Technology and the Civilianization of Warfare

Abstract

The Russia-Ukraine war demonstrates the crucial role of technology in modern warfare. The use of digital networks, information infrastructure, space technology, and artificial intelligence has distinct military advantages, but raises challenges as well. This essay focuses on the way it exacerbates a rather familiar challenge: the “civilianization of warfare.” Today's high-technology warfare lowers the threshold for civilian participation in the war effort. A notable example is the widespread use of smartphone apps by Ukrainian civilians, who thereby help the armed forces defend against Russian aggression. Through the lenses of international humanitarian law, conventional just war theory, and revisionist just war theory, this essay evaluates the normative dimensions of such civilian participation. The analysis shows that civilians can lose their legal protections when they use these apps to directly participate in hostilities, and this loss of immunity can be justified by Michael Walzer's conventional just war theory. Revisionism, however, puts the justness of the war at the forefront, and so sheds doubt on the moral liability of Ukrainian civilians. Considering the broader implications, including the blurring combatant-civilian distinction, indicates that such civilianization of warfare should not be welcomed; the risks will often outweigh the benefits. At a minimum, states ought to exercise restraint in mobilizing civilians and inform them of the implications of their actions.

The ongoing armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine demonstrates the crucial role of technology in modern warfare. Digital networks, information infrastructure, space technology, and artificial intelligence (AI) offer distinct advantages: connectivity can help protect civilians in peril (such as in the besieged city of Mariupol); AI software can transform data into valuable military intelligence; GPS-guided smart weapons can minimize collateral damage; and high-resolution satellite imagery can expose disinformation, humanitarian crises, and potential war crimes. In general, the wealth of (open-source) intelligence allows an unprecedented transparency that significantly reduces the “fog of war,” a factor that can impair ethical decision-making.

However, the use of new technology in the Russia-Ukraine war also raises challenges. In this essay, I focus on the way it exacerbates a rather familiar challenge: the participation of civilians in warfare. As a phenomenon, the “civilianization of warfare” is hardly new.¹ But in today's high-technology warfare, the civilian world is drawn in far more easily and profoundly than before.² That raises an important normative question: how do we weigh the moral benefits and risks of technology-enabled civilianization of warfare? I focus on a notable Ukrainian example: the widespread civilian use of smartphones to contribute to military operations. What are the normative dimensions of such civilian participation? In this essay, I will examine the answer to this question using three prominent lenses: international humanitarian law (IHL), conventional just war theory (JWT), and revisionist JWT.³ The analysis shows that civilians could lose their legal protections by directly participating in hostilities, which conventional JWT would justify. Revisionism, however, sheds doubt on the moral liability of Ukrainian civilians, while also providing additional tools for evaluating the causal relationship between a particular contribution and threat. Based on an assessment of the wider implications of technology-enabled civilianization of warfare, including the blurring distinction between combatants and civilians, I argue that a high degree of caution is well advised; civilians are best kept away from the battlefield. At a minimum, states ought to exercise restraint in mobilizing civilians and inform them of the implications of their actions.

“Smartphone Warfare”

Technological advances have allowed Ukrainian citizens to play a significant role in the defense of their country against Russia's invasion. Anyone with a smartphone can transmit relevant information in real time, such as the locations of Russian troops, military equipment, and other persons or objects of interest.⁴ The large number of mobile devices equipped with cameras, in combination with accurate positioning data transmitted through position, navigation, and timing satellites, like GPS, and connectivity through digital networks (most notably Starlink's satellite network), have made such reporting possible. Moreover, advances in AI have increased the speed and accuracy of the verification and analysis of information. This includes the ability to fuse large amounts of data from different sources (such as social media posts, human intelligence, acoustic sensor data, satellite imagery, and surveillance footage from unmanned aerial vehicles) to produce valuable military intelligence.

