Rede unseres Spitzenkandidaten Rheinland Pfalz auf der Pirate Secon in München

Dear friends, visitors, guests...

About 100 years ago there has been a major change of the way wars had been fought. A new vehicle, the tank, changed the face of war. In german called "Panzer", that vehicle is said to had gotton it's name by the inscprition on transport boxes. The legend says, these boxes had formerly been used to transport water tanks. The lettering had not been changed due to concealing purposes. Non the less the tank could finally take off on its victory lap.

A couple of years later, as track vehicle, the tank had become a decisive assett in conventional warfare. This situation continued a markebly time and only succeeded by the relevance of aircrafts and airborne assetts. This again did change the face of war fundamentally and permanently. In nowadays wars, decisions are made on the ground, but it is won in the air.

During 21st century we, again, will witness a fundamental change of armed forces. From the points of view of morality and humanity this will bring up a dilemma even more serious than the introduction of tanks on battlegrounds 100 years before.

Upcoming wargrounds will show financially strong players, capable of disabling and killing people without any human interaction. This requires partly identification, classification and evaluation of motion patterns. Algorithms are being held, computer capacity is sufficient despite of special tasks as video analysis. In the end, only a matter of time.

Behind all this, there is a promise to preserve human lives of own population. The politicians vision is coming true, not to have to cope media reports of dead soldiers, no justification of sacrifices, preserving of own election results while being engaged in international conflicts. Sacrifices will only occur for opponents, directly with excellent media footage.

I do not know, whether we will call them soldiers, but machines as upcoming elements of infantry will be able to carry 200 kilogramms of ammunition beside highly sophisticated plating structures, devices for infrared recognition and motion tracking, aiming by radar and laser and fully autonomic decisive whether to kill or not.
Tanks with its crews far away in secure will satisfy all demands of warfare in best political practice. As long as we fully control all pictures and reports of harm and sacrifice, suffered by opponents.

Unmanned vehicles will gain more and more importance whereby velocity of decisions will raise boundless. Current processes of human structures to decide and command need at least minutes, occasionally hours to be fulfilled.  The dynamics lead to more comprehensive overviews of the situation whereas computer algorhithms force decisions within milliseconds.

We reclaim it to be a milestone of civilisation, not only to decide about humans death, but as well as to grant the act of grace to live on. I valuate this point as crucial for human self-concept for not to eliminate the very rest of humanity on futures wargrounds.

Until now, I did not mention the questions that should have been discussed a long time ago. Extra territorial kills by drones without declared war, are simply extra-legal kills. More conveniant we call it murder. Furthermore so called "side effects" as collateral damage and signature strikes are results of confused minds decisions, more common known as mass murderers.

Decisions whether to kill humans,  or not, will be taken from the hands of people who might be made responsible for their decisions. As a result there will be a "cloud of responsibility". Every single individuum will be able to say honestly "I am not responsible. I did not make that decision!"
Especially in this region of the world we frankly did NOT make good experiences with that attitude.
It is my total conviction: We do not want fully automated weapon systems as long we want to keep our human face.