Final Report Summary - EIW3R (The ethics of information warfare: risks, rights and responsibilities)
Information warfare (IW) is a new form of conflict characterised by strategies designed to strike at communication nodes and infrastructures, through the deployment of artificial agents such as tools of offence (robotic weapons), and by the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) for the management of strategic communications among fighting units. It has its roots in the military use of intelligence as a strategic means, but has developed thanks to the revolutionary transformations caused by the pervasive use of ICTs and artificial intelligence (AI) artefacts on the battlefield. This two-year research project was devoted to analysing the ethical implications of IW. The project is now successfully completed and has achieved its overarching objective of defining ethical principles for the waging of this kind of warfare.
The project addressed three categories of ethical problems engendered by IW concerning the risks, rights and responsibilities in IW. In greater detail, the risks concern the potential increase in the number of conflicts and casualties. ICTs-based conflicts are virtually bloodless for the army that deploys them. This advantage has the drawback of making war less problematic for the force that can implement these technologies, and therefore making it easier, not only for governments, to engage in ICT-based conflicts around the world thereby increasing the risk of escalation and therefore for casualties.
IW is pervasive for it not only targets civilian infrastructures but may be launched through civilian computers and websites as well. This may initiate a policy of higher levels of control enforced by governments in order to detect and defend their citizens from possible hidden forms of attacks. In this circumstance, the ethical rights of individual liberty, privacy and anonymity may come under sharp, devaluating pressure. Finally, the assessment of responsibilities is a highly problematic issue in IW. In the case of robotic weapons, it is becoming increasingly unclear who, or what, is accountable and responsible for the actions performed by complex, hybrid, man-machine systems on the battlefield. The assessment of responsibility becomes an even more pressing issue in the case of cyber attacks, as it is potentially impossible to track back the author of such attacks.
During the two-year research project, efforts were concentrated upon training the researcher beneficiary of the Marie Curie Intra European Fellowship, on the development of innovative research and on the dissemination of the research results. The project had three milestones:
(i) acquiring an in-depth knowledge of the technologies deployed in cases of IW;
(ii) developing a conceptual analysis of IW, which then provided the ground for (iii);
(iii) investigating its ethical implications.
By the end of the second year, an innovative and effective ethical analysis of IW had been developed. Such an analysis unveiled the nature of this phenomenon by showing that IW is an 'umbrella' phenomenon, meaning that it has three kinds of occurrences ranging from cyber-attacks, to the deployment of robotic weapons on the battlefield, to the use of ICTs for the management of strategic communications among fighting units. The research also provided a new definition of IW, according to which IW is a 'transversal kind of warfare', which is reshaping the very concept of warfare. For IW radically changes the way in which war is waged by involving both human and artificial agents, physical and non-physical targets, military and civilians and finally by causing conflicts whose level of violence may vary upon circumstances.
These research findings provided the conceptual ground for the identification of normative theories that could generate ethical principles of decision-making within the context of IW. Such theories have been identified in Just War Theory and in Information Ethics. The research on these two ethical theories highlighted that when applied individually to IW none of them addresses properly and fully the ethical problems posed by this phenomenon. However, the research also showed that the two theories are compatible and that when merged together they provide all the necessary and sufficient elements for developing the required ethical principles for a just IW. Three ethical principles have been defined, prescribing the condition for declaring a just IW and the boundaries in which such warfare ought to be waged.
The ethical principles fill a much-needed vacuum of ethical guidance for IW and provide the foundation for developing ethically oriented policies and regulations for this phenomenon, which are currently amiss.
The developed research has a twofold impact: it provides a much-needed ethical analysis of IW and develops an innovative approach to these problems, which have already proved to be of high impact for the academic communities on this topic, e.g. computer ethics, war studies, applied ethics. In order to optimise such an impact, the research developed during this project was illustrated and promoted in ten talks given at as many international peer-reviewed conferences and workshops, and in three research articles. The beneficiaries of the grant also organised an international workshop and a symposium to gather experts in the fields of computer ethics, war studies and cyber security. They also edited a book 'The Ethics of Information Warfare' (Springer, forthcoming) collecting twelve contributions on the topic of the ethics of IW.
The research is also of high relevance for non-academic communities such as policy, law-makers and militaries concerned with defining regulations and procedures concerning IW. In this respect, it is noteworthy that the results of this project have been the topic of an invited keynote speech by Dr Taddeo, hosted during the 4th International Conference on Cyber Conflict organised by NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence, attended by military representatives, private and public policy-makers. During the same conference another talk was given by Dr Taddeo for the Media Workshop, with the purpose of briefing international media in respect to the ethical problems posed by IW. Finally, the project results have been described by Dr Taddeo in an interview for The Atlantic, in a short article (forthcoming) for Wired.it and in blog entries for the Practical Ethics Blog (see http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/ online for further details).
