Militarisation of Tech: Redefining the battlefield

00:07.47
Gus
Welcome to The Technology Pill, a podcast that looks at how a technology is reshaping our lives every day and exploring the different ways that governments and companies use tech to increase their power.

00:18.17
Gus
My name is Gus Hosein and I'm the Executive Director at Privacy International.
Caitlin
And I'm Caitlin and I'm PI's Campaigns Coordinator. Hi.

00:28.70
Gus
In this edition, we're talking about the militarization of tech. I guess you can call it when tech goes to war, but it's both richer and darker than that. Fortunately, we're joined by two colleagues at PI who can take us through what is perhaps one of the biggest shifts in global tech and power that's happening right now.

00:53.31
Gus
Which includes the fact that big tech is shifting into war, but also there's this rise of massive investment in the defense tech industry and how that defense tech industry isn't just trying to sell defense technology, but it's also getting into civilian life.

01:12.00
Gus
and how there's a huge shift in the way that data is increasingly used in conflict, and then that data in conflict is then used to build technology that is then brought home to town squares and our civilian lives.

01:26.95
Gus
In the conversation, because we're very fortunate to work with extraordinarily smart people, they refer to a number of terms from the sectors that they necessarily have to dive into. So for instance, they talk about the challenges of regulating dual use technologies. And just to describe it is the type of technologies that can be used both in national security and warfare, but also civilian use.

01:50.96
Gus
You can think of encryption as a dual use technology. But that poses particular challenges around regulation when laws regulate governments differently and then they regulate conduct by individuals.

02:03.48
Gus
And they also talk about being legal nerds, different legal regimes. And so there are laws that regulate how governments can wage war. And there's a regime of law called international humanitarian law that they sometimes refer to as IHL.

02:18.52
Gus
And there's also laws that essentially protect human rights. And there are gaps in between these legal systems and navigating these gaps is also fascinating. And finally, they talk a lot about how national security as a term of art or as a weapon as a term of art that governments use to shield themselves from accountability. So if a government doesn't want to talk about something, they'll say, oh, but for national security reasons, we cannot discuss the nature of our powers.

02:49.25
Gus
And this is increasingly happening as our societies militarize. And that concept of militarization in societies is when our societies and our civilian life start taking on aspects of military life, of defense.

03:07.24
Gus
And when that happens, governments get to use the excuse of national security to defend themselves from democratic norms and accountability measures. This all all sounds very deep and this all sounds very ominous, but don't worry, if you hold on to the end, you'll find that there was a very rich discussion around hope and what good can come out of all of this fear and destruction and massive investments into defense tech and big tech.

03:48.41
Caitlin
I'm going to start asking this question. Who are you guys who've wandered into this meeting room at PI?
Ilia
Hi, I'm Ilia. I'm a human rights lawyer currently leading PI's project on militarization of tech or technology.

04:02.77
Ilia
We are divided on that. And I've been working at PI for the past seven years, primarily focusing on state accountability for surveillance practices. And I'm very happy to be here.

Serhat
Hi, I'm Serhat Öztürk. I'm a legal officer at PI.

04:19.02
Serhat
I've been working on the areas of international human rights and humanitarian law, including in this project. Awesome.

Caitlin
And eagle-eyed listeners might remember Ilya from another podcast that she's definitely been on, but I can't remember the name of. So you if you listen to this podcast and you're like, damn, I want to hear more from Ilia, you'll be able to find that podcast in the description box wherever you're listening or on our website.

04:40.74
Caitlin
Ilia is shaking her head, but... She's a delight. I don't know what anyone wants to know. So we're here today to talk about militarization. And like two-ish years ago, this isn't a topic that we would be covering. It's not something anyone in particular was talking about. And now it's just about everywhere.

04:56.67
Caitlin
So what was kind of the key moment for each of you where you realized something was starting to systemically change? That would be amazing.

Ilia
Okay, what made the shift for me? No surprises there. It's Ukraine as for, i would don't want to say most of the globe, but many people.

