Dustin A. Lewis is the Research Director at the Harvard Law School Program on International Law and Armed Conflict.
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Harvard Law School Program on International Law and Armed Conflict has released a new briefing on an emerging debate: Can and should a U.N. counterterrorism body authoritatively interpret and assess compliance with international humanitarian law?
Editor's Note: This piece is crossposted on Lawfare and EJIL:Talk!
States frequently take actions and make statements that implicate international law. But because they do not—and, indeed, could not—express a view on each such act or statement by all other states at all times, silence seems to be the norm, rather than the exception, in international relations.
In April 2017, the Pentagon created an “Algorithmic Warfare Cross-Functional Team,” pending a transfer of $70 million from Congress. The premise of this initiative is that maintaining a qualitative edge in war will increasingly require harnessing algorithmic systems that underpin artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).
Under what conditions may a state lawfully intervene—or otherwise act—in relation to armed conflict in Syria? In support of or against whom? In this context, how do states frame their approaches to acting (or not acting)? What legal arguments (if any) are embedded in those statements? Do those arguments comport with or contravene—or even seek to modify—existing international law? On which of the underlying legal issues do states agree or disagree? And what implications might those arguments entail for other conflicts?
We just entered the second year of a purported “era of persistent conflict” forecasted to extend to 2028. In that context, does it really matter if we can tell that a particular war has definitively concluded? Who gets to decide, and who should decide, how to calibrate a legal test to authoritatively determine the end of armed conflict?
The Defense Science Board recently identified five “stretch problems”—goals that are “hard-but-not-too-hard” and that have a purpose of accelerating the process of bringing a new autonomous capability into widespread application:
In the midst of armed conflict, accurate and comprehensive information is notoriously difficult to come by.