There are a variety of smartphone apps that civilians can use. These range from dedicated air defense apps; to social-messaging apps; to preexisting government-created apps such as Diia, a widely used Ukrainian government portal for documents such as digital IDs and driver's licenses. After the Russian invasion, this app was upgraded with an E-Enemy feature, enabling civilians to upload location-tagged photos, report enemy positions, and give tips on “suspicious” persons.⁵ Another example is the newly developed air defense app ePPO, which makes use of GPS and a smartphone's internal compass, and can be used in tandem with Diia to report incoming Russian drones and missiles.⁶ The information is passed on to air defense units, analyzed, and combined with radar information and other data using AI to estimate the target and route.⁷ The ePPO app has significant military value, and is said to be successful in defensive operations against Russian attacks.⁸ In October 2022, civilian use of this app reportedly led to an incoming Kalibr cruise missile being shot down.⁹ Ukrainian authorities also launched chatbots to enable citizens to share information on the location of Russian troops, and provided public instructions on how to use them. The Financial Times described a civilian who, upon seeing a Russian convoy, “immediately opened ‘STOP Russian War,’ a Telegram chatbot created by the security services, and input the location. He also put a pin in the Google Maps location, screenshotted it, and sent that, plus everything else he knew.” Half an hour later the convoy was attacked by the Ukrainian armed forces.¹⁰

In this way, high-technology warfare exacerbates the civilianization of warfare. While civilian participation is not uncommon, such as in guerilla warfare, new technologies significantly lower the threshold.¹¹ Having a smartphone makes it easy for civilians to contribute to the war effort, and perhaps even turns them into “fighters” when crowdsourced intelligence is an essential part of the targeting process.¹² Yet this ease comes at a price: it increases the risk that those civilians will be harmed or killed. And indeed, there are reports of Russian troops going door to door hunting for smartphones and laptops, and civilians being killed because Russian tank photos were found on their phone.¹³ Could such targeting of civilians be justified?

A Normative Evaluation

Three distinct but related normative frameworks can shed light on the preceding question: IHL, conventional JWT, and revisionist JWT. The principle of distinction is central to IHL. It dictates that parties to an armed conflict must distinguish between combatants and noncombatants, and between military and civilian objects. Combatants, whether or not the military operation is lawful, are permitted to use force against their adversaries within the constraints of IHL.¹⁴ Noncombatants, on the other hand, are protected against direct attack. However, legal protections can be lost when civilians directly participate in hostilities.¹⁵ Following the interpretation of the International Committee of the Red Cross, civilian participation only qualifies as such when it meets three criteria: threshold of harm, direct causation, and belligerent nexus.¹⁶ Do civilians who use the type of apps described above participate directly in the hostilities, in the legal sense? Although the exact legal interpretation of these criteria is far from settled,¹⁷ use of these apps could meet this standard under certain conditions: when it is likely to adversely affect Russian military capacity or operations, when there is a direct causal link between the voluntary act (independently or as an integral part of a coordinated tactical operation) and the resulting harm, and when it supports one party to the conflict to the detriment of another. It seems plausible that some activities—taking a photo, writing a message, and uploading information in an app—can qualify as direct civilian participation in hostilities when there is a relatively direct causal relationship between providing information and an attack, like in the STOP Russian war chatbot example above. Contributions such as these affect the protected status of civilians and can make it legally permissible to directly target Ukrainian civilians who participate in this way.¹⁸

This interpretation would be justified by conventional JWT. According to Michael Walzer, the “legal equality of combatants” tracks the “moral equality of combatants.” Combatants are instruments of the state, as it were, and they are not responsible for the justness of the war itself.¹⁹ Moreover, they collectively pose a threat “simply by fighting,” which makes them morally liable to attack.²⁰ As such, and in line with IHL, the jus ad bellum judgment is irrelevant when considering the rules of jus in bello—a distinction known as the “independence thesis.” War can be conducted justly when only those who forfeit their right to life (just and unjust combatants alike) are directly targeted. As noncombatants have done nothing to forfeit their right to life, they ought to be protected against the dangers of war. However, when civilians intentionally engage in “warlike” actions, thereby directly contributing to “the business of war,”²¹ they are no longer “innocent” and become morally liable to attack. For Walzer, the type of causal contribution matters.²² According to this “functional view,” providing combatants with military resources qualifies as direct participation, whereas providing them with welfare resources does not.²³ Ukrainian civilians who transmit targeting information using dedicated apps like ePPO are similar to civilians producing weapons: they provide “what soldiers need to fight.”²⁴ As a result, like civilians who lose immunity when working in the war industry, so, too, do users of these apps lose immunity when they are using them. While the legal threshold seems higher than Walzer's threshold for moral liability to attack,²⁵ both lenses indicate that it can be allowed to directly attack participating civilians, regardless of the justness of the war.²⁶

