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Letter From the Secretary General

In the absence of concord, cataclysm is inevitable.

When understanding falters, consequences [Link] RKCMUN’26, let wisdom guide

us before crisis defines us

Distinguished Delegates, welcome to RKCMUN’26, a conference not merely of speeches,

but of substance; not merely of debate, but of direction. Over the next few days, these
committees will transform into arenas of intellect, negotiation, and strategy. Ideas will
collide, policies will be defended, and perspectives will be challenged. But above all,
character will be revealed.

Our guiding philosophy this year is simple, yet profound: यत्र संवादः तत्र सौहार्दम ् (Yatra
Samvaadah Tatra Sauhaardam) Where there is dialogue, there is harmony.

The word Yatra reminds us that harmony is conditional. It does not appear by chance; it
emerges where patience prevails over pride, where listening matches speaking, and
where disagreement is handled with dignity. For these days, that “where” is
RKCMUN’26. It is in these rooms, through your words and your restraint, that harmony
will either falter or flourish.

Model United Nations is not about being the loudest voice in the room. It is about being
the most prepared mind. It is about understanding that diplomacy is strength
controlled, not power displayed. Debate passionately, but responsibly. Negotiate boldly,
but ethically. Build alliances thoughtfully, not impulsively. The true measure of a
delegate is not applause after a speech, but the impact left on a resolution.

As Secretary-General, my commitment is to uphold a conference defined by integrity,

fairness, and intellectual rigor. I encourage you to enjoy the intensity, the strategy, the
fast-paced negotiations but never forget the responsibility that comes with representing
a [Link] discussions grow heated, let dialogue steady them. If opinions diverge
sharply, let respect guide them. If conflict arises, let maturity resolve it.

Let RKCMUN’26 not simply be another entry on your résumé, but an experience that
refines your confidence, sharpens your intellect, and strengthens your leadership. Speak
with clarity. Listen with intent. Lead with integrity.

The floor is yours.

With conviction and confidence,

Reyansh Punjabi
[Link]@[Link]
Secretary-General
RKCMUN’26

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Letter From the Executive Board

Technology reshapes power but responsibility must shape technology.

Dear Delegates,

It is our privilege to welcome you to the Disarmament and International Security

Committee. This year’s agenda invites you to engage with one of the most consequential
questions in contemporary global security: the international regulation and
norm-setting of emerging weapons technologies, with particular focus on nuclear
modernization, Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS), and AI-enabled missile
technologies.

The character of warfare is undergoing profound transformation. Advances in artificial

intelligence, automation, hypersonic delivery systems, and digital command structures
are redefining deterrence, escalation dynamics, and strategic stability. At the same time,
the modernization of nuclear arsenals and the integration of intelligent systems into
military infrastructure raise complex legal, ethical, and humanitarian concerns. These
developments challenge existing arms control frameworks and expose critical gaps in
international regulation.

Within this committee, you are tasked not only with assessing technological capability,
but with evaluating its implications for global peace and security. The balance between
national defense interests and collective international responsibility will be central to
your deliberations. Questions of accountability, meaningful human control, cyber
vulnerability, and proliferation risks must be addressed with precision and intellectual
rigor.

We encourage you to approach this agenda with depth of research, clarity of policy, and
a forward-looking understanding of global security architecture. DISEC demands
analytical thinking, disciplined diplomacy, and well-structured solutions grounded in
international law and strategic realism.

We look forward to a committee defined by substantive debate, thoughtful negotiation,

and principled leadership.

Warm Regards,
Meet Rada Jaynil Sangani Tirth Bhatt
Chairperson Vice chairperson Rapporteur
[Link]@[Link] jaynil1312@[Link] tirthb16@[Link]

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INDEX

[Link] Topic [Link]

1 Introduction to the Committee 5

2 Committee Mandate 6

3 Abbreviations and Definitions 7

4 Introduction of the Agenda 8

5 Evolution of Strategic Warfare: From Nuclear Deterrence to 9

AI-Enabled Systems

6 Existing Legal and Institutional Frameworks and Regulatory 14

Gaps

7 Nuclear Modernisation and Strategic Stability 15

8 Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems (LAWS) and Meaningful 17

Human Control

9 AI Integration in Missile and Hypersonic Technologies 20

10 Cybersecurity Threats to Military and Nuclear Infrastructure 24

11 Ethical and Humanitarian Implications of Autonomous Warfare 26

12 Past UN Action And Applicable International Law 28

13 Role of Private Technology Corporations in Military Innovation 31

14 Case Studies 33

15 Conclusion 37

16 Documentation Guide 38

17 Questions A Resolution Must Answer 47

18 Bibliography 48

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Introduction to the Committee

Historically formed in 1945, concurrent with the founding of the United Nations, the
United Nations General Assembly First Committee (DISEC) is the First Committee of
the United Nations General Assembly and is charged with the task of dealing with
matters pertaining to international peace, security, and disarmament.

DISEC holds discussions on topics such as nuclear disarmament, non-proliferation,

control of conventional arms, prevention of arms races, and new technological
challenges. Although it does not have any kind of enforcement power, such as that of the
United Nations Security Council, its resolutions have great political value and are often
the precursor to future international treaties and norms.

With the current agenda of “Deliberation on international regulation and norms for
emerging weapons technologies, focusing on nuclear weapons, Lethal Autonomous
Weapons Systems (LAWS), and AI-enabled missile technologies,” the DISEC is dealing
with the ever-changing nature of warfare. The increasing pace of developments in
artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, and nuclear weapons modernization
programs creates increasingly complex strategic, legal, and ethical challenges.

In this process, the Committee is required to assess whether the current international
legal frameworks are adequate to regulate these new technologies or if new legal
frameworks are needed. It is important to pay special attention to compliance with
international humanitarian law, human control over the use of force, and the prevention
of destabilizing arms races that could result from competitive technologies

Moreover, the integration of artificial intelligence into command and control systems,
missile technology, and autonomous systems has created concerns about escalation,
accountability, transparency, and cybersecurity risks. The development of hypersonic
and AI-enabled nuclear delivery systems has made the traditional concept of deterrence
even more complex.

As such, DISEC becomes a broad-based multilateral platform where Member States can
jointly consider confidence-building measures, transparency policies, and the
progressive development of norms to address proliferation challenges while promoting
responsible innovation. In view of the rapidly increasing pace of technological change,
the Committee emphasizes the need for collaborative strategies that reconcile national
security concerns with global responsibilities.

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Committee Mandate

The Disarmament and International Security Committee (DISEC), the First Committee
of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), is mandated to address issues that
threaten international peace and security within the framework of the UN Charter. Its
primary responsibilities include:

● Disarmament and Arms Regulation: Considering and recommending measures for the
regulation, limitation, and general reduction of conventional, nuclear, and other
weapons of mass Destruction.

● Global Security and Threats to Peace: Examining international security concerns and
challenges, particularly those arising from conflicts, arms races, and emerging threats
such as cyberwarfare, space militarization, and terrorism.

● Cooperation with Other Bodies: Working in close cooperation with the United Nations
Security Council (UNSC), the Conference on Disarmament, and other specialized
agencies to harmonize disarmament efforts.

● Confidence-Building and Transparency: Promoting confidence-building measures

among Member States, encouraging transparency in military matters, and fostering
international cooperation to prevent escalation of hostilities.

● Peaceful Use of Technology: Reviewing the impact of advancements in science and

technology on global security and ensuring their use for peaceful purposes.

● Non-Binding Recommendations: While DISEC does not possess the power to impose
legally binding decisions, it drafts recommendations, resolutions, and reports for
consideration by the UNGA and, where necessary, the Security Council.

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Abbreviations and Definitions

Words Definitions
Algorithmic Decision The use of computer programs (algorithms) to automatically analyze
Making data and make decisions .
Autonomous Weapons Weapons that can select and attack targets on their own without human
Systems (AWS) intervention after activation.

Ballistic Trajectory Curved flight path a missile follows after launch.

Cataclysm A sudden, large-scale disaster.

CTBT Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty

Treaty banning all nuclear test explosions.

Deontological ethics A moral theory that judges actions based on rules and duties, not on
consequences.

HGV Hypersonic Glide Vehicle

A maneuverable weapon that glides at hypersonic speed (Mach 5+).

ICBM Intercontinental Ballistic Missile

Long-range missile capable of carrying nuclear warheads across
continents.

IHL International Humanitarian Law

Laws regulating conduct during armed conflict.

IMS International Monitoring System

Global sensor network detecting nuclear test explosions.

MIRV Multiple Independently Targetable Reentry Vehicle

One missile carrying multiple warheads aimed at different targets.

NPT Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons

Treaty preventing the spread of nuclear weapons and promoting
disarmament.

CCW Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons

UN treaty restricting weapons that cause excessive harm or
indiscriminate damage.

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Introduction to the Agenda

“Deliberation on international regulation and norms for emerging weapons technologies,
focusing on nuclear weapons, Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS), and AI-enabled
missile technologies.”

New and emerging weapons technologies are changing the way we view security today.
As such there are many urgent issues that need attention, like strategic stability;
deterrence; and international law.

The current state of modernizing nuclear stockpiles; developing Lethal Autonomous

Weapons (LAWS); utilizing Artificial Intelligence within missile guidance systems; as
well as other developments are creating unprecedented regulatory and ethical
dilemmas.

This agenda will review the current international legal and institutional frameworks
surrounding these technologies; assess the shortcomings in the governing laws; and
develop good global norms that help prevent the escalation of new conflicts, occurrence
accidents, and arms races caused by superiority of Technology.

The participating Nations must balance their individual requirements of National

Security with the responsibility of the International Community to assure that any
future advances made within the use of military force do not adversely affect Global
Peace and Humanitarian Values.

Additionally, the growing participation of private tech companies and dual-use

technologies creates more ambiguity in the distinction between civilian and military
research. The proliferation of highly advanced AI technologies among both state-based
actors and non-state actors generates significant proliferation issues and reduces the
barriers for weapons development while eroding traditional deterrence approaches.

The merging of cyber technologies with autonomous and nuclear weapons creates
additional risks related to algorithmic errors, manipulation and/or unintended
escalation. The increasing use of digitized command and control systems makes it a
pressing global security requirement to protect the systems that support them against
cyber interference.

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I. The Nuclear Age: Deterrence as the Foundation

of Strategic Stability

1. Birth of Nuclear Strategy (1945–Cold War)

The employment of nuclear weapons in 1945 changed the nature of warfare. Rather than
winning a war through battlefield superiority, the goal of strategy became deterrence –
preventing war through the threat of catastrophic retaliation.

