War at Machine-Speed

Episode 52 - Retired Predator Pilot Reflects on Autonomous Weapons Our guest this week has done something few philosophers of war can claim: he has flown the aircraft he writes about. We sit down with drone pilot and philosopher Joe Chapa to interrogate the widening gap between technological capability and moral judgment on the modern battlefield. Chapa deconstructs the rush to embed machine learning across military hierarchies, cautioning against blind faith in statistical prediction systems operating under the irreducible fog of war. We examine whether remote combat dilutes the martial virtues or merely reconfigures psychological burden, exploring the acute ethical friction between human tactical restraint and algorithmic certainty. Finally, the conversation confronts the geopolitical reality of autonomous weapons, contrasting commercial software dependencies with the elusive promise of an artificial moral conscience. Joseph Chapa holds a PhD in philosophy from the University of Oxford and has served as a Predator pilot and instructor of philosophy at the Air Force Academy, logging more than 1,400 pilot and instructor pilot hours. His work centers on just war theory, military ethics, and especially the ethics of remote and autonomous weapons. He also knows the Pentagon from the inside. He previously served as the Department of the Air Force’s first Chief Responsible AI Ethics Officer and has taught as a military faculty member at the Marine Command and Staff College. He retired from the Air Force October 1st. He is the author of Is Remote Warfare Moral? (PublicAffairs, 2022), which examines remote warfare within the context of the just war tradition, virtue, moral psychology, and moral responsibility, and, more recently, AI for the Rest of Us (Air University Press, 2026). He writes the weekly newsletter Views Expressed, and we’re delighted to welcome him as our new postdoctoral colleague. Joe, welcome to the show.  Show Notes: Joseph Chapa’s website Is Remote Warfare Moral? Weighing Issues of Life and Death from 7,000 Miles by Joseph O. Chapa AI for the Rest of Us: Understanding the Technology That’s Shaping Our World by Joseph O. Chapa (Air University Press) Views Expressed (Joe Chapa's Substack newsletter) Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany by Donald L. Miller Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow (Discussed in relation to revenge, martial virtue, and moral injury) As always, listeners can contact us at [email protected] with questions, comments, and suggestions for future topics. Credits: Hosted by James Hughes and Nir Eisikovits Music & Production by Jake Burley

Episode 51 - Uploading Yourself to the Cloud This week on Prosthetic Gods, Nir and J discuss the transhumanist concept of brain uploading, exploring everything from cutting-edge connectomics and artificial intelligence to ancient philosophical views on personal identity. We debate the metaphysics of “substrate independence,” “computational functionalism,” and religious views of the soul to weigh the prospects of preserving consciousness. They also examine the practical and ethical implications of creating digital simulacra, including duplication problems, machine suffering, and moral responsibility. Show Notes: Connectome 2.0 Project: A National Institutes of Health (NIH) initiative utilizing an advanced MRI scanner to map brain connections down to a single micron level.  Eon Systems Fly Cyborg: A simulated fruit fly connectome connected to a virtual body to simulate behaviors like walking and grooming.  Carboncopies Foundation - research and development toward whole brain emulation.   Blue Brain Project - a Swiss project to model the brain that concluded work in 2024.  Virtually Human: The Promise and the Peril of Digital Immortality by Martine Rothblatt   State of Brain Emulation 2025: A comprehensive report featuring contributions from 45 authors and the Allen Institute that outlines the roadmap for animal and human brain emulations.  “The Soul of Trans-humanism” by Ted Peters, reflecting on the various interpretations of the soul in Christianity, and their compatibility with uploading   San Junipero - Black Mirror episode on uploading  Duncan Bell on transhumanism on David Runciman’s Past, Present and Future podcast  As always, listeners can contact us at [email protected] with questions, comments, and suggestions for future topics. Credits: Hosted by James Hughes and Nir Eisikovits Music & Production by Jake Burley

Episode 50 - Animal Testing This week on Prosthetic Gods, Nir and J. dissect the rapid dismantling of the animal-testing paradigm. We explore the legal and political shifts sweeping the EU and the United States—including the surprising federal momentum under the current HHS framework. From the utilitarian calculus of sentient consciousness down to the moral weight of insect neurology, we interrogate whether high-tech alternatives like organoids and AI models can and should finally render mammalian sacrifice obsolete. Show Notes: “The global push to reduce animal testing in drug development” Drug Target Review “HHS Accelerates Shift to Human-Based Research, Reduces Reliance on Animal Testing” US Department of Health and Human Services “The FDA Finalizes Rule Recognizing Non-Animal Testing Methods, Building on Year-Long Reduction Push” PharmTech  “The future of science without animal testing” Humane World for Animals “A Kantian Case for Animal Rights” Christine Korsgaard Animal Liberation Now: The Definitive Classic Renewed  Peter Singer and Yuval Noah Harari Lanterns on HBO Piers Morgan interview with AI actress derailed by Cantonese   As always, listeners can contact us at [email protected] with questions, comments, and suggestions for future topics. Credits: Hosted by James Hughes and Nir Eisikovits Music & Production by Jake Burley

