Privacy and data protection are essential to governing military AI

Privacy International (PI) participated in an informal multi-stakeholder exchange in Geneva in June 2026 to discuss the implications of military artificial intelligence (AI) on international peace and security. Alongside four principlal arguments, PI asserted that privacy and data protection are core human rights obligations essential to any regulatory framework governing military AI.

In terms of its four main points, PI stated:

• International human rights law provides a legally binding framework applicable in both peace and wartime throughout the entire lifecycle of AI systems. 
• States should establish a global process toward a binding international instrument to ban and strictly regulate autonomous weapons systems.
• Human rights impacts of military AI extend beyond autonomous weapons. It called on states to reject national security as a blanket justification to bypass regulation, demanding proof of legality, necessity, proportionality, and independent oversight.
• There should be a moratorium on using AI systems for the use of force, such as in decision support systems, until safeguards and transparency measures are established.

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