What do you do when two identities that make up your deepest self find themselves on opposite sides of a moral and spiritual battlefield?
I am Catholic. I have been one for over 20 years since I made the life-altering decision to join a friend for Mass one day. My faith became a spiritual and ethical foundation at a time I sorely needed it, so much so that for a time, I contemplated entering the priesthood, which replaced my previous career goal of entering the CIA. I eventually realized that teaching was my true calling and decided to pursue that path upon finishing my doctorate, but my faith has remained my moral center ever since. I am also a security and intelligence scholar, and I serve as professor and director of the graduate programs in intelligence and security studies at Augusta University. For two decades, I have analyzed international security and, recently, emerging technology, particularly within the realm of information warfare, influence operations, cyber operations, and the increasing role of AI in human conflict.
Much of the time, these two identities — my professional role and my faith — coexist in a delicate but manageable truce, but sometimes they are in intense conflict. The recent publication of Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, has become such an occasion. As with many ethical conundrums, there may be no convenient or elegant answer, and perhaps getting those who work at the intersections of security and technology, such as myself, to experience internal conflict was partly the pope’s goal. Yet I do not ultimately believe that the Catholic and security scholar in me need to remain in perpetual conflict. There is a point where these two identities can come together with a shared purpose and plan: to continue developing AI-enhanced military capabilities, but with much better, stronger guardrails.
The Pope’s Hardest Challenge
Released in an era of an accelerating great-power competition and the unfolding of a new AI arms race, Magnifica Humanitas is both a stirring defense of human dignity and a sharp critique of our current technological trajectory. Pope Leo writes, “At the heart of the Christian understanding of the human person lies the great biblical affirmation that men and women are created in the image and likeness (cf. Gen 1:26-27) of the Triune God. Created for relationship, every human person is planned and willed by God to enter into communion with him, with others, and with creation” (Paragraph 50).
For the pope and for Catholics, the dignity of every human life must be protected. One of the many reasons war itself is morally unacceptable is that it violates this dignity. The pontiff pushes back against the Church’s own longstanding recognition of the just war doctrine, which holds that while war is always tragic, it may be morally justifiable as an act of legitimate defense when undertaken by proper authority against grave and certain aggression, after peaceful alternatives have failed, with serious prospects of success, and without causing evils greater than those it seeks to prevent.
Again, he writes, “Today, more than ever, without prejudice to the right to self-defense in the strictest sense, it is important to reaffirm that the ‘just war’ theory, which has all too often been used to justify any kind of war, is now outdated” (Paragraph 192). He calls for an end to armed conflict, affirming that we now have “far more effective and capable tools for promoting human life and resolving conflicts, such as dialogue, diplomacy, and forgiveness” (Paragraph 192).
With this foundation laid, Pope Leo then goes on to explain why he believes that AI-enhanced warfare could make an already unacceptable occurrence — war — even worse than it already is. In a section titled “Weapons and Artificial Intelligence,” he warns that AI “can only bring about conflict more quickly and render it more impersonal, lowering the threshold for resorting to violence, transforming defense into threat prediction and thus reducing victims to data.” Furthermore, “it will accustom us to the idea that violence is inevitable and needs only to be optimized” (Paragraph 198). He then goes on to say, in the same paragraph, that “it is not permissible to entrust lethal or otherwise irreversible decisions to artificial systems. No algorithm can make war morally acceptable.”
Choosing the Path of Less Harm
As a Catholic, I cannot treat a papal encyclical as just another op-ed. I am called to receive it with deep reverence, and I do. But as a security scholar, I am also driven to seek a point of reconciliation between what I view as the encyclical’s profound moral appeal to protect the dignity of the person from the dangers of AI and to end the cycle of AI escalation, and my own realist viewpoint that to protect that same dignity, democratic societies must be prepared to use AI responsibly in war.
Let us examine the two hard lines that Pope Leo draws in the sand. First, he states that war itself is morally and theologically unacceptable and that the just war doctrine is outdated. However, I do not feel that it necessarily is. Here, the pope seems to declare that because of the technological sophistication society now possesses, along with the massive communication structure that opens more diplomatic channels, that the premises of any call to war being ‘just’ no longer applies. In other words, society should have overcome the need for warfare, in part, due to its technological sophistication.
While we indeed have the tools for resolving conflicts without violence, and there are myriad confidence-building mechanisms to shape global communication, trust, and peace between adversaries, bad actors still exist that are determined to wage war. In fact, the very same technological tools that create conditions for peace, as the pope insists, can also provide a competitive advantage and rationale to engage in offensive operations. Thus, although the possibility for peace exists, war persists. And since it occurs, I believe it is also our responsibility to do everything we can to reduce harm. Unfortunately, there are situations when this can be better achieved through fighting than absolute pacifism, and history is full of examples of this.
