A claim common among opponents of a treaty ban on autonomous weapon systems (AWS) is that treaties banning weapons don't work - suggesting efforts to arrest the development of AWS are an exercise in futility. Now this claim has been picked up uncritically by the editors at Bloomberg, writing in the derisively titled, "No Really, How Do We Keep Robots From Destroying Humans?": "Bans on specific weapons systems -- such as military airplanes or...
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Wednesday Addams Linkage: Special Andragogy Edition
Sorry for the lack of Wednesday linkage posts recently. Bizarrely, on a day when I undertake an intercontinental move, I finally have time to catch up on linking. To commemorate the end of summer teaching and the brief respite between summer school and real school (hey, didn't I join academia so I could have summers off?), here's some links about teaching. Nineteen observations about teaching by Andrew Joseph Pegoda, especially 3, 4, 6, 7, 11,...
Favela Ninjas and Apartheid Samurai
Neill Blomkamp's "Elysium" packs a punch for an action sci-fi film even if its punches don't land. So yeah ... Jodie Foster doesn't give her best performance and the other roles for women in the film are completely lame. A beefy Matt Damon, bless his heart, is poorly cast. The core plot line doesn't make much sense. Look, let's face it, there is just no way Blomkamp can match the brilliance of his earlier hit, "District 9." Nevertheless,...
Belated Friday Nerd Blogging: Meta Heroes
I am on vacation so I am a bit late with the FNB. This 2014 film looks like a heap of fun--when superhero impersonators stop impersonating and start hero-ing:
Monday Morning Linkage
Hey, y'all... Here's your linkage... Enjoy. Kapil Patel argues that a growing awareness of India's declining conventional deterrence vis-a-vis China has led it to create a new mountain strike corps of 40,000 men. Alec Metz at Registan reviews this year's Eid message from the sub-literate but charismatic Mullah Muhammad Omar. Ajit Sahi argues that despite the very significant flare-up in Indo-Pak tensions last week along the Line of...
Levee en Masse–but it’s only an operational concept!
Over at the National Interest T.X. Hamnes has a nice critique of AirSea Battle, seemingly the Pentagon's reigning strategy…sorry, operational concept...for dealing with a rising China and the problem of Anti-Access/Area Denial (for the official overview, see here). I expect I’ll be writing a bit on ASB during my time at the Duck, so I won’t try to engage in every debate in the first post. For now I’ll limit myself to one question Hamnes...
Really delayed Thursday Morning Linkage
Apologies for the delay in Thursday linkage but was a bit under the weather. It's the Texas heat, making me crazy and violent, or at least so suggests a recent empirical study in Science though it has its detractors. This week, I link to the back and forth of a major study on climate and conflict that carries out a meta-analysis of 60 studies and finds a 1 standard deviation change in variety of climate indicators leads to a 4% rise in...
APSA Aerobics
It’s almost APSA time and it seems all my friends are busy planning really wonderful sporting engagements for times they aren’t in panels. This always puts me in a bind – I thought we became academics because we were bad at sports! I can’t throw a Frisbee and soccer requires too much coordination. So, I’ve compiled a list of the fun and somewhat aerobic things I plan to do at APSA, none of which require much coordination but all of which...
Beyond Robopocalypticism
In all the media frenzy over “killer robots,” Terminator imagery comes up a lot. So do references to Battlestar Galactica. So does a specific scene from Robocop, soon to be remade to resonate with public fears of domestic drones. These iconic narratives invoke a recurrent theme in American science fiction about lethal robot malfunctions or uprisings against their human creators. So prevalent is this theme in anti-killer-robot media coverage...
Does a Global Climate Agreement Require National Action?
At least since the Copenhagen summit of 2009, global climate negotiations have stalled. Both academic researchers and policy analysts have recently emphasized the need to develop innovative strategies to break the negotiation gridlock. One such argument is that if major emitters show 'leadership' by adopting ambitious national policies, they can build trust and move the negotiations forward. This argument was recently made in a joint report...
What Helps End Minority Discrimination? Recent Cool Research
Yesterday, four Neo-Nazis were finally sentenced for their roles in a series of brutal killings of Roma families in Hungary in 2008 and 2009. Although the convictions have been applauded as a human rights victory, advocates are still demanding that Hungary steps up to the plate and protects the rights of Roma, a historically at-risk minority. The killings were not isolated events against Roma in Hungary; other discriminatory actions have been...
Tiwesdæg: the Left-hand of Linkage
Tuesday on Lake Champlain In comments, Assaf Moghadam notes that his Studies in Conflict and Terrorism critique of Bob Pape's work is free to download (PDF). In light of the 5 August 40-year anniversary of the LTBT, the National Security Archive notes its 2003 collection, "The Making of the Limited Test Ban Treaty, 1958-1963." Erin Jenne compares and contrasts ethnic politics in Macedonia and Kosovo. Tom Murphy notes the prevalence of...