Based on SIPRI Yearbook assessments, nuclear deterrence was made possible by:
-​ Second-strike capability
-​ Survivable nuclear forces
-​ Rational decision-making
-​ Effective communication of red lines

This approach developed into the strategy of mutually assured destruction (MAD),
whereby no rational party would choose to start a nuclear war because of assured
retaliation.

Analysis by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute and considerations

within the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs suggest that, while deterrence
helped to maintain a lack of direct conflict on a large scale between nuclear-weapon
states, it also institutionalized a regime of constant threat. Strategic stability required
not only military strength, but also reliable early warning systems, sound command and
control arrangements, and the premise of rational behavior during crisis situations.

As has been noted in several UN disarmament debates, this delicate balance has always
been at risk of miscalculation, technical failure, or political misperception, thereby
emphasizing that, while deterrence is stabilizing in theory, it has never removed the
existential threats posed by nuclear weapons.

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2. Multilateral Governance: NPT and Institutional Architecture

The international community’s approach to nuclear threat has created a broad

multilateral framework that is founded on the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of
Nuclear Weapons (NPT), which is based on three interlocking pillars: non-proliferation,
disarmament, and peaceful use of nuclear energy. Within this framework, non-nuclear
states agree not to pursue nuclear weapons, while nuclear states have specific
obligations towards the goal of disarmament. These are largely ensured through
safeguards agreements that are administered by the International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA), whose inspection system is at the heart of ensuring that there is no
diversion of civilian nuclear materials for military use. This framework is further
supported by disarmament discussions at the United Nations General Assembly First
Committee (DISEC), where member states discuss risk reduction, arms control, and
new strategic challenges

The United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA) has repeatedly observed
that although global nuclear arsenals declined significantly following the end of the Cold
War, the pace of reductions has slowed and, in some regions, reversed. Recent
assessments by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) indicate
that nuclear-armed states are investing heavily in modernization programs — including
upgraded delivery systems, warhead life-extension projects, and advanced missile
technologies, rather than pursuing further reductions. International reporting by
Reuters and the BBC has highlighted rising geopolitical tensions, renewed strategic
competition among major powers, and doctrinal shifts that place greater emphasis on
nuclear preparedness. These developments reinforce concerns expressed within UN
disarmament forums that modernization, coupled with emerging technologies, may
erode strategic stability and complicate future arms control negotiations.

Such trends only serve to underscore the concerns voiced in UN disarmament

conferences about the potential for modernization, in conjunction with new
technologies, to undermine strategic stability and make future arms control talks even
more difficult. Specifically, the trend of discussion in the United Nations General
Assembly First Committee has come to increasingly reflect a concern that the drive for
qualitative improvements in nuclear forces, such as improved accuracy, hypersonic
delivery vehicles, lower-yield warhead capabilities, and coupling with advanced
command and control systems, could have the effect of reducing the nuclear threshold
rather than enhancing deterrence.

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II. Post Cold War Strategic Transformation

1. Precision Warfare and Technological Layering

The decades after the Cold War have brought a profound shift in strategic warfare.
While nuclear deterrence continues to be the focal point of global strategic thinking, the
nature of military competition has increasingly turned to more sophisticated
conventional systems and technologies. Countries have started pouring investments into
precision-guided weapons, missile defense systems, cyber warfare, hypersonic delivery
systems, and highly advanced intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR)
networks. According to SIPRI estimates, these technologies do not supplant nuclear
deterrence but instead are complexly intertwined with it in ways that are often
destabilizing.

Precision-guided munitions and long-range conventional strike systems, for instance,

increase accuracy and minimize collateral damage but also create ambiguity. A missile
could be conventional or nuclear, and in a crisis environment, the inability to
distinguish between the two can create perilous pressures for escalation. Likewise,
missile defense systems, which were originally conceived to improve national security,
can be seen by adversaries as undermining second-strike capabilities, thus destabilizing
deterrence itself. Hypersonic technologies, which can maneuver at very high speeds,
have condensed decision times to almost nothing. Cyber warfare further muddies the
strategic waters by attacking critical infrastructure, early warning systems, and
communications networks, potentially disrupting strategic command and control.

SIPRI’s research has repeatedly emphasized that these technological tiers erase the
distinction between conventional and nuclear conflict, reduce the time available for
response, and introduce ambiguity during crises. International media coverage by Al
Jazeera and The New York Times has often pointed to how hypersonic weapons and
cyber warfare challenge the existing arms control regime, which was largely established
in a previous era when these technologies did not exist. Thus, the post-Cold War era is
marked not by the absence of deterrence but by its intersection with rapidly advancing
technological competition

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III. The AI Revolution in Strategic Warfare

1. AI as a Military Enabler
The most revolutionary change in the 21st century has been the integration of artificial
intelligence into military planning and operations. According to the United Nations
Office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA) and the United Nations General Assembly
First Committee (DISEC), AI is increasingly being used in a broad range of military
[Link] include decision support systems that help commanders analyze large
amounts of data, surveillance and reconnaissance systems that have the capability of
pattern recognition, autonomous and semi-autonomous vehicles, cyber defense and
attack systems, and logistics optimization systems that aim to improve efficiency.

Crucially, it is not the presence of AI as a technology that is of concern in multilateral

settings, but rather its integration with strategic systems, especially those related to
nuclear command, control, and communications (NC3). AI has the potential to support
human judgment by processing information at a faster rate than traditional systems. But
when used in nuclear scenarios, even in a supporting role, it has the potential to shape
leaders’ perceptions of threats and options for response. The nexus between AI and
nuclear deterrence is thus imbued with new levels of strategic uncertainty.

2. The AI–Nuclear Nexus

Research carried out by SIPRI and discussions organized by UNODA have pointed out
some of the most important risks arising from the nexus between AI and nuclear
weapons. One of the main risks is the issue of compressed decision-making. AI can
speed up threat detection, data analysis, and response suggestions. In conventional
warfare, speed can be an advantage, but in nuclear situations, the compressed timeline
could mean less time for diplomatic engagement or thoughtful decision-making. The
theory of deterrence has traditionally relied on rational and thoughtful decision-making.

The second issue is the opacity of algorithms. There are some AI systems that are black
boxes, whose reasoning processes are opaque even to the people who use them. In
situations where there is a lot of pressure to make strategic decisions, leaders might use
the recommendations made by AI systems without fully understanding how the
recommendations were arrived at.

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Third, AI-based systems could bring cyber risks. As strategic infrastructure is

increasingly digitized, it may be vulnerable to spoofing, hacking, data manipulation, or
system failure. A compromised early warning or decision-support system could generate
false warnings, raising the specter of miscalculation. SIPRI analyses stress that, while
such risks are not novel, they are certainly exacerbated by the addition of AI.

The literature on international law related to the American Society of International Law
(ASIL) emphasizes that existing international humanitarian law remains applicable to
AI-based systems. However, the ASIL debates focus on the open questions of
accountability, attribution of responsibility, and the need for human control. The
underlying debate is not simply technological but rather normative: how to ensure that
autonomous or semi-autonomous systems are still bound by lines of command and
control, as well as by legal norms.

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IV. Global Political Recognition of the Risk

However, awareness of these challenges has reached the highest political echelons.
According to Reuters news, the U.S. and Chinese leaderships have reached a consensus
that the choice on nuclear weapons should continue to be made by human beings rather
than by artificial intelligence. This kind of convergence among the great powers
indicates that they have realized that the risks associated with the automation of nuclear
command and control systems are extremely high.

In a similar manner, the UN Secretary-General has warned on several occasions during

Security Council meetings that new technologies such as AI and cyber capabilities have
the potential to increase the instability of nuclear risk calculations if they are not
properly managed. Reports by BBC and The New York Times have reflected the concern
about the rapidly escalating technological arms race, where the competition is no longer
limited to the number of nuclear weapons but also involves data, algorithms, and
infrastructure.

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V. UN and Multilateral Responses

1. UNODA and DISEC Engagement

In light of these rapidly advancing technological trends, the United Nations Office for
Disarmament Affairs (UNODA) has significantly increased its engagement on artificial
intelligence in the military area. In line with the mandates established by the General
Assembly, UNODA has organized Military AI and Peace & Security Dialogues (MAPS),
which have brought together Member States, technical experts, academia, civil society
organizations, and industry stakeholders to evaluate both the opportunities and the
systemic risks of AI-enabled military systems.

These dialogues have been organized not only as a form of intellectual discussion but
also as a means of confidence-building, which are then channeled into the formal
processes of the United Nations. In accordance with the General Assembly resolutions
on “Artificial Intelligence in the Military Domain and its Implications for International
Peace and Security,” the Secretary-General has submitted analytical reports, which
include comprehensive assessments as requested by Member States, on how artificial
intelligence influences escalation dynamics, accountability mechanisms, and the
application of international law. These reports have formally acknowledged that the
integration of AI technology into defense systems could have a strategic impact,
especially when used in command and control infrastructure.

UNODA has also strengthened youth engagement activities, such as the

Youth4Disarmament dialogue sessions, to ensure that new voices are part of the
long-term governance debate. Expert panels organized under the auspices of the UN
have particularly focused on the destabilizing impact of AI and information and
communications technologies on nuclear security. These activities are a result of the
UN’s formal recognition that technological development must be accompanied by
normative development, transparency, and preventive diplomacy. The message in all
these initiatives is clear: innovation must not run ahead of regulation in a manner that
affects international peace and security.

Within the United Nations General Assembly First Committee (DISEC), negotiations are
ongoing every year regarding Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS), AI
governance in security, and strategic risk reduction. These negotiations are conducted in
parallel with other discussions in the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons
(CCW), where countries discuss the need for a legal framework on autonomous
weapons. Although there is no agreement yet on a legal framework, the General

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Existing Legal and Institutional Frameworks and

Regulatory Gaps

The control of emerging weapons technologies, such as nuclear modernization, the

integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI), cyber weapons, and Lethal Autonomous
Weapons Systems (LAWS), is based on a complex but piecemeal international legal
framework. Although many international treaties and organizations deal with
traditional weapons and strategic stability, there is currently no global regime that
regulates AI-enabled or autonomous military technologies. This gap in the international
legal framework has been formally recognized in several UN settings.

At the heart of the nuclear legal framework is the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of
Nuclear Weapons (NPT), which entered into force in 1970 and has 191 States Parties.
Article VI requires nuclear-weapon states to negotiate in good faith towards nuclear
disarmament. Nevertheless, the NPT was negotiated in a pre-AI, pre-cyberwarfare, and
pre-autonomous systems era. Although it covers possession, transfer, and peaceful
nuclear cooperation, it does not cover algorithmic decision-support systems in nuclear
command and control structures, nor does it envision AI-driven early warning systems.
UN General Assembly resolutions, such as A/RES/78/240 (2023), continue to reaffirm
the NPT as the cornerstone of the international non-proliferation regime, but it is
increasingly being noted in debates that technological developments are challenging its
strategic premises.

