A/HRC/23/47 “exterminated.”72 These descriptions conjure up the image of LARs as some kind of mechanized pesticide. 96. The experience of the two World Wars of the last century may provide insight into the rationale of requiring humans to internalize the costs of armed conflict, and thereby hold themselves and their societies accountable for these costs. After these wars, during which the devastation that could be caused by modern technology became apparent, those who had personally taken the central military decisions resolved, “in order to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war”, to establish the United Nations to pursue world peace and to found it on the principles of human rights. While armed conflict is by no means a thing of the past today, nearly 70 years have passed without a global war. The commitment to achieve such an objective can be understood as a consequence of the longterm and indeed inter-generational effects of insisting on human responsibility for killing decisions. 97. This historical recollection highlights the danger of measuring the performance of LARs against minimum standards set for humans during armed conflict. Human soldiers do bring a capacity for depravity to armed conflict, but they also hold the potential to adhere to higher values and in some cases to show some measure of grace and compassion. If humans are replaced on the battlefield by entities calibrated not to go below what is expected of humans, but which lack the capacity to rise above those minimum standards, we may risk giving up on hope for a better world. The ability to eliminate perceived “troublemakers” anywhere in the world at the press of a button could risk focusing attention only on the symptoms of unwanted situations. It would distract from, or even preclude, engagement with the causes instead, through longer term, often non-military efforts which, although more painstaking, might ultimately be more enduring. LARs could thus create a false sense of security for their users. H. Other concerns 98. The possible deployment of LARs raises additional concerns that include but are not limited to the following: • LARs are vulnerable to appropriation, as well as hacking and spoofing. 73 States no longer hold a monopoly on the use of force. LARs could be intercepted and used by non-State actors, such as criminal cartels or private individuals, against the State or other non-State actors, including civilians.74 • Malfunctions could occur. Autonomous systems can be “brittle”. 75 Unlikely errors can still be catastrophic. • Future developments in the area of technology cannot be foreseen. Allowing LARs could open an even larger Pandora‟s box. • The regulation of the use of UCAVs is currently in a state of contestation, as is the legal regime pertaining to targeted killing in general, and the emergence of LARs is likely to make this situation even more uncertain. • The prospect of being killed by robots could lead to high levels of anxiety among at least the civilian population. 72 73 74 75 18 Robert Sparrow “Robotic Weapons and the Future of War” in Jessica Wolfendale and Paolo Tripodi (eds.) New Wars and New Soldiers: Military Ethics in the Contemporary World (2011), p. 11. Jutta Weber “Robotic warfare, human rights and the rhetorics of ethical machines”, pp. 8 and 10, available from http://www.gender.uu.se/digitalAssets/44/44133_Weber_Robotic_Warfare.pdf Singer (see note 3 above), p. 261-263. Kastan (see note 55 above), p. 8.