In November 2025, members of the PLATFORM WARS team presented their ongoing work at various events and international conferences.
At the Global AI Policy Research Summit 2025 at TU Delft, Martine Jaarsma participated in an interdisciplinary panel on AI in warfare, alongside researchers and practitioners from responsible AI, defense organizations, international law,and civil society. The session examined how automated decision-making and data-driven analytics are increasingly embedded in surveillance, targeting practices, and wartime information environments. Martine highlighted how different AI producers (e.g., Google vs. Palantir) build fundamentally different systems, which, in turn, shape how militaries perceive and interpret data for targeting. She argued that these technical differences carry legal consequences, as the design of AI tools helps structure how IHL judgments are made in practice. Watch the panel recording here.
Furthermore, Martine presented a paper on ‘AI’s Accomplices: AI-Enabled Targeting in a Data-Driven, Air-Based Targeting Cycle’ at the Asser Institute Early Career Conference on Emerging Disruptive Technology and Arms Control. Her contribution analyzed how predictive analytics are integrated into an existing targeting cycle shaped by aerial reach and data-driven inference, arguing that AI amplifies rather than transforms these infrastructures.
Finally, Fer Avar took part in a panel on The Future of Non-Proliferation and Disarmament at the 14th EU Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Conference in Brussels. Within the broader theme of digital disarmament, she highlighted two main points. First, the importance of reducing institutional reliance on dominant digital platforms to help shape norms and strategies, with full ‘de-platformization’ as a long-term objective. Second, the arms-control community’s role in establishing norms around defining the operational boundaries of defense-technology companies during both war and peace.
