In and Beyond Great Power Diplomacy: Can Competition and Cooperation Co-Exist in US-China AI Governance?
Guest post by Ruofei Wang What role can diplomacy play in managing the competitive dynamics and cooperative potentials between the United States (US) and China—the world’s two biggest AI and military superpowers—on governing AI? The landmark Trump-Xi Summit in May 2026 marks a historic moment in US-China relations, amid the increasingly fierce AI, defence, and […]
Reflections on the Weaponised AI Policy Debate Throughout the ERC AutoNorms Project
From 15 to 17 June 2026, the United Nations (UN) Office for Disarmament Affairs in Geneva hosted informal exchanges on AI in the military domain and its implications for international peace and security. These consultations followed the UN General Assembly resolution 80/58 adopted in 2025. The resolution mandated holding discussions on various uses of AI […]
Weaponised AI, Norms, and Order: Reflections from Research on China
By Guangyu Qiao-Franco and Qiaochu Zhang Within the AutoNorms project, China has been a key site for understanding how norms around autonomous and AI-enabled weapons are emerging, stabilising, and being contested. As the project draws to a close, this blog post sets out two key areas of findings from our research: first, it synthesises the […]
How Practices Make Norms: Key Analytical Take-Aways from the ERC AutoNorms Project
The military adoption of AI technologies and avenues toward their potential governance have gained significant salience throughout the early 2020s. Initially, the focus of the global discussion was exclusively on autonomous weapon systems (AWS) that “select and engage to one or more targets without human intervention”. Over time, states and other stakeholders involved in the […]
AutoPractices at the UN Informal Exchanges on AI in the Military Domain
Ingvild Bode and Anna Nadibaidze represented the AutoPractices project at the Informal Exchanges on Artificial Intelligence in the Military Domain and its Implications for International Peace and Security. The exchanges were held from 15 to 17 June 2026 in Geneva and organised by the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA). Credit: Anna Nadibaidze Statement during […]
Machine Guardians, Human Monsters, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Take the Terminator Franchise Seriously
The core aim of the AutoNorms project has been to develop a new theoretical approach for studying the relationship between practices of designing and using autonomous weapon systems (AWS), international norms, and the global governance of emerging technologies. In addition to my contributions to cataloguing the practices of human-machine interaction associated with the global development […]
Three Takeaways from the US Military-Anthropic Dispute
By Anna Nadibaidze and Robin Vanderborght The public dispute that erupted recently between the US Department of War (formerly Department of Defense) and the technology company Anthropic has captured the attention of global media and experts. Anthropic has developed the popular large-language model (LLM) Claude, which is not only used by private consumers worldwide, but […]
AutoPractices at the UN GGE on LAWS in March 2026
The AutoNorms team regularly participates in meetings of the United Nations Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) on emerging technologies in the area of lethal autonomous weapons systems. The GGE meetings take place in Geneva and bring together delegations of state parties to the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW), observer states, as well as […]
Sustaining Human Agency in the Military Domain: The AutoPractices Toolkit at REAIM 2026
By Alexander Hedegaard On 4-5 February 2026, the third edition of the Responsible AI in the Military Domain (REAIM) Summit was held in A Coruña, Spain. The event was organised by the Spanish Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Defence, together with the A Coruña City Council. The third edition followed upon two summits held in […]
Toolkit of Best Practices to Strengthen Human Agency in the Military Domain
Download the best practices toolkit here Routine uses of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies affect military personnel’s capacity to exercise human agency. The impacts of using AI on the exercise of human agency in the military domain should be addressed via bottom-up forms of governance. Such a process starts with the practices performed by stakeholders in […]