Suchergebnisse

References to the Terminator films are central to Western imaginaries of Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS). The puzzle of whether references to the Terminator franchise have featured in the United States' international regulatory discourse on these technologies nevertheless remains underexplored. Bringing the growing study of AI narratives into a greater dialogue with the International Relations literature on popular culture and world politics, this article unpacks the repository of different stories told about intelligent machines in the first two Terminator films. Through an interpretivist analysis of this material, we examine whether these AI narratives have featured in the US written contributions to the international regulatory debates on LAWS at the United Nations Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons in the period between 2014 and 2022. Our analysis highlights how hopeful stories about what we coin 'machine guardians' have been mirrored in these statements: LAWS development has been presented as a means of protecting humans from physical harm, enacting the commands of human decision makers and using force with superhuman levels of accuracy. This suggests that, contrary to existing interpretations, the various stories told about intelligent machines in the Terminator franchise can be mobilised to both support and oppose the possible regulation of these technologies.

References to the Terminator films are central to Western imaginaries of Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS). The puzzle of whether references to the Terminator franchise have featured in the United States' international regulatory discourse on these technologies nevertheless remains underexplored. Bringing the growing study of AI narratives into a greater dialogue with the International Relations literature on popular culture and world politics, this article unpacks the repository of different stories told about intelligent machines in the first two Terminator films. Through an interpretivist analysis of this material, we examine whether these AI narratives have featured in the US written contributions to the international regulatory debates on LAWS at the United Nations Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons in the period between 2014 and 2022. Our analysis highlights how hopeful stories about what we coin 'machine guardians' have been mirrored in these statements: LAWS development has been presented as a means of protecting humans from physical harm, enacting the commands of human decision makers and using force with superhuman levels of accuracy. This suggests that, contrary to existing interpretations, the various stories told about intelligent machines in the Terminator franchise can be mobilised to both support and oppose the possible regulation of these technologies.

AbstractMore than two decades after the 9/11 attacks, the militarised approach to counterterrorism initiated by the George W. Bush Administration remains firmly in place. Growing frustration with these actions has prompted debates on 'forever war'. This article traces the origins of 'forever war' to the interplay of neoconservatism and conservative nationalism in the George W. Bush Administration, which aimed at preserving American primacy through the cultivation of overwhelming military power. The Administration's support for the revolution in military affairs contributed to the development of a more remote counterterrorism approach, which helps explain the continuities in US counterterrorism policies across the latter Bush administration as well as the Obama and Trump presidencies. By helping embed a 'common sense' understanding that further 9/11-style attacks could only be prevented by enduring and aggressive military action against transnational terrorist organisations, neoconservatism shaped the evolution of American counterterrorism policy. The specific influence of neoconservatism must be qualified and contextualised, however, because the strategic commitment to primacy had wider support within the Bush Administration.

This paper aims to develop the study of remote warfare's constitutive "remoteness." It proposes a novel definition of remoteness as the degree of the American public's socio-psychological detachment from the realities of political violence fought at a physical distance from the continental United States, as mediated through spectatorship of the use of military force. The remoteness of remote warfare has physical, psychological, and social properties. We argue that it exists on a continuum subject to change over time and should not be approached as a fixed condition measured solely by the physical distance separating combatants involved in armed fighting or as the use of various weapons technologies. The numerous dynamics associated with the remoteness of remote warfare are illustrated through an examination of American military intervention in Libya during Obama's presidency. From the height of the 2011 NATO intervention in the country onwards, US military operations in Libya became more "remote" for the American public. Whilst other contextual factors contributed toward this outcome, we argue that the diminished spectacle surrounding the 2016 Operation Odyssey Lightning helps explain the American public's increasing remoteness from military intervention in Libya.