In this eye-opening episode of the SafeGround Podcast, host Lilly McKenzie examines Australia's covert arms industry, revealing how foreign multinational defense companies dominate and influence government decisions. Featuring insights from expert researcher Michelle Fahy and Australia Stop Killer Robot coordinator Matilda Byrne, we explore long standing secrecy, controversy over weapons exports, and the role of Australia within the global arms trade. The discussion also highlights the rise of autonomous weapons systems (LAWS), the ethical and legal risks of AI-driven warfare, and the urgent need for international arms control treaties. Discover why transparency, defense regulation, and arms trade accountability are vital for safeguarding democracy, human rights, and peace in the era of military robotics.

Keywords: arms industry, autonomous weapons, LAWS, AI in warfare, Australian defense, arms trade, international arms control, military robotics, transparency, defense exports, arms influence, climate security, human rights, disarmament, military technology, AUKUS, weapons manufacturing, global security, government accountability, war ethics, stop killer robots.

Introduction and Episode Overview [01:16]

Background on Australia's Defense Industry [01:39]

Influence and Secrecy in the Arms Industry [04:20]

Foreign Ownership and Sovereignty Concerns [10:42]

Employment and Economic Impact [19:43]

Impact on Democracy and Public Accountability [23:21]

Corruption and Conflicts of Interest [27:52]

Growing autonomous military capabilities and Australia’s landscape [31:31]

International Collaboration and AUKUS [36:27]

Australian arms companies and autonomous systems development [38:46]

Ethical, Legal, and Security Concerns of Autonomous Weapons [41:07]

Australia's Position on Disarmament Treaties [44:42]

Civil Society and Advocacy Movements [46:18]

Conclusion and Call to Action [48:35]

Attention Parliamentarians: The lack of transparency in Australia’s defense research and arms exports, especially regarding autonomous weapons, is a critical issue. It hampers accountability, risks misuse and corruption, as well as undermines international disarmament commitments. We urge you to advocate for clear, public reporting & responsible arms control policies. Your leadership can shape a more transparent, peaceful future for Australia and the world."

Thank you for listening!

If you have questions or concerns please contact us via info@safeground.org.au

If you want to know more look for us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram Australia Campaign to Stop Killer Robots or use the hashtag #AusBanKillerRobots.

Become part of the movement so we ‘stay in command’!

For access to this and other episodes along with the full transcription and relevant links and information head to safeground.org.au & https://safeground.org.au/category/dispatches/podcasts/

Link to the International Stop Killer Robots campaign: https://www.stopkillerrobots.org

Our podcasts come to you from all around Australia and we would like to acknowledge the Traditional Owners throughout and their continuing connection to country, land, waters and culture.

Stock audio provided by Videvo, downloaded from...

In this episode of Stay in Command we showcase the ICRC perspective on autonomous weapons and the need for limits. Our guest is a weapons and disarmament expert, Neil Davison from ICRC's Department of Law and Policy at Geneva HQs bringing his own insight and the ICRC's view.

Content in this Episode:

ICRC mandate and approach to weapons issues [1:14]

Humanitarian concerns of autonomous weapons [2:27]

Legal Issues [5:40]

Human Control as a core concept [8:14]

Ethical perspective [10:36]

Limits on autonomy [12:28]

International talks and 'crunch-time'[16:59]

If you have questions or concerns please contact us via info@safeground.org.au

If you want to know more look for us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram Australia Campaign to Stop Killer Robots or use the hashtag #AusBanKillerRobots.

Become part of the movement so we Stay in Command!

For access to this and other episodes along with the full transcription and relevant links and information head to safeground.org.au/podcasts.

Our podcasts come to you from all around Australia and we would like to acknowledge the Traditional Owners throughout and their continuing connection to country, land, waters and culture.

Stock audio provided by Videvo, downloaded from www.videvo.net

In this episode of Stay in Command we discuss the diplomatic process and progress being made regarding lethal autonomous weapons systems. The episode featured Elizabeth Minor from UL-based NGO Article 36 which works to to prevent harm from weapons through stronger international standards and is on the steering committee of the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots. We look at how this issue has progressed and where it is going. We unpack key themes in the current debate and where the process must go.