05:12.26
Ilia
And it was one particular company's involvement that really struck to me on something that has been changing. And that was Starlink, primarily owned and controlled by Elon Musk.

05:24.29
Ilia
And Starlink has been providing Ukraine with internet access V8 satellites from but early on in the conflict. And back then, everybody had celebrated the moment where Starlink was coming in, until the bill they provided to Ukraine.

05:41.89
Ilia
And so today, ho hospitals, military bases, and even troops on the front line have been using Starlink to connect, and even civilians have been using Starlink terminals to get Wi-Fi.

05:53.69
Ilia
And the more the country conflict occur continues, the deeper the connection of Ukraine to Starlink is. And this is the first time a European state had ah made a contract with Starlink.

06:07.62
Ilia
But what is particularly interesting for me in that case is the level of control one single company has over the connectivity of the entire state.

06:19.52
Ilia
It resembles to many ways to telecommunications companies, but telecommunications companies ah have entire infrastructures on the state. While right now, the Ukraine is facing the fact that with clicking one button,

06:34.81
Ilia
Starlink can simply cut the connection to the entire country. And there's been that incident in September 2022 where, okay, there is a lot of speculation of what exactly happened, whether Elon Musk gave the order or what exactly was going on, but the respective of what the how exactly it happened, the fact that all of a sudden at the moment where the Ukraine was about to start a key operation for their military operations,

07:03.91
Ilia
the connection got cut. And there was nothing ah Ukraine as Ukraine could do about that. And this was what really triggered it for me, that the world is shifting and we need to shift our focus and work with it.

07:22.52
ilia
Serhat, back to you.

Serhat
Okay, thank you. I feel like it was not a precise moment in history for me, or it was not a particular event, but rather it was a process of learning and curiosity and concern.

07:35.77
Serhat
And now looking backwards, but also onwards, I feel like I should have known more and I should have predicted more. but I would say personally, what triggered my curiosity to look into this phenomenon is at Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and other companies over the course of the last 10 years, there have been like workers objecting to certain involvement of these companies.

08:04.56
Serhat
right I think it's regularly out there. There are always people who are putting on the table some humanitarian concerns. And it made me realize What do these companies that I use on my phone, on my social media, or at like at best my work computer have to do with conflict and war and occupation?

08:26.30
Serhat
So then I try to follow that question. And it feels like now everything is connected in a way around... like the importance of having the most data. So I understand like how private companies and states and have so many interconnected interests.

08:46.76
Serhat
So like if you look at the particular technologies around surveillance and those technologies that feed from data sets, you find pretty much the same technologies in war and occupation, but also in like countries at peace in the Western or whichever part of the globe you look at, like they're used in surveillance. So they're all the same in a way.

09:10.78
Serhat
I think that's my brief take on it, but I understand it's much more complex than that. So that's why we have a project on it.

Caitlin
And a podcast. Gus, what about you?

Gus
No, for me, it was when we were all wondering whether or not there was going to be a Ukraine war, you know, even as Macron, the French president was saying, oh, no, no, we're still negotiating and this isn't going to happen. Peace is still possible.

09:34.07
Gus
What I thought was fascinating was that the Americans, and I believe to some degree, the British were parachuting in to Ukraine to help patch critical infrastructure.

09:47.91
Gus
You know, in the old days, you imagine foreign governments parachuting in before an invasion to like build, you know, trenches or to to put mines around borders. But in this case, there was a story in The New York Times about how the US government was heading into Ukraine to do software patches to shore up the civilian infrastructure of Ukraine.

10:11.98
Gus
Because if there was going to be a conflict, and apparently the Americans believe there was going to be a conflict, ah amongst the first wave of the attack was going to be the Russian intelligence agencies with their extraordinary hacking powers

10:26.05
Gus
essentially attacking the civilian infrastructure of the rail and the electricity and other things that are all accessible through digital means. And so it kind of indicated that war was changing and the defense against war was changing.

