Question 15168 — weapons

Summary

Mr. Erwan Balanant draws the attention of the Minister of the Armed Forces to lethal autonomous weapons. Since the 1990s, certain military powers have equipped themselves with autonomous weapons. If, originally, these weapons were only intended to carry out surveillance missions, they evolved during the United States' intervention in Iraq in the form of remote-controlled drones and, in recent years, lethal autonomous weapons have emerged. Programmed to neutralize, destroy or even kill, these machines, often referred to as “killer robots”, are capable of detecting a target and putting it to death without any human intervention. These include the SGR-A1 military robot developed by Samsung in South Korea, capable of exterminating any intruder within a radius of 4 kilometers. Another example is that of the MAARS robot in the United States equipped with an M240 submachine gun or a rocket launcher and 360-degree panoramic vision. He moves completely autonomously and if, today, his interventions are still supervised by human soldiers, this will no longer be the case in the near future. In addition to the highly worrying nature of these technologies from a moral point of view, their use would go against humanitarian law. First of all, the principle of humanity, fundamental in humanitarian law, would be found obviously flouted, since the decision to kill and select a target would no longer correspond to an ethical choice, and would not require human intervention. Then, in accordance with the international law of war, in particular the Geneva Convention relating to the protection of civilian persons in time of war of August 12, 1949, civilians must not be targeted for attacks and humanitarian organizations must be able to access conflict zones. However, the use of such technologies would threaten compliance with these essential rules for the protection of populations. Finally, lethal autonomous weapons could obviously malfunction or even be diverted. It cannot be ruled out that certain robots may turn against the soldiers of the army to which they belong. Faced with the severity of these threats, 26 States, 86 non-governmental organizations and 25,000 artificial intelligence experts have spoken out against the use of these weapons. However, negotiations towards the conclusion of an international treaty prohibiting them are compromised. Indeed, at the end of August 2018, the Group of Governmental Experts on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems, mandated within the framework of the United Nations Convention on Certain Weapons classics, only succeeded in formulating recommendations and obtaining the renewal of its discussion mandate. On the other hand, no negotiating mandate was granted to it, due to the strict opposition of certain States to the ban, such as Russia, the United States, China and Israel. In response, the European Parliament adopted, on September 12, 2018, a resolution with a view to obtaining a common position from Member States against lethal autonomous weapons and to actively participate in international negotiations to obtain a binding legal instrument prohibiting “any lethal autonomous weapons system whose critical functions, such as the choice and attack of targets, are devoid of human control”. If the discussions are therefore going in the right direction within the European Union, they must be deepened at the international level. END November 2018, during the annual meeting of States Parties to the Convention on the Prohibition or Restriction of the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons, a minority of States continued to block the initiation of negotiations to obtain a ban treaty. While the President of the Republic specified that he was “categorically opposed” to killer robots, France only supported the adoption of a political declaration within the walls of the United Nations. Some non-governmental organizations therefore see this as ambiguous. How does the Government plan to fight against the advent of lethal autonomous weapons devoid of any ethics and representing a huge step backwards compared to international humanitarian law? He asks him if France supports the total ban on these weapons or if it is in in favor of a limited legal framework under which these weapons would only be subject to a certain degree of human intervention.

Machine translation from French. The official text remains authoritative.

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