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It was reported yesterday that a significant number of Russian drones – were shot down in Polish airspace. An escalation of the war with Ukraine. Surgeons working in Gaza have testified to the International Development Committee in Parliament the Israeli tactic of deploying armed drones to fly over recently bombed areas in the aftermath, to shoot people following the bombing. And over the summer, in another new development, Ukrainian drones were, for the first time, powered by artificial intelligence. Three drones decided on their own when and how to strike a Russian position. AI-powered drones deciding when and how to kill humans has military advantages: improving the speed of decision-making, and reducing the number of military personnel needed to run the operation. But it’s a development that raises ethical and moral questions in the prosecution of war. What’s currently the stuff of dystopian movies – thousands of armed drones overwhelming a city or a nation – killing at will from the air – seems to be getting closer. The waging of war is increasingly mechanised and decision making is beginning to be outsourced to artificial – not human – intelligence. Ever since the invention of the first machine gun in 1884 and the replacement of cavalry horses with mechanised tanks from 1917, the way that wars have been fought has been changing. Increasing use of technology has meant that the trajectory has been to distance human beings from the violence we perpetrate. Military personnel guiding drones from far away reduce the risk to us while maximising the risk to our enemies and increasing exponentially the number of people we can kill at any one time. War - any war - is a tragedy that toxifies the human condition. Scripture hallowed by both Christians and Jews imagines a time when swords will be beaten into ploughshares and spears into pruning hooks: an early vision to reverse the technological advances that turn peaceful tools into killing machines. For a drone operator in a remote warehouse, the blood and dust of the attack is far away. And what we as citizens ask our armed forces to do is beyond most of our imaginings. For understandable reasons then, technology is being used to distance us from the consequences of our violence. It’s hard to face. But with a God’s eye view of the aggression of which every one of us is capable, however far we try to remove ourselves, the responsibility is now and will forever remain, human.