That’s something you see in movies, yes, but as I understand what Paul Scharre is saying, it’s not something that’s actually true. According to him, the laws of war “care about what you do, not who you are.” If you are behaving in a soldierly fashion, you are a soldier, whether you are a young man, old man, woman, or child.
Anecdote: during deployment when we arrive in country, we are given briefings about the latest tactics being employed in the area where we will be operating. When I went to Iraq in 2008 one of these briefings was about young girls wearing suicide vests, which was previously unprecedented.
The tactic consisted of taking a family hostage, and telling the girl that if she did not wear this vest and go to X place at Y time, her family would be killed. Then they would detonate the vest by remote.
We copped to it because sometimes we had jammers on which prevented the detonation, and one of the girls told us what happened. Of course, we didn’t have jammers everywhere. Then the calculus changes from whether we can take the hit in order to spare the child, to one child or many (suicide bombings target crowds).
The obvious wrongness of killing children does not change; nor that of allowing children to die. So one guy eats the sin, and the others feel ashamed for letting him.
On a more depressing note one might look into the events in the Korean War “except for women and children” was not applied. The movie is called A Little Pond (it was available on Amazon Prime a year or so back not sure if it’s there now though) about the events at Nogunri.
Now, the movie also depicts the more human side of a soldier when confronted directly with that act—rather than the impersonal shapes from hundreds of meters away—near the end of the movie.
I would also add, regarding the whole permissible versus exception, that I suspect it is even grayer than suggested. The 5 year old with a radio is hardly and less a part of the fighting force than the civilians providing all the logistics and production supporting any of the military actions. So where is that line?
I’m not sure the AI will do much worse or much better than those making the plans and issuing the orders far from the battle ground and not exposed to the bloodshed and human carnage.
At least in the old war movies I’ve seen, that used to have the general “except for women and children” clause.
That’s something you see in movies, yes, but as I understand what Paul Scharre is saying, it’s not something that’s actually true. According to him, the laws of war “care about what you do, not who you are.” If you are behaving in a soldierly fashion, you are a soldier, whether you are a young man, old man, woman, or child.
I affirm Scharre’s interpretation.
Anecdote: during deployment when we arrive in country, we are given briefings about the latest tactics being employed in the area where we will be operating. When I went to Iraq in 2008 one of these briefings was about young girls wearing suicide vests, which was previously unprecedented.
The tactic consisted of taking a family hostage, and telling the girl that if she did not wear this vest and go to X place at Y time, her family would be killed. Then they would detonate the vest by remote.
We copped to it because sometimes we had jammers on which prevented the detonation, and one of the girls told us what happened. Of course, we didn’t have jammers everywhere. Then the calculus changes from whether we can take the hit in order to spare the child, to one child or many (suicide bombings target crowds).
The obvious wrongness of killing children does not change; nor that of allowing children to die. So one guy eats the sin, and the others feel ashamed for letting him.
On a more depressing note one might look into the events in the Korean War “except for women and children” was not applied. The movie is called A Little Pond (it was available on Amazon Prime a year or so back not sure if it’s there now though) about the events at Nogunri.
Now, the movie also depicts the more human side of a soldier when confronted directly with that act—rather than the impersonal shapes from hundreds of meters away—near the end of the movie.
I would also add, regarding the whole permissible versus exception, that I suspect it is even grayer than suggested. The 5 year old with a radio is hardly and less a part of the fighting force than the civilians providing all the logistics and production supporting any of the military actions. So where is that line?
I’m not sure the AI will do much worse or much better than those making the plans and issuing the orders far from the battle ground and not exposed to the bloodshed and human carnage.