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Killing people is bad. And yet the world is chock full of harbingers of death that can elegantly shred the human body from within in a matter of seconds. Nations are engaged in an armed conflict perennially, either killing the enemy or their own. War is seen as a necessary evil. Weapon manufacturers develop top-notch torture weapons, as countries throw away wads of cash to acquire yet another fighter jet instead of feeding the starved. Can the decimation of entire cities at a button’s press truly be justified? Is conflict and killing a non-negotiable human trait? Ethical failings of the war industry have been far too many. And while a utopia is as unattainable as the Garden of Eden, the research and advancements in weapons technology can be realistically restricted to murder within a “moral” limit.
Ethics can be a fickle subject. Still, the collective judgement of most existing states, deliberating on what's right and wrong in warfare, is as good a place to start as any. The 1925 Geneva Protocol bans the use of chemical and biological weapons in warfare. These weapons use living pathogens or chemical substances to cause incapacitating or even lethal effects. Its torturous intent combined with the indiscriminate killing of combatants and non-combatants raises serious ethical questions.
Manufacturing these weapons is extremely cheap and elementary, as catapulting plague-infested dead bodies to enemy land serves just as efficiently as any modern bioweapon. With virtually untraceable origins, entities waging biological wars cannot be held accountable for their actions. On account of the uncontrollable mortality rate and damage to civilian lives, biological warfare has been declared a war crime.
Chemical weapons like pepper spray and tear gas have found their way into the hands of civilians, with many being regularly used for riot control. Mustard gas, phosgene and cyanide are some of the more vicious ones, reserved for offensive warfare. Just like the grotesque images painted by Wilfred Owen in his poem “Dulce et Decorum est”, these weapons leave their victims with burning and blistering skin, searing lungs, loss of sight and an intense craving for the quick death from a swift bullet.
A single nuclear bomb dropped over a city will, within seconds of detonation, reduce everything immediately around the epicentre to mere atoms. The very air will catch fire. Skin and muscles melt off the body, followed by a devastating shockwave that will knock down everything in its path. With the initial impact decimating everything and everyone within a roughly 3-mile radius, the nuclear fallout will go on to contaminate everything for miles and miles with radioactive waste. Catastrophic deaths, with many more to follow from cancer and radiation sickness, water and plants coated with radioactive material, the very air and land turned poisonous and unfit for contact for years to come, all possible with the press of a button, oceans away.
The cost of human life and lasting environmental damage caused by a single nuke cannot be contained in words. And yet nine countries have access to close to 13,000 of these ‘Little Boys’ who can issue the death sentence of millions at a 15-minute notice. A cutthroat competition among nations can be seen when it comes to equipping themselves with nuclear warheads. This is done in pursuit of the only defence for nuclear weapons, nuclear deterrence.
Nuclear deterrence is the discouragement of a nation to use its nuclear weapons against an enemy due to the threat of a retaliatory attack that will far outweigh any gains from its actions. During the Cold War, both the Soviet Union and the USA were loaded with nuclear weapons. Tensions and paranoia persisted on both sides as the threat of a nuclear war was right on the brink. But with the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki serving as a fresh reminder, both nations were aware that declaring a nuclear war was a suicide mission. The Cold War remained cold due to the swords hanging over each nation’s heads. So spending billions on developing a nuclear programme is merely a defence and their existence is a tool for peace, right?
The fact that the world hasn't been blown apart by loads of missiles yet is not a strong enough defence for the effectiveness of nuclear deterrence. For this mutual promise for mass slaughter to work, each nation needs to believe that the other is capable of actually launching an attack, with the initial attack pushing the limit of what's acceptable before declaring suicide. All it would take is a small malfunction, human error or simple misunderstanding for both nations to go ballistic, as was seen in 1995 Russia when a Norwegian research rocket was mistaken by Russian radar for an incoming United States nuclear attack. A nuclear war between two of the greatest world powers was avoided by mere minutes. The Cuban missile crisis of 1962 was averted by sheer dumb luck.
A blind faith in nuclear deterrence has pushed nations to participate in this nuclear arms race, and more and more catastrophic weapons continue to be developed. The Hiroshima bomb doesn't hold a candle to the rapidly advancing nuclear technology of the modern age, which has created weapons that are thousands of times more potent. Nuclear disarmament continues to be the only foolproof solution to prevent history from repeating itself.
A study conducted by the U.S. military after World War 2 found that only 15 to 20 per cent of soldiers fire their weapons on the battlefield and an even smaller percentage fire to kill. This staggering revelation meant more research into transforming these emotional fools into war machines. With years spent on training and brainwashing the human out of them, soldiers of flesh and bone seem like an utter waste of resources. Lethal drones with facial recognition, unmanned armed robots and autonomous fighter jets seem to be the natural step forward. While the idea of releasing a rampant and unfeeling machine, capable of mass destruction, on the battlefield seems very bad, there is much faith in future technology to achieve effective results with the least possible damage.
In broad brushstrokes, all advances in AI have been to humanise the technology. A robot passing the Turing test is considered the epitome of intelligence. AI used in warfare is no different. There are no doubts about the destructive capabilities of a robot soldier, it is the humanity that lacks.
Can a robot differentiate between combatants and non-combatants? Can AI ever be trusted in situations requiring ethical decision-making? These questions become irrelevant when we question our own ethics. How many times have people been allowed to die as it was in the best interest of the nation? How many protesters have been silenced for good by the jackboot? How many civilians have been killed as collateral damage in wars? A machine incapable of bending the rules, one that has no personal stakes in murder, is perhaps the most ethical weapon we can hope to have.
But a world where battalions of Optimus Prime defend nations is far into the future. The more pressing danger AI and machines pose in warfare is the alienation from fellow humans. The decimation of an entire city in 1945 was possible because the button was oceans away. If a troop of soldiers and tanks had been tasked with the mission, to witness the desecration of the homes and lives of thousands of people, the catastrophe could have never taken place. If more drones are created that kill at a command received from a different continent, taking people's lives would be as easy as playing Call of Duty. If war is a must-have, then emotional and sensitive soldiers, who err before killing, wielding simple targeted weapons to deliver quick justice, is an irreplaceable cornerstone.
Warfare has become a well-funded industry, employing talent that could just as easily save lives. The cheap and easy access to arms by civilians has turned a nightmare-like school shooting into the norm. While a set of steadfast rules of ethics are yet to be arranged, the dystopian reality of putting food on the table by selling bombs and guns and celebrating the demise of people beyond an imaginary border is, hopefully, not lost on us forever.
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