In addition to the NPT, the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) is another

regime that complements the NPT and was adopted by the UNGA in resolution
A/RES/50/245. Although the CTBT has not yet entered into force, it has developed a
very effective International Monitoring System (IMS) with more than 300 facilities
around the globe. Ironically, the very effective monitoring system developed by the
CTBT regime shows how advanced data analytics can be used to improve arms control
verification. However, there is no verification or transparency regime developed for
AI-enabled weapons systems.

In the area of conventional arms, the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons

(CCW) is the framework for banning or regulating weapons that are considered to be
excessively injurious or indiscriminate. The CCW’s Group of Governmental Experts
(GGE) is the forum for talks on LAWS. Since 2014, states have been discussing the
definition of autonomy, accountability, and “meaningful human control.” Yet, consensus
is reached only under the CCW’s unanimity principle, which has hindered efforts
towards the adoption of a legally binding instrument. Each year, UNGA resolutions such

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as A/RES/78/241 (2023) have called for further talks, but no binding protocol on
autonomous weapons has been adopted. This institutional deadlock is a sign of a
structural regulatory gap: technological development is fast, but intergovernmental
consensus-building is slow.

International Humanitarian Law (IHL), especially the **Geneva Conventions and

Additional Protocols, sets out the basic principles of distinction, proportionality, and
precaution. States have often claimed that IHL is “technology-neutral” and that it is
sufficient to regulate AI-enabled weapons. Article 36 of Additional Protocol I requires
states to carry out legal reviews of new weapons. But UN deliberations show that there is
a patchy implementation of Article 36 legal reviews, and there is no transparency about
the methods used. The use of AI systems that have machine learning capabilities adds
unpredictability, and this raises questions about the verification of compliance and
attribution of responsibility.

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Nuclear Modernisation and Strategic Stability

The post-Cold War period has not seen the elimination of nuclear weapons; rather, it
has been a period of sustained and sophisticated nuclear modernisation in all
nuclear-armed states. Although these modernisation efforts have been justified by all
nuclear-armed states as necessary to ensure the sustainability of effective deterrence in
a volatile and multipolar world, experts, diplomats, and United Nations officials have
expressed concern that nuclear modernisation could have destabilising effects on
international strategic stability. Strategic stability is based on the principle of mutual
vulnerability, where all nuclear-armed states understand that any nuclear attack will be
met with massive retaliation, and no state will be willing to engage in a nuclear strike.

Traditionally, the foundation of strategic stability has been supported by binding arms
control treaties, verification mechanisms, transparency measures, and established
military communication channels. Yet, with the current drive towards modernisation,
including the integration of cyber technologies, digitalised command systems, and the
latest generation of delivery platforms, the technical landscape is evolving. These issues
are evident in the debates of the United Nations General Assembly’s First Committee, as
well as the analytical reports produced by research organisations such as the Stockholm
International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), whose findings in their Yearbook
reports are commonly cited as empirical evidence within the UN.

1. What Is Nuclear Modernisation?

Nuclear modernization is said to extend beyond replacement of ageing Cold

War-era systems to a complete transformation of nuclear forces. This includes, but is
not limited to, upgrades to:
Warhead designs and life extension programs (LEPs)
Delivery systems, including land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs),
submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), and strategic bombers
Command and control systems, including digitalization and communication systems
Early warning systems, including space-based sensors and radar systems
Other supporting nuclear infrastructure

Modernisation often includes replacing analogue systems with digital systems,

integrating secure communication satellites, improving accuracy through advanced
guidance systems, and introducing new generations of submarines and missile systems.

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Today, many countries are investing in survivability upgrades, including mobile

launchers, stealth bombers, and underground bunkers, to ensure second-strike
capability.
According to the latest publicly available data from SIPRI, about 12,000 to 13,000
nuclear warheads are currently present on the planet, of which about 9,500 are in
military stockpiles and about 3,900 are deployed. The total number of nuclear warheads
on the planet has significantly reduced since the Cold War era, when there were more
than 60,000 nuclear warheads, but the rate of reduction is now slowing down.
According to SIPRI, “Quantitative growth is no longer the main driving force of nuclear
development worldwide, but rather qualitative development.”

2. Strategic Stability in the Modern Era

Traditionally, the two pillars of strategic stability were:

Crisis Stability – No side thinks it must strike first in a crisis to avoid losing
deterrence capability.
Arms Race Stability – No side thinks it must continue to improve its
capabilities to maintain a competitive position.
Modernisation impacts both.

3. Strategic Stability Under Pressure: Crisis Risks

Perhaps one of the most critical challenges posed by nuclear modernization

is its potential impact on crisis stability – i.e., a situation in which states do not feel
forced to use nuclear weapons first in a tense confrontation. The growing accuracy in
missiles, the development of refined low-yield warhead types, and enhanced precision
strike capabilities can create an environment in which nuclear weapons are perceived to
be “usable” in a limited and controlled manner. During discussions in the United
Nations General Assembly First Committee, there have been suggestions from Member
States that these perceptions can create a concern that nuclear weapons are becoming
“easier” to deploy.

Modernisation also has a significant bearing on the pace of nuclear decision-making,

especially given the increasing tendency to rely on digital networks, space-based
sensors, and data fusion techniques to identify potential missile launches. While these
systems are intended to provide more accurate and reliable information to

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decision-makers, they may also have the unintended consequence of reducing the time
available to leaders to scrutinise incomplete information. The United Nations’
Secretary-General has highlighted this concern in reports to the General Assembly,
noting that “the integration of nuclear forces with new technologies, such as cyber
warfare and artificial intelligence, may also increase the complexity and unpredictability
of nuclear decision-making.” In the midst of a crisis situation, there is a high likelihood
that a technical malfunction or false alarm may be misinterpreted as hostile intent on an
adversary’s part. There are several precedents from the Cold War era when satellite
misidentification and radar misinterpretations nearly led to nuclear strikes. While
modern digital systems are more advanced compared to their predecessors, they are still
prone to software malfunctions, spoofing, data corruption, or sophisticated cyber
attacks.

Apart from military command control systems, incidents concerning civilian nuclear
facilities serve to highlight how a technology failure, human error, or inadequate control
can build up to a conflict situation that has serious international repercussions. The
Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant catastrophe in 1986 and the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear
Power Plant disaster in 2011 were not connected to nuclear weapons, yet these incidents
created international political tensions, public panic, economic disruption, and
environmental effects. Recently, the safety and security of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear
Power Plant due to conflict has led to urgent discussions at the United Nations
concerning radiological risks and escalation. While not connected to nuclear weapons,
these examples highlight one critical lesson that nuclear-related technology operates in
a complex technical system that can build up to a conflict situation beyond its
geographical location.

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[Link] Autonomous Weapon System and Meaningful

Human Control

Autonomous weapons systems require “autonomy” to perform their functions in the

absence of direction or input from a human actor. Artificial intelligence is not a
prerequisite for the functioning of autonomous weapons systems, but, when
incorporated, AI could further enable such systems. In other words, not all autonomous
weapons systems incorporate AI to execute particular tasks. Autonomous capabilities
can be provided through pre-defined tasks or sequences of actions based on specific
parameters, or through using artificial intelligence tools to derive behavior from data,
thus allowing the system to make independent decisions or adjust behavior based on
changing circumstances. Artificial intelligence can also be used in an assistance role in
systems that are directly operated by a human. For example, a computer vision system
operated by a human could employ artificial intelligence to identify and draw attention
to notable objects in the field of vision, without having the capacity to respond to those
objects autonomously in any way.

Debates on lethal autonomous weapon systems have proliferated in the past 5 years.
Ethical concerns have been voiced about a possible rise in the number of wrongs and
crimes in military operations and about the creation of a “responsibility gap” for harms
caused by these systems. To address these concerns, the principle of “meaningful human
control” has been introduced in the legal–political debate; according to this principle,
humans not computers and their algorithms should ultimately remain in control of, and
thus morally responsible for, relevant decisions about (lethal) military operations.
However, policy-makers and technical designers lack a detailed theory of what
“meaningful human control” exactly means. In this paper, we lay the foundation of a
philosophical account of meaningful human control, based on the concept of “guidance
control” as elaborated in the philosophical debate on free will and moral responsibility.
Following the ideals of “Responsible Innovation” and “Value-sensitive Design,” our
account of meaningful human control is cast in the form of design requirements. We
identify two general necessary conditions to be satisfied for an autonomous system to
remain under meaningful human control: first, a “tracking” condition, according to
which the system should be able to respond to both the relevant moral reasons of the
humans designing and deploying the system and the relevant facts in the environment
in which the system operates; second, a “tracing” condition, according to which the
system should be designed in such a way as to grant the possibility to always trace back
the outcome of its operations to at least one human along the chain of design and
operation. As we think that meaningful human control can be one of the central notions
in ethics of robotics and AI, in the last part of the paper, we start exploring the

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implications of our account for the design and use of non-military autonomous systems,
for instance, self-driving [Link] 2014, the United States has participated in
international discussions of LAWS, sometimes colloquially referred to as "killer robots,"
under the auspices of the United Nations Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons
(UN CCW). In 2017, these discussions transitioned from an informal "meeting of
experts" to a formal "Group of Governmental Experts" (GGE) tasked with examining the
technological, military, ethical, and legal dimensions of LAWS. In 2018 and 2019, the
GGE has considered proposals by state parties to issue political declarations about
LAWS, as well as proposals to regulate them. In addition, approximately 30 countries
and 165 nongovernmental organizations have called for a preemptive ban on LAWS due
to ethical concerns, including concerns about operational risk, accountability for use,
and compliance with the proportionality and distinction requirements of the law of war.
The U.S. government does not currently support a ban on LAWS and has addressed
ethical concerns about the systems in a March 2018 white paper, "Humanitarian
Benefits of Emerging Technologies in the Area of Lethal Autonomous Weapons." The
paper notes that "automated target identification, tracking, selection, and engagement
functions can allow weapons to strike military objectives more accurately and with less
risk of collateral damage" or civilian [Link] the UN CCW is a
consensus-based forum, the outcome of its discussions could hold implications for U.S.
policy on lethal autonomous [Link] 2023, the UN Secretary-General’s New
Agenda for Peace called for the prohibition of LAWS, recommending that States
develop a legally binding instrument that bans LAWS, especially those that do
not require human control and are non-compliant with international
humanitarian law.

