Fifteen hours on the last day
The United States and Russia removed a series of safeguards from the United Nations’ draft rules on lethal autonomous weapons during the final day of negotiations in Geneva earlier this month, the Washington Post reported on 26 September. The details had not been reported before.
Over roughly 15 hours, according to three people familiar with the negotiations and documents the Post reviewed, the two delegations stripped language requiring that the systems operate in a “predictable” and “reliable” manner, removed a clause requiring ethical considerations to be taken into account when AI weaponry is used, and removed a provision requiring that humans review military targets developed by AI before a strike.
The session was closed. UN cameras were off and civil society observers had been removed. Washington and Moscow each deployed about ten lawyers — close to twice the diplomatic presence of other delegations — and moved fast enough that smaller delegations were left, in the Post’s word, dizzied.
“It was death by a thousand paper cuts,” one of the three people told the paper.
The US State Department, the Russian Foreign Ministry and the United Nations did not return the Post’s requests for comment.
What is actually being negotiated
The talks sit under the UN’s long-running effort to regulate lethal autonomous weapons, and are the furthest that effort has got. The text is non-binding as it stands. Its significance is that it could become the basis for a legally binding treaty if member states agree to open that process.
That decision is scheduled. Nations return to Geneva in November to determine whether the talks can turn into an official mandate, or a treaty.
The consensus requirement is the pressure point. Nicole van Rooijen, executive director of the coalition Stop Killer Robots, told the Post that the US and Russia do not favour legally binding rules and can use “political capital to exert pressure on other states”. She added: “They have the power to block any significant progress that is made by the vast majority of states who do want to move forward on a binding treaty.”
Why the clauses matter
Verity Coyle, deputy director for arms in the crisis, conflict and arms division at Human Rights Watch, told the Post that weak rules have concrete consequences. “It could mean machines can make life-and-death decisions without human control,” she said. “The practical impact is stark: more civilian harm, less accountability and a faster slide into riskier, automated warfare.”
She described the US delegation — State Department diplomats, Pentagon officials and legal experts — as “a well-resourced team, and they come prepared to defend U.S. military autonomy”, and said the approach follows a pattern: “When the U.S. wants to preserve military or technological advantage, it pushes voluntary guidelines instead of binding rules. We’ve seen the same playbook in cyber, space and other arms-control debates.”
Richard Lennane, disarmament adviser for the legal team at the International Committee of the Red Cross, argued the opposite case from precedent, citing chemical and biological weapons, antipersonnel landmines and cluster munitions. “It’s not about punishment, it’s about setting norms and influencing behavior,” he said. “We believe that a treaty regulating autonomous weapons could be similarly effective.”
The domestic parallel
The clauses removed in Geneva resemble ones in the Pentagon’s own 2023 directive on autonomous weapons, which requires human judgement to check autonomous and semi-autonomous systems and obliges operators to abide by the laws of war.
That directive is being rewritten. Trump issued a national security memorandum in June requiring an update within 90 days. As of late September, the Post reports, no new version has been released.
The administration’s stated position on international rules is not ambiguous. At the UN on Tuesday, Trump said: “The United States also totally rejects any attempt to construct a globalist scheme to control for the artificial intelligence being spoken of so much now.”
What to watch
Two dates. The Geneva meeting in November, which decides whether three years of talks become a negotiating mandate for a binding treaty or stay advisory. And the Pentagon directive, now past the deadline the White House set for it.
