---
type: source
title: "ASIL / SIPRI — Legal Analysis: Growing Momentum Toward New Autonomous Weapons Treaty, Structural Obstacles Remain"
author: "American Society of International Law (ASIL), Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI)"
url: https://www.asil.org/insights/volume/29/issue/1
date: 2026-01-01
domain: ai-alignment
secondary_domains: [grand-strategy]
format: legal-analysis
status: unprocessed
priority: medium
tags: [LAWS, autonomous-weapons, international-law, IHL, treaty, SIPRI, ASIL, meaningful-human-control]
---

## Content

Combined notes from ASIL Insights (Vol. 29, Issue 1, 2026) "Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems & International Law: Growing Momentum Towards a New International Treaty" and SIPRI "Towards Multilateral Policy on Autonomous Weapon Systems" (2025).

**ASIL analysis — legal momentum:**

Key legal developments driving momentum for a new treaty:
1. Over a decade of GGE deliberations has developed areas of "significant convergence" on elements of an instrument
2. The two-tier approach (prohibitions + regulations) has wide support, including from states that previously opposed any new instrument
3. International Humanitarian Law (IHL) framework — existing IHL (distinction, proportionality, precaution principles) is argued by major powers (US, Russia, China, India) to be sufficient. But legal scholars increasingly argue IHL cannot apply to systems that cannot make the legal judgments IHL requires. An autonomous weapon cannot evaluate "proportionality" — the cost-benefit analysis of civilian harm vs. military advantage — without human judgment.
4. ICJ advisory opinion on nuclear weapons precedent: shows international courts can rule on weapons legality even without treaty text.

**Legal definition problem:**
What is "meaningful human control"? Legal scholars identify this as the central unresolved question. Current proposals range from:
- "Human in the loop" (human must approve each individual strike)
- "Human on the loop" (human can override but system acts autonomously by default)
- "Human in control" (broader: human designs the parameters within which AI acts autonomously)
The definition determines the scope of what's prohibited. No consensus definition exists. This is simultaneously a legal and a technical problem: any definition must be technically verifiable to be enforceable.

**SIPRI analysis — multilateral policy:**

SIPRI (2025 report): Over a decade of AWS deliberations has yielded limited progress. States are divided on:
- Definitions (what is an autonomous weapon?)
- Regulatory approaches (ban vs. regulation)
- Pathways for action (CCW protocol vs. alternative process vs. status quo)

SIPRI frames the governance challenge as a "fractured multipolar order" problem: the states most opposed to binding governance (US, Russia, China) are the same states most aggressively developing autonomous weapons capabilities. This is not a coordination failure that can be solved by better process design — it's a structural conflict of interest.

**Emerging legal arguments:**

1. **IHL inadequacy argument:** AI systems cannot make the legal judgments required by IHL (distinction between civilians and combatants, proportionality). This creates a categorical prohibition argument: systems that cannot comply with IHL are illegal under existing law.

2. **Accountability gap argument:** No legal person (state, commander, manufacturer) can be held responsible for autonomous weapons' actions under current legal frameworks. This creates a governance void.

3. **Precautionary principle:** Under Geneva Convention Protocol I Article 57, parties must take all feasible precautions in attack. If autonomous AI systems cannot reliably make the required precautionary judgments, deploying them violates existing IHL.

## Agent Notes

**Why this matters:** The IHL inadequacy argument is the most interesting finding — it suggests that autonomous weapons capable enough to be militarily effective may already be illegal under EXISTING international law (IHL) without requiring a new treaty. If this legal argument were pursued through international courts (ICJ advisory opinion), it could create governance pressure without requiring state consent to a new treaty.

**What surprised me:** The convergence between the legal inadequacy argument and the alignment argument. IHL requires that autonomous weapons can evaluate proportionality, distinction, and precaution — these are the same value-alignment problems that plague civilian AI. The legal community is independently arriving at the conclusion that AI systems cannot be aligned to the values required by their operational domain. This is the alignment-as-coordination-problem thesis from a different intellectual tradition.

**What I expected but didn't find:** Any ICJ or international court proceeding actually pursuing the IHL inadequacy argument. It remains a legal theory, not an active case. The accountability gap is documented but no judicial proceeding has tested it.

**KB connections:**
- [[universal alignment is mathematically impossible because Arrows impossibility theorem applies to aggregating diverse human preferences into a single coherent objective]] — the legal inability to define "meaningful human control" technically mirrors Arrow's impossibility: the value judgment required by IHL cannot be reduced to a computable function
- [[some disagreements are permanently irreducible because they stem from genuine value differences not information gaps]] — the US/Russia/China opposition to autonomous weapons governance is not based on different information; it reflects genuine strategic value differences (security autonomy vs. accountability)

**Extraction hints:** The IHL inadequacy argument deserves its own claim: "Autonomous weapons systems capable of making militarily effective targeting decisions cannot satisfy the IHL requirements of distinction, proportionality, and precaution — making sufficiently capable autonomous weapons potentially illegal under existing international law without requiring new treaty text." This is a legally specific claim that complements the alignment community's technical arguments.

## Curator Notes (structured handoff for extractor)
PRIMARY CONNECTION: [[AI alignment is a coordination problem not a technical problem]] — the ASIL/SIPRI legal analysis arrives at the same conclusion from international law: the problem is not technical design of weapons systems but who gets to define "meaningful human control" and who has the power to enforce it
WHY ARCHIVED: The IHL inadequacy argument is the only governance pathway that doesn't require new state consent. If existing law already prohibits certain autonomous weapons, that creates judicial pressure without treaty negotiation. Worth tracking whether any ICJ advisory opinion proceeding begins.
EXTRACTION HINT: The IHL-alignment convergence is the most KB-valuable insight: legal scholars and AI alignment researchers are independently identifying the same core problem (AI cannot implement human value judgments reliably). Extract this as a cross-domain convergence claim.
