DILEMA Lecture by Dr Rupert Barrett-Taylor

On 14 November 2024, Dr Rupert Barrett-Taylor will deliver a DILEMA lecture on the topic of artificial intelligence and automation and how these technological developments on the battlefields are making the state and war incidental to warfare. After the lecture, there will be a Q&A session moderated by Klaudia Klonowska (DILEMA project), followed by a networking reception.

Click here to register for this event. The lecture will take place in-person at the Asser Institute.

Abstract

Nordin and Oberg argue that war is no longer principally understood as violent encounters through fighting and is better understood through process and repetitive battle-rhythm. I argue that this is precisely because of the increasing mediation of warfare by digital technology including augmentation with artificial intelligence. This is more than just the mediation of the battlefield caused by proliferation of long-range weapons and sensors, but because war itself has been reduced to an activity requiring management in the manner of commercial business.

Through this lens warfare is an exercise in optimisation and efficiency, removed from its brutal context. Arguably, this is the relationship between managerialism as argued by Klikauer and the technologies of optimised warfare that create the effect observed by Nordin and Oberg. The result of this is a disconnection between a traditional understanding of the role played by warfare and its relationship to the state and the reality of modern war. Where Clausewitz argued that war was a political act, its modern incarnation manages the process of warfare but violence itself and the objective of war is incidental to this process. A question for scholars and practitioners is how to reclaim the practice of war and encourage the state to understand warfare in terms of its complex effects on those subject to it rather than as a problem of optimisation and efficiency.

About the Speaker

Dr Rupert Barrett-Taylor has over 20 years’ of experience working in defence and security issues. He holds an undergraduate degree in Aerospace Engineering and a War Studies Masters. His PhD thesis is a socio-technical analysis problematising and critiquing the conventional understanding of software as a principal means for identifying targets, improving organisational efficiency, and optimising the targeting process.

Rupert’s experience includes operational deployment as a civilian analyst and liaison officer for the UK in Afghanistan and work as an open-source analyst within the private sector. He joined the Alan Turing Institute from his second stint in the UK’s Civil Service where his last role was as head of the team supporting the cross-government Integrated Security Fund with data and analytical expertise in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.

About the DILEMA Lecture Series

The DILEMA Lecture Series regularly invites academics and other experts working on issues related to the project to present their work and share reflections with a general audience comprising researchers, students, and professionals. Topics of interest within the scope of this lecture series include technical perspectives on military applications of AI, philosophical enquires into human control and human agency over technologies, analyses of international law in relation to (military) AI, including international humanitarian law and international human rights law, and interdisciplinary contributions related to these topics.