> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.opendemocracy.net/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # The UK must back global bans on AI weapons – before it’s too late - URL: https://www.opendemocracy.net/the-uk-must-back-global-bans-on-ai-weapons-before-its-too-late/ - Published: 2026-11-12T09:53:16.000Z - Updated: 2026-11-12T10:01:59.000Z - Description: New research shows military AI begins poisoning the planet long before it reaches the battlefield - Author: Nico Edwards - Tags: artificial intelligence, weapons, Arms trade, UK arms industry, warfare, war, Ukraine, Russia Defence spending is supposed to keep us safe, while infrastructure spending should improve our lives. But manipulation by war and tech profiteers is driving a surge of public investment with the exact opposite result: consuming essential resources and poisoning our environment, as well as countless places overseas, to build deadly and unpredictable tech. In London, the [largest factory](https://isembard.com/uk/newsroom/southwark-launch/?ref=opendemocracy.net) since the Second World War is being set up in Southwark, where ‘precision’ manufacturing giant Isembard will act as a machine shop for defence-tech giants including US firm Anduril, whose founder Palmer Luckey once[ crowed](https://www.defenceconnect.com.au/air/15953-no-moral-high-ground-in-losing-autonomous-systems-war-says-luckey?ref=opendemocracy.net): “I love killer robots.” This is just the tip of the iceberg in the UK’s military AI expansion, in which many of the most violent harms are well documented: from the[ targeting](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/sep/11/naza-directors-film-israeli-intelligence-rachel-szor-yuval-abraham-?ref=opendemocracy.net) and killing of civilians (particularly[ children](https://www.unicef.org/syria/documents/children-and-armed-conflict-un-secretary-general-annual-report?ref=opendemocracy.net)), to hacking risks and the[ clear link](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/privacy-international%5Fautonomous-weapons-systems-are-closer-to-activity-7521950155110006784-fDi3?ref=opendemocracy.net) between AI weapons and surveillance at home. It’s unsurprising, then, that [90% of Britons want the government to lead on the global regulation of AI weapons](https://autonomousweapons.org/ai-weapons-poll-uk/?ref=opendemocracy.net), according to a recent survey by the non-profit Future of Life Institute. Yet in defiance of this, the UK is [rumoured](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/beatrice-fihn-1351bb11%5Fafter-10-years-of-discussions-a-draft-proposal-share-7521882954617282560-l1Yb?ref=opendemocracy.net) to be joining the [US, Russia, and Israel](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/nov/06/autonomous-weapons-ai-russia-us-binding-rules?ref=opendemocracy.net) to lobby against a last-ditch attempt to put the brakes on the uncontrolled development of military AI and lethal autonomous technologies at the[ seventh annual review conference](https://meetings.unoda.org/ccw-revcon/convention-on-certain-conventional-weapons-seventh-review-conference-2026?ref=opendemocracy.net) of the UN’s Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons in mid-November. Faced with the risks and encouraged by a long list of war-tech profiteers, the response of these governments is escalatory: a bid to acquire more expansive data-driven war machines before opponents do. But even outside the most violent worst-case scenarios, autonomous weaponry affects local lives and lived environments long before it appears on a battlefield. We are currently researching the full[ life cycle of military AI’s impacts](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NiZy8R5NZulR87IA0BSOXDUnXQmx4bCiTivNX46IsQ8/edit?usp=sharing&ref=opendemocracy.net), going beyond the dangers of war to look at the waste, damage and suffering caused by the resource extraction, manufacturing, data (computing), and post-deployment requirements of military AI systems, such as ‘combat clouds’, targeting software and automated strike-drones. We have found the military AI buildout is already having catastrophic consequences for livelihoods and habitats in Britain and across the world, and accounts for an underacknowledged amount of the bandwidth generated by the data centres being thrown up across the country. The meteoric data centre expansion in and around Greater London is a key example, where digital infrastructures are being pitted against the needs and wellbeing of local residents while contributing to rising carbon emissions and ‘data heat islands’. In Slough, data centre buildout is worsening housing inequalities, raising the cost of and access to electricity, and eating away at urban green spaces, according to Slough Against Data Centres, a resident-led campaign group. The ecological impacts of computation, of course, go beyond AI warfare, but the militarisation of data is a key way the UK hopes to gain an economic edge in an intensifying global arms race – despite[ little evidence](https://transitionsecurity.org/buying-the-dip/?ref=opendemocracy.net) that either military or digital expansion translates into more jobs for Britons. Outside the UK, the picture gets worse. Militarised AI not only requires data but a wide range of digital infrastructure and component hardware that cut across a complex network of global supply chains, where a scramble for raw materials is escalating risk worldwide. In Taiwan, semiconductor production threatens marine life and the local water supply, forcing rice farmers out of work. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, scarred by decades of devastating conflict, people suffer from backbreaking labour and long-term exposure to chemicals and heavy metals in the mines that supply copper, cobalt and coltan to the AI arms race. It’s a similar story in Ghana, where toxic pollution drives chronic health problems in one of the world’s largest and most hazardous e-waste scrapyards. Millions of tonnes of discarded digital and military technologies are dismantled, burned or melted in chemical baths every year. Ecologically vulnerable societies are ill-equipped to survive crisis and conflict. Far from protecting us, the military AI industry’s resource grab is creating both a more dangerous Britain and a more dangerous world. Due to the secrecy of digital supply chains and weapons production, it is difficult to understand the full extent of the damage. Then there is AI-powered warfare itself, which, far from the precision and distance promised by its sellers, is making the battlefield bigger, messier, and more brutal. In Iran, the health, environmental and economic impacts of oil facility fires, asbestos-heavy construction debris and atmospheric fallout will continue long after US military bombing campaigns have ceased – supercharged in their intensity by AI targeting systems such as [Palantir’s Maven](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdrm52g4pl2o?ref=opendemocracy.net). Similarly, when the artillery eventually falls silent in Ukraine, what will remain is a huge expanse of drone and other debris littering a vastly contaminated landscape with lithium batteries, fibre-optic cables and unexploded ordnance. In Gaza, the film *NAZA*, among numerous other investigations, has exposed Israel’s use of algorithmic mass killing: an increasingly automated, software-driven attack not just on Palestinians and their housing, education and healthcare, but also on their farms, forests and other ecosystems, water, waste and sanitation infrastructure. The only answer to all of these harms is a shared commitment to pull back from the brink. Even at the height of the Cold War, rival powers agreed to limit nuclear warheads, and established systems for controlling the proliferation of particularly destructive or unpredictable weapons. Such is the momentum we now need for military AI. This is a question of human and planetary health versus short term returns to a handful of defence-tech billionaires. A majority of UN member states and their populations now support legal controls on autonomous weapons. The existing UN process should be the beginning, not the end, of a global drive to prevent the moral and political, as well as human and ecological, consequences of automated warfare from coming to pass – before it’s too late. *This commentary draws on a new report by Dr Nico Edwards titled ‘The Ecological Bootprint of UK Military Digitalisation,’ supported by Scientists for Global Responsibility, the War &* Geos *project at Newcastle University, and LEX International. Read the full report online* [*here*](https://lexinternational.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/11/Report-Ecological-Bootprint.pdf?ref=opendemocracy.net)*.*