Autonomous weapons debate stuck for a decade on a definition problem, CFR argues
mchorowitz · x · 2026-10-17
Background
Michael Horowitz (UPenn professor and former deputy assistant secretary of defense) and Lauren Kahn (research analyst at Georgetown's CSET) published a visual explainer for the Council on Foreign Relations arguing that terms like "killer robots," "fully autonomous weapons," "AWS," and "LAWS" are used as if there were consensus definitions — there isn't one.
Key arguments
- The autonomous weapons debate and the frontier AI safety debate are about different problems and should not be conflated.
- Geneva negotiators took a decade to reach only a partial consensus on defining LAWS, showing how the definition problem has stalled regulation.
- Their proposed framework: instead of asking whether a weapon is autonomous, ask how autonomous it is — classifying weapons into unguided, semi-autonomous, and autonomous, with the latter two further split into supervised vs. unsupervised, yielding 5 types.
- Lawmakers and the public need this framework to regulate effectively and move past a decade of deadlock.
Related event: CFR Experts Say Autonomous Weapons Debate Stuck on Definitions for a Decade(4 posts)→
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