One of the main arguments used by those supporting the development of lethal autonomous weapons — “killer robots”, to use the popular term — is that they have to potential to keep human beings out of harm’s way. But what if their use sparks a violent backlash against the very people they are meant to protect?

That’s one of the concerns raised by officials at the Department of National Defence in documents obtained by iPolitics through an access to information request. The memos outline what policy analysts at the Department of National Defence see as possible ramifications of the use of the weapons, known as LAWS, and suggest that their use could prompt attacks on Canadians by the people they are used against.

“In asymmetrical conflict, a lack of human interaction with the populace in counterinsurgency (COIN) operations, as well as the ‘bully syndrome’ which often stems from great power asymmetry, could engender opposition among foreign populations in times of war,” one policy developer explains in the 2014 memo.

“Such an extreme asymmetry of risk could make conflict more likely, erode warrior ethics, appear cowardly, shift the burden onto foreign civilians, incite attacks against our civilians, erode democratic engagement with the war process and increase the moral distance between the two warring sides.”

The paper goes on to explain that the development of LAWS represent a “fundamental shift” to the nature of warfare — making it possible for a country to fight a war without the risk of soldiers coming home in boxes.

“LAWS (along with other technological advancements such as cyber weapons) represent a fundamental shift from less or minimal risk to one’s own forces to no risk at all,” the paper reads. “The implications of this shift have not yet been fully considered.”

The paper also offers a caveat, noting that warfare has always involved resource and technological imbalances between sides.

“These points must be balanced against the moral imperatives to limit risk to one’s own soldiers and win the war as quickly and efficiently as possible. It should be remembered that exploiting asymmetries has always been at the root of military strategy.”

The Canadian government has said that Defence Research and Development Canada is not currently developing lethal autonomous weapons, although it is doing research on non-lethal autonomous and unmanned systems.

The key difference between lethal autonomous weapons systems and other systems with varying degrees of autonomy is in the capacity to kill a human. For example, Britain’s Taranis drone prototype can search, identify and locate targets without human control — but cannot actually engage with a target until someone from mission command tells it to.

Such devices are quite unlike unmanned systems such as IED disposal robots, which are remotely controlled by a human and generally don’t have the capacity to take independent action.

At the heart of the debate over lethal autonomous weapons systems is the question of whether machines should be allowed to decide on their own whether a person lives or dies.

There’s also the question of whether removing the risk to human soldiers voids the moral justification for war — the idea that some value or idea is so important that it’s worth dying for.

“Arguments touching on military and democratic virtue dovetail closely with concerns about the stark asymmetry that LAWS exacerbate between the technological haves and have-nots,” the report says. “Without taking on risk, the argument goes, there is no moral basis for killing, and the use of force should not even be called warfare.”

Walter Dorn, chair of the Royal Military College’s masters of defence program, specializes in studying the role of technology in peacekeeping and conflict.

He said concerns about backlash from the use of lethal autonomous weapons are valid and, given American drone attacks are viewed by people in the Middle East, fully autonomous lethal weapons — and the countries that use them — would only face more extreme hatred from populations subjected to their power.

“If you have a country that’s technologically advanced using (LAWS), then it will be seen as a kind of technological imperialism upon the countries that don’t have them,” he said.

“They may consider that they are like animals in slaughter, where machines do the dirty work.”

Another concern raised in the documents has to do with how the development of lethal autonomous weapons could change power balances within security alliances.

Countries like the United States and Russia have invested hundreds of billions of dollars in building up their militaries, relying on the tax revenue and demographic resources that come from having large populations. But with lethal autonomous weapons, the report suggests, even small countries could become powerful military players.

“For example, LAWS would play to the strengths of highly technological and innovative countries such as Japan and South Korea. In fact, the effective harnessing of robotic innovations into advanced military platforms could function to de-couple military power from population base, allowing even tiny high-tech states such as Singapore to play a significant military role.”

Ultimately, addressing the challenges and risks that are coupled with any future development of lethal autonomous weapons systems would require countries and citizens to prepare for the consequences of military calculations being taken out of human hands.

In particular, that would require more detailed and strategic planning on how to adapt existing escalation and de-escalation practices, as well as further study into how leaders should interpret behaviour by other countries’ militaries when deciding what to interpret as a threat.

The report also outlined the potential for lethal autonomous weapons systems to miscalculate a risk and decide to take action in a situation where a human would not.

“One reacts to the other because it senses a threat and then the other reacts to that reaction because it senses a threat and then they start calling re-enforcements and it could escalate very quickly, and no humans are actually involved in the decision to initiate or escalate force,” said Peter Asaro, an affiliate scholar at Stanford and professor of media studies at The New School.

Asaro, who is also a member of the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, said that with lethal autonomous weapons, the decision about how to respond to such a situation theoretically wouldn’t lie with a person who has the ability to judge the nuance of a situation — and that could cause problems.

One of the examples cited in the Department of National Defence documents was the ongoing dispute between China and Japan over the Japanese controlled-Senkaku islands.

China — which has staked a claim to the islands — flew a UAV toward the islands in late 2013, which prompted the Japanese to scramble F-15s to assert their presence.

Without a human at the helm, the potential for miscalculation against both military actors and civilians increases, said the documents, and the resulting dynamic would require “new norms” to address the escalated risk posed by removing humans from the decision-making.

Asaro echoed that concern and stressed that the human aspect of military action can often act as a mitigating force — exercising mercy, for example, or having soldiers on the ground who pass out candy to children or work alongside locals to build schools or hospitals.

That’s not the case with lethal autonomous weapons, he said, noting that defence officials are right to be concerned.

“You can’t make those kinds of judgement calls that humans actually make a lot of the time.”