Legal Reviews of War Algorithms: From Cyber Weapons to AI Systems
15 December 2025
Abstract
States are obliged to conduct legal reviews of new weapons, means, and methods of warfare. Legal reviews of artificial intelligence (AI) systems pose significant legal and practical challenges due to their technical and operational features. This article explores how insights from legal reviews of cyber weapons can inform those of AI systems and AI-enabled weapons. It first delves into legal criteria relevant in the cyber domain that can help determine which AI-enabled tools deserve scrutiny, and how temporal considerations in legal reviews of evolving cyber weapons can inform when reviews of learning AI tools should be triggered. Further, this article examines how substantive rules of international law relevant to cyber weapons’ reviews, including targeting law and the prohibition on indiscriminate weapons, offer guidance for assessing AI systems’ legality. Finally, from a practical angle, it addresses how assessment frameworks and toolkits in the cyber domain can support and inform review practices of AI-enabled systems.
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