Today: “The argument in favor of these systems is ultimately about speed: Combat now often happens so fast that the human operator can’t keep up—and the operator’s communications with a weapon might get cut off. This argument can become self-fulfilling, because the faster combat goes, the stronger the case becomes that we need to automate weapons systems just to keep up. So we’re in a new arms race—focused on combat acceleration.” What are the risks of “killer robots” to civilians? Lucy Suchman on the automation of modern warfare.

+ Why is the U.K. so dependent on the U.S.?

& new music from A Sagittariun.

First: what we’re tracking for this week’s member’s despatch …

• Indian officials say they targeted the groups Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, alleging they’ve been freely operating from Pakistan. India has previously held these groups responsible for some of the deadliest terror attacks in the country’s history.
• Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif says India “will have to suffer the consequences” of the airstrikes, and he authorized the military to take “corresponding” action against India. Pakistan denied the existence of any terrorist camps or infrastructure in the places India struck.
• Pakistan says it downed five Indian aircraft during the raid, though the details aren’t certain. It appears the Indian planes didn’t cross into Pakistani airspace, so it’s unclear how Pakistan was able to hit them.

Media reports are asking whether or how much the two countries will escalate the conflict, given each side’s domestic political tensions amid international pressure for calm.

As Indian and Pakistani leaders decide what to do next, a key aspect of the context is that millions in each country feel deep antipathy toward those in the other. It’s a hostility grounded in religious and nationalist identities; it goes back even before the countries split into modern India and Pakistan in 1947; and though this antipathy has changed shape since, it remains powerful—and always potentially influential on the countries’ political leaderships—today.

• Most analysts are saying legislators wanted to send a message of protest against either the precarious left-right coalition or Merz’s policies and personnel choices since his party won national elections in late February.
• The Christian Democrats have lost ground in opinion polls since—and are now roughly tied with the populist-right Alternative für Deutschland. Last week, German intelligence services designated the AfD an extremist organization—citing its officials’ harsh rhetoric against ethnic minorities, use of Nazi slogans, and dismissal of the Holocaust.
• Merz made his first trip as chancellor on Wednesday, traveling to France to meet President Emmanuel Macron and announce the formation of a new joint council for defense and security.

Merz’s trouble getting enough votes in the first round appears to be a sign that his coalition might have trouble sticking together for tough policy decisions later. But it also appears to be part of a larger pattern, in which France and other European countries are having trouble forming strong, capable governments—because voters are increasingly splitting their votes more parties that don’t have a lot in common. … See Matthias Matthijs, ‘A leadership void.’

This edition, produced in partnership with the Human Rights Foundation, features conversations—with Ben Freeman, Miranda Patrucić, Justin Callais, and Josh Rudolph—on how authoritarian states build political influence in the U.S., why dictators keep disrupting so many other countries, why autocratic corruption is such a problem for democratic life, and what democracies can do about it.

Terminators

And it’s a robot—or, as militaries call it, an autonomous weapons system. The operation was the first known case of so-called “killer robots” being sent out to track, target, and kill human beings. A UN report found they’d been “programmed to attack targets without requiring data connectivity between the operator and the munition.”

Since then, military and paramilitary forces have used various autonomous and semi-autonomous weapons systems in conflicts in Ukraine, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, and Gaza. And now there’s a campaign to restrict their use. The UN General Assembly has tried to ban them. The EU has endorsed a ban but hasn’t enacted anything. China has called for a treaty prohibiting their use—though not their production, which Beijing is ramping up, in order to compete with the United States. Meanwhile, European weapons manufacturers say they’re “not far off” from producing drones that can select and hit targets entirely on their own.

The main rationale for outlawing these systems is that they represent an exceptional threat to civilians in combat zones. UN Secretary-General António Guterres says they’re “morally repugnant and politically unacceptable.” At the same time, several governments are looking to produce or buy more of them, saying they’re necessary for war in the 21st century.

So what civilian risks do these weapons really entail?

Lucy Suchman is a professor emerita at Lancaster University. Suchman says this is just the beginning for killer robots. The systems now in use are basically early prototypes, but they’ve been potent all the same. And while most combat robots are still remotely controlled by humans, in the near future more and more of them will be able to fight and kill on their own.

It’s a new arms race, Suchman says. Militaries are rushing to buy the best new weapons systems. Which might prove very effective: They could potentially outgun even the best-trained and -equipped human soldier. But a big problem is that they shoot whatever they’ve been trained to shoot. And that’s one thing when it comes to obvious military targets, like tanks, but entirely another when it comes to people in crowded urban scenes …

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