Next, we examine the pope’s belief that it is not permissible to entrust lethal and irreversible decisions to autonomous systems. I agree. While there are many strategic advantages that AI-enhanced warfare can confer, replacing the human role in making lethal decisions should not be one of them. Human oversight ought to always remain present. But to say that fully autonomous weapons systems should not be used is not the same as saying that AI-enhanced military capabilities should not be used at all. All autonomous weapon systems use AI, but not all AI-enhanced military technologies are autonomous weapon systems.
I have previously written at length about AI-enabled military capabilities in scholarly contexts as well as for the mainstream media. I am not an AI evangelist and share the view that there are serious risks to integrating AI into armed conflict. At the same time, I believe that AI-assisted systems do have the capacity to minimize harm. They can process vast amounts of data exponentially faster than any human can, shorten the kill chain, and enable more precision in targeting and engagement. This, in turn, could theoretically reduce risk to civilians through a number of ways, such as improved target identification, better monitoring of real-time changes in environment (e.g., a military target suddenly becomes surrounded by civilians), better collateral damage assessment, and more surgical strikes that can reduce the need for broader, less discriminating forms of force.
Of course, a technology having the capacity to reduce harm does not mean it actually will, and Pope Leo displays a sophisticated awareness of how things could go wrong. This brings us to the pontiff’s concern that AI will escalate and proliferate violence rather than reduce it. This is certainly possible. AI can shorten the kill chain, and this could theoretically reduce destruction and minimize civilian casualties, but it does not in itself guarantee those outcomes. There is not enough evidence to support the latter claim and, if anything, recent conflicts such as the Iran war and the war in Gaza highlight the uncertainty and risks, lending further weight to the pope’s warning.
However, AI does represent a possibility for reducing conflict and minimizing harm to civilians. When we look at the world as it is, we see authoritarian adversaries and non-state actors unbound by ethical constraints racing to exploit AI for military purposes. For democratic societies in a time of proliferating threats, abstaining from AI-enabled military capabilities — or armed conflict entirely — would risk ceding advantage to those who do not honor the imago Dei, the belief that every person is created in the image of God and ought to therefore be honored and protected.
Throughout the encyclical, the pope also stresses that a just social order should protect innocents and the vulnerable among us, yet if we hold back from developing our own AI-assisted defense capabilities while adversaries embrace them without restraint, it is those very vulnerable people we would be putting at risk. I therefore believe that we have a moral and ethical responsibility to explore every possible avenue of containing conflict and minimizing civilian harm as much as possible, and one of those avenues is by being prepared to use the same technologies our adversaries are arming themselves with, albeit with strict guardrails so as to prevent Pope Leo’s fears from coming true.
The pope himself seems to leave a narrow door open for this middle way. Despite his grave concerns, he is not anti-technology or even anti-AI in itself. He portrays AI as capable of serving humanity when oriented toward the common good but dangerous when driven by ruthless competition and the pursuit of power and profit. He writes that therefore “the development and use of AI in warfare must be subject to the most rigorous ethical constraints, to guarantee respect for human dignity and the sanctity of life and to avoid a race to develop such arms” (Paragraph 197). He also emphasizes “the importance of instilling, as far as possible, values and sound judgment into the artificial systems we build, so that they can contribute to a moral ecosystem in which humans are better able to listen to their own consciences, as well as allowing AI models to establish appropriate boundaries.”
In other words, he seems to suggest that if AI is to be used in armed conflict, the only condition under which this is acceptable is if there are rigorous guardrails. It is also possible that what he actually means by subjecting the use of AI in warfare “to the most rigorous ethical constraints” is to hold back development. If that is his argument, then I am prepared to accept that, notwithstanding my faith and my love and respect for the pope, I respectfully disagree on this specific point.
Strict AI Governance as a Middle Way
The pope and I are aligned on the imperative to defend the sanctity of life and the need for strict guardrails to ensure AI reduces harm rather than exacerbates it. Where we may diverge seems to be in how confident we are, respectively, that those guardrails can be established and whether they would be enough. Between pausing development of AI for military use and moving forward with tight governance, perhaps the pontiff prefers the former, whereas I prefer the latter. Again, there are risks here as well, but I think they are less than the risks of pausing development of military AI.
Where I acknowledge the pope’s concerns here too is that there is a considerable gap between the level of governance we need and what we have currently. Much of what we currently have in the way of guardrails, such as the Political Declaration on Responsible Military Use of Artificial Intelligence and Autonomy or the Responsible Artificial Intelligence in the Military Domain initiative, consists of nonbinding aspirational frameworks, not enforceable laws or binding operational policies. Some tangible policies do exist, such as the Department of Defense Directive 3000.09 on Autonomy in Weapon Systems and Department of Defense Instruction 3000.17 on Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response. But they are not enough. For instance, Directive 3000.09 requires “appropriate levels of human judgment” over autonomous weapon systems, but it does not define what “appropriate levels” means, allowing too much room for interpretation. Moreover, human oversight means little if the humans in question are mechanically rubber-stamping approval due to intense time pressure. Directive 3000.09 is also focused on autonomous weapon systems, but AI risks are present throughout the entire kill chain. If there’s an error early in the chain, it would be exceedingly difficult for a human approving a strike to identify that error.
There is also the matter of how these Department of Defense policies are enforced. Without enforcement, organizational policies can look good on paper but ring hollow in practice. What we need are legally binding laws — ideally international ones — such as what the International Committee of the Red Cross and the U.N. Secretary-General have been calling for, or what organizations such as the Brennan Center for Justice and Americans for Responsible Innovation, in the United States, are calling on Congress to enact as legislation.
Recent developments also show how prescient the pope’s warnings are. Reporting on the Pentagon’s revision of its targeting doctrine suggests the U.S. military is moving toward a broader role for AI in targeting. What would concern the pope — and certainly concerns me — is that the updated doctrine envisions “systems where AI initiates actions with human monitoring.” This is a shift from the previous position of having “‘human in the loop’ systems, in which a human initiates actions.” Humans are still involved, but the doctrine appears to shift the human role from initiator to monitor. The updated doctrine also seeks to reduce the “sensor to shooter cycle” and “increase the tempo of operations.”
This is a step in the wrong direction. We should be proceeding cautiously, not escalating the tempo of operations without stronger guardrails. At minimum, responsible use of AI for military purposes requires five enforceable guardrails: meaningful human control, auditability and accountability, rigorous testing, legal review, and democratic oversight. Additionally, certain lines should never be crossed, such as the pope’s admonishment that fully autonomous weapons systems should not be used.
The aforementioned guardrails also need to be codified into enforceable law. To make them so, Congress should make authorization and funding for AI military programs contingent on the Pentagon demonstrating, through mandatory reporting, that it is meeting requirements for human control, auditing, operational testing, accountability, legal review, and harm assessment. Key terms and phrases such as “meaningful human control” ought to also be explicitly defined to leave no room for flexible interpretation. And violations should result in real consequences, such as suspension of funding to noncompliant systems and accountability for decision-makers linked to those systems.
Finally, since no unilateral framework can solve the collective action problem, the United States should move to make responsible AI standards a condition for participation in defense purchasing, intelligence sharing, and joint operations. And because authoritarian nations and hostile non-state actors may reject such constraints, democratic nations should do this among themselves anyway. This may be the only way to avoid the arms race the pope fears, while not remaining passive in the face of growing security threats.
The coming months and years will test whether we can truly develop, regulate, and employ AI-enhanced warfare in a way that minimizes conflict and suffering rather than amplifies it. If we fail, then the pope’s warnings may prove tragically correct. For now, I believe that a safer future remains possible, but because of what I have seen and studied in my profession, I cannot comfortably trust it will come about through diplomacy and idealism alone. I believe it can only come about if democratic societies are prepared to use the same tools our adversaries are arming themselves, albeit with strict restraints. Yet, at the same time, I find myself unable to rest easy in this conclusion, and it is due in no small part to the encyclical. And perhaps that is a good thing. It is good that Magnifica Humanitas refuses to let companies, policymakers, military personnel, or scholars such as myself hide from moral responsibility behind opaque algorithms. It is good that it pushes us to keep questioning ourselves even as we advocate for the solutions that we believe are needed. Until we find those solutions, and maybe even then, my mind and heart remain in an uneasy truce, united in the sacred imperative to protect the innocent but perennially conflicted over the means for doing so.
Craig Douglas Albert, Ph.D., is professor of political science and the founding director of the Master of Arts in Intelligence and Security Studies and the doctoral program in intelligence, defense, and cybersecurity policy at Augusta University in Augusta, Georgia. He has published extensively on information warfare, AI in global competition and governance, and cyber operations in peer-reviewed journals such as Defense & Security Analysis, the Cyber Defense Review, Global Society, Journal of Information Warfare, Journal of Information Technology and Politics, and Digital War.
Image: Edgar Beltrán via Wikimedia Commons