Revisionist JWT, however, offers a third lens that leads to different answers. The main reason is that revisionism rejects the “independence thesis.” This is because, in the words of Jeff McMahan, “the principles of jus ad bellum apply not only to governments but also to individual soldiers, who in general ought not to fight in wars that are unjust.”²⁷ Taking an approach sometimes called “reductive individualism” as a starting point, revisionism assumes that war is no exceptional moral domain, and therefore jus in bello norms should be reduced to the “normal” individual, rights-based morality; that is, the norms regulating interpersonal killing.²⁸ This undermines the moral equality of combatants; only unjust combatants pose an unjust threat and so forfeit their right to life. Russian troops are unjust combatants who fight a war of aggression. And while their moral guilt depends on individual factors such as their intention, level of coercion, and information available to them, it is clear that they are not the moral equals of Ukrainian combatants. This means that, in principle, both Ukrainian combatants and civilians are permitted to attack Russian unjust combatants in self-defense. In doing so, they do not forfeit their rights and remain nonliable to attack. As a result, the precise criteria for moral liability are irrelevant: revisionism allows Ukrainian civilian participation on the assumption that the civilians are defending themselves against Russian combatants posing an unjust threat.

Where does this leave us? According to IHL and conventional JWT, Ukrainian civilians who use these apps can be legitimate targets. Revisionism, on the other hand, puts the justness of the war itself at the forefront. Although it remains true that by participating in hostilities, these civilians risk losing their legal protections, revisionists would deny that this justifies targeting them. As autonomous individuals in a society under threat, revisionists would argue, they are entitled to take part in the defense against unjust aggression without thereby losing their immunity as civilians.²⁹ They do nothing to forfeit their right to life. Particularly in this context, the moral commitment felt by Ukrainians to defend their sovereign state and its population is quite understandable.³⁰ Not only are they invaded by an aggressor but also Ukrainian civilians are often indiscriminately targeted by Russian combatants. These revisionist conclusions might therefore be congruent with the moral intuitions of those observing the war.³¹ But perhaps not everyone would share these intuitions. While just and unjust combatants are not exactly each other's moral equals, there are strong moral reasons for applying IHL to them equally, especially in light of limiting the overall suffering in war.³² That is, straightforward norms that address combatants as a collective impose the same minimal standard to warring parties and so contribute to restraint, which is less likely when norms are contingent on individual moral guilt and the often contested justness of the war. Moreover, when such jus ad bellum assessments could convincingly be made, unequal norms would remove the incentive to minimize damage for unjust combatants (as they are acting unjustly even if they abide by IHL) and for just combatants (as they could be inclined to disregard IHL in their fight against “evil”).³³ Furthermore, in light of Russian recruitment strategies and propaganda, it seems that many Russian soldiers really are used as instruments of the state, often misled or coerced, and perhaps not in a position to properly evaluate the justness of what they are fighting for.³⁴

However, if we disconnect jus in bello judgments from the justice of war and assume that some attacks on participating civilians can be permitted, the line proves very hard to draw. What type of causal contribution justifies the loss of immunity? While it is true that using these apps can be seen as doing something warlike (although not in the traditional sense of producing munitions), and while it is also true that the causal connection can be temporally and geographically direct, revisionists have suggested that the warlike function of a contribution is not a decisive factor. Cécile Fabre challenges Walzer's functional view; both the moral relevance of the distinction between military and welfare resources and the assumption that direct participation automatically leads to liability to attack. Most participating civilians, she argues, would not in fact be liable because their contributions are not significant enough.³⁵ Indeed, it seems that most contributions described in this essay are relatively minor in light of the entire chain of events. One report is likely to be a single piece of the puzzle that helps identify a target, and there are multiple other agents and causal factors producing the outcome, including the proximate causes (for instance, the actual attack on a Russian convoy).³⁶ At the same time, even a relatively minor contribution can be a significant causal factor.³⁷ One report from a civilian could, in theory, meet the sine qua non test when the targeting would not be possible without it.³⁸

