Self-determination in the age of algorithmic warfare

Abstract

The paper advances the claim that the pervasive surveillance practices employed for the purpose of feeding AI-supported decision-support systems prevent spontaneous and collective political action, thus violating the right to self-determination. Analysing recent events in Gaza and the West Bank, the article describes Israel’s utilisation of algorithmic systems in armed encounters with Palestinians, in particular for the purpose of the detecting ‘anomalous behaviour’. It claims that because the Israeli security apparatus can point to the legal strictures of IHL targeting rules to rationalise the further entrenchment of surveillance architectures that are necessary for the increasing deployment of machine-learning algorithms, the law of armed conflict functions as a justificatory rhetorical framework for the perpetuated, structural denial of the exercise of the right to self-determination by the Palestinian people. This claim is defended through the conceptualisation of spontaneous political action as advanced by Rosa Luxemburg and Hannah Arendt. Spontaneity is inherent in the idea of collective political agency, which in turn is presupposed in the concept of self-determination as a procedural right to political action. As the algorithmic rationalities of the military and security context inevitably inhibit the possibility to act spontaneously, the deployment of such systems will thus violate the right to self-determination.