Do Philosophers Dream of Electric Sheep? The Ethics of War in the Age of Technology
Date
2019-05-28
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Abstract
In 2010, Belorussian software developer Sergey Ulasen discovered a bug in several
customers’ computers that indicated something far more sinister than just a flaw in the system. The
computer worm, later christened Stuxnet, is thought to have been created through a joint effort
from the American and Israeli governments with the purpose of destabilising Iran’s nuclear
weaponry program, reportedly ruining a fifth of Iran’s nuclear centrifuges. General Michael V.
Hayden, former director of the CIA and NSA, called it “the first attack of a major nature in which a
cyberattack was used to affect physical destruction.”1
As technology progresses and develops, it becomes crucial to determine how just war
principles will apply to this new realm of combat. Stuxnet is an example of how new avenues of
technology can produce attacks with unprecedented consequences. We don’t exactly know what
technology’s full capabilities are. Because much of technology’s scope and reach remains speculative,
it is difficult to envision its limits and boundaries. Nonetheless, it is definitely present, prevalent, and
only likely to increase, making it worthy and necessary of discussion. This thesis focuses on three
primary avenues of technology - cyberwarfare and drones - and how they affect the scope of the
ethics of warfare as we currently envision them.
The thesis begins with a brief overview of just war theory, covering its earliest documented
usage and comparing that to its contemporary view today. This includes the most prominent just
war theory of the 21st century, set out by Michael Walzer in Just and Unjust Wars . It is Walzer’s
conception of just war theory that I will be referring to, citing its inapplicability to modern
technological forms of warfare. Also in this chapter, I develop three criteria for an enduring,
applicable just war theory: consistency, adaptability, and defensibility. I then spend significant time
discussing the domestic analogy, a conceptual tool that philosophers use to streamline their
arguments, but arguing against it in contexts of war. After this, I discuss cyberwarfare and drones.
Both of these technological developments propose unique problems to traditional just war theory
that necessitate the development of a new framework. Finally, I introduce the concept of moral
particularism, a position most thoroughly outlined by Jonathan Dancy. I argue that moral
particularism is the best framework through which we can evaluate the ethics of war, because it
fulfills the three criteria for an adequate just war framework: consistency, adaptability, and
defensibility.
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Keywords
war, ethics, technology, philosophy, politics