of spying: the essential role of truth and how it is defined in an intelligence context. This book offers some insights into the workings of the intelligence community and aims to provide the first comprehensive and unifying analysis of the relevant moral, legal and social questions, with a view toward developing policy that may influence real-world decision making. The contributors analyse the ethics of spying across a broad canvas – historical, philosophical, moral and cultural – with chapters covering interrogation and torture, intelligence’s relation to war, remote killing, cyber surveillance, responsibility and governance. In the wake of the phenomena of WikiLeaks and the Edward Snowden revelations, the intelligence community has entered an unprecedented period of broad public scrutiny and scepticism, making this volume a timely contribution. This book will be of much interest to students of ethics, intelligence studies, security studies, foreign policy and IR in general. (shrink)

Discusses nuances required to balance out the debate surrounding the moral and legal permissibility of using autonomous weapon systems in war fighting.

The question of whether new rules or regulations are required to govern, restrict, or even prohibit the use of autonomous weapon systems has been the subject of debate for the better part of a decade. Despite the claims of advocacy groups, the way ahead remains unclear since the international community has yet to agree on a specific definition of Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems and the great powers have largely refused to support an effective ban. In this vacuum, the public has (...) been presented with a heavily one-sided view of Killer Robots. This interdisciplinary volume presents a more nuanced approach to autonomous weapon systems that recognizes the need to progress beyond a discourse framed by the Terminator and HAL 9000. Re-shaping the discussion around this emerging military innovation requires a new line of thought and a willingness to challenge the orthodoxy. Lethal Autonomous Weapons focuses on exploring the moral and legal issues associated with the design, development and deployment of lethal autonomous weapons. The volume brings together some of the most prominent academics and academic-practitioners in the lethal autonomous weapons space and seeks to return some balance to the debate. As part of this effort, it recognizes that society needs to invest in hard conversations that tackle the ethics, morality, and law of these new digital technologies and understand the human role in their creation and operation. (shrink)

The US military is a globally recognizable force politically, ethically and, to some extent, economically. It is not generally realized, however, that such an influential military force also holds...