Content in this episode:

Overview of this issue on the diplomatic stage to date [00:01:56]

Human Control Unpacked [00:09:05]

Human control in international debates[00:12:57]

Notion of the so-called 'entire life cycle' of the weapon [00:14:50]

False solution of proposed techno-fixes [00:18:35]

Limitations of Article 36 Weapons Reviews[00:20:50]

Debates around definition [00:25:58]

Going beyond the guiding principles[00:29:28]

Arriving at ‘Consensus recommendations’[00:30:31]

How a Legally Binding Instrument might look [00:33:26]

How we get there-diplomatic avenues[00:37:06]

The need for decisive action and leadership[00:38:42]

If you have questions or concerns please contact us via info@safeground.org.au

If you want to know more look for us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram Australia Campaign to Stop Killer Robots or use the hashtag #AusBanKillerRobots.

Become part of the movement so we Stay in Command!

For access to this and other episodes along with the full transcription and relevant links and information head to safeground.org.au/podcasts.

Our podcasts come to you from all around Australia and we would like to acknowledge the Traditional Owners throughout and their continuing connection to country, land, waters and culture.

Stock audio provided by Videvo, downloaded from www.videvo.net

John Rodsted: [00:00:00]

Content in this episode:

1. Today we speak with Paul Barratt AO, Australians For War Powers Reform [00:00:19]
2. An Insider To Policy and Decision Making [00:03:04]
3. What Role Does Opposition In Parliament Play? [00:04:36]
4. The Australians For War Powers Reform [00:05:38]
5. Is The Response Time An Issue? [00:06:56]
6. Will Politics Get In The Way? [00:08:25]
7. How to Keep Intelligence Secret? [00:09:39]
8. Who Supports War Powers Reforms? [00:11:37]
9. An Artificial Intelligence Arms Race? [00:14:56]
10. Legal Framework In Decision Making [00:17:14]
11. Bias & Lack of Cultural Knowledge and Sensitivity [00:17:55]
12. An Algorithm Mess [00:20:58]
13. Responsibility For Picking Up The Tab? [00:24:03]
14. Will Killer Robots Be Used If We Get Them? [00:24:56]
15. Weapons and Proportionality [00:25:53]
16. Campaign Vigorously to Outlaw Fully Lethal Autnomous Weapons[00:26:55]
17. The Role of Universities [00:29:14]
18. Trusting The Prime Minister? [00:31:07]
19. General info about SafeGround podcasts, Acknowledgement of traditional owners & Stock Credits [00:32:48]

If you have questions or concerns please contact us via info@safeground.org.au

If you want to know more look for us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram Australia Campaign to Stop Killer Robots or use the hashtag #AusBanKillerRobots.

Become part of the movement so we Stay in Command!

For access to this and other episodes along with the full transcription and relevant links and information head to safeground.org.au/podcasts.

Welcome to SafeGround, the small organization with big ideas. I'm John Rodsted. Today. We're speaking with Paul Barrett. Paul has had a long career in Australia's public service since 1966, but what distinguishes him from many others within government and the public sector is his strong conscience.

He's held many senior roles within government, notably within the department of trade, primary industries in energy and the business council of Australia and Secretary of the Department of Defence from 1998 to 1999. It was his senior role in the Department of Defence that put him at odds with the government positions and policy.

This led him to leaving the public service. Since then, he's had a very strong voice on how and why Australia goes to war and the powers that a few have to commit us to war. He's also one of the founders and current president of Australians for War Power Reform. Welcome Paul.

Paul Barratt: [00:01:12] Morning John

John Rodsted: [00:01:13] Originally you studied physics and graduated with honours from the

University of New England. How did you go from serious science to Australia's public service and Department of Defence?

Paul Barratt: [00:01:23] Well, John, throughout my, undergraduate career, I was intending to do a PhD in physics and become an academic physicist. And towards the end of my honors year, I read this interesting little advertisement in the Sydney Morning Herald, I had sort of had a rough rush of blood to the head and joined the public service.

And that interesting little advertisement said the department of defence was looking for people to monitor scientific developments of defence interest in the Asia Pacific region. So I thought that sounds interesting. And I applied for it months later and security clearances later, and what have you? I turned up for work and discovered that the scientific developments of defence...

In the ‘Stay in Command’ episode today, Major General Mike Smith (Ret.) and John Rodsted from SafeGround explore the issues surrounding the development of Lethal Autonomous Weapons with Artificial Intelligence. The mechanics, ethics and application of this new technology paints a disturbing picture of a world where machines decide who will live and who will die. Today we will talk about leadership both civil and military and the complexities of command responsibility in regards to Lethal Autonomous Weapons.