10:41.32
Gus
And then once the conflict did occur, a key moment happened for us, which was we were trying to imagine if this is the nature of warfare now, that an element of civilian infrastructure that can be targeted in war that applies to telecommunications systems too.

10:57.22
Gus
And so we' we're wondering if Russia intends to actually invade and occupy, what does that mean for the data infrastructure in the country, particularly the telecommunications data infrastructure? That is telephone companies that have vast amounts of data on people in a now occupied country

11:17.50
Gus
and that data can be used to target civilians. And then it becomes very dangerous. And so we wrote to the telecommunications companies that operate in Ukraine and asked them, do you have plans for this?

11:30.56
Gus
And we didn't get a response, which is quite unfortunate, but it it just forced this shifting in our minds of that, you know, the infrastructure of modern telecommunications and modern intranet and the modern data world that we've built has always had this this idea that was built to aid peace and understanding.

11:52.18
Gus
And we were about to enter into a world of conflict and war. Arguably, war and conflict existed over the last 20-odd years. It was just unevenly distributed. Now the West was going to wake up to the reality that war was taking place and war was going to be different.

12:07.93
Gus
So yeah, that was the moment when i turned... to Ilia. And Ilia, I could see that she was having the exact same thoughts. Something was going on in the world. And so we wondered, what can we do about it? And then Ilia fortunately had all the answers. Right, Ilia?

12:23.42
Ilia
Always.

Gus
So you said PI's got to work on this. What is the this?

Ilia
I mean, Caitlin said it at the very beginning. It's been two years ago, we wouldn't be considering working on this.

12:34.46
Ilia
And nowadays, everyone is talking about militarization and the need to modernize the militaries from increase of defense budgets, militarization of AI goes on.

12:46.19
Ilia
Both of the two ongoing conflicts, one in Ukraine and one in Gaza have been marked by how heavily technology-focused the conversations and the news have been.

12:57.64
Ilia
And yet I feel and I felt when we were building the project, there is little consideration on what are the broader impacts of those trends to our everyday lives. Something that Serhat hinted to as well when he was talking about what made an impact on him.

13:14.55
Ilia
And at the moment, in the process of modernizing the militaries, governments with company supports are rapidly militarizing our societies.

13:25.60
Ilia
They are increasing military spending while they are undermining civil rights protections and reducing social protection programs. And this is exactly what militarization of tech is for us.

13:36.65
Ilia
It is not only about the tech and data innovating how conflicts are conducted and how big tech from Microsoft, Google, Meta and all the rest of them, and not only chasing defense contracts in the US and beyond, but they have shifted their policies to ensure they can use our data for war and surveillance.

13:57.36
Ilia
Militarization of tech to us is also about how defense tech companies are now selling the products to be deployed in our day-to-day lives, in our town squares.

14:08.56
Ilia
And this is how we understood ah the change that was happening in the world, a change that was not only impacting the battlefield, but was impacting our town squares. And of course, I'm a low lawyer, so half of my questions asked to Gus were about how this whole...

14:25.78
Ilia
thing is governed, where are the limits, what are the rules of engagement? Dual use products is not a new term. We see it in expert controls, it's dominating war. It's not something new that defense and militaries will influence how technologies we use is developed.

14:44.67
Ilia
But then how is it regulated on the ground? And what are the protections we can have against our data being used in war and to target us? So this is how we conceptualize the project to begin with that keeps taking more and more shape.

15:01.96
Caitlin
To dive a bit deeper into what you were saying, like why is it different and why is it important? like dual use technologies, technologies that are used in civilian spheres and military spheres, if they've been around a while, like what makes this a systemic shift rather than a continuation of a trend that we've already kind of seen

Ilia
ah Much of this we have seen before, no doubt.

15:25.66
Ilia
Military tech projects offering commercial alternatives from touchscreens to GPS, these are things that were initially military projects. And military being involved in protecting critical infrastructures, that has also been part of the deal. They are there to protect us from external threats. So from electricity to water supplies, these are critical infrastructures they need to protect.