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1)Illicit arms trade

The illicit arms trade, worth $1.7 - 3.5 billion per year, comprises small arms
and light weapons . Small arms such as assault rifles, submachine guns, and
pistols are operated by a single user. Light weapons such as anti-tank missiles
and grenade launchers, intended for use by a small crew, have proliferated
alongside small arms . Small arms and light weapons are produced in far
greater quantities and are easier to smuggle than tanks, fighter jets, and other
large weapon systems.

Small and light arms proliferation occurs when powerful states provide weapons to their
preferred factions in civil wars. Alternatively, politico-economic crises or state collapse
leave governments unable to effectively control their arms stockpiles . Amid the chaos,
arms are traded for drugs, money, and natural resources, resulting in them illicitly
moving around conflict zones and into insecure border areas. Abetted by money
laundering, the dark web, and globalized finance, billions of dollars’ worth of illicit arms
sales are made by terrorist and organized crime groups each year .Third World” proxy
conflicts between the United States and the Soviet Union led to a wave of illicit arms
proliferation in Africa, Latin America, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. For instance,
small arms intended for the Afghan Mujahideen eventually flowed into Pakistan and
other neighbouring countries . The illicit arms trade expanded as the Soviet Union,
Eastern Bloc, and Yugoslavia disintegrated at the end of the Cold War. Economic
collapse and the loss of state control over Soviet arms stockpiles created opportunities
for East European governments and criminal organizations to sell arms to
conflict-afflicted countries in East and West Africa American military interventions in
Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the conflicts arising from the Arab Spring, worsened the
proliferation of illicit arms in Central Asia and the Middle East. Weapons and non-state
armed groups spread across the Levant during the Iraqi and Syrian civil wars, a factor
worsened by Iran arming the militant groups that comprise its Axis of Resistance . The
fall of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi destabilized the West African Sahel when his
now-unemployed Tuareg mercenaries returned to Mali with their weapons . Meanwhile,
small arms manufactured in Brazil and the United States circulate widely among Latin
America’s cartels and non-state armed groups Ungoverned spaces in Latin America, the
Middle East, and Sub-Saharan Africa will remain hotspots of illicit arms. Future
proliferation will be driven by areas of weak state capacity the Amazon, the Sahel, and
the Iraq Syria border as well as cooperation between non-state actors such as Latin
America’s cartels, Somalia’s al-Shabaab, and Yemen’s Ansarullah. Taking East Africa as
an example, the conflicts in Ethiopia, Somalia, and Sudan have resulted in illicit arms
flowing between non-state armed groups and into neighbouring states, as evidenced by
trafficked arms fueling criminality in northeastern Uganda.

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Legally manufactured weapons from Europe and North America will continue to find
their way onto black markets. Russian veterans and criminal organizations are bringing
small arms from the Russo-Ukrainian war into Russia, leading to increasing violent
crime and fears that, like 1990s Yugoslavia, Russia and Ukraine will become sources of
illicit arms used in conflicts in the Global South . The American arms industry will
remain a source of trafficked weapons both to established criminal groups in Mexico
and emerging organizations in Haiti and Trinidad .

VIII. AI Integration in Missile and Hypersonic Technologies

In a global thermonuclear war in which ballistic missiles and long-range bombers would
conduct mutually assured destruction on pretty much all parties involved, no matter
which side was crazy enough to start [Link], the fall of the iron curtain and the
transition of the USSR’s warlike, dictatorial communist rule into Russia’s warlike,
dictatorial capitalist rule has left a lot of uncertainty about what capabilities today’s
nuclear powers have, what their defensive technology looks like, and what remaining
and new threats the US may need to prepare [Link] of these new threats that has been
slowly coming to light in recent years is the new generation of hypersonic missiles, and
CNN reports that Russia and China are well ahead of the US in developing this
technology.

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WHAT ARE HYPERSONIC MISSILES?

Hypersonic missiles, as the term applies to recent technology, are vehicles that can
travel at hypersonic speeds, which is 5 times the speed of sound or significantly faster.
Today’s hypersonic missiles fly at much greater speeds than ordinary aircraft, can
potentially enter low earth orbit, and, importantly, can change direction to evade
traditional tracking and anti-missile [Link], since some of the new
hypersonic weapons “breathe” air, using scramjet or hydrocarbon-explosion-pulse
engines, they don’t need to utilize solid or liquid rocket fuel with self-contained
oxidizers, and can be launched by smaller, lighter rockets or dropped from other
aircraft. Reuters reported in October 2021 the “first official U.S. confirmation of a
Chinese hypersonic weapons test that military experts say appears to show Beijing's
pursuit of an Earth-orbiting system designed to evade American missile defenses.”The
intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) has been the mainstay of the world’s nuclear
arsenals since 1957 with the USSR’s first design and successful launch, and 1959 with
the US’s. All current ICBMs in the world’s arsenals are hypersonic, reaching speeds of
up to 15,000 mph at their maximum velocity. The nuclear payload that can be delivered
by a single ICBM has grown from frightening to truly horrifying over the intervening
years, with the development of the MIRV (multiple independently targetable reentry
vehicle) design that allows a single ICBM to carry and deliver up to 14
[Link], while those warheads can be individually targeted within certain
limits, the missile and warheads utilize a free-flight ballistic flight path that can be
mathematically predicted once begun and the warheads are released. This characteristic
makes it theoretically possible to build defensive systems capable of targeting and
destroying the missile and/or MIRV warhead before impact, though it is extremely
complicated and expensive to do [Link] new types of hypersonic missiles don’t fly as fast
as an ICBM, but are much lighter, smaller, and more [Link] May 2022, CNBC
reported that China had tested a new hypersonic missile with an engine “powered by
low-cost hydrocarbon fuel explosions and it achieved stable operation during a
simulated hypersonic test flight.”The report also said that China was “trying to create a
hypersonic weapon that will be capable of hitting a moving target while moving at five
times the speed of sound. such a weapon will need to successfully track and zero in on
the target at high speeds and the current thermal tracking systems are incapable of
doing that. But they seem to have found a solution by taking the help of motion sensors
to create a full image keeping all the variables in mind.”The US, Russia, China, and
India have all developed and tested hypersonic weapons, according to the report, as well
as possibly North Korea.

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DF-17 (DONG FENG-17)

China carried out the first flight-tests of a new kind of ballistic missile with a hypersonic
glide vehicle (HGV) in November, According to a U.S. government source who described
recent intelligence assessments on the People’s LiberationArmy Rocket Force (PLARF)
on the condition of anonymity, China recently conducted two tests of a new missile
known as the [Link] first test took place on November 1 and the second test took
place on November 15. The November 1 test was the first Chinese ballistic missile test to
take place after the conclusion of the first plenum of the Communist Party of China’s
19th Party Congress in [Link] the November 1 test flight, which took place
from the Jiuquan Space Launcher Center in Inner Mongolia, the missile’s payload flew
to a range of approximately 1,400 kilometers with the HGV flying at a depressed altitude
of around 60 kilometers following the completion of the DF-17’s ballistic and reentry
[Link] begin flight after separating from their ballistic missile boosters, which
follow a standard ballistic trajectory to give the payload vehicle sufficient [Link]
of the U.S. intelligence community assess that the DF-17 is a medium-range
system, with a range capability between 1,800 and 2,500 kilometers. The
missile is expected to be capable of delivering both nuclear and conventional
payloads and may be capable of being configured to deliver a maneuverable
reentry vehicle instead of an [Link] of the missile’s flight time during the
November 1 flight test was powered by the HGV during the glide phase, The
missile successfully made impact at a site in Xinjiang Province, outside Qiemo,
“within meters” of the intended target, the source added. The duration of the
HGV’s flight was nearly 11 minutes during that [Link] HGV payload that
China tested in November was specifically designed for the DF-17, while
noting that parts of the U.S. intelligence community assess that the DF-17 is
heavily based on the PLARF’s DF-16B short-range ballistic missile, which is
already deployed.“The missile is explicitly designed for operational HGV
implementation and not as a test bed,” the source said, describing U.S.
intelligence assessments of the DF-17. This was “the first HGV test in the
world using a system intended to be fielded operationally,” tThe DF-17, per
current U.S. intelligence assessments, is expected to reach initial operating
capability around 2020.

“Although hypersonic glide vehicles and missiles flying non-ballistic trajectories were
first proposed as far back as World War II, technological advances are only now making
these systems practicable,” Vice Admiral James Syring, director of the U.S. Missile
Defense Agency, remarked in June, before the U.S. House Armed Services

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[Link] these missiles, China has conducted seven known tests of

experimental hypersonic glide vehicles. These tests took place between 2014 and
[Link] of the DF-17, the first missile designed for the operational deployment of an
HGV with the PLARF followed the first ever appearance of a physical hypersonic glider
test object in Chinese state media in October.

It’s unclear if the object bears any relation to the tested DF-17, In addition to China, the
United States and Russia are also developing hypersonic glider technology, but neither
country is known to have flight-tested a system in a configuration intended for
operational deployment to [Link] gliders, by virtue of their low-altitude flight,
present challenges to existing radar sensor technology enabling missile defenses. By
flying at a low altitude instead of reentering from a much higher apogee on a ballistic
trajectory, adversary radars would detect HGVs with less time for an interception to take
place before the payload can reach its target. HGVs, however, are considerably slower in
the final stages of their flight than most reentry vehicles on a ballistic trajectory. This
may leave them vulnerable to interception by advanced terminal point defense systems.
In a report detailing new ballistic and cruise missile threats to the U.S. released this
year, the U.S. National Air and Space Intelligence Center observed that “Hypersonic
glide vehicles delivered by ballistic missile boosters are an emerging threat that will pose
new challenges to missile defense systems.”

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AVANGARD
President Vladimir Putin announced the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle in 2018,
saying it was a response to U.S. development of a new generation of weapons and a U.S.
missile defence system that it could [Link] it approaches its target, the Avangard
glide vehicle detaches from the rocket and is able to manoeuvre sharply outside the
trajectory of the rocket at hypersonic speeds of up to 27 times the speed of sound (about
21,000 miles per hour or 34,000 kilometres per hour).

