Blood and Robots: How Remotely Piloted Vehicles and Related Technologies Affect the Politics of Violence

“Blood and Robots: How Remotely Piloted Vehicles and Related Technologies Affect the Politics of Violence“

Speaker: Gartzke, E. (University of California, San Diego)

Date: 17 January 2020

Speaker Session Preview

SMA hosted a speaker session presented by Dr. Erik Gartzke (University of California, San Diego) as a part of its SMA DHS CAOE Speaker Series. Dr. Gartzke’s presentation focused on emerging technologies and how they will shape the battlefield in the 21st century. He began by stating that, as technology changes more rapidly, it becomes increasingly important to distinguish which technologies military planners should focus their attention on. He stressed that military planners must keep in mind that motives and behaviors in human society do not change as quickly as the tools that it has; therefore, military planners must focus on how these tools will affect and/or change existing motives and behaviors. Dr. Gartzke then focused his presentation on remotely piloted vehicles and similar AI machine technologies, which are making it possible to remove humans from direct involvement in combat. He explained that, to the degree that substituting machines for people lowers the costs of fighting and occupation, conflict will become more frequent and less definitive. Dr. Gartzke also argued that the combination of industrial and military automation threatens democracy and hardens autocracy, as workers and soldiers will no longer be essential for national productivity or defense. Moreover, populations can be more easily held in check by AI-sponsored surveillance and interrogation, in addition to robotic police. Dr. Gartzke then explained that war is a highly intensive, intellectual process, and despite the help of machines, some thinking is required. Therefore, the substitution of capital for labor is imperfect; not all humans can be removed from the battlefield due to this need for cognition. Dr. Gartzke also discussed the impact of battlefield automation on the frequency of warfare. He stated that the “common conjecture effect” relates to the origins of war—if everyone knows how the contest is going to go, there is no contest. It is when people disagree about who is going to prevail, or by how much, when you have a real contest. Furthermore, the biggest effect of automation may be to produce a rise in gray zone conflicts. To conclude, Dr. Gartzke explained that automation will not make war “costless” and discussed how being good in modern military affairs goes hand in hand with being bad at occupation.

‍