The project addressed three categories of ethical problems engendered by IW concerning the risks, rights and responsibilities in IW. In greater detail, the risks concern the potential increase in the number of conflicts and casualties. ICTs-based conflicts are virtually bloodless for the army that deploys them. This advantage has the drawback of making war less problematic for the force that can implement these technologies, and therefore making it easier, not only for governments, to engage in ICT-based conflicts around the world thereby increasing the risk of escalation and therefore for casualties.
IW is pervasive for it not only targets civilian infrastructures but may be launched through civilian computers and websites as well. This may initiate a policy of higher levels of control enforced by governments in order to detect and defend their citizens from possible hidden forms of attacks. In this circumstance, the ethical rights of individual liberty, privacy and anonymity may come under sharp, devaluating pressure. Finally, the assessment of responsibilities is a highly problematic issue in IW. In the case of robotic weapons, it is becoming increasingly unclear who, or what, is accountable and responsible for the actions performed by complex, hybrid, man-machine systems on the battlefield. The assessment of responsibility becomes an even more pressing issue in the case of cyber attacks, as it is potentially impossible to track back the author of such attacks.
During the two-year research project, efforts were concentrated upon training the researcher beneficiary of the Marie Curie Intra European Fellowship, on the development of innovative research and on the dissemination of the research results. The project had three milestones:
(i) acquiring an in-depth knowledge of the technologies deployed in cases of IW;
(ii) developing a conceptual analysis of IW, which then provided the ground for (iii);
(iii) investigating its ethical implications.
By the end of the second year, an innovative and effective ethical analysis of IW had been developed. Such an analysis unveiled the nature of this phenomenon by showing that IW is an 'umbrella' phenomenon, meaning that it has three kinds of occurrences ranging from cyber-attacks, to the deployment of robotic weapons on the battlefield, to the use of ICTs for the management of strategic communications among fighting units. The research also provided a new definition of IW, according to which IW is a 'transversal kind of warfare', which is reshaping the very concept of warfare. For IW radically changes the way in which war is waged by involving both human and artificial agents, physical and non-physical targets, military and civilians and finally by causing conflicts whose level of violence may vary upon circumstances.
These research findings provided the conceptual ground for the identification of normative theories that could generate ethical principles of decision-making within the context of IW. Such theories have been identified in Just War Theory and in Information Ethics. The research on these two ethical theories highlighted that when applied individually to IW none of them addresses properly and fully the ethical problems posed by this phenomenon. However, the research also showed that the two theories are compatible and that when merged together they provide all the necessary and sufficient elements for developing the required ethical principles for a just IW. Three ethical principles have been defined, prescribing the condition for declaring a just IW and the boundaries in which such warfare ought to be waged.
The ethical principles fill a much-needed vacuum of ethical guidance for IW and provide the foundation for developing ethically oriented policies and regulations for this phenomenon, which are currently amiss.
The developed research has a twofold impact: it provides a much-needed ethical analysis of IW and develops an innovative approach to these problems, which have already proved to be of high impact for the academic communities on this topic, e.g. computer ethics, war studies, applied ethics. In order to optimise such an impact, the research developed during this project was illustrated and promoted in ten talks given at as many international peer-reviewed conferences and workshops, and in three research articles. The beneficiaries of the grant also organised an international workshop and a symposium to gather experts in the fields of computer ethics, war studies and cyber security. They also edited a book 'The Ethics of Information Warfare' (Springer, forthcoming) collecting twelve contributions on the topic of the ethics of IW.
The research is also of high relevance for non-academic communities such as policy, law-makers and militaries concerned with defining regulations and procedures concerning IW. In this respect, it is noteworthy that the results of this project have been the topic of an invited keynote speech by Dr Taddeo, hosted during the 4th International Conference on Cyber Conflict organised by NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence, attended by military representatives, private and public policy-makers. During the same conference another talk was given by Dr Taddeo for the Media Workshop, with the purpose of briefing international media in respect to the ethical problems posed by IW. Finally, the project results have been described by Dr Taddeo in an interview for The Atlantic, in a short article (forthcoming) for Wired.it and in blog entries for the Practical Ethics Blog (see http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/ online for further details).