Short circuit: retracing the political for the age of ‘autonomous’ weapons

The spectre of lethal autonomous weapons has drawn increasing interest and concern in recent years as advances in robotics and artificial intelligence have signaled their potential immanence. Long portended in dystopic pop culture conjurings, the figure of the militarized automaton already registers in popular imaginaries in ways that intersect with quotidian understandings of ‘smart bombs’ and ‘surgical strikes’, first made familiar to global …