15:52.30
Ilia
Or companies marketing their products as being battlefield tested. This is their mark of marketing seal of approval that they know what they're talking about.

16:04.50
Ilia
But we believe that the nature and intensity of those intersections is changing. Data is becoming central to war. It is no longer just about collecting information to getting advantage over the enemy. The collection and processing of the data in itself is becoming a military operation.

16:26.45
Ilia
And in the process, they're using data intensive data data driven technologies. And those technologies require more and more data to be developed and operating.

16:39.43
Ilia
And as a result, it's no longer just about the battlefield data, about the military intelligence that it's gathered, but it is everybody's data. They are collecting data from big tech companies, from data brokers, from everything in our day-to-day lives.

16:57.72
Ilia
And this has as a relight that there is an ever deeper fusion on military and civil data, tech infrastructures, as we have never seen before.

17:08.29
Ilia
Everything seems to be coming after a game.

Gus
I think you're nailing that analysis. it's like For an organization like PI that cares about different forms of surveillance and different forms of data gathering, the use in war just completely transforms the surveillance power to begin with, but also the nature of conflict. So, you know, in the past, we've looked at how governments will hack devices and in order to get data out of those devices.

17:36.30
Gus
Or we did some litigation when it was discovered because of Edward Snowden's disclosures that the UK government had hacked the Belgian telecommunications service to get access to vast amounts of data.

17:47.63
Gus
Or we'd also done work on, say, a company like Clearview AI, which is a facial recognition firm that was scraping data from social media and other places in order to build its database to then sell to police.

18:03.52
Gus
And then war happens and it just completely transforms the landscape. you know Now using the example of Russia would have hacked the rail infrastructure or would have hacked the telecommunications infrastructure of Ukraine and would have then been able to understand the movements of people across the country. And so waging war against Ukraine would have been dramatically different.

18:26.70
Gus
Or as we saw with the example of facial recognition, and this is a very dark example, but Clearview AI, after having lost case after case that we were behind some of them, decided to offer for free to the Ukrainian government its services.

18:44.39
Gus
And the reason I say it's dark is because Clearview had scraped Russian social media and so therefore had faces of Russians, which is Russian soldiers, and they were offering the service to the Ukrainian government purportedly to identify dead Russian soldiers.

19:04.83
Gus
And so all of a sudden these tools and these methods developed in so-called peace time were going to transform war. And then as Ilia was saying, we're seeing these companies and these these solutions being battle tested, field tested in war, and they're going to be part of our civilian infrastructure going forward.

19:26.86
Gus
We've seen, for instance, Israeli facial recognition firms start deploying this very same technology that was battle tested. And we know where that was battle tested.

19:39.45
Gus
They're then selling that branded technology. And these firms are marketing to schools and to hospitals. And so all of a sudden, not only do you have an ethical question of technology developed in war then being deployed in civilian spaces and in our town squares, but you also have the question about what about the data and the data that essentially made these systems to be viable for selling and that data is the blood of people. It's horrific.

20:20.76
Caitlin
Serhat, you did a presentation for PI staff and our partners fairly recently. And one of the things that you mentioned that I thought was really interesting and comes back to the data question is if data is a military asset and data centers and military targets, is that something you want to talk a tiny little bit more about?

20:38.49
Serhat
Yeah. So under international humanitarian law, civilians and like civilian objects are protected against attacks. This is the main rule. And when we look at the most important assets today, as we are talking in this podcast, it also definitely includes data, like data sets.

20:59.97
Serhat
And there are two ways of looking at data, the data itself or the physical infrastructure where it is contained, right? But if we focus on data, there are still unanswered questions whether data counts as an object or as a property.

21:17.47
Serhat
And basically this ambiguous situation of data as property or object also hinders its protection from attacks during armed conflict, but also confiscation and like lawful use and its restrictions that are regulated under international humanitarian law.

21:39.93
Serhat
So just because it is not a physical element, the legal world has been discussing whether this concept of data enjoys such protection.