Major General Michael Smith (ret) has spent his life leading others. He graduated the Royal Military College Duntroon as Dux of his year in 1971 and since commanded everything from a Platoon to a Brigade. His 34 years in the Australian Army had him in some complicated situations.

1. "The Buck Stops Here" [00:02:33]
2. Legal Framework for Commanding in Conflict [00:05:10]
3. Introducing Lethal Autonomous Weapons to the battlefields [00:08:54]
4. The Nature of Wars [00:16:12]
5. A Possible Arms Race? [00:21:51]
6. Technology Development [00:25:05]
7. The Fog of War Continues [00:32:43]
8. Making The Decision To Go To War [00:38:27]
9. Banning these Lethal Autonomous Weapons? [00:41:44]

If you have questions or concerns please contact us via info@safeground.org.au

If you want to know more look for us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram Australia Campaign to Stop Killer Robots or use the hashtag #AusBanKillerRobots.

Become part of the movement so we Stay in Command!

For access to this and other episodes along with the full transcription and relevant links and information head to safeground.org.au/podcasts.

John Rodsted with Mike Smith

A Commander’s View on Lethal Autonomous Weapons - Interview with Major General Mike Smith (Ret.) [00:00:00]

John Rodsted: [00:00:25] And today we're speaking with Mike Smith as part of the 'Stay in Command' series. ' Stay in Command', explores the issues surrounding the development of lethal autonomous weapons and artificial intelligence. The mechanics, ethics, and application of this new technology paints, a disturbing picture of a world where machines decide, who will live and who will die.

Mike spent 34 years in the Australian Army and retired a Major General. He graduated from the Royal Military College Duntroon in 1971 as Dux of his year and has had a distinguished military career as an infantry officer commanding all levels from Platoon to Brigade Commander.

He served as Australia's Defence Advisor in Cambodia in 1994. And throughout 1999 was Director General for East Timor. He was then appointed as the First Deputy Force Commander of the United Nations' Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) in 2000 and 2001. In recognition of this, he was promoted to an Officer in the Order of Australia.

After the army Mike became the CEO of the Australian refugee agency Austcare from 2002 until 2008. He then became the founding Executive Director of the Australian Government's Civil-Military Center from 2008 until late 2011. He then served with the United Nations Support Mission in Libya for 12 months as the Director of Security Sector Reform. He's the immediate Past President of the United Nations Association of Australia and is the current Chair of the Gallipoli Scholarship Fund and a Non-Executive Director of the Institute for Economics and Peace.

Mike holds a master's degree in...

The Tech Perspective with Lizzie Silver:

Technological Aspects and Tech Industry

This episode of Stay in Command emphasised the technological dimensions and concerns as well as the implications on lethal autonomous weapons on the tech industry. Our guest Dr Lizzie Silver is a Senior Data Scientist at Melbourne-based AI company Silverpond.

Content in this episode:

Troubling reality of these weapons [1:49]

Problems with fully autonomous weapons - explainability[3:49]

Facial recognition and bias[7:11]

Military benefits from technical point of view [11:36]

Machines and the kill decision [15:01]

Hacking [16:30]

Positive uses of AI and funding battle [17:10]

Challenge of Dual Use [20:45]

Regulation: Treaty, Company Policy, Individual Actions [22:16]

If you have questions or concerns please contact us via info@safeground.org.au

If you want to know more look for us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram Australia Campaign to Stop Killer Robots or use the hashtag #AusBanKillerRobots.

Become part of the movement so we Stay in Command!

For access to this and other episodes along with the full transcription and relevant links and information head to safeground.org.au/podcasts.

Transcript:

Welcome to SafeGround, the small organisation with big ideas working in disarmament, human security, climate change and refugees. I’m Matilda Byrne.

Thank you for tuning in to our series Stay in Command where we talk about lethal autonomous weapons, the Australian context and why we mustn’t delegate decision making from humans to machines.

This episode we’re looking at the “Tech Perspective”. We are going to discuss the technological concerns of lethal autonomous weapons and their implications on the tech industry.

