On Wednesday, September 15, starting at 12 o’clock (CEST), the Institute of European Studies is organizing a webinar:
Dr. Srđan Korać
Necroethics and Technological Purification of War in the 21st Century: Depersonalization of Killing and the Postheroic Age
The achievements of the Fourth Industrial Revolution spurred major military-technological changes in the early 21st century, to the extent that the question justifiably raises the question of whether they together will transform the ontology of war.
The demand for the effective and efficient conduct of imperial punitive expeditions across the global periphery – motivated by the minimization of own human casualties and the sustainable conduct of war operations – makes semi-autonomous and fully autonomous weapon systems the optimal combat weapon. Dronification and robotization turn combat actions into a kind of automated industrial procedures from which prosocial behavior in the form of empathy and solidarity, as unnecessary “costs” of military operations, is easily removed. To that extent, robotization can depersonalize killing procedures and turn enemy soldiers and civilians into mere objects deprived of moral value.
The purpose of the lecture is to encourage a discussion on whether the drone operator is a hero, antihero or victim, and whether robots would be ideal soldiers of the future.
Dr. Srđan Korać is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Political Studies in Belgrade.
You can follow the lecture via the Zoom platform, at this link.