Caitlin
So, my family pictures, if I'm starting to put them on Instagram or my Google photos that Google are using as part of their whatever training programs become potential military considerations.

22:03.60
Serhat
Yeah, it is possible that state or a non-state armed group attacks your data, so to say, or let's say data data of mass importance to communities such as like economic data or medical data.

22:18.79
Serhat
And as a result, they may just very well argue that it is not protected under IHL or it is justified, ah their attack is justified under the circumstances because there is not a heightened protection preventing such attacks.

22:33.71
Caitlin
And weird weaponry and weird attack vectors are becoming increasingly relevant. And you actually went to the UN to talk about killer robots recently. Is that something you can explain?

22:48.50
Serhat
yeah I think killer robots is a great example of what we are talking about here in terms of these data intensive technologies. like There are so many valid concerns around killer robots. And what we mean by killer robots is this integrated technology into a weapon, which allows the weapon to autonomously without significant human involvement,

23:12.81
Serhat
identify and engage with a target. But what we mean by engage is most potentially the act of killing, right? So there's a big ethical question of delegating the decision to kill to machines and algorithms.

23:27.63
Serhat
There's a question of security, of proliferation, because these systems are not as expensive as one could imagine. So they may end up threatening like global and contextual regional peace initiatives.

23:41.60
Serhat
But at the end, there is also a big problem about data and privacy. And this is actually one of the reasons we are more and more present in these discussions. Because it is impossible to build and develop these machines without the data sets.

23:57.28
Serhat
So we are trying to understand, analyze, and also ask everybody we meet the question of where does this data come from? And does it change hands?

24:09.40
Serhat
Does it help building technologies, like on the one hand, in war and conflict, but on the other hand, peacetime surveillance? Are they interchangeable? And so far, I'm afraid we don't have a clear answer, but I feel that our suspicion leads us towards the right direction.

24:28.62
Serhat
And just to add to it, there is indeed a process to like ban and regulate autonomous weapon systems, what we call killer robots. But the discussion is bigger than that.

24:40.59
Serhat
Today, we are discussing also military decision support systems that we have seen in use, especially in Gaza. And these kinds of systems, as they only suggest profiles to be attacked, people to be attacked without engaging with them automatically, are not part of the discussion and they operate with less protective frameworks, unfortunately.

25:01.90
Caitlin
People are interested, I think we've talked briefly about those systems on the podcast before, but could you explain a little bit more what you mean by those systems in use in Gaza? Like what are they? How do they work?

Serhat
So military decision support systems are systems based on, once again, vast amounts of data that profile people of interest or communities ah based on their behavior, based on their political affiliation and many more sensitive information.

25:31.52
Serhat
So as a result of this profiling based on data, the tool offers the Army's or non-state armed groups, basically profiles to be targeted because maybe they are showing patterns of suspicious activity, or maybe that's not even required. Maybe they're just profiled as affiliated to a certain group, or maybe it's being a man of a certain age that directly contributes to your targeting.

25:59.22
Serhat
So here we are talking about algorithmic systems that operate with very little oversight and accountability that put another strain on respect for international law.

26:13.79
Gus
There was one example that we discussed in a previous podcast. I think it was Washington Post and New York Times was identifying slightly the inverse challenge, which was in order to target neighborhoods in Gaza, the Israeli armed forces were relying on telecommunications data to identify that there were fewer people in the neighborhood.

26:36.67
Gus
So there's, they said, look, there's fewer mobile phones pinging the telecommunications tower, so therefore it's okay to proceed with the attack. They didn't include in their calculation that a lot of phones may not be connecting because the batteries had run dry and there was no electricity.

26:57.59
Gus
Or there might be problems with the telecommunication system because it had also been attacked. And so the lack of data was being used to justify military action as well. And that could have its own problems.

27:11.86
Ilia
What Serhat and Gus just describing and what is highly problematic is the layers of opaqueness that come with these transformations.

27:23.49
Ilia
We have always been facing the national security rules when it comes to law enforcement and counterterrorism, but at the same time, there are processes in place where we can...