Episode 49 - Targeting at Machine Speed This week on Prosthetic Gods, Nir and J speak with Major Michael Brodka, a U.S. Army military intelligence officer and author of the July 2026 Military Review article “By Algorithm or Order.” Major Brodka argues that the U.S. Army's human-paced targeting doctrine is dangerously misaligned with the rapid emergence of machine-speed, AI-enabled warfare being pursued by adversaries like China and Russia. It asserts that to close this critical "velocity gap," the military must reform its doctrines, organizations, and training to integrate lethal autonomous weapon systems under lawful human-on-the-loop control. Show Notes: “By Algorithm or Order” Michael Brodka DoD Directive 3000.09: Autonomy in Weapon Systems Department of Defense Law of War Manual Field Manual (FM) 3-60:Army Targeting 2023 DoD Data, Analytics, and Artificial Intelligence Adoption Strategy Michael A. Santoro, “Designing Lethal Decisions: AI, Accountability, and the Future of Military Judgment,” Modern War Institute (16 Apr 2026) Jesse R. Crifasi, “Targeting at Machine Speed: The Capabilities—and Limits—of Artificial Intelligence,” Modern War Institute (17 Jul 2025)   As always, listeners can contact us at [email protected] with questions, comments, and suggestions for future topics. Credits: Hosted by James Hughes and Nir Eisikovits Music & Production by Jake Burley

Episode 48 - Black Mirror Nir and J discuss the show Black Mirror, the now archetypal tech dystopian cultural phenomenon. In almost every episode, technology is the villain. What rarely appears is a legislature, a regulator, or anyone organizing with anybody else. Technology simply arrives, and the only available moral is individual failure. Dystopian narratives are popular, but what work do they do? Do they spur us to action or disempower us? What would a tech realist version look like? Show Notes:   Be Right Back - s2e1 - What if we could record and replay every experience?   Metalhead- s4e5 - What if Terminator apocalypse with robot dogs?    San Junipero - s3e4 - What if we could upload our minds to virtual heaven?   Common People - s7e1 - What if capitalism enshittified brain-computer interfaces?   Years and Years    As always, listeners can contact us at [email protected] with questions, comments, and suggestions for future topics. Credits: Hosted by James Hughes and Nir Eisikovits Music & Production by Jake Burley

Episode 47 - Are Chatbots Conscious? A Conversation with Henry Shevlin Henry Shevlin, DeepMind's first in-house philosopher and associate director of Cambridge's Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, joins the show to sort through the hardest question in AI: are these systems conscious, and would we even know? Drawing on his background in animal cognition, Shevlin argues that the consciousness debate has never been settled by a single decisive test, in animals or in machines, but by the slow accumulation of behavioral and mechanistic evidence.  From there, the conversation ranges across Ted Chiang's recent essay dismissing machine consciousness, the "just an X-ism" fallacy, what spiders can teach us about the difference between perceiving the world and caring about it, Anthropic's constitutional AI project, and the uncomfortable historical parallels raised by building minds engineered to serve us. Along the way: reward hacking, the "anthropomimetic turn" in AI design, and why philosophy is suddenly a growth industry at the frontier labs. Show Notes: “No, Artificial Intelligence Is Not Conscious” Ted Chiang "Behaviourism's Revenge" Shevlin "The House Elf Problem" Shevlin "Contra Chiang" Shevlin  Henry Shevlin’s website   As always, listeners can contact us at [email protected] with questions, comments, and suggestions for future topics. Credits: Hosted by James Hughes and Nir Eisikovits Music & Production by Jake Burley

