Month: July 2026

On 19 March 2026, the essay “War Matrix: Male Hegemony, Martial Epistemology and Experimental AI Warfare” of Prof. Dr. Jutta Weber was published in Hermann Theisen (ed.), Kriegsuntüchtigkeit als Chance: Essays gegen den Krieg und für zivile Konfliktlösung (Heidelberg, 2026), pp. 81–90.

War and the threat of war define our time, while alarming climate-policy warnings have had little lasting impact. In this anthology, authors from a wide range of disciplines and backgrounds address the question of why we need explicitly anti-war modes of thinking and acting in order to confront the crises of our age. What unites all contributors is the deep conviction that wars cannot be justified and that the global challenges of our time can only be understood and resolved through civilian means. As Louis Lecoin’s critique of war remains relevant today: “Even if it were proven to me that my ideal could be achieved through war, I would still say no to war. For a human society cannot be built upon heaps of corpses.”

The lecture examined the development, epistemic logic, and materiality of AI-based warfare, as well as its consequences, drawing on examples from the U.S. “War on Terror” and the war in Gaza. It will also discuss Europe’s rapid build-up of advanced military AI capabilities as a response not only to Russia’s war against Ukraine, but also to an evolving multipolar world order and its accelerating polycrisis.

On April 15, 2026, Prof. Dr. Jutta Weber delivered a lecture at the University of Klagenfurt entitled “The AI-Military Complex: On Drones and New Ways of Warfare.”

She was invited by the Center for Peace Research and Peace Education at the Institute of Educational Science and Research, in cooperation with the Institute of Media and Communication Studies. Prof. Dr. Jutta Weber has also published numerous works on this topic.

In issue 05/2026 of Luxemburg, the journal of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, Prof. Dr. Jutta Weber published the article “The New AI Military-Industrial Complex – Accelerated by wars, the defense boom is giving rise to a new ecosystem of start-ups, data science, artificial intelligence, and drone technology. Is AI experiencing its Oppenheimer moment?”

On July 1, 2026, at 7:00 p.m., Shona Illingworth’s film Threatscapes and Data Points: The Splintered Reality of AI-Based Warfare was screened at the Capitol Cinema in Marburg.

Shona Illingworth, a Danish-Scottish artist, created this film as part of this externally funded research project MeHuCo: Meaningful Human Control.

Following the screening, a discussion will take place with Prof. Dr. Jutta Weber in her role as the coordinator of the MeHuCo project. The discussion is organized by the Student Association for Peace and Conflict Studies (FuKschaft) at Philipps University Marburg.