27:36.14
Ilia
question what is happening, what tools they've been using, and how are they getting their information to criminally prosecute people when it comes to arrests. with these current developments and the identification of warfare, it feels to me that it's becoming this layer over layer of everything is becoming a matter of national security. We cannot draw the line. Our health data...

28:04.98
Ilia
our school data, our social media interactions, silly time we spend to relax are all becoming part of the package that can feed into the military's action.

28:19.23
Ilia
And that means that, for instance, an organization like PI that is promoting freedom and autonomy and dignity cannot actually be asking these questions anymore. We cannot find out what's happening with this data.

28:35.33
Ilia
And how it's been transferred to the military and where the military transfers them next. So we may become the target of the next conflict. But also, mean we may as well being part of a big a national security archive.

28:51.79
Ilia
ah So where does that stop? And I think we've seen that with concern with what is happening in China, where the People's Liberation Army has now been implementing for a few years now a full military civil fusion strategy.

29:08.64
Ilia
That means that civilian data is not exempt from the national security classification. So allowing the army to access massive civilian data sets. And then ah that includes Chinese citizens, even foreign users of Chinese platforms.

29:25.98
Ilia
And all this data can be accessed and used by the army. But then that means that the default is that every single data set on each individual data is part of the Army military national strategy and under its rubric.

Gus
This is the thing I find most fascinating.

29:45.86
Gus
And so what do we do? You know, it was interesting. We started talking about China and so many things came to mind. Of course, TikTok came to mind, but also the Biden administration, when they...

29:57.63
Gus
took positions similar to our own on saying the Chinese car firms in America should not be trusted because they might exploit the data for nefarious purposes.

30:09.34
Gus
That sounds like what you're talking about. Now, i'm not trying to put words in your mouth, but I'm curious If that is the new landscape and you add to that, that this is a lot of the motivation for American firms to grab as much data because they're trying to compete against China.

30:22.96
Gus
What are the rules that we can apply? Like where are the lines that we can draw to regulate this? Like stopping is one thing, but I think to regulating this because it's it's not, hope isn't all lost on this, right?

30:36.67
Ilia
Oh, what gives me most hope actually is exactly what you talked about right now, which is the fact that we can exploit those data sets and our allies means that our enemies can do as well.

30:51.29
Ilia
And it's becoming, there are more and more reporting and studies demonstrating that actually it's not only about the everyday civilian users data that's high can be purchased by armies and exploited, but actually military personnel and veterans data have been actually purchased and can be accessed by our enemies.

31:18.76
Ilia
So there's been instances where, for instance, a company ah told a US politician that they had data on German soldiers that they purchase purchased from a Lithuanian company.

31:31.96
Ilia
US military ah veterans data from their fitness apps, from their day-to-day apps, have been found by the Duke University to have been fully available in the datasets purchased quite cheaply from data broker companies. These are companies that they are amassing, aggregating, and reselling datasets on people.

31:54.54
Ilia
So this gives me hopes in the sense that there is this realization right now that it is not only an opportunity, but it is a threat as well. So I'm hoping that this will motivate both militaries and politicians to better regulate this world.

32:11.12
Ilia
And the regulation, the way we see it, cannot come just from one treaty or one legal instrument. So, Serhat spoke about how he was in Geneva to discuss lethal autonomous weapon systems, the regulation.

32:26.39
Ilia
This alone cannot solve the reality we are facing today. Also, the EU passed the AI Act. which by the way, excludes national security from its application.

32:40.93
Ilia
That alone cannot solve it. It is just more of the concerted effort and understanding of different legal frameworks and sectors and the exchange of information, understanding how they operate, not only alone, but in coordination with each other, that we believe we can build a world where we can rely on for rule of law and human rights protections for our futures.

33:11.58
Ilia
So in that regard, we are working with different organizations that are bringing along different expertise to better understand what solutions can be brought forward.

33:23.52
Serhat
So this project of ours at PI, militarization of technology, it brings together so many actors that are experts in their own area and their expertise really matters because the militarization phenomena is really complex to understand and uncover in all its aspects.

