In July, a drone strike on a petrol station in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, killed three civilians. A New York Times investigation has since reported that the drone appeared to use onboard AI to pick its exact target after human operators sent it towards the area. Russia has so far refused to confirm whether it uses autonomous weapons systems. However, this illustrates how quickly AI is moving from supporting military decisions to shaping them.
This November, that question lands on the agenda of a UN meeting in Geneva. From the 16-20 November, the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) holds its Seventh Review Conference, where states will decide whether to start negotiating a binding agreement on autonomous weapons.
Jesus calls his followers to be peacemakers: ‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God’ (Matthew 5:9). As Christians, we are called to care for those who bear the consequences of violence and to support efforts that restrain it. Churches around the world have been asking their governments to act on autonomous weapons, and the UK Government has an opportunity to take a leading role in negotiations
This raises a fundamental question: should a machine ever decide who lives and who dies? According to the ICRC, an autonomous weapon is one that, once switched on, chooses and attacks targets without further human intervention, using sensors and a pre-set profile of what to look for.
How the UN process works
The Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, is a treaty with 128 member states that already restricts weapons such as landmines and blinding lasers. Decisions are then made by consensus, so it takes just one state to refuse new restrictions.
This year, a group of appointed experts drew up a set of “elements” for a possible legal instrument. States must now decide what comes next: a mandate to negotiate a binding protocol in 2027, or more delay.
The campaign group Stop Killer Robots, is urging states to agree a negotiating mandate with a short time limit, and to refuse any deal that only promises further discussion. More than 70 states are said to back using the draft text as a basis for negotiation, though reports from September’s talks suggest the United States and Russia are pushing to weaken safeguards.
Why should you care?
You don’t need to be an arms-control expert to have a stake in this. These weapons raise questions about the kind of world we are willing to live in. For many Christians, this touches some our most important beliefs.
Let’s start with accountability. If a machine unlawfully kills, who answers: the commander, the programmer, the manufacturer? When a weapon picks its own target, responsibility becomes harder to assign. “Where is your brother?” God asks Cain (Genesis 4:9), and he expects a person to answer. A machine can’t be asked that question, and a chain of command that points at the code has no one left to answer.
War also rests on human judgement. International humanitarian law requires judgements about civilians, combatants and proportionality, and those judgements can change in an instant. Theories around ‘just war’ require combatants to weigh proportionality and distinguish between military and civilian targets. Handing that decision to an AI hollows it out. Wars that cost the attacker fewer lives are easier to start, and the price is usually paid by those furthest from the decision makers.
Underneath all this is a question about who we think people are. A system that matches people against a profile treats them as data points, yet Christians believe every person is made in God’s image. The Good Samaritan saw the wounded man and was moved with compassion; a machine can detect a heat signature, but it cannot be moved by what it finds. If we are called to love our neighbours, that includes the ones we will never meet who could end up on the receiving end.
In 2019, the WCC’s Executive Committee expressed grave concern and urged member churches to press their governments to support an international ban. In June this year, the WCC signed a joint statement on AI in warfare calling for AI to be halted in military kill chains. Past treaties on landmines and cluster munitions show that restraining a weapon is possible when states and civil society push for it.
Where the UK comes in
The UK has played its part in earlier arms-control treaties, but on autonomous weapons it has held back. Previous UK submissions have argued that international humanitarian law is sufficient to punish those using autonomous weapons irresponsibly. On 29 October, the UK delegation voted in favour of a draft resolution on lethal autonomous weapons and in his speech to the Labour Party Conference, Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband said he would seek to use the UK’s upcoming presidency of the G20 to lead the way on guardrails for AI. They must now back the opening of formal negotiations at the meeting in Geneva
At the same time, the UK is racing ahead on military AI. In May 2025, the then defense secretary, John Healey, told the Guardian that AI would have a massive impact on the military and the battlefield within five years, and said he wanted the UK armed forces at the leading edge of AI innovation in NATO.[1]
To be clear, military AI implementation is not necessarily the same as autonomous weapons, but it shows the direction of travel: the line between a person choosing and a machine choosing needs to be drawn now, not after the technology is embedded.
With the Review Conference around the corner, the UK could support a negotiating mandate and use its diplomatic weight to bring allies along.
What can I do?
- Sign the petition asking for the UK and other European governments to take a leading role.
- Pray. Hold the delegates in Geneva in your prayers, especially during 16-20 November.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/may/20/uk-armed-forces-artificial-intelligence-ai-strategic-defence-review-john-healey