And so with me today I have a great guest with me today in Dr Lizzie Silver. Lizzie is a Senior Data Scientist at Silverpond which is an AI company based in Melbourne, which is also where I am coming to you from - so welcome Lizzie, thanks so much for joining us today

Lizzie Silver[00:00:52] Thanks for having me

Matilda Byrne: Before we jump in, I’m just going to talk a bit about the definition of killer robots in case any of our listers are unfamiliar with exactly what it is we’re talking about.

So killer robots or fully autonomous weapons are weapons that have no human control over the decision making. So when they select a target and engage the target so decide to deploy lethal force on that target, there is not a human involved in that process and it is just based on AI and algorithms. So with these fully autonomous weapons there are lots of concerns that span a whole of areas that span a number of different areas - today we are going to go into technological concerns in particular because we have Lizzie and her expertise, but there's also things like moral, ethical, legal global security - a whole host of concerns really.

What is the most concerning thing about killer robots?[00:01:49]

Matilda Byrne: And what I’m interested in Lizzie, is, just to start off with if you could tell us what is it about fully autonomous weapons that you find the most worrying, so what about them makes you driven to oppose their development.

Lizzie Silver: It’s really a fundamental issue with these issues is you can't give a guarantee on how they’re going to behave. WIth humans we can’t give a guarantee on how they're going to behave but that’s why we have all these mechanisms for holding a human accountable. Now you can’t hold an algorithm accountable in any meaningful way. So what you would like to do is find a way to characterise how...

Yennie Sayle is completing her studies of a Bachelor of International Studies at RMIT University and is the Youth Engagement intern with SafeGround for the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots Australia.

She sits down with three other students from different areas of studies and experiences to talk killer robots, the level of exposure in their degrees to the topic, their views, concerns, thoughts on university involvement in their development, raising awareness among students and more.

Matilda Byrne on Australia's position on Killer Robots

John Rodsted:

Welcome to SafeGround, the small organisation with big ideas working in disarmament, human security, climate change and refugees. I’m John Rodsted

Thank you for tuning in to our series Stay in Command where we talk about lethal autonomous weapons, the

Australian context and why we must not delegate decision making from humans to machines.

Matilda Byrne is the national coordinator of the Australian Campaign to Stop Killer Robots. The Campaign to Stop Killer Robots is an international effort to preemptively create a binding treaty that will bring restrictions and the ban to a concept of weapons system that would have no meaningful human control - lethal autonomous weapons or killer robots. She holds a master’s degree in international relations and is presently working on a PhD, on international security and global governance. Welcome Tilly.

Matilda Byrne: Thank you for having me!

John Rodsted: Killer robots! Can you tell me what they are and why do you want them banned?

Matilda Byrne: Killer robots or lethal autonomous weapon systems are essentially weapons that are using artificial intelligence. And so for their selecting of targets and the decision to deploy lethal force, this is all done by the AI algorithms. So there's no human that oversees or intervenes or controls the targeting of people and then deciding to kill those people as targets. And so as for why we would like to ban these weapons, there's a whole host of different concerns across moral, ethical, legal, security concerns. For me, I think one of the most compelling things is this idea of delegating the decision making over life to a machine. And so seeing that as humanity, we are not prepared to have this decision done solely by an algorithm and that a human has to control this question of life and death of another human being.

John Rodsted: So, where does Australia sit on this subject? Is Australia for killer robots or against them?

Australia, regrettably has this position where they say it's premature to support a ban. They've been saying this for years now. And essentially what this means is that Australia would like to have the option to potentially develop lethal autonomous weapons in the future. And so beyond that as well, they have suggested many times in public forums, so at the United Nations and in their own sort of reports and things that these weapons could potentially be also desirable. And so we need to research more. We want to look at developments in this direction and see how it could be really positive for our military. Obviously this is an incredibly disappointing position, especially because there's been no attempt by the Australian government or defence to engage with the idea of human control and actually to maintain human control in the decision making.

There are strong diplomatic efforts from civil society to get a ban on these weapons before they are developed and deployed, in short a treaty. Is this movement gaining any traction? And if so, with who?

Matilda Byrne: Yes, it definitely is. We've been seeing growing momentum towards these calls for a ban. And so first you have the different governments of the world. There is a grouping of 120 different countries called the non-aligned movement who have declared their support for a ban. In addition, there's also 30 different countries who have explicitly stated that they support a ban in the talks at the specific forum that deals with this issue of lethal autonomous weapons.

And as well as that, you've mentioned the civil society movement. So we have a lot of tech workers that are speaking up about having a ban and why that's...