Abstract

Current warfare is accelerating as conventional military forces, autonomous systems, and human-machine combinations integrate. This development presents an essential quandary: either establish moral and legal causation within systems under non-standard conditions of perception of human time. To counter this, the question is: can humans reciprocate independent actions in real time through a prior contract, thereby arranging future conduct in advance? It is especially applicable in situations that are too fast for humans to comprehend or too slow, where constantly concentrating on every action is not feasible. Leveraging the medical-legal precedent of the so-called advance care directives, the framework suggests the so-called Advance Control Directive (ACD) to help pivot the rigorous deliberation needed to become accountable in the first place. This, therefore, creates an autonomy command, a framework of power designed and justified by creating these orders before implementation.