These complexities suggest that causality is a matter of degree. If so, it is perhaps best conceptualized as a sliding scale, where gradations of causal contributions can be differentiated to determine appropriate consequences. Relatively minor contributions would justify the imposition of minor consequences (for instance, confiscation of the smartphone), while only direct and significant contributions to the war effort would justify the extreme consequence of losing immunity.³⁹ The problem with these assessments, however, is that it is nearly impossible to determine the degree to which a single report contributes to the threat. The whole process involves myriad interrelated sequences, and the answer depends on the specific circumstances, the relative significance of other causal factors, and whether or not the outcome would have occurred without that contribution.⁴⁰ Knowing exactly how direct and significant a contribution is in light of the entire chain of events is very hard, especially for combatants on the battlefield. So, while applying jus in bello equally to collectives is arguably the best way to foster restraint, civilians breaking out of the “innocent collective” by participating in hostilities nonetheless present complicated individual assessments; that is, the degree to which someone contributes to a threat, and whether that justifies an attack.⁴¹

Wider Implications

How do we evaluate the wider implications of this type of civilianization? And should states welcome civilian participation in warfare? Undoubtedly, these contributions can boost military effectiveness. The widespread use of apps aids Ukraine's defense against Russian aggression, and so can reduce the overall risk to civilians.⁴² For example, civilian use of the ePPO app to report Shahed drones and Kalibr cruise missiles allows them to be intercepted before they hit their target.⁴³ That military advantage and the extent to which it helps prevent loss of life must be weighed against the risk that these contributing civilians are harmed or killed as a result of their participation. In that balance, a more subtle implication must also be taken into account: the increased risk for the entire civilian population. Adversaries can take advantage of the uncertainties discussed above, which can allow them to “flexibly” interpret the rules to their advantage. One can question whether that matters in this particular context, given the seemingly blatant disregard of the rules and the frequent targeting of Ukrainian civilians and civilian infrastructure. Nonetheless, if combatants do attempt to attack only legitimate targets, it will be profoundly complicated for them to determine which individual contributions justify the use of force. The ease with which those apps are used by civilians not distinguishing themselves as fighters makes this even harder, and the phenomenon of mobile-mobilized civilians may feed into a perception wherein the entire population poses a threat.⁴⁴

In that way, this type of civilianization blurs the military-civilian distinction and thickens the fog of war. It diminishes civilian protections in Ukraine and, in the long run, could negatively impact IHL compliance worldwide, undermining the principle of distinction.⁴⁵ An overall evaluation needs to balance these implications, including the military advantage of such civilian participation in terms of overall success of the military operation and specific advantages in combat; for example, would a given Kalibr cruise missile be able to be intercepted even without civilian use of the ePPO app? While I cannot determine the relative value of these advantages here, it seems that the gravity of the risks will often outweigh the benefits, especially the subtle but serious risk of an eroding principle of distinction. States should therefore, in principle, prevent civilian participation.

This is not what the Ukrainian authorities are doing. Ukraine does not prevent civilian participation but actively mobilizes the population.⁴⁶ The Ministry of Digital Transformation promotes the use of the E-Enemy feature of the Diia app: “Anyone can help our army locate Russian troops. Use our chat bot to inform the Armed Forces.”⁴⁷ And the ePPO app is touted as being able to let “civilians help shoot down drones and missiles in Ukraine.”⁴⁸ Participation is expected and encouraged as a patriotic duty. While the de facto military advantage may or may not justify such mobilization of civilians, it seems that, at a minimum, Ukraine has a moral responsibility to properly inform its citizens of the implications of those contributions. As participation takes the form of something entirely familiar like using the governmental app to quickly upload photos, it is not at all clear that civilians are aware of those implications.⁴⁹ Using one's phone is usually not associated with “doing something warlike” and taking lethal risk. Therefore, there is a special responsibility for states to inform citizens so that they understand the dangers involved and the potential loss of protected status; that is, their choices need to be informed choices.⁵⁰

Concluding Thoughts

Technology enables new ways of mobilizing civilians for war efforts, with unmistakable military advantages. It also, however, lowers the threshold for direct participation in hostilities and blurs the military-civilian distinction, possibly eroding the principle of distinction over time. Therefore, I have argued that, in principle, states ought to protect their civilians by upholding the distinction between combatants and civilians, keeping the latter out of harm's way. More specifically, states should be extremely cautious when it comes to actively mobilizing civilians and, at a minimum, inform them about the implications of using their smartphone to participate in hostilities.