On October 22, I addressed fellow West Point graduates at a gathering of the MacArthur Society on artificial intelligence and a question that would have challenged even General Douglas MacArthur: What becomes of military command when machines begin influencing decisions about who lives and who dies?

When I graduated from West Point in 1973, the Army was still an analog profession. Today, commanders confront battlefields crowded with satellites, drones, autonomous systems, and artificial intelligence.

The technology has changed beyond recognition. The responsibility of command has not.

The Society’s members have raised concerns about the Honor Code, admissions standards, and whether the Academy still prepares officers to lead soldiers in combat.

Those institutional questions deserve serious examination. But the AI revolution poses a different test. Even officers who master every new system must still have the judgment and moral courage to question the machines that shape their decisions.

The New Character of War

As a young Army captain in Germany during the Cold War, I prepared to defend against Warsaw Pact formations with maps spread across vehicle hoods and acetate overlays marking enemy avenues of approach.

Artificial intelligence goes further. Earlier technologies extended the soldier’s vision, reach, and firepower. AI now shapes the commander’s judgment itself.

It can sift intelligence, spot patterns, recommend courses of action, and nominate targets. Its recommendations may arrive faster than a human staff can evaluate them.

That’s both its promise and its danger. More information does not guarantee better judgment. Sometimes it only delivers confusion faster.

AI will not remove the fog of war. It may thicken it.

A drone feed may reveal movement without explaining intent. An algorithm may identify suspicious behavior without establishing whether those involved are legitimate military targets. A targeting system may calculate probabilities yet miss the one circumstance that turns a sound recommendation into a disaster.

That burden remains human.

The Question No Algorithm Can Answer

Consider an AI system identifying a suspected military target with high confidence. Before approving an attack, the commander must still evaluate the intelligence, consider civilian risks, assess the anticipated military advantage, and determine whether the operation might provoke a wider conflict.

A machine’s confidence score cannot settle those questions.

The Christian Just War tradition distinguishes the moral justification for going to war from the obligations governing its conduct. Those obligations, echoed in the law of armed conflict, require commanders to separate legitimate targets from civilians and to ensure expected civilian harm is not excessive relative to the anticipated military advantage. Compressing a decision into seconds does not suspend that duty.

The Defense Department’s January 2023 directive on autonomous weapon systems requires these systems to be designed so commanders and operators can exercise appropriate levels of human judgment over the use of force.

The International Committee of the Red Cross has warned that weapons able to select and strike targets on their own raise serious legal and humanitarian concerns, particularly when operators cannot predict or control their effects.

These concerns are not arguments against military innovation. America must never send its soldiers into battle with yesterday’s technology against tomorrow’s threats.

But speed is not wisdom. Prediction is not judgment. Calculation is not conscience.

The more immediate danger is quieter: commanders gradually surrendering their judgment because the machine has proved so useful.

As commanders grow accustomed to reliable AI recommendations, challenging them will seem unnecessary. Eventually, the officer who questions the system will look like an obstacle to the operational tempo.

What Makes Human Judgment Different?

The difference goes deeper than military doctrine. It concerns what makes human beings morally responsible.

Genesis 1:27 teaches that human beings are created in God’s image. Human life therefore possesses an inherent dignity and moral significance that no information processing can reduce.

Artificial intelligence can simulate conversation, solve difficult problems, and recommend military actions. Yet computational ability does not establish conscience or moral agency. A machine cannot repent before God, worship its Creator, or bear moral responsibility for taking a human life.

The profession of arms has never been solely about mastering weapons. It has always required mastering oneself.

That conviction is not limited to Christians. Military law and professional ethics demand the same: lawful authority carries obligations no machine can assume on an officer’s behalf.

What West Point Must Teach

West Point must prepare officers who understand AI without becoming dependent upon it.

Cadets must learn how faulty intelligence, deception, and corrupted data can produce convincing but erroneous recommendations. They should also practice commanding without digital assistance. An officer who cannot read terrain, assess an enemy, or exercise judgment when communications fail is poorly prepared for war, however sophisticated his equipment.

Officers must retain the authority and courage to challenge an algorithm’s recommendation or halt an operation when circumstances demand it.

Accountability extends to programmers, contractors, operators, acquisition officials, and senior civilian authorities.

But distributing responsibility cannot become an excuse for evading it.

These questions extend well beyond West Point. Next month, I expect to join international military experts at the Aurora Dialogue at the Vatican to examine AI and armed conflict, including the question every military leader must face: When may humans delegate life-and-death judgment to machines, and what responsibility must remain human?

We need an answer before technological capability outruns moral restraint.

MacArthur’s Enduring Challenge

On May 12, 1962, General Douglas MacArthur returned to West Point to accept the Sylvanus Thayer Award. Having witnessed extraordinary changes in warfare, he reminded the Corps of Cadets of the principles that define an American officer: Duty, Honor, Country.

More than six decades later, those words remain essential.

Duty demands service beyond ourselves. Honor requires doing what is right, especially when doing so is difficult. Country reminds us that military power exists to defend our Constitution, our people, and their freedoms.

America needs the finest military technology it can build. But technological superiority will mean little if our officers lose the capacity for independent judgment and moral courage.

When I entered West Point more than half a century ago, I could not have imagined the machines today’s officers would command. But I understood what was expected of an American officer.

Those expectations must not change.

Commanders remain accountable before God, under the Constitution, and to the soldiers they lead. No algorithm can bear that responsibility for them.

Duty. Honor. Country.