Stop Killer Robots is urging all states to adopt, at the 7th Review Conference of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) (16–20 November,Geneva), a mandate for negotiations on a new legally binding Protocol to the CCW on autonomous weapons systems, which must be negotiated within one year—by the end of 2027.
You know, set-it-and-forget-it weapons?
Killer robots, blind moles
sniffing out pre-programmed targets,
unsupervised scavenger
hunt for heat signature.
Unblinking camera eyes trained
on code over creed,
with unflagging stamina, vulturing
skies without feeling
the sun, and the finger
that will pull the trigger
has never held a human hand.
One hundred twenty-eight UN member states
looked into those cosmic voids
and softened
their language, not their swords:
Meaningful human control,
and predictability chopped
on the cutting board of consensus.
But we've seen the sci-fi:
unmanned devices
unmanning too many,
mangled massacres.
And when some hotshot missile breaks
the boundary of a non-binding text,
who will open the curtain
of curling smoke to stare
at blood-stained faces?
Who will look suffering
in its leaking eyes and say yes—
I stand by my call?
Anne Ramallo is a writer, editor, and performer living in Los Angeles, CA. Her poetry has been featured in journals and anthologies, including Sky Island, Low Hanging Fruit, Elysium Review, Cosmic Daffodil, Radical Catalyst, and The Poetry Lighthouse. She is a co-founder of indie press Poets in the Pines, publishing the Made From Midnight anthology series. Keep up with her on Instagram @AnneRamallo.
