No dia 18 de Março, Norma Möllers (Queen’s University, Canada) será a oradora convidada do seminário organizado pelos Grupos de Investigação LIFE & SHIFT, UTH (ICS-ULisboa) e CIES (ISCTE), com o tema Necro-extractivism: Algorithmic Warfare, “Kill Clouds”, and the Racial Political Economy of Security Imperialism. A partir das 11h, na Sala 3 