The CCW Expert’s Conference on Autonomous Weapons ended yesterday with a draft report from the Chair (France) that set the stage for further discussions in November. For the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, a continued discussion had been the primary objective at this stage, so this is good news for campaigners. NGOs were pleased with the inclusion in the document of the term “meaningful human control” as a principle around which to evaluate all weapons systems. Sarah Knuckey has more. The official report from the global coalition is here. A round-up of social media coverage by the coalition...

Am I the first to use the pun “ducking out”?  I can’t be, someone has to have used that to describe leaving the Duck of Minerva before.  Regardless, this brings up two key problems with blogging, the quick move towards the cheap pun and to the tendency to do no actual background research on before a post.  I am probably prone to both.   In any case, I am moving on from the Duck.  I will be moving over to RelationsInternational to help build a new blog.  I think blogging is an increasingly important part of our academic jobs and we need more voices in this community.  Therefore it is in our...

This will be nothing like a comprehensive overview on the topic (for one thing I have been in and out of plenary, for another I am filtering this event through the lens of my specific research agenda on framing and norm development). That said, here are a few notes and observations about the nature of the debate and the process here since I arrived yesterday - angles I am not likely to blog about in depth but which are worth noting in passing. Hope others will take them up and link to whatever others are writing - I am mostly following events here rather than online, with the exception of...