The 'Zvezda' television channel owned by the Russian defence ministry showed a
ballistic missile being transported to a launch silo, slowly raised into vertical position
and then lowered into a shaft in the Orenburg region near [Link] installed
its first Avangard-equipped missile in 2019 at the same Orenburg [Link] and the
United States, by far the biggest nuclear powers, have both expressed regret about the
steady disintegration of arms-control treaties which sought to slow the Cold War arms
race and reduce the risk of nuclear [Link] the United States, Russia and China are
developing a range of new weapons systems, including hypersonic [Link] United
States casts China as its biggest competitor and Russia as its biggest nation-state threat,
while U.S. President Joe Biden argues that this century will be defined by an existential
contest with between democracies and [Link] says the post-Cold War
dominance of the United States is crumbling and that Washington has for years sown
chaos across the planet while ignoring the interests of other [Link] is
composed of a high-performance ballistic missile and an HGV to maneuver and engage
with ground targets at hypersonic speed. The HGV can reportedly be integrated as a
multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicle (MIRV) with the Russian Strategic
Rocket Forces’ RS-18B/UR-100UTTKh (NATO Reporting Name: SS-19 Stiletto Mod 3),
R-36M2 Voevoda (SS-18 Satan Mod 5/6), and RS-28 Sarmat (SS-X-30) intercontinental
ballistic missiles (ICBMs). Initially, the UR-100N UTTKh missile will be the carrier of
the strategic weapon and when Sarmat, another ICBM under development, is ready for
operations then it will replace the UR-100N UTTKh.

In December 2018, Russia test-launched Avangard HGV, after which Putin announced
the success of the first flight tests. He further stated that “The Avangard has fully passed
through its test program and will become operational on schedule. The weapon has fully
confirmed its specifications”. According to Putin, Avangard was launched from the
Dombarovskoye Missile Base in the Southern Ural Mountains, flew about 6,000 km,
“maneuvering horizontally and vertically at hypersonic speeds” and managed to reach a
simulated target on the Russian Kamchatka peninsula . A previous test launch of the
Avangard HGV in October 2017 had yielded negative results.

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SS-19 is not a new ICBM system; it was designed in the 1980s. What is new and tested is
the HGV which can also be attached to other ICBMs or space launchers, which upon
re-entry to the atmosphere can fly on an unpredictable trajectory and engage targets at a
maximum speed of Mach 20. Avangard constantly changes its course and altitude as it
flies throughout the atmosphere, attempting to defeat any missile defense system.
Putin said that the vehicle is capable of sharp maneuvers on the way to the target,

making it “absolutely invulnerable to any missile defense system.” Unlike previous

nuclear warheads fitted to ICBMs that follow a predictable trajectory, it is much more
complicated to calculate the spot where HGV can be intercepted. This makes these
systems ideal for short-notice strikes against critical targets, not only strategic assets,
command and control facilities, air and missile defenses but also potentially fleeting
targets, including military or civilian leadership.

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IX). Cybersecurity Threats to Military and Nuclear

Infrastructure

There are a number of vulnerabilities and pathways through which a malicious actor
may infiltrate a nuclear weapons system without a state’s knowledge. Human error,
system failures, design vulnerabilities, and susceptibilities within the supply chain all
represent common security issues in nuclear weapons systems.
Cyberattack methods such as data manipulation, digital jamming and cyber spoofing
could jeopardize the integrity of communication, leading to increased uncertainty in
decision-making.
During peacetime, offensive cyber activities would create a dilemma for a state as it may
not know whether its systems have been the subject of a cyberattack. This unknown
could have implications for military decision-making, particularly for decisions affecting
nuclear weapons deterrence policies.
At times of heightened tension, cyberattacks on nuclear weapons systems could cause an
escalation, which results in their use. Inadvertent nuclear launches could stem from an
unwitting reliance on false information and data. Moreover, a system that is
compromised cannot be trusted in decisionmaking.

For the NPT nuclear-weapon States and India, nuclear powered ballistic missile
submarines constitute a key pillar of nuclear deterrence. This is because their mobility
and stealth ensure their survivability and render them “invulnerable to a surprise first
strike”.100 Some experts have argued that submarine network architectures are
essentially ‘air gapped’; even if this were the case, they would not be insulated from
threat. Cyber operations against either submarines themselves for example, infiltration
during their procurement, operation, or maintenance or their NC3 systems could
directly challenge deterrence capability and credibility; this is exacerbated by the
number of commercial entities involved as suppliers of components and software in
many nuclear-armed States.

The scenario is not far-fetched. A Russian defence contractor linked to the development
of naval submarines was targeted in May 2021 with malware capable of identifying files
of interest and creating longer-term vulnerabilities (there was no indication the malware
succeeded in this instance).Similarly, cyber operations in January 2021 against the
software manufacturing company Solarwinds breached the Los Alamos National
Laboratory, involved in the production of US nuclear weapons (US officials reported no
known impact). Meanwhile, some speculate that the launch order broadcasting systems
used in the submarines of some nuclear armed States could be vulnerable; US internal
tests in the 1990s had gained back-door access to that of Trident submarines. The
uncovering of such operations targeting ballistic missile submarines and related systems

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could undermine the assured retaliatory capability of nuclear-armed States, and in

times of crisis prompt a forceful military response that could drive potential nuclear
escalation. There exist other means through which nuclear armed States have sought to
secure or strengthen their second-strike capability. With an eye towards improving the
“reliability, survivability, and penetrability” of their arsenals, and in response to the
development of conventional precision-strike capabilities, many States have turned to
the deployment of land-based mobile ballistic missiles.106 For the Russian Federation
and China, the importance of such missiles lies in their enhanced survivability in case of
a counterforce attack by an adversary. But through the prism of escalation, these
systems also present entry points especially due to increased digitalization through
which cyber operations could directly drive deterrence failure. The integration of cyber
capabilities with other technologies has already enhanced the ability of States to hunt
down mobile missile systems.108 The possibility may not pose an existential threat for
nuclear- armed States that have achieved true nuclear triads. But for those States whose
deterrent is based on less diverse nuclear arsenals, concerted cyber operations that
threaten their mobile missiles could represent a red line, prompting a decisive response
and in particular circumstances even providing potential justification for considering
nuclear response.A related entry point is the systems that facilitate the ability of States
to preserve their nuclear forces, absorb initial attack, and consequently exercise their
retaliatory capability. These include NC3 and early warning,which as discussed have
been prone to malfunction in the past. Decision makers in some nuclear-armed States
have expressed concerns about the susceptibility of their own systems to cyber
operations. A UK House of Lords Select Committee called for an inquiry into NC3
resilience.

A US classified cybersecurity assessment drove a “significant increase in focus” in the

area, while the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review also noted “considerable [external] effort
to design and use cyber weapons against networked systems”, including NC3. This is
significant, given that current US nuclear doctrine refers specifically to cyber operations
on its NC3 and early warning capabilities as a red line. There already exists evidence
that the classified satellite communications channel of at least one nuclear-armed State
(India) has been previously penetrated by cyber operations. Some experts suggest a
blurry line between electronic and cyberwarfare here, which could expand the spectrum
of escalation possibility especially as some States pursue directed-energy weapons that
can be employed against satellite [Link] ongoing development and potential use of
emerging technologies in nuclear weapons and related systems will create new entry
points for cyber operations.

Nuclear forces are becoming more digitalized and networked, while early warning and
NC3 systems are likely to incorporate more automation and machine learning. Such

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trends impact on vulnerability for instance, the US Department of Defense, in testing its
weapons systems under development, “routinely found mission critical cyber
vulnerabilities” despite utilizing tests “limited in scope and sophistication”; the
document finds especially concerning that the results were sometimes “discounted … as
unrealistic. Already a number of nuclear-armed and nuclear-allied States are deploying
uncrewed vehicles, in air, land, and sea, some tasked with functions central to the
practice of nuclear deterrence, and all of which must be supported by other complex
[Link] Russian Federation has commissioned submarines it plans to equip with
dual capable Poseidon uncrewed underwater vehicles, a strategic system aiming to
strengthen its second strike capability. For its part, the United States has focused its
uncrewed underwater vehicle programme on antisubmarine warfare capabilities: the
role of that force is to “hold the adversary’s strategic assets at risk from the undersea.”
Such autonomous naval systems rely on data (including in navigation) that can be
susceptible to sophisticated attacks. The fact that these will be considered “prime
targets” for cyber operations underlines the possibility of deterrence failure stemming
from direct cybernuclear interactions that are likely to increase

X). Ethical and Humanitarian Implications of Autonomous Warfare

The deployment of autonomous weapons systems raises profound ethical questions

about human dignity and the moral implications of delegating lethal decision-making to
machines. The concept of human dignity, central to both international humanitarian law
and broader ethical frameworks, demands that human life be treated with inherent
respect and value. “the delegation of lethal decision-making to autonomous systems
potentially represents a fundamental affront to human dignity by removing human
moral judgment from the ultimate decision to take a life.” This concern reflects what
Amoroso and Tamburrini identify as the ‘meaningful human control’ argument: certain
decisions, particularly those involving lethal force, require human moral agency to
preserve dignity and respect for human life. This argument suggests that even
technically perfect autonomous targeting would remain ethically problematic because it
removes the moral deliberation that acknowledges the gravity of human life. As
Blanchard observes, “the act of killing without human moral consideration may
constitute a form of objectification that denies the victim’s humanity.” Proponents of
autonomous weapons systems counter that concerns about human dignity must be
balanced against potential humanitarian [Link] that if autonomous systems
can reduce civilian casualties through superior discrimination capabilities, prohibiting
their use might constitute an ethical failure. This consequentialist perspective prioritizes
the outcomes over the moral character of the decision-making process. However, as
Human Rights notes, “this approach risks reducing human dignity to a purely

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consequentialist calculation, neglecting its deontological dimensions.” The tension

between deontological concerns about the process of lethal decision-making and
consequentialist assessments of outcomes reflects deeper philosophical questions about
the nature of human dignity. The Martens Clause of the Hague Conventions, which
references “the principles of humanity and the dictates of public conscience,” provides a
legal anchor for these ethical considerations within international humanitarian law .
This clause suggests that ethical concerns about autonomous weapons cannot be
dismissed as merely philosophical abstractions, but constitute relevant legal
considerations. Cultural and religious perspectives further complicate the ethical
landscapes. Different traditions hold different views on the moral significance of human
agency in lethal decisions. Some religious frameworks emphasize human moral
responsibility as divinely ordained and non-delegable, while others focus more on
outcomes regardless of the decision-making process . These diverse perspectives
highlight the importance of inclusive global dialogue in the ethical dimensions of
autonomous weapons systems.
The principle of distinction, which requires belligerents to differentiate between
combatants and civilians, presents significant challenges when applied to autonomous
weapons systems. As codified in Article 48 of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva
Conventions, this principle constitutes “the foundation on which the codification of the
laws and customs of war rests’ . The fundamental question is whether autonomous
systems possess sufficient technical capability to make nuanced discrimination that
human combatants are legally required to perform. Current sensor and algorithmic
technologies demonstrate both promise and limitations in this regard. Computer vision
systems have achieved remarkable accuracy in certain controlled environments but
continue to face challenges in complex, dynamic battlefield scenarios . observe, “the
unpredictable and chaotic nature of armed conflict environments creates significant
obstacles for reliable target identification by autonomous systems.” Contextual
understanding distinguishing a civilian holding a weapon in self-defense from an active
combatant, for example remains particularly problematic for algorithmic
decision-making. The legal standard for distinction does not require perfect
discrimination, but rather reasonable precautions based on available information.
argued that autonomous weapons must be evaluated against this standard rather than
an idealized notion of perfect distinction. From this perspective, the relevant question is
whether an autonomous system can achieve discrimination capabilities comparable to
those of human combatants under similar circumstances. Some scholars have suggested
that advanced sensor fusion and machine learning algorithms may eventually surpass
human capabilities in certain targeting scenarios. However, counters that “the
distinction principle encompasses qualitative judgments that extend beyond pattern
recognition to include contextual understanding and normative reasoning.” This
position suggests that even technologically advanced autonomous systems may struggle

