LAWS, disarmament and the case for science anticipation

In 2007, the roboticist Noel Sharkey warned readers of The Guardian that the international community was “sleepwalking into a brave new world where robots decide who, where and when to kill”. Almost two decades on, formal negotiations on a binding instrument governing lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS) have yet to begin. This article asks why the disarmament system struggles to keep pace with the weaponization of emerging science and technology. Drawing on twenty-nine interviews with State delegates and civil society representatives, an interdisciplinary workshop and the ongoing efforts to govern LAWS, it identifies three families of obstacles: the structure of the fora themselves; gaps in capacity and expertise; and a pre-emptive disarmament paradox whereby the systems most in need of anticipatory regulation are those for which the empirical case for harm is least available. Arguing that science anticipation, mediated by honest-broker networks, is an under-used corrective, the article proposes three measures: embedding standing scientific advice in fora that lack it, modernizing Article 36 reviews, and building an anticipatory issue tracker capable of putting an expert-validated picture of harm into diplomatic conversation before civilians bear its cost.