Episode 46 - Killer Robots This week Nir and J discuss the evolving ethical, political, and strategic landscape of autonomous weapons systems, contrasting historical methods of remote warfare (such as landmines and guided missiles) with modern AI-driven autonomy. They debate the necessity of keeping a "human in the loop," weighing consequentialist arguments—such as sparing soldiers' lives, acting faster than human cognition, and potentially reducing collateral damage—against risks like cognitive deskilling, unpredictable AI behavior (illustrated by recent LLM security breaches), and complex accountability gaps. The conversation highlights how the geopolitical arms race, particularly with China, severely limits the practicality of international regulations or unilateral restraint. Ultimately, they question whether human moral judgment can or should be replicated by artificial consciences, concluding that technological determinism and military pressures will likely drive the adoption of fully autonomous systems regardless of ethical hesitations. Iain M. Banks' Culture Series: The discussion concludes with a recommendation of Banks' sci-fi novels, which explore a post-scarcity, utopian society governed by hyper-intelligent, benevolent AIs—a fitting, if idealized, backdrop to modern debates on AI alignment, control, and human irrelevance. Show Notes: NYT on autonomous weapons The Culture Series by Iain M. Banks  “Defining Autonomy: Why Software, Not Drones, Will Decide the Next War” by Kateryna Bondar and Matt Mande   “The Futility of Banning Killer Robots” by Rob Enderle  “The Vulnerability of Autonomous Warfare Systems” by Burak Oktenli  “By Algorithm or Order: Integrating Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems into Targeting” by Maj. Michael J. Brodka    “Autonomous Ukraine: We Are in a New Era of Warfare” with Michael C. Horowitz and Erin D. Dumbacher  “A legal perspective:  Autonomous weapon systems under international humanitarian law” by Neil Davison   “The End of American Military Dominance? A Conversation” with Paul Scharre      As always, listeners can contact us at [email protected] with questions, comments, and suggestions for future topics. Credits: Hosted by James Hughes and Nir Eisikovits Music & Production by Jake Burley

Episode 45 - Right to Try This week on Prosthetic Gods, Nir and J discuss patient autonomy and the "right to try". The debate surrounding medical autonomy is intensifying as desperate patients use federal "Right-to-Try" laws and amateur biohackers bypass traditional regulations to create and access unapproved treatments. A booming gray market has emerged for unproven, compounded peptide shots, and RFK’s FDA wants to protect that access. These trends highlight a profound ethical tension between a patient's fundamental right to medical self-determination and the state's paternalistic duty to protect the clinical trial regime - which gives us the data necessary for informed consent - and to guard citizens from harm. Ultimately, regulators and bioethicists argue that without rigorous oversight, vulnerable individuals may fall victim to "snake oil" because true informed consent is impossible when a treatment's risks and efficacy remain largely unknown Show Notes: “No Evidence for Trump’s Right to Try Claim” Eugene Kiely “Right–to-Try Does Not Undermine Clinical Trials” Niklas Anzinger “Survey: Americans Overwhelmingly Back the Right to Try for Individualized Treatments” Goldwater Institute “Final wish denied as Colorado ALS patient's access to experimental drug stalls”  Brian Maass, Colin McIntyre “Peptides, Patient Autonomy, and the Limits of Medical Freedom” Chuck Dinerstein “Survey Shows Peptide Misinformation, Misuse Rising in US” Ashish Rana “What's behind the push to make peptide therapies more readily available” Will Stone   As always, listeners can contact us at [email protected] with questions, comments, and suggestions for future topics. Credits: Hosted by James Hughes and Nir Eisikovits Music & Production by Jake Burley

Episode 44 - Magnificent Humanity This week, J and Nir talk to Father Michael Baggot about Pope Leo XIV’s recent encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, which outlines Catholic positions on AI and other emerging technologies. Father Michael Baggot is an Associate Professor of Bioethics at the Vatican’s Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum in Rome, a member of the Scholarly Advisory Board for Magisterium AI, and the chief editor of Enhancement Fit for Humanity: Perspectives on Emerging Technologies. Show Notes: MAGNIFICA HUMANITAS  “Pope Leo’s First Encyclical Is a Game Changer,” The Nation  “Pope Leo XIV Against the Market’s Techno-Dehumanization,” Jacobin  “Pope Leo Isn’t Standing Athwart the Singularity” New York Times      As always, listeners can contact us at [email protected] with questions, comments, and suggestions for future topics. Credits: Hosted by James Hughes and Nir Eisikovits Music & Production by Jake Burley

Episode 43 - Brain-Computer Interfaces This week on Prosthetic Gods, Nir and J discuss the ethics of brain-computer interfaces. What role do they play in the futurist imagination, and what is the reality of their current use? How quickly will they be available for consumer use, and what ethical issues do they pose? Show Notes: The Philosophy of Brain-Computer Interfaces Conference - UMass Boston - June 5-6, 2026  “Long-term independent use of an intracortical brain–computer interface for speech and cursor control” Nature Medicine “Brain-computer interface trials are taking off” MIT Technology Review “Brain Implant Lets Man With Severe Paralysis Speak in His Own Voice Again” ScienceAlert “How Scientists Are Growing Computers From Human Brain Cells” SingularityHub “China Prepares Tianjin as a Center for Brain-Computer Technology” VOI An introduction to Neal Asher's Polity Universe books      As always, listeners can contact us at [email protected] with questions, comments, and suggestions for future topics. Credits: Hosted by James Hughes and Nir Eisikovits Music & Production by Jake Burley