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to fulfill the legal requirements of distinction in complex operational environments. The

human capacity to interpret ambiguous situations through cultural understanding and
contextual knowledge represents a significant advantage over algorithmic approaches.
State practices reflect these tensions, with major military powers adopting various
positions. The Directive 3000.09 requires autonomous weapons to “distinguish
effectively between military and non-military targets,” while acknowledging that this
capability must be verified through “appropriate levels of human judgment.” Similarly,
the United Kingdom’s approach emphasizes that autonomous systems must be “capable
of being used in accordance with IHL,” including the distinction requirement

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XI). Past UN Action And Applicable International Law

1).Convention on certain conventional Weapons(CCW)
The Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional
Weapons Which May Be Deemed to Be Excessively Injurious or to Have Indiscriminate
Effects as amended on 21 December 2001, usually referred to as the Convention on
Certain Conventional Weapons is a key international humanitarian law instrument. Its
purpose is to ban or restrict the use of specific types of weapons that are considered to
cause unnecessary or unjustifiable suffering to combatants or to affect civilians
indiscriminately.
1 Protocol I - Non Detectable Fragments

Prohibits the use of any weapon designed to injure by fragments which cannot be
detected in the human body by X-rays.

2 Amend Protocol II - Mines,traps and Other Devices amended on 3 May 1996

Prohibits the use of nondetectable anti-personnel mines and their transfer, and
prohibits the use of non-self-destructing and non-self-deactivating mines outside
fenced, monitored and marked areas. Seeks to limit the indiscriminate damage caused
by landmines and requires High Contracting Parties to take all feasible precautions to
protect civilians when using these weapons. Amended Protocol II is the only
legally-binding instrument which covers Improvised Explosive Devices (IED). A limited
number of State Parties are still party to Original Protocol II.

3 Protocol III - Incendiary Weapons

Prohibits the use of weapons primarily designed to set fire to objects or cause burn
injuries against civilians.

4 Protocol IV - Blinding Laser Weapons

Prohibits the use and transfer of laser weapons designed to cause permanent blindness.

5 Protocol V - Explosive Remnants Of War

Prevents and minimizes the humanitarian impact of unexploded ordnance and

abandoned explosive weapons. Includes provisions on clearance and destruction of
ERW, measures for the protection of civilians, recording the use of explosive ordnance,
international cooperation and assistance, and victim assistance.

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2).UNGA Resolution 78/241

In paragraph 2 of its resolution 78/241 on lethal autonomous weapons

systems,
the General Assembly requested the Secretary-General to seek the views of
Member States and observer States on lethal autonomous weapons systems,
inter alia, on ways to address the related challenges and concerns that they
raised from humanitarian, legal, security, technological and ethical
perspectives and on the role of humans in the use of force, and to submit a
substantive report reflecting the full range of views received with an annex
containing those views, to the Assembly at its seventy-ninth session for further
discussion by Member States. In paragraph 3 of the same resolution, the
Assembly also requested the Secretary-General to invite the views of
international and regional organizations, the International Committee of the
Red Cross, civil society, the scientific community and industry and to include
those views in the original language received in the annex of the
aforementioned report. The present report is submitted pursuant to those
requests.
On 1 February 2024, the Office for Disarmament Affairs sent a note verbale to

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all Member States and observer States, drawing their attention to paragraph 2
of General Assembly resolution 78/241 and seeking their views on the matter.
Notes, verbales and letters were also sent to the entities specified in paragraph
3 of the same resolution, drawing their attention to that paragraph and
seeking their views on the matter. The views received by 25 May 2024 are
reproduced in the annexes to the present report. Any views received after that
date will be posted on the website of the Office in the original language of
submission. Sections II to VI of the present report provide a consolidated
summary of elements from the submissions received from Member States and
observer States, without prejudice to their individual positions. The
observations and conclusions of the Secretary General are set out in section
[Link] noted that rapid technological processes, including artificial
intelligence, could drive economic growth, improve human well-being and help to
achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. At the same time, emerging
technologies could also pose challenges for international peace and security and
raise questions about the role of humans in war. States considered that the
unique challenges that lethal autonomous weapons systems posed required
particular [Link] noted that there was currently no internationally
agreed definition of autonomous weapons systems or lethal autonomous
weapons systems. Several States noted that agreement on a definition or general
characterization could be useful for future work. They noted that such an
agreement could be reached when formulating specific prohibitions, for example
in the course of negotiating on a legally binding instrument. Several States
expressed the view that an exact definition was not required to make progress
and begin negotiations on a legally binding instrument. In their submissions,
States variously referred to “autonomous weapons systems” and “lethal
autonomous weapons systems”. Some States considered the word “lethal” to be
an important reference to a system’s capability to apply lethal force. Others were
of the view that the lethality of a weapons system depended on its use rather than
on its design. Several States argued against the use of the word “lethal”, stating
that it had no basis in international humanitarian law and noting, inter alia, that
lethality was an effect of the manner in which a weapon was used. It was also
noted that the non-lethal use of force could also lead to violations of international
humanitarian law. In the present report, in accordance with the terminology of
General Assembly resolution 78/241, the term “lethal autonomous weapons
systems” is used without prejudice to the preference of States regarding its use.

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XII). Role of Private Technology Corporations in Military Innovation

1).[Link]
AirScan Inc. was formed in 1984 by former US Air Commandos Walter Holloway and
John Mansur with high standards of recruitment. They have been specializing in
airborne surveillance , security operations, surveillance systems, wildlife surveys and
training since 1989. They are one of the few companies able to operate unmanned aerial
vehicles They most recently won a $10 million contract from the coalition provisional
authority to provide aerial surveillance of the pipelines protected by Erinys
international [Link] are rather secretive about many of their operations, choosing to
remain vague, citing privacy, and speak mostly about their infrared deer surveys and
polar bear trackings.
On December 13, 1998, AirScan misidentified the village of Santo Domingo as a hostile
guerrilla target, leading to a cluster bomb attack by Colombian Air Force units which
killed eighteen civilians, including nine children. While the AirScan aircraft was in the
vicinity, and deserved the action by the Colombian Air Force they were not involved in
the operation. Three employees of AirScan were flying the skymaster plane from which
they provided the Colombian military with the coordinates to drop the bombs. The
operation had been planned at Occidental's complex in Caño Limón by the CAF and
AirScan.

AirScan is one of the named defendants in the lawsuit Galvis Mujica v. Occidental
Petroleum, et al. filed April 23, 2003, in the US District Court in Los Angeles The suit
was filed by the Washington D.C based international Labour Rights Fund and is based
on the Alien Tort Claims Act . The AirScan employees, Arthur McClintock, Jose Orta,
and Charlie Denny have disappeared and their location remains unknown. The Coast
Guard is investigating whether Orta, who was allegedly flying the plane, was a military
officer on active duty at the Coast Guard at the time. AirScan has denied any
responsibility for the events.

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2) Wagner Group

The Wagner Group officially known as PMC Wagner is a Russian state-funded private
military company (PMC) that was controlled until 2023 by yevgeny prigozhin, a former
close ally of Russia's president vladimir putin, and since then by pavel prigozhinThe
Wagner Group has used infrastructure of the Russian Armed Forces Evidence suggests
that Wagner has been used as a proxy by the Russian government, allowing it to have
plausible deniability for military operations abroad, and hiding the true casualties of
Russia's foreign interventions.

The group emerged during the war in Donbas where it helped Russian separatist forces
in Ukraine from 2014 to 2015. Wagner played a significant role in the later full-scale
Russian invasion of Ukraine, for which it recruited Russian prison inmates for frontline
combat. By the end of 2022, its strength in Ukraine had grown from 1,000 to between
20,000 and 50,000. It was reportedly Russia's main assault force in the battle of
bakhmut Wagner has also supported regimes friendly with Russia, including in the civil
wars in syria,libya,central African Republic and Mali in Africa it has offered regimes
security in exchange for the transfer of diamond- and gold-mining contracts to Russian
[Link] Wagner members, including its alleged co-founder Dmitry Utkin have
been linked to the far right , and the unit has been accused of war crimes including
murder, torture, rape and robbery of civilians, as well as torturing and killing accused
deserters.

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Case Studies

1)​. CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS (1962)

The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 was a direct and dangerous confrontation between
the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War and was the moment when the
two superpowers came closest to nuclear conflict. The crisis was unique in a number of
ways, featuring calculations and miscalculations as well as direct and secret
communications and miscommunications between the two sides. The dramatic crisis was
also characterized by the fact that it was primarily played out at the White House and the
Kremlin level with relatively little input from the respective bureaucracies typically involved
in the foreign policy process.

After the failed U.S. attempt to overthrow the Castro regime in Cuba with the Bay of Pigs
invasion, and while the Kennedy administration planned Operation Mongoose, in July 1962
Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev reached a secret agreement with Cuban premier Fidel
Castro to place Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba to deter any future invasion attempt.
Construction of several missile sites began in the late summer, but U.S. intelligence
discovered evidence of a general Soviet arms build up on Cuba, including Soviet IL–28
bombers, during routine surveillance flights, and on September 4, 1962, President Kennedy
issued a public warning against the introduction of offensive weapons into Cuba. Despite
the warning, on October 14 a U.S. U2 aircraft took several pictures clearly showing sites for

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medium range and intermediate range ballistic nuclear missiles (MRBMs and IRBMs)
under construction in Cuba. These images were processed and presented to the White
House the next day, thus precipitating the onset of the Cuban Missile CrisisOn October 24,
Khrushchev responded to Kennedy’s message with a statement that the U.S. “blockade” was
an “act of aggression” and that Soviet ships bound for Cuba would be ordered to proceed.
Nevertheless, during October 24 and 25, some ships turned back from the quarantine line;
others were stopped by U.S. naval forces, but they contained no offensive weapons and so
were allowed to proceed. Meanwhile, U.S. reconnaissance flights over Cuba indicated the
Soviet missile sites were nearing operational readiness. With no apparent end to the crisis in
sight, U.S. forces were placed at DEFCON 2 meaning war involving the Strategic Air
Command was imminent. On October 26, Kennedy told his advisors it appeared that only a
U.S. attack on Cuba would remove the missiles, but he insisted on giving the diplomatic
channel a little more time. The crisis had reached a virtual [Link] afternoon,
however, the crisis took a dramatic turn. ABC News correspondent John Scali reported to
the White House that he had been approached by a Soviet agent suggesting that an
agreement could be reached in which the Soviets would remove their missiles from Cuba if
the United States promised not to invade the island. While White House staff scrambled to
assess the validity of this “back channel” offer, Khrushchev sent Kennedy a message the
evening of October 26, which meant it was sent in the middle of the night Moscow time. It
was a long, emotional message that raised the specter of nuclear holocaust, and presented a
proposed resolution that remarkably resembled what Scali reported earlier that day. “If
there is no intention,” he said, “to doom the world to the catastrophe of thermonuclear war,
then let us not only relax the forces pulling on the ends of the rope, let us take measures to
untie that knot. We are ready for this.”

