[T]he current surge … in robotic warfare is being driven by the promise of efficiency and control and the hunger for what militaries have tasted in Nagrorno-Karabakh and in Ukraine: the power of universal precision.
George Dougherty, Beast in the Machine
Smart. Fast. Lethal. Precise. These are the qualities our military needs in an era of great power conflict. These qualities are also the means to victory that aligns with our best theories of the just war. Individualized ethics of killing, what philosophers call revisionist just war theory, gained traction during the “warheads on foreheads” era of military operations that dominated counterinsurgency and counter-terror operations of the last few decades. The “universal precision” of agentic warfare ensures that these theories remain relevant to 21st-century conflict. We can trust that our best moral frameworks for killing are equal to the challenges of great power competition.
There is, however, a turn of the screw: greater power brings new moral implications. The unprecedented capacity provided by forces that are smart, fast, lethal, and precise compels us to rethink how we discharge two central obligations: the defense of others and the respect owed to our adversary’s autonomy.
Some might think that the return of great power competition requires us to abandon revisionist theories. That would be a mistake. We can reject revanchist realism in moral discourse just as we resist revanchist powers in practice—by holding to our values and drawing strength from them. Agentic warfare promises the technological and collective power to make good on our convictions and defend our values. With our smart, fast, lethal, and precise “Ring of Gyges” in hand, our answer to the moral challenge of great power competition should mirror Socrates’ answer to Glaucon. We do not kill the king and ravage the queen, even when fighting those who do, because we do not want to lie to ourselves about what is most sovereign within us – our values that tell us to meet our obligations and respect our enemies.
As I said, while agentic warfare and great power competition are no threat to our values or are understanding of the ethics of killing, this does not mean there are no new moral implications. Our new ring of power does come with some implications for the morality of fighting and killing in the age of great power competition. One implication is revisionary of our attitudes surrounding the obligations of other defense, and one is revisionary of our practice in war.
Great power competition does not diminish our duty to protect innocents in war. But the smart, fast, lethal, and precise capabilities of agentic warfare—fighting with enmeshed networks of human agents, artificial agents, and autonomous platforms—lower the cost thresholds of such protection. This alignment of new methods with established ethics is reassuring: we need not choose between principles and practice. Instead, humanitarian concerns now provide stronger reasons to develop and employ these methods in service of our other-defense obligations.
That such concerns remain relevant to the ethics of killing is in once sense calming because we do not have to choose between our principles and a new method of warfare. In fact, our wide concerns suggest we have moral reasons to develop and understand agentic warfare in light of our obligations of other defense. Agentic warfare offers important moral opportunities during great power competition to reduce harm in a way that reinforces our shared values and obligations. But, in another sense, the means of agentic warfare is revisionary of our attitudes towards those wide concerns because it lowers our moral risk and personal costs associated with acting on the moral reasons that arise. In short, by lowering the costs associated with protecting those people under threats of unjust harms, agentic warfare could significantly redraw the line between obligatory and supererogatory defense of others. Our attitudes towards the plight of the innocent may stand in need of revision.
Similarly, we have another moral opportunity that would revise our practice against our adversaries. Our growth in collective power, under the promise of precision, requires a corresponding growth in moral imagination. Our collective power should help us recognize and act for the opportunities that give us positive moral reasons to act. Too often, we limit our consideration of new methods to their tactical and operational value within the competition of combat and campaigns. However, there is a good deal more we might be able to do with small trades in effectiveness for large gains in moral value. Looking for these kinds of trades would be truly revisionary of our practice. For example, instead of anonymous targeting processes that are only known obliquely by the strikes, we could look for opportunities to offer, and therefore respect, choices of both the just and the unjust. However unlikely we might think it to be that our adversaries would take those choices, offering the choice can still matter for two reasons. First, it would demonstrate respect for human rights by assuming some risk to provide the opportunity. Second, it could form a practice that, over time, protects more rights by reinforcing a rules-based global order. This seems morally preferable to our present practices within great power competition that, for some, corrodes a rules-based order and, more strongly, puts the lie to our claims that any such order is morally valuable.
The answer to the ethics of killing in the age of great power competition is striking in its similarity to how Socrates answered Glaucon: the reason to prefer justice over injustice and so use our ring of Gyges according to our values follows from our desire to tell the truth about ourselves. One of the chief benefits of smart, fast, lethal, and precise agentic warfare might be the ability to assume individual and collective risk proportionate to the values we profess: respect for and protection of human rights in the course of our individual and collective action.
Far from retreating in the face of revanchist realism, agentic warfare should encourage us to seek a balance. As our collective power grows, so too must our willingness to accept proportionate risks to realize our values. Shifting from purely efficiency-driven operations toward value-proportionate risk acceptance reflects maturity in the use of enhanced capabilities. When we can offer adversaries meaningful choices, protect innocents with minimal collateral damage, and maintain moral consistency across human–machine teams, our obligations expand alongside our power.
Striking such a balance reveals what is most fundamental in our actions. Should we achieve it—aligning agentic warfare with our moral obligations like accepting proportionate risks, and expanding our other-defense obligations—we will wield our enhanced power without self-deception, aligning military effectiveness with the values we claim to defend.
Dr. Bob Underwood Bob Underwood LinkedIn
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1 | For a more detailed treatment of these themes, see the author’s published work: “Suleimani’s Choice: The Narrow Permissions and Wider Considerations of Remote Warfare,” in Drones and Global Order: Implications of Remote Warfare for International Society, Editors: Paul Lushenko, Srinjoy Bose, William Maley, Routledge: New York, 2021.
2 | Plato, The Republic, tr. Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 2016), 37-39.
3 | The author used both Claude and ChatGPT to revise this essay.