Scope, definitions, uncertainty

Scope

This site maps the legal and institutional machinery governing AI-assisted targeting and autonomous weapon systems, centred on the United Kingdom, and proposes reforms. It is a companion to the scenario site Autonomy 2040, but it is a legal and institutional map, not a speculative timeline.

It examines decision-shaping systems broadly: data selection, classification, ranking, target recommendation, route planning, navigation and terminal guidance. A system does not need to fire a weapon independently to matter legally.

Definitions

'Meaningful human control' is used as a testable property — information, time and authority to make a real decision — not as a slogan. 'Material update' means a change in software, model, data or configuration that could alter reviewed behaviour; part of the argument is precisely that no public threshold currently defines this. 'Operating envelope' means the bounded conditions within which a system is authorised to act.

Epistemic rules

Every substantive claim carries one of seven labels: current law, state practice, reported practice, legal analogy, Trial Trial finding, hypothetical, or proposed reform. Sources carry verification status, and no citation, quotation, case status, statistic or URL is invented — claims that cannot be verified are removed or visibly marked pending. Factual claims have a July 2026 evidence cut-off.

Named legal cases are described within their actual limits: the ICC's jurisdiction is over natural persons; the Nuremberg industrialist convictions were of individuals; van Anraat concerned a physical precursor; Lundin is ongoing and is not described as a conviction; Lafarge's terrorism-financing conviction is not a corporate war-crimes conviction. The procedural status of ongoing cases must be re-checked immediately before publication.

Trial Trial

Trial Trial was a simulated criminal trial of a fictionalised case, conducted by n-Space at Somerset House Studios in 2026 with practising lawyers, expert witnesses and a citizen jury. Its findings are research observations from a structured adversarial exercise. They are not judicial findings, and they establish no fact about any real company, person or state. Participant material requires permission before publication.

Uncertainty and limitations

The framework matrix simplifies: cells state principal duties, not exhaustive doctrine, and an absent cell means 'not typically engaged', not 'never relevant'. The Accountability Test in the margin shows qualitative editorial judgements of institutional capacity, not measurements. The proposed reforms and the international agency are recommendations; nothing presents them as existing or inevitable.

The site argues a position — that accountability is part of defence capability — and states it openly rather than performing neutrality. The counterarguments it takes most seriously are recorded where they bite: regulatory burden, incumbent advantage, and the risk of turning suppliers into private foreign-policy authorities.