By Dr. Steven Mandel
The LAWS are here, and they could be working against us.
No, we don’t mean our system of governance and rules. We’re talking about Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS) – often referred to a “lethal robots.”
These systems – which can include drones, missiles or robotic technology – have been described as “legally unacceptable“ and “morally repugnant” as they select and engage targets without human intervention. So the United Nations is actively working to regulate or ban them, with a goal to establish a legally binding document in 2026.
Why should we as Jews and particularly as Jewish men care? Because Jewish moral teachings place a strong human emphasis and sanctity on human life, moral responsibility for violence, and the obligation to exercise human judgement when making life-and-death decisions. Jewish values teach that protecting life and taking responsibility for moral decisions are fundamental.
Jewish tradition teaches insists human life can never be reduced to technical calculation. Human accountability is central to Judaism, as is the principle of pikuach nefesh – saving a life. Jewish history is also sensitive to dehumanization. So lethal autonomous weapon systems – weapons without human judgement – raise serious concerns.
Last month, the U.N. held meetings over the course of one week to develop a document to be ratified by the General Assembly within a year. The key concerns were lack of human control, accountability, and ethical and legal violations.
The U.S. Defense Department defines autonomous as “a capacity (or set of capacities) that enable a particular action or a set of actions or systems to be automatic, or within program boundaries of self- governing.” The U.N. defines LAWS as “weapon systems that can identify, select and engage targets without human intervention in those tasks: once activated, the system can decide and apply force without further human contact.”
Autonomous weapons are not so much immoral as amoral. They don’t allow for moral deliberation and reflections necessary to pass ethical judgment. LAWS may improve national security, from internal and external threats, but they are incapable of recognizing the worth of the human being.
LAWS remove human judgement, challenging responsibility, courage and national honor. Jewish ethics emphasizes human responsibility, highlighting the need for oversight in lethal autonomous weapons.
The UN is also concerned about the humanitarian, legal, ethical and security challenges of autonomous weapons, and stresses that humans must remain responsible for its use of force. The international organization is concerned that artificial intelligence decisions are being delegated to algorithms. It sees AI not as neutral tools, but as transformative technology that can amplify the moral and legal states of war, making regulations and human oversight essential.
So the U.N. wants to place restrictions on the targets and scale of operations using LAWS, and to prohibit them where damage can’t be anticipated or limited. LAWS, the organization believes, should be limited to military targets and exclude civilians and civilian objects as the objective of the attack.
LAWS should be used with human judgement in control, with requirements for distinction, proportionality and precision in attack. There should be allowances for modification by human intervention through real-time machine learning, to include deactivation, self-destruction and self-neutralization.
Dr. Steven Mandel is FJMC International’s NGO representative to the United Nations, and vice president of outreach and engagement for the New York Metro Region.
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