Although U.S. experts were convinced the message from Khrushchev was authentic, hope
for a resolution was short lived. The next day, October 27, Khrushchev sent another message
indicating that any proposed deal must include the removal of U.S. Jupiter missiles from
Turkey. That same day a U.S. U–2 reconnaissance jet was shot down over Cuba. Kennedy
and his advisors prepared for an attack on Cuba within days as they searched for any
remaining diplomatic resolution. It was determined that Kennedy would ignore the second
Khrushchev message and respond to the first one. That night, Kennedy set forth in his
message to the Soviet leader proposed steps for the removal of Soviet missiles from Cuba
under supervision of the United Nations, and a guarantee that the United States would not
attack [Link] was a risky move to ignore the second Khrushchev message. Attorney General
Robert Kennedy then met secretly with Soviet Ambassador to the United States, Anatoly
Dobrynin, and indicated that the United States was planning to remove the Jupiter missiles
from Turkey anyway, and that it would do so soon, but this could not be part of any public
resolution of the missile crisis. The next morning, October 28, Khrushchev issued a public
statement that Soviet missiles would be dismantled and removed from Cuba.

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The crisis was over but the naval quarantine continued until the Soviets agreed to remove their
IL–28 bombers from Cuba and, on November 20, 1962, the United States ended its quarantine.
U.S. Jupiter missiles were removed from Turkey in April 1963.

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2). Russia VS Ukraine(2022-2026)

Ukraine was a cornerstone of the Soviet Union, the archrival of the United States during the
Cold War. Behind only Russia, it was the second-most-populous and -powerful of the fifteen
Soviet republics, home to much of the union’s agricultural production, defense industries, and
military, including the Black Sea Fleet and some of the nuclear arsenal. Ukraine was so vital to
the union that its decision to sever ties in 1991 proved to be a coup de grâce for the ailing
superpower.

In its three decades of independence, Ukraine has sought to forge its own path as a sovereign
state while looking to align more closely with Western institutions, including the EU and NATO.
However, Kyiv struggled to balance its foreign relations and to bridge deep internal division . A
more nationalist, Ukrainian-speaking population in western parts of the country generally
supported greater integration with Europe, while a mostly Russian-speaking community in the
east favored closer ties with [Link] 21 February 2022, President Putin officially recognised the
self-declared independence of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and Luhansk People’s Republic
(LPR), the regions of eastern Ukraine (the Donbas) that have been under the control of Russian-backed
separatist forces since [Link] of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance were subsequently
signed with the leaders of those regions and Russian forces were deployed under the guise of
peacekeeping operations. Three days later, on 24 February, President Putin announced that Russia, acting
in self-defence and in accordance with the Treaties of Friendship, was launching a special military
operation in Ukraine. Russian forces crossed into the country from Belarus in the north, Russia in the east
and Crimea in the South. The purpose of the operation, he said, was to protect the people of the Donbas
from “humiliation and genocide perpetrated by the Kiev regime” and to “demilitarise and de nazify
Ukraine”. The Kremlin denied, however, that it was planning to occupy Ukrainian territory or “to impose
anything on anyone by force”. The move came after months of diplomacy aimed at averting a crisis and
despite Russian insistence that it had no plans to invade Ukraine. The Kremlin had previously said that its
build up of forces on Ukraine’s borders was in response to provocative actions by NATO At the end of
September 2022, Russian-backed authorities in Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia
called urgent referendums on joining Russia, even though those regions were not totally under
Russian control.

It was Ukraine’s ties with the EU that brought tensions to a head with Russia in 2013–14. In late
2013, President Yanukovych, acting under pressure from his supporters in Moscow, scrapped
plans to formalize a closer economic relationship with the EU. Russia had at the same time been
pressing Ukraine to join the not-yet-formed EAEU. Many Ukrainians perceived Yanukovych’s
decision as a betrayal by a deeply corrupt and incompetent government, and it ignited
countrywide protests known as Euromaidan. Putin framed the ensuing tumult of Euromaidan,
which forced Yanukovych from power, as a Western-backed “fascist coup” that endangered the
ethnic Russian majority in Crimea. In response, Putin ordered a covert invasion of Crimea that
he later justified as a rescue operation. “There is a limit to everything. And with Ukraine, our
western partners have crossed the line,” Putin said in a march 2014 address formalizing the

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annexation. Putin employed a similar narrative to justify his support for separatists in
southeastern Ukraine, another region home to large numbers of ethnic Russians and Russian
speakers. He famously referred to the area as Novorossiya (New Russia), a term dating back to
eighteenth-century imperial Russia. Armed Russian provocateurs, including some agents of
Russian security services, are believed to have played a central role in stirring the
anti-Euromaidan secessionist movements in the region into a rebellion. However, unlike
Crimea, Russia continued to officially deny its involvement in the Donbas conflict until it
launched its wider invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

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CONCLUSION

These show how much warfare has changed in recent years. What once revolved mainly
around nuclear deterrence has now expanded into areas like artificial intelligence,
hypersonic missiles, autonomous weapons, and cyber threats. Technology is no longer
just supporting military strategy, it is shaping it. While these advancements promise
greater speed, precision, and efficiency, they also create new uncertainties. Nuclear
modernisation and vulnerabilities in cyber infrastructure remind us that strategic
stability is becoming more complex and, in some ways, more fragile than before.

At the same time, the growing use of AI and autonomous systems raises serious ethical
and humanitarian questions. Issues like meaningful human control, accountability, and
the role of private technology companies show that modern warfare is not only a
military concern but also a moral and political one. As innovation continues to move
faster than regulation, it becomes clear that global cooperation, responsible governance,
and thoughtful decision-making are essential. Progress in defense technology must go
hand in hand with a commitment to protecting human values and maintaining
international peace and security.

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DOCUMENTATION GUIDE
1.​ Position Paper

Committee - United Nations Security Council

Agenda - Discussing the Conflict of Armenia-Azerbaijan with Special emphasis on
Nagorno-Karabakh
Portfolio - The French Republic (République française in French)
School - _____________
Delegate Name - ____________

The Republic of Azerbaijan and Armenia have engaged in an armed conflict ever since
the late 1980s in the southern part of Caucasus. This is marked by the armed struggle
in 2020, the recent struggles in the year 2023, and the region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
The socio-political situation that has emerged socio,
ethnical, and cultural over the years has resulted in civilizational destruction, exile,
and the breeding of humanitarian crises. Putting territorial boundaries aside, the
region is a commingled hotspot of ancient civilizations, multi-ethnic nations, cultures,
social structures, languages, belief systems, and traditions.

The OSCE Minsk Group and the UN have tried multiple times to veil the struggle
through diplomacy and protecting human life. Providing sovereignty, the borders of
domination, aggressing in the will affiliated with channeling balance becomes
innocuous of human dignity and restrain precondition of humanity. France, belonging
to the Co-Chairs of the OSCE alongside the French Republic, stating themselves under
law showcases the need for guiding policies.

The conflict has gravely impacted the regional equilibrium from a political point of
view as continuous violations of the ceasefire are escalating the threat to world peace.

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The bilateral ties between the nations Armenia and Azerbaijan are at an all-time low
due to constant external interference from global players. France, today, stands for a
resumption of diplomatic talks based on shared beliefs of mutual
recognition and respect for international law as cultural conflicts often spiral into
ethnic conflicts which are a huge burden and travesty for humanity at large. France
calls for the need to promote settlement plans, cultural sites, and displaced people.

The use of drones and cyber warfare has shown that this conflict has evolved
militarily, raising concerns about the use of deadly weaponry and the risks of higher
civilian casualties.

In a nutshell, France is convinced that peace will always prevail over war. Humans
should be able to live in peace, without fear, without losing their homes, and without
violence. We cannot continue to have history repeat the same suffering. France invites
all countries to unite, not to take sides, but to save lives. This is not about territory, it
is about humanity. It's time to end the violence, to begin the conversation, and to
create a future where no child ever has to listen to the rumbles of war.

Let this be the generation that decides upon peace rather than power, unity instead of
division, and
hope instead of hate. France is prepared, the world should be too.

Thank you,
The delegate of France

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2. Presidential Statement

Presidential Statement

Agenda: Addressing the Global Refugee Crisis Caused by Cross-Border Transgressions and

Conflicts

The United States of America

Whitehouse, Oval Office

Date: 21 June 2025

President, esteemed delegates,

The United States addresses this chamber not as an observer of the conflict. But as the nation
practicing principle and burdened with duty. From the wasteland left where once was a
thriving country to the terrorised city of Gaza. Yemen’s starving children to the unheard voices
of Iranian civilians, this refugee crisis is not an accident. It’s the conclusion of a plot of cross
border transgressions fueled by extremists, proxy militias and overall imbeciles. Last night,
the United States launched targeted, and proportional air strikes on Iranian nuclear
infrastructure facilities used not for clean energy however to shield its military campaign to
proclaim military grade uranium. Leading to greater regional [Link] has traded
warfare under the pseudo of hezbollah and the Houthis, alleged of funding Hamas operations
too. Where, human rights are barely a word with any definition where accountability is unseen
just as a child lost under the tremor of their operations. So let this air strike, a declaration that
we are not bystanders, were opposers of such practices. The United States reaffirms its
commitment to international law, refugee protection, and the sovereignty of nations. But
sovereignty is not a license to destroy neighboring peoples. The nation will stand to lead not
with arms, but with asylum, aid and diplomacy. We stand committed, we propose to build
refugee shelters in Puerto Rico and repurpose abandoned prison facilities, after refurbishing
them to meet basic human [Link] you

.President of the United States of America

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3. Working Paper

Working Paper 1.0

Committee-_______________
Agenda-__________________
Authors- _________________
Signatories- ______________

PREAMBLE

We, the Leaders of the Summit , reaffirm our commitment to having collectively
resolved consensus after multifaceted deliberation on “building a stronger and more
reliable healthcare infrastructure,to aid recovery and prevention against pandemics”
to constitute multiple committees, partnerships and securing to all global citizens an
equitable global health infrastructure. Ensuring that all people, regardless of their
circumstances, have access to quality healthcare. In the________________, we do
hereby adopt, enact and give to ourselves this declaration.

