CFP: New Technologies and the Future of War and Peace

Context

This workshop, the first of four, coincides with a new Elements series from Cambridge University Press, The Philosophy of War and Peace, edited by Lee-Ann Chae and Graham Parsons. While inclusive of traditional approaches to the ethics of war, this Elements series also investigates broader questions such as the intersection of culture and war, the historical emergence of just war theory as opposed to pacifism or realism, the full impact of war and the military on real communities, and the strategic limitations of war as a tool of statecraft. This series looks at the problems of war and peace in their full complexity, taking advantage of tools from disciplines across the humanities.

The workshop will include a mix of Elements authors, and scholars who will be selected from this CFA. Future workshops will be organized around different themes, but keep this same format.

Confirmed Elements authors for the July 2026 workshop include:

• Daniel Brunstetter (Professor of Political Science at UC Irvine) on Force Short of War
• David Danks (Polk JSF Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy, Artificial Intelligence, & Data Science at University of Virginia) on AI and Autonomous Weapons
• Scott Sagan (Professor of Political Science at Stanford University) on Nuclear Just War Doctrine
• Blake Hereth (Assistant Professor of Medical Ethics, Humanities, and Law at University of Western Michigan) on Super Soldiers

Thematic Description

Our collective imaginings about a technologically advanced future are crowded with both doomsday predictions and utopian visions. As the influence of AI becomes ever more marked across myriad and disparate fields – such as communications, medicine, surveillance, education, robotics, and weapons manufacturing – we continue to lurch towards an uncertain future. The rapid development of new technologies is profoundly changing the nature of war and the possibilities of peace, with significant implications for how we understand and enforce human rights. This conference will explore how new technologies are impacting traditional human rights (including privacy, free speech and free association, and freedom of movement) and the laws of war, and will also consider how our reliance on technology is changing our conception of a flourishing human life.

Questions of interest might include:

• What technological advancements hold the most promise, or the most danger, for a peaceful human future?
• How is AI changing the nature of warfighting?
• Can AI be effectively limited or controlled by human oversight?
• Governments are increasingly willing to use surveillance technologies on their own citizens in order to undermine peaceful protests. Do we need new technologies of nonviolent resistance to resist the contemporary shape of government repression?
• What limits should there be, if any, on human enhancement, for the purposes of warfighting?
• What are human rights, or the laws of war, for? To minimize human suffering? To hold individuals to account? To protect the minimum conditions that are necessary to live a human life?
• How do technological innovations change the way we perceive war and warfare? Do some technologies make resorting to war seem more or less acceptable?

Submission

Interested participants are warmly invited to submit an abstract of approximately 500 words to Lee-Ann Chae at [email protected] and Graham Parsons at [email protected] by March 1, 2026. Please also note whether you would be interested in commenting if your abstract is not chosen for a presentation. Notifications will be made via email by March 15, 2026.