Configuring Warfare: Automation, Control, Agency

Author(s): Matthias Leese
Editor(s): Marijn Hoijtink, Matthias Leese
Book Title: Technology and Agency in International Relations
Series: Emerging Technologies, Ethics and International Affairs
Publisher(s): Routledge
Publication Year: 2019

This chapter argues that in order to understand what might be at stake in the future of warfare against the backdrop of potentially “autonomous” weapons systems, we must pay attention to the specific ways in which humans and machines share or split tasks within these systems, and how their relationships revolve around notions of automation and control. Building on Suchman’s concept of configuration, it highlights the role of cultural imaginaries that inform the construction of socio-technical systems, notably the idea of “meaningful human control” over automated system functions. In doing so, it draws specific attention to the presupposed boundary between humans and computers that is within socio-technical systems engendered through the notion of control.

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