Conveners
Military Technology
- Sanne Verschuren (Boston University)
Description
This panel focuses on the interplay between military technology and global security – and how scholars study it. Emerging technologies are unquestionably shaping the ways in which policy makers, military, and industry do security and defence. New developments in artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, additive manufacturing, hypersonics, quantum computing, and space technology are projected to have transformative – even disruptive – effects on strategic stability, military innovation, defence economics, and the conduct of warfare. Most new military technology is dual use and has commercial origins, widening the spectrum of threats and actors with access to technology thanks to cheaper alternatives to military-grade systems. This trend affects the relations among commercial interests (private companies), scientific thought leaders (epistemic communities), those who weaponize technology (militaries), and those who develop technology policy (political leaders). Research on designing key principles for global technology governance and standards for military applications of emerging technologies is in high demand, while the dynamics between old and new technologies on the battlefields is still poorly understood. At the same time, how we study military technology requires more methodological rigor. Responsible forecasting is yet to moderate exaggerated expectations about military technology’s capabilities, inclinations to technological determinism, and strategic overkills. This panel invites submissions that theoretically and conceptually advance our understanding of how military technology changes the security environment. It encourages diversity in scientific disciplines (political science, sociology, economy, history, philosophy), theories, and methods, since the panel primarily aims to facilitate dialogue between scholars interested in how politics and technology interact.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is poised to have a deep transformative effect on the character of war. While discussions on military AI predominantly centered on the implications of Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS), empirical evidence highlights that AI applications extend beyond the notion of “killer robots”, especially in the form of decision-support and Lethal Targeting Assistance...
This paper seeks to investigate whether and how cybersecurity firms have possibly gained business power over democratic governments in the digital age? First, we propose an interaction-oriented view to approach the public-private coordination of how to secure cyberspace. Public and private actors need to agree on policies; and the one with lower costs of non-agreement arguably achieves the...
This paper brings recent advances in critical security studies and Science and Technology scholarship into greater dialogue with the more established International Relations (IR) literature on military change to highlight the role that shared social “imaginaries” of war can play in mediating how shifts in the external threat environment impact the development and fielding of new military...