1.​ World Pandemic Response Network:

An international monitoring and alert system will be set up to identify pathogens
through biosensors within a week. Countries with robust trade capacities will support
resource and information sharing, providing advanced port systems for transport.
Wealthy nations will offer essential resources and monetary support to less affluent
countries. Healthcare professionals in G20 nations will undergo routine training in
crisis management to uphold international humanitarian laws safeguarding
fundamental human rights.

2.​ Digitalization of Healthcare and its infrastructure:

We commit the monitoring of cases through telemedicine. With the help of the same,
we commit caring of patients even during curfews & lockdowns through online
services. For the purpose of transparency and accountability, each G20 member will
aid other countries by sharing their experience and issues with other countries for
solutions.

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3.​ Fostering Innovation and Ethical Healthcare Practices:

Establishing a Global Health healthcare solutions for global health ensuring
challenges, prioritising funding for LMIC research facilities. Ideally funded by HIC's,
the program focuses on digital health technologies, biotechnological advancements,
and sustainable healthcare infrastructure. The goal is to improve access to care and
health outcomes through telemedicine, AI-driven diagnostics, gene editing,
personalized medicine, and vaccine development. Additionally, promoting sustainable
healthcare facilities with renewable energy and climate resilience. The initiative is
guided by an International Code of Ethics for Healthcare Innovation.

4.​ Establishing a Public Private Partnership to increase transparency among the

two sectors:
In order to achieve the SDGs and guarantee ethical healthcare, a collaboration
between the government and private sector will be established. In accordance with
Section 135 of the Companies Act, a group will oversee and document corporate social
responsibility (CSR) contributions from the private sector according to their profit
margins. Corporations in the 2%-5% range are eligible, with tax cuts for those
surpassing the threshold. This method advocates for transparent communication,
decentralization, social well-being, and ethical norms.

Conclusion
We reiterate our commitment to the sustainable growth and development of
healthcare. The G20 recognises healthcare as a universal right that shall not be
compromised, which it reaffirms through the reforms under the declaration above. We
are committed to building a safer and more reliable healthcare system.

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4. Press Release

PRESS RELEASE
Committee- UNEP

Author - Delegate of India

Agenda- Addressing Global Warming and Climate Action

The Delegation of India reaffirms its unwavering commitment to combating global warming through
equitable, sustainable, and science-driven climate action. Climate change remains one of the most
pressing challenges of our time, disproportionately affecting developing nations despite their
historically lower contributions to greenhouse gas emissions.

India emphasizes the principle of Common But Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective
Capabilities (CBDR-RC)as enshrined in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Any global climate framework must reflect historical accountability and ensure climate justice for the
Global South.

India has demonstrated leadership through ambitious initiatives, including its updated Nationally
Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement. The nation has committed to achieving
net-zero emissions by 2070 and significantly expanding its renewable energy capacity.

Through the establishment of the International Solar Alliance, India has mobilized global partnerships
to promote clean energy access, particularly for developing countries. Furthermore, India advocates for
increased climate finance, technology transfer, and capacity-building support from developed nations
to ensure a just transition.

The Delegation of India calls upon all Member States to:

1.​ Accelerate the transition to renewable energy sources.

2.​ Fulfill climate finance commitments exceeding USD 100 billion annually.
3.​ Promote sustainable consumption and production patterns.
4.​ Invest in climate-resilient infrastructure in vulnerable regions.

India believes that environmental responsibility must align with economic development and poverty
eradication. Sustainable growth, green innovation, and multilateral cooperation remain the
cornerstones of effective global climate governance.

The Delegation stands ready to collaborate constructively with all nations to secure a resilient,
sustainable, and equitable future for generations to come.

“Climate justice is not a choice; it is an obligation.”

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5. Communique

Communique
To: Crisis/Backroom
From: Vladimir Putin

Communique to Chinese President [who is not part of the committee]

In the light of recent developments,

Mr. President, I would like to strike an arms trade agreement with
you. I would like to order 65 new Chinese fighter aircrafts for the sum of
$200 billion. I would also like to request your aid when we launch our
invasion of Japan.

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6. Draft Resolution

Draft Resolution 1.0

Committee: environmental policy and climate agreements

Agenda: policy framing: policy framing for climate adaptation and moderation or
mitigation

Sponsors: The Kingdom of Belgium and The Commonwealth of Australia

Signatories: Republic of Indonesia, Republic of the Philippines, Republic of India,

State of Japan, French Republic, Republic of Türkiye, Federal Republic of Germany,
United States of America, Republic of Indonesia, Argentine Republic,, Ukraine,
Republic of Singapore, Federal Republic of Germany, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan

Preambulatory clauses

Recognizing the urgent and pressing need for comprehensive strategies to address the
multifaceted impacts of climate change on our most vulnerable communities and
precious ecosystems, which are at risk of irreversible damage

Acknowledging the commitments made under the Paris Agreement, where nations
came together to limit global warming and enhance our collective ability to adapt to
changing climates

Emphasizing the importance of integrating climate considerations into national

development plans and policies, ensuring that our pursuit of economic growth does
not come at the expense of our environment or future generations

Recalling previous resolutions that highlight the necessity of providing financial

support to developing countries, which often bear the brunt of climate impacts despite
contributing the least to the problem, to ensure the security of the funds urging UN
based anonymous organisations for security of funds given by the

Noting the critical role of technology transfer and capacity building as essential
components in empowering nations to effectively mitigate climate change effects and
adapt to its realities

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Deeply concerned about the disproportionate impact of climate change on

marginalized populations, including women, children, indigenous peoples, and
low-income communities, who often lack the resources to adapt

Highlighting the importance of scientific research and indigenous knowledge in

developing effective climate adaptation strategies that respect local traditions and
practices

Affirming that climate change is a global challenge that requires a united response,
transcending national borders and necessitating cooperation among all nations,
regardless of their level of development

Recognizing the significant economic opportunities presented by a transition to a

green economy, which can create jobs, foster innovation, and promote sustainable
development while addressing climate change

Acknowledging the role of youth and future generations as vital stakeholders in

climate action, as they will inherit the consequences of today’s decisions and must be
empowered to lead in creating sustainable solutions

Operative Clauses

1)Calls upon all member states to take meaningful action by developing and
implementing inclusive national adaptation plans that reflect the voices and needs of
local communities, ensuring no one is left behind

2)Encourages the establishment of a dedicated Climate Adaptation Fund, designed

to provide timely financial assistance to those countries most affected by climate
change, helping them build resilience and recover from climate-related disasters

3)Urges each nation to set ambitious yet achievable legally binding greenhouse gas
emission reduction targets, in line with scientific recommendations aimed at limiting
global temperature rise and protecting our planet for future generations

4)Promotes significant investments in renewable energy technologies and

infrastructure, paving the way for a sustainable energy future that reduces our reliance
on fossil fuels and fosters energy independence

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5)Requests the formation of international partnerships for technology transfer,

enabling developing nations to access innovative solutions that enhance their capacity
for climate resilience while fostering sustainable development

6)Advocates for the integration of climate change considerations into all relevant
economic, social, and environmental policies at both national and local levels,
ensuring that our responses are holistic and effective

7)Supports initiatives aimed at raising public awareness and education on climate

change impacts and adaptation strategies, empowering communities to take proactive
steps in safeguarding their environments

8)Calls for regular monitoring and reporting mechanisms that assess progress on
climate commitments, ensuring transparency and accountability among nations as we
work together toward a common goal

9)Encourages collaboration among member states, non-governmental organizations

(NGOs), and the private sector to share best practices in climate adaptation and
mitigation efforts, fostering a spirit of cooperation and shared responsibility

10)Requests the establishment of a global platform for knowledge sharing on

successful climate policies, practices, and innovations that can be replicated across
different contexts, allowing us all to learn from one another’s experiences.

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Questions A Resolution Must Answer

1). Should the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons be

expanded or modernized to address AI-enabled nuclear command, control,
and launch systems?

2).Should the United Nations adopt a legally binding treaty banning fully
autonomous Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS)?

3).Should “meaningful human control” be established as a mandatory

international legal standard for all AI-enabled weapons systems?

4).Should the Conference on Disarmament prioritize negotiations on

AI-driven weapons technologies as an urgent global security issue?

5).Should states prohibit the development and deployment of fully

autonomous nuclear launch systems?

6).Should the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons be amended to

explicitly regulate Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS)?

7).Should international law require transparency, algorithmic auditability,

and confidence-building measures for AI-enabled missile technologies?

8).Should the Missile Technology Control Regime expand export controls to include AI
software and machine-learning components used in missile systems?

9).Should international humanitarian law be revised to clarify accountability for harm

caused by autonomous weapons systems?

10).Should a new international treaty be created specifically to regulate AI-enabled

strategic weapons beyond existing nuclear and conventional arms control agreements?

DISEC 56 RKCMUN’26
 RKCMUN SOCIETY

Bibliography
1.​ Al Jazeera – “Are Killer Robots the Future of War?”​
[Link]
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2.​ United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR) – Artificial
Intelligence in the Military Domain and Its Implications for International Peace
and Security​
[Link]
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map-for-future-policy-action/
3.​ Al Jazeera – “Friend or Foe? Artificial Intelligence and the Military”​
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4.​ The Wall Street Journal – “New Nuclear Arms Race Pits U.S. Against Both Russia
and China”​
[Link]
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5.​ The Wall Street Journal – “Anthropic’s Feud with Pentagon Earns It Fans Amid
the Blowback”​
[Link]
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6.​ The Wall Street Journal – “Anthropic, Amodei, Hegseth and the Debate on AI in
Military Use”​
[Link]
7.​ International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) – Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of
Nuclear Weapons (NPT)​
[Link]
8.​ United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs – Convention on Certain
Conventional Weapons (CCW)​
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9.​ U.S. Department of State – Political Declaration on Responsible Military Use of
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[Link]
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10.​United Nations News – Developments on Artificial Intelligence and Global
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DISEC 57 RKCMUN’26