The more-than-human biopolitics of swarming – complexity, emergence, and control in military robotics

Abstract Military robotic swarming is expected to herald a disruptive change in warfare. This article analyses how both the technoscientific promises and problematizations of robotic swarming in the military relate to transformations in the way wars are cognized and conducted by liberal societies. This analysis will be conducted through the lens of a more-than-human biopolitics. Firstly, the paper traces how a new understanding of life, established by complexity sciences, has enabled entanglements and translations between different forms of life and how these have informed the military imaginaries and design principles of military swarming. Secondly, the problematization of robotic swarms as potentially running out of human control is re-interpreted in terms of this re-conceptualizing and appropriation of a more-than-human life. The central argument here is that a biomimetic robotic swarm not only inherits the desired properties of a natural swarm but also its inherent risks. Thirdly, it is analysed how military approaches to the government of robotic swarms and their dangerousness move to a less centralized and less direct form of Command and Control (C2), aiming to maximize the benefits of swarming while minimizing its risks. The article concludes by discussing how this new C2 paradigm of governing at the ‘edge of chaos’ points us to the need to rethink the legal ordering of swarming.