33:44.22
Serhat
So with these organizations that we are working together, we are analyzing thanks to their hard work and expertise, for example, real life case studies of militarization in different contexts around the world, gendered impacts of these systems in armed conflict, but also in peacetime, legal and policy frameworks around exports, but also uses of these technologies in civic spaces,

34:09.01
Serhat
And there are collaborators who are diving into private firms that are involved in this trade and much more. So we are hoping that this body of knowledge we are collectively creating will inform not only the public, but also the policymakers to prioritize addressing this issue with a human rights lens as a priority.

34:30.37
Gus
But the one thing I'll take away with a lot of hope is the fact that Ilia is hopeful. And it reminds me, by the time people are listening to this, a little bit of time has passed, but last week, the Danish interior minister was arguing that end-to-end encryption over chat and messaging apps was a problem and must be gotten rid of.

34:53.09
Gus
And I thought it was ironic that it was the Danish minister minister for the interior arguing that while Danes use a messaging system built by American firms, that they don't want a layer of security protecting Danish citizens from having their communications monitored at a time where the president of the United States is talking about invading Greenland, which is a Danish part of the, date God, I don't even know the right words describe Greenland's relationship with with Denmark, but that in its own right is problematic. So it it just feels like PI and the work that we do, we're so accustomed to interior ministries or justice ministers saying and doing stupid things.

35:38.02
Gus
And got the impression from Ilaa that like as much as the national security framing can take away so many rights and make it harder for us to do our work, this militarization and national security framing is actually an opportunity for people who understand attack surfaces and risk very well to step in and say, no, we can't allow this wild west to continue.

36:03.97
Gus
We actually need to secure our societies. And I think there's this opportunity with these organizations we're working with to secure in a way that doesn't lock out human rights and other fundamental democratic safeguards. Is that a fair hope, Ilia, just to close off?

36:20.21
Ilia
Yes, a little bit more pro-military than and would be my taste. but

Gus
Here I am. This is how how long I've been in this business. I'm looking for friends anywhere I can find them. And there was a time I was hoping intelligence agencies would step up and say, oh, no, for the national security of our people, we must make sure our our infrastructure is secure.

36:42.31
Gus
They didn't do that, at least not in the United Kingdom. They do that a little bit in the U.S., But, and now I'm hoping to the armies will save us. That's pretty sad.

Ilia
Someone needs to be the responsible adult. Let's see. It's a brave new world.

36:57.86
Gus
It's brave new world. It's a brave new world. Well, with that, thank you so much for joining us today. This is a conversation we've wanted to have for a long time, and it's about time. So I look forward to seeing more of this work, and particularly the work with the other organizations who are you know arms control organizations. And what their take on all of this is,

37:21.75
Gus
And the killer robots conversation. Jesus, that is dark, but yeah, we remain hopeful. Thank you both. Thank you.

37:42.04
Gus
Thanks for listening. If you found this topic as interesting as i did, and Caitlin did as well, I hope, I think, right? i just The reason I went off script here is because militarization is just something that fascinates me so deeply.

37:56.37
Gus
And as I said, I'm so grateful we had the chance to talk to our colleagues about this. And they have been so busy trying to explain this.

38:06.55
Gus
and explore this topic that there's bucket loads of content now available on our website and through other means. So I strongly urge you to go and sign up to our mailing lists for updates on this specific topic. There's a very specific mailing list we've started around the militarization of tech, for instance, and you can do so by going to pvcy.org/podsignup.

38:28.73
Gus
We'll also include relevant links to all the articles that we've been crafting that are relevant to the issues discussed and also some news articles and reports others that we raised in this discussion.

38:41.35
Gus
And we'll add that to the description wherever you're listening or on our website at pbcy.org slash tech pill. Don't forget to rate and subscribe to the podcast on whichever platform you use.

38:53.99
Gus
Music is courtesy of Sepia. This podcast was produced by Max Burnell for Privacy International.