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About

Duncan MacIntosh is a philosopher and legal theorist whose research sits at the intersection of military ethics, autonomous systems, and the philosophy of law. His work has made significant contributions to one of the most pressing debates in contemporary applied ethics: the moral and legal permissibility of Autonomous Weapons Systems (AWS) in warfare. MacIntosh's most cited work, "Fire and Forget: A Moral Defense of the Use of Autonomous Weapons Systems in War and Peace" (2021, 23 citations), directly challenges the widely held assumption that so-called "killer robots" inherently violate human dignity, offering a rigorous philosophical counterargument to mainstream critics of lethal automation. His co-authored volume "Lethal Autonomous Weapons: Re-Examining the Law and Ethics of Robotic Warfare" (2021, 20 citations) further broadens this inquiry, synthesizing legal and moral frameworks to reassess how existing norms apply to emerging technologies. An earlier piece from 2016 laid important groundwork by drawing structural parallels between law, morality, and automata, arguing that rule-of-law values may actually support, rather than oppose, the automation of lethal decision-making. MacIntosh's scholarship is essential reading for anyone engaging seriously with the ethics of artificial intelligence in conflict.