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Short abstract

The paper identifies key debates surrounding emerging military technologies and traces counter-mobilization across different organizational forms. It explores how actors frame the problem, envision alternative futures, and articulate notions of justice, accountability, and peace.

Long abstract

This paper presents preliminary findings from the FairComp research project, which explores international initiatives mobilizing against the militarization of computational technologies. As artificial intelligence, computing power, data infrastructures, and autonomous systems increasingly shape contemporary warfare, promising speed and precision, the project investigates how such promises travel and how they are contested in multiple domains. The analysis maps a constellation of actors, including tech workers, whistleblowers, artistic initiatives, advocacy groups, campaigns, and expert networks, who raise concerns about the military applications of emerging technologies, such as autonomous weapons, algorithmic warfare, and so-called killer robots, and their political, discursive, and organizational strategies through which resistance to these developments is articulated.

The paper identifies key debates surrounding military-technological development, particularly in terms of novelties and continuities, and traces the socio-material practices of counter-mobilization across different organizational forms. Additionally, it explores how these actors frame the problem, envision alternative futures, and articulate notions of justice, accountability, and peace. Empirically, the paper draws on qualitative data from participant observation, document analysis, and informative interviews; conceptually, it engages frameworks from social movement theory, global sociology, and STS. The primary goal of this presentation is to expand critical debates on algorithmic warfare beyond regulation of an assumed trajectory, toward understanding the contentious politics that actively question what these systems are for, who sets the terms, and which futures they make possible or foreclose.