Disruption in Defense: The Rise of Unicorn Companies

From Gaza to Ukraine, today’s war zones are being used as testing grounds for new systems driven by artificial intelligence. Billions of dollars are now being pumped into AI weapons technology, much of it from Silicon Valley venture capitalists.

In this episode, we speak to Elke Schwarz, a reader in political theory at Queen Mary University of London in the UK who studies the ethics of autonomous weapons systems, about what this influx of new investment means for the future of warfare. 

This episode was written and produced by Mend Mariwany and Gemma Ware with sound design by Michelle Macklem. Our theme music is by Neeta Sarl. Full credits for this episode are available. Sign up here for a free daily newsletter from The Conversation.

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Further reading:

• The Silicon Valley venture capitalists who want to ‘move fast and break things’ in the defence industry
• Gaza war: Israel using AI to identify human targets raising fears that innocents are being caught in the net
• War in Ukraine accelerates global drive toward killer robots