In a recent address, Vance emphasized that the uniqueness of warfighters lies in waging war justly, insisting that life-and-death decisions must remain in human hands rather than being delegated to machines, a stance rooted in religious moral values. He warned that adversaries will not forgo military AI, and while AI can enhance speed and efficiency, it risks eroding moral judgment by turning kill chains into automated processes. Defense technologist Christian Brose highlighted policy gaps that allow lethAl autonomous systems, underscoring the need for ethical restraint. The article draws parallels to historical moral debates, such as the prohibition of chemical weapons after World War I, which were driven by religious and humanitarian groups. it argues that religious liberty is crucial to preserving human conscience in the AI age, ensuring the military remains worthy of the republic it serves.
What makes you as warfighters unique is that we wage war justly, said Vance . This means that if the warfare of the future is to live up to the moral values of our ancestors,decisions over life and death must be made by humans and not machines.
It's worth saying that these moral values are religious. vance didn't declare this explicitly, though he made the point when he endorsed Pope Leo's, saying that humanity must not outsource the most important moral decisions to digital technology. As AI disrupts human affairs, he shared, the thing I worry about most with AI is how it will change warfare.
And only human beings, Vance exhorted the class of officers, have the conscience - minds but too hearts - to master AI and not let it master us. Its an insistence that, even as military technology enters the AI age, those who use it remain anchored to America's foundational values. for Vance, a military that forgets why human judgment matters will eventually forget what it is defending - what the res is in the res publica of the American republic.
This is why America's religious values, particularly its two-and-a-half-century love affair with religious freedom, are vital to the military's use of artificial intelligence. No serious person thinks America can abstain from military AI completely. Our adversaries will not. AI will assist soldiers see faster, move faster, defend faster, and, when necessary, strike faster.
Though speed is not wisdom. Automation can narrow the gap between identifying a target and destroying it until the moral act disappears into the workflow. A kill chain can become a robotic production line. Vance is right to tell officers to jealously guard their office as moral agents.
With defense technologist Christian Brose, president of Anduril, which exposed the danger with unusual clarity. Asked about policy limits, Brose noted that the rules do not forbid automating the kill chain or building a system capable of functioning as a lethal autonomous weapon. you're not not allowed to do that,he remarked. But Brose mostly avoided answering the question of whether we should fully delegate the taking of human life to autonomous digital systEms.
To answer this question,we need religious and moral values. The need for religious thinking in military ethics isn't novel. New technologies have historically prompted religiously grounded moral reflection on their just employment. To name one example, after poison gas was used on the Western Front in World War I, followed by the use of mustard gas at Ypres, the question was not whether the technology worked.
It was whether it should be used, an ethical question inseparable from moral judgment and religious thinking. It was the Red Cross - a humanitarian aid group inspired by Christianity - that appealed to governments for a ban, supported by the Vatican and other religious groups. their effort culminated in the 1925 Geneva Protocol, which proscribed chemical and biological warfare. the debate over AI in warfare is not only technical, legal,and operational. It must too be theological and philosophical.
As with the discernment of past developments in weapons technologies,the debate must inquire what kind of victory would corrupt the victor. Religious liberty is essential to this debate - in the age of AI, it will preserve the human concience in war. Because without religious conscience, as Vance implies, the most advanced military in history would become not stronger though less worthy of the republic it serves.
Christopher J. Motz is senior counsel and chairman of the military affairs practice group at First Liberty Institute. To learn more, go to their website
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