On the final day of UN-backed talks on lethal autonomous weapons, US and Russian diplomats spent around 15 hours removing safeguards from the draft text.
The negotiations, held in Geneva under the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, marked what the Washington Post described as the furthest progress yet towards a potential treaty governing weapons that can identify, select and attack targets with little or no human involvement.
By the time the two delegations had finished, the draft no longer required a human to review a target developed by an AI system before a strike, no longer required the systems to operate predictably and reliably, and no longer required ethical considerations to be taken into account. The Post reported the changes on Saturday 26 September 2026.
What Came Out of the Text
The account rests on people inside the room and on the drafts themselves. The Washington Post reported that three people familiar with the negotiations, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss closed-door proceedings, described the final-day revisions, and that the newspaper reviewed documents from the talks. The details had not previously been reported.
One of the most consequential changes concerned human review. The draft had included a provision under which humans would review military targets developed by AI before a strike, close to the core of what arms control advocates mean by meaningful human control. It was removed.
Two further standards went with it. Language requiring autonomous systems to operate in a predictable and reliable manner was deleted, as was a clause mandating that ethical considerations be taken into account when such weapons are used.
🇺🇸🇷🇺 More than 70 countries want rules for killer AI, but the U.S. and Russia are pulling the brakes.
— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) September 26, 2026
At U.N. talks in Geneva, countries were working on rules for how AI weapons can be used in war.
The U.S. and Russia don't want those rules to become legally binding. They each… pic.twitter.com/Q2vtegKGQE
The potential consequence is less human intervention during rapid targeting decisions. Autonomous systems can process and respond to information faster than people, which raises concerns about what happens when a system misidentifies a target or acts on faulty data.
How Two Governments Could Rewrite a Global Text
The structure of the talks helps explain it. The Group of Governmental Experts on lethal autonomous weapons systems met in two sessions this year, from 2 to 6 March and from 31 August to 4 September, under a mandate to formulate elements of an instrument by consensus without prejudging what form it would take.
The Post reported that the consensus requirement gives the United States and Russia considerable ability to impede progress.
The removals run against years of pressure for tougher rules. On 5 October 2023 UN Secretary-General António Guterres and Mirjana Spoljaric, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, jointly called on states to establish specific prohibitions and restrictions on autonomous weapon systems.
They renewed that appeal in August 2026, warning that the world was dangerously close to crossing a moral red line over machines autonomously targeting people.
The principle being stripped out has had broad support among states. During a UN First Committee debate in November 2023, Egypt's representative said that an algorithm must not be in full control of decisions that involve killing or harming humans, and that human responsibility for any use of lethal force must be preserved whatever the weapon.
Russia had already signalled its position. When the UN General Assembly adopted resolution A/RES/79/62 on lethal autonomous weapons on 2 December 2024, it passed by 166 votes to three, with Russia joining Belarus and North Korea in opposition and 15 countries abstaining.
The US position comes as the Pentagon moves to revise its own rules. The Post reported that a national security memorandum issued by Trump in June required the military's existing directive on autonomous weapons to be updated within 90 days, and that no replacement had been publicly released by late September. It was not immediately clear whether either government had responded publicly to the report.
What Happens in November
The text is not binding. The Geneva process produces non-binding work, although it could provide a basis for negotiations on a legally binding instrument governing lethal autonomous weapons.
The next major decision comes in November, when governments meet in Geneva for the Convention's Seventh Review Conference from 16 to 20 November.
The expert group is due to submit its final report to the conference, which will determine how to proceed, including whether to move towards negotiations on a new international instrument. The weakened text is now part of the record that will inform those discussions.
A first international agreement on lethal autonomous weapons may still emerge, but the draft that left Geneva in September no longer says a human has to check the target.
