Emergent Ethics of Drone Violence: Toward a Comprehensive Governance Framework

Project Information

DRONETHICS

Grant agreement ID: 771082

DOI

10.3030/771082

Project closed

EC signature date 3 May 2018

Start date 1 July 2018

End date 30 June 2023

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 1 359 348,00

EU contribution

€ 1 359 348,00

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON
United Kingdom

Periodic Reporting for period 4 - DRONETHICS (Emergent Ethics of Drone Violence: Toward a Comprehensive Governance Framework)

Reporting period: 2023-01-01 to 2023-06-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The increasing use of armed, uninhabited aircraft is a serious political challenge with implications for security and justice worldwide. Drone technology is attracting huge investment, drones controlled remotely are proliferating, and technological momentum toward drone systems incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) is building. Many lives are at stake in this, so the violent use of drones continues to generate ethical concerns. DRONETHICS has been systematically addressing an urgent need to clarify the morality of ‘drone violence’, defined as violence involving an aerial, reusable weapon system that is radically remote from its user. Such remoteness is achieved through extreme physical distancing or the devolution of functional control from humans to AI, so drone violence disrupts traditional expectations about war and a warrior’s exposure to risk. In turn, the disruptive premise of this project is that such violence does not necessarily fall within the remit of the Just War framework of morality and governance. DRONETHICS has involved ethical inquiry into drone violence conceptualized as either war, violent law-enforcement, tele-intimate violence, or devolved (to AI) violence. The research harnesses international relations, moral philosophy, international law, and gender studies perspectives. Through innovative application of alternative judgment frameworks, we have aimed to produce a broad and integrated framework for explaining ethical concerns arising from current and potential forms of drone violence, and recommendations on why and how it should be restrained.

DRONETHICS has been helping to ensure ethical debate keeps pace with the accelerating proliferation and scientific progress of weaponized drone technology. Based on theorization of the multifaceted nature of drone violence, and assessment of moral arguments for and against it, we have been developing principled and evidence-based recommendations. This expansive approach to emergent ethics is more conducive to discerning the true essence of drone violence and more likely to lead to a holistic framework for governing it effectively and justly. Our research has focused on three big questions: What is drone violence? Why can drone violence be morally justified or condemned? How should drone violence be prevented, restricted or permitted? The main objectives of DRONETHICS are: (Theory) to develop a comprehensive theory of drone violence as a basis for normative thinking; (Judgment) to discover and assess how officials, academics, drone operators and AI engineers make a moral case for or against drone violence; and (Governance) to generate value-sensitive policy recommendations on preventing, restricting or permitting drone violence in differing circumstances.

At the project’s conclusion, research findings show that armed drones have the potential to illuminate or exacerbate six kinds of moral problems: unjust decisions to resort to violence in international affairs; the use of indiscriminate and/or disproportionate methods of warfare; excessive use of force in the enforcement of domestic criminal law; extrajudicial punishment of criminal wrongdoing; the incurring of moral injury from the experience of killing another person; and inadequate human control over the operation of weapon systems.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The project work is distributed into 7 Work Packages (WPs): (1) Theorising drone violence; (2) Drone violence as war; (3) drone violence as violent law-enforcement; (4) Drone violence as tele-intimate violence; (5) Drone violence as devolved (to AI) violence; (6) Workshops and interviews; (7) Project administration and research dissemination.

The Principal Investigator has recruited and managed two postdoctoral research associates (PDRA1 since December 2018 and PDRA2 since February 2019), and a project website was launched in May 2019. In July 2019 our research workshop in Southampton involved 14 participants (from Australia, France, Germany, Netherlands, UK and US) discussing the theme “Governing Drone Violence: Concepts, Moralities, and Rules”. Selected workshop papers were revised into 9 chapters for a volume edited by the PI and published in January 2021. A policy-oriented workshop on “Developing the Armed Drone Code of Ethics”, in London in March 2022, involved representatives of non-government organizations. All project team members received approval from a University of Southampton research ethics committee to conduct in-person or online interviews. Research participants have been recruited, and an appointed Ethics Adviser has been available to give independent advice. Manuscript submissions to publishers: 11 articles, 8 chapters, 1 conference proceedings paper, 2 authored books, 1 edited volume, and 2 policy papers. Research findings also disseminated at 20 conferences, 14 workshops, and 51 other events.

The PI has: led WPs 1-3 and 7; contributed to WPs 4-6; maintained a website; liaised with the Ethics Adviser; recruited research participants for WPs 2 and 3; co-organized 2 project workshops; submitted to publishers 5 articles, 4 chapters, 1 edited volume (of 9 chapters), 1 book manuscript, and 2 policy papers; participated in 15 conferences and 4 workshops; and disseminated research findings at 30 other events.

PDRA1 has: led WP4; contributed to WPs 1, 6 and 7; recruited research participants for WP4; co-organized two project workshops; submitted to publishers 2 articles and 1 chapter; participated in 2 conferences and 2 workshops; and disseminated research findings at 3 other events.

PDRA2 has: led WP5; contributed to WPs 1, 6 and 7; recruited research participants for WP5; submitted to publishers 4 articles, 3 chapters, 1 conference proceedings paper, and 1 book manuscript; participated in 3 conferences and 8 workshops; and disseminated research findings at 18 other events.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

We confronted the challenge posed by suggestions that drone violence sometimes does not count as war. The state-of-the-art approach to ethically assessing such violence (using Just War principles) has needed to be supplemented or replaced by other normative approaches. We have made progress applying military ethics principles to assess drone violence that is warlike. And we have conceptualized non-war manifestations of state violence: by advancing the idea of drone strikes (manifesting as violent law-enforcement) as a punitive tool of ‘wild justice’, and by ethically assessing potential police uses of armed drones. Beyond state agency (as war-wager or law-enforcer), our research efforts have also encompassed two non-state-centric conceptualizations of drone violence: (1) tele-intimate violence, where concerns about the morality of killing arise at the level of individual drone operators who can remotely but richly perceive another person's humanity via satellite and video-camera; and (2) devolved violence, where the critical functions of drone-based weapon systems are no longer under human control because they are instead performed by AI technology. Accordingly, our work has also involved: applying a feminist ethics of care to the wielding of tele-intimate violence; exploring the potential for drone operators to experience moral injury; ethically assessing modes of human-machine interaction in AI-assisted drone violence; and proposing and testing ideas for a Code of Ethics that explains and promotes the 'responsible use' of armed drones.

Reaper drone taxis at Kandahar airfield, Afghanistan