Killer Catalysts, War Memory, and Peace Procurement through Youth Involvement
by Taryn Sebba
The United Nations (UN) International Youth Day is celebrated every year on 12 August to bring global attention to the voices, actions, and initiatives of young people. In honour of this important day, members of the Stop Killer Robots Youth Network shared their thoughts on the themes of autonomous weapons systems, digital dehumansiation, and youth in disarmament. Disclaimer: The blogs in this series do not necessarily constitute the opinions of Stop Killer Robots, nor should they be considered the opinions and views of all Stop Killer Robots members.
“LETHALITY STARTS WITH LOGISTICS,” boasts an advertisement for an artificial intelligence–powered weapons procurement system on the walls of the Washington D.C. metro. Similar ads for long-range solid rocket motors and “super-human military staffs” fade into the background of one’s daily commute and subconscious.
A blue and white poster, sleek and minimal, overlaid with tasteful wave patterns, showcases a palette of high-explosive artillery shells, with lethal fragmentation radii of 50 to 60 meters, casualty radii extending to 150 to 200 meters, and with primary and secondary fragmentation and cascading damage reaching even further. These images are audacious; advertising yet concealing mass destruction through trendiness. They carry a sci-fi aura with futuristic silhouettes in sleek designs, yet their impact is brutally real, leaving craters and ruined ecosystems, shattered families, and communities forever altered. Parents, voters, decision-makers, commanders, and politicians alike bustle past these signs, either having not noticed or being unbothered by the digital dehumanization encroaching on our government institutions and collective awareness.
These advertisements have become normalized but should be raising alarm bells. We often think of autonomous weapons systems as far-off, fictitious cyborgs like “the Terminator”; yet intermediary AI weapons systems that catalyze the procurement of weaponry require our attention, are a cause for deep concern, and demand scrutiny. These systems are capable of determining which weapons are bought, when, and at what rate.
A short escalator ride above ground leads to the marble corridors of the United States Capitol. On this day, the halls were filled with advocates from across the country in support of Legacies of War, an organization dedicated to raising awareness about the American Secret War in Laos. Legacies of War advocates for the United States’ government to clear bomb-filled land in Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam, educate populations about this history and present manifestations of the war, and facilitate healing within and between communities touched by this history.
Through this work, I’ve met veterans who were drafted as youth and tasked with procuring weaponry, mapping bombing campaigns, and unknowingly carrying out war plans. These orders resulted in over 270 million cluster bombs being dropped on Laos. Today, more than 80 million remain live, embedded in the soil. This shared history haunts all stakeholders involved in the conflict. Fifty years after these missions, the veterans I’ve met are riddled with guilt. The silver lining is that many have transformed this guilt into action and reparations, becoming tireless advocates for disarmament, lobbying for demining and unexploded ordnance (UXO) removal funding, and leading humanitarian efforts to build schools and improve healthcare systems. Bearing witness to these atrocities has built bridges between two nations that want to heal from the past and safeguard the future from repeating it. Having been present, these veterans ensure the American Secret War comes to light and is not forgotten.
It is precisely this humanity — the long reckoning with past decisions, the friction that causes people to slow down and look back — that AI procurement systems threaten to erase.
Optimization of procurement processes by AI agents outsources human oversight and essential emotional labor. Hegemonic capitalist thought will argue that efficiency in procurement saves money and time. This market failure neglects to account for the necessity of “inefficiency”: the additional time and oversight needed to contend with deep ethical quandaries, debates over norms and needs, and consideration of the consequences of weapons programs. The “inefficiencies” of human oversight create space for arguments in boardrooms and for civil society to mobilize. They are the system’s last moral guardrails. They force decision-makers to confront the stakes: not just the price in dollars, but in human lives.
While these systems may not be pressing the red button, they remove the barriers to purchasing the ammunition loaded into it. Research on frictionless payment systems, such as mobile pay, shows that consumers spend significantly more and deliberate less before buying (NPR, 2024, PMC, 2024). Removing similar “friction” in military procurement risks turning acquisition into a mechanical pipeline, where transaction speed outpaces the gravity of consequences.
These fears aren’t speculative. The proliferation of this technology is already rapidly underway. In late 2024, the White House ordered agencies to “develop an AI strategy for identifying and removing barriers to their responsible use of AI” and to eliminate “unnecessary bureaucratic restrictions” on its adoption (Reuters). In July of 2025, the government respectively awarded Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, and xAI $200 million in contracts to “accelerate the adoption of advanced AI capabilities to address critical national security challenges” (Ai.mil). The global market for defense AI, now worth $13.24 billion, is projected to surpass $35.54 billion by 2031 (Yahoo Finance), and is correlated with rising geopolitical tensions and contemporary bombing campaigns that mirror those of the 1960s in Southeast Asia.
In his speech entitled “Beyond Vietnam,” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. condemned the war and urged for “every nation [to] develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies” (Beyond Vietnam). He warned that without such a shift, “we will find ourselves organizing Clergy and Laymen Concerned committees for the next generation” and “attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy” (Beyond Vietnam). His warning against the entrenchment of military industrialism could not be more relevant today in the face of digital dehumanization.
On this International Day of the Youth, we must require that those who will inherit the consequences of today’s military decisions have a seat at the table. War is fought and sustained by the young, yet they are seldom included in key decision-making. Further, human oversight should not be seen as an obstacle to be coded away, but preserved as a safeguard that history shows we cannot survive without. Removing humanity, particularly youth, from these systems fundamentally changes the nature of war and the memorialization of it. Fifty years from now, there will be no algorithm sitting in a congressional hearing room, trying to explain to a new generation why the bombs are still falling. It is inspiring to see the efforts of organizations like Legacies of War, Mines Action Canada, and Stop Killer Robots that are including and uplifting the voices of youth in disarmament spaces. We desperately need the whole of society to similarly follow suit.
Taryn Sebba is grateful to be a Mines Action Fellow with Mines Action Canada, an Advocacy Ambassador with Legacies of War, and a part of the Stop Killer Robots Youth Network. Her work spans policy, data, and humanitarian advocacy, with a focus on unexploded ordnance disposal, non-proliferation, and the threat of autonomous weapons.
