DAWEI: Deployed Autonomous Weaponry, Espionage and Intelligence systems

As the winter fog retreats into the trees, DAWEI acquires his next target and stalks towards it. His steel hands clamp around its soft, tender neck. He grasps. Wrenches. With a damp noise, the dandelion weed pulls free from the ground, a clump of soil clinging to its roots.

…deployed with the purpose of exerting kinetic force against a physical entity…

DAWEI tosses the weed onto the growing pile and flexes his stiff arms. He feels terrible. His metal skull rings like a beaten gong, and his treads creak more than the bungalow’s floorboards. The other residents try to accommodate for him by talking quietly in the mornings and being careful not to slam doors. But today, even the mellow noises of Callisto strumming her guitar, the Rii3 brewing coffee, and KiMo pattering in the workshop threaten to short-circuit him.

…to this end is able to identify, select or attack the target without the intervention of another agent…

Growling in frustration, DAWEI surveys the garden in a critical sweep. This patch he’s been working on is stripped bare. He’ll let the weeds dry out in the sun before carrying them to the disposal bin. He trundles along to where an explosion of thistle threatens to overwhelm the camellia bushes.

The heavy, repetitive movements keep the wolves at bay. Grasp, pull, throw. Grasp, pull, throw. At night, DAWEI tries as hard as he can not to power down. But sometimes he must charge his batteries, and it’s difficult not to drowse. That’s when the memories snap at his heels.

His first deployment, into combat, in contested territory. A blur of gunfire, movement, screams.

His second mission, a covert operation gone wrong. His friend, fragmenting into shards beside him.

His third, an ambush. A line of human figures on the horizon. DAWEI stalled. Why aren’t you firing? The humans were too small. There was a 67% chance those were not adults. Was that too low? Too high? DAWEI wrestled with his internal circuitry—and shut down.

He was sent to analytics, deemed too faulty to operate in the field, and decommissioned.

…a lethal system is a specific subset with the goal of exerting kinetic force against human beings…

DAWEI—Deployed Autonomous Weaponry, Espionage and Intelligence Systems—lifts his head from the weeds. For the first time in a long while, he notices the way the sunlight falls: a golden waterfall spilling through the cracks between grey clouds. A damp wind brings leaves and whispers swirling out of the nearby forest. The soil on his hands smells loamy. In the dirt by his treads, an earthworm pokes out, wriggles joyously in the fresh air, and then disappears underground. As he watches it go, a strange feeling blooms in his body.

This morning, he is nowhere else. He is just here.

NB. Quotations adapted from:Taddeo, Mariarosaria; Blanchard, Alexander (2022). "A Comparative Analysis of the Definitions of Autonomous Weapons Systems". Science and Engineering Ethics. 28: 37. doi:10.1007/s11948-022-00392-3. PMC 9399191.