what the treaties don’t say

the major arms control treaties of the twentieth century were drafted well before the age of AI. these arms control treaties did not imagine AI to emerge, much less endure in the forms in which it does. these treaties were designed to constrain forces their authors could imagine: nuclear warheads, poison gas, blinding lasers, cluster munitions. none of them anticipated autonomous targeting systems, AI-assisted launch decisions, large language models that could design novel pathogens, or algorithmic surveillance tools sold across borders to suppress dissent.

this leaves in its wake a major gap in governance that needs to be mindfully and meaningfully addressed if we want to produce change, regulate the military use of AI and its impacts. “what the treaties don’t say” maps this gap, and imagines an article x for each of the key treaties, in the language and register of each of the original treaties, that could potentially address the military use of AI.