Move Fast and Break Things? AI Targeting, Moral Atrophy and Intentional Adaptation with Elke Schwarz

On this episode of Technology & Security, Dr Miah Hammond-Errey is joined by Professor Elke Schwarz, Professor of Political Theory at Queen Mary University of London and author of Death Machines: The Ethics of Violent Technologies. When a machine helps decide who dies, who is left holding the moral responsibility? Elke explains how AI-enabled targeting acts as a cognitive prosthesis, why operators working within a 20-second decision window tend to over-trust system outputs, and how the moral friction between a decision and its consequences is being eroded.

The conversation examines why "meaningful human control" has given way to a more technical logic "context-appropriate human judgment and control," and what an expanding targeting appetite means for civilians in conflict. Elke traces how venture capital's growth-driven timelines are pushing defence procurement toward speed and scale, and asks who bears the cost when defence starts to look like Silicon Valley. The episode closes on what it takes to build a more intentional, deliberate AI future, and why philosophy, ethics and social science belong in the room for security leaders, not on the margins.

Elke Schwarz is Vice-Chair of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control and a current British Academy Global Innovation Fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations. Her research examines the ethics of war and technology, including how venture capital dynamics are shaping military norms and defence spending.