Reframing Security in the Age of Militarized AI: Patriarchal, Decolonial, and Intersectional Perspectives

Gisela Lujan Andrade

Track: tiny / short paper (up to 4 pages)

Keywords: Military AI, militarized AI, autonomous weapons systems, AI-enabled decision-support systems, feminist security studies, decolonial theory, intersectionality, data colonialism, algorithmic bias, Latin America

TL;DR: Militarized AI embeds patriarchal and colonial hierarchies into the infrastructure of violence, redistributing vulnerability along preexisting lines of structural inequality.

Abstract: The integration of artificial intelligence into military infrastructures - specifically through autonomous weapons systems (AWS) and AI-enabled decision-support systems (AI-DSS) - is increasingly framed through legal and technical safeguards that leave unexamined the security paradigms shaping these technologies. Drawing on feminist and decolonial perspectives, this paper argues that such approaches are insufficient without a structural analysis of these paradigms and develops and integrated analytical framework structured around three interrelated dimensions: patriarchal, decolonial, and intersectional. These dimensions are applied to assess how militarized AI reorganizes decision-making processes, redistributes vulnerability, and interacts with preexisting inequalities. Insights from Latin American contexts marked by militarized governance illustrate the layered effects of AI-enabled security infrastructures in settings of structural asymmetry. This paper engages critically with the AI for Peace agenda, arguing that technical risk mitigation is insufficient without confronting the security paradigms that militarized AI reflects and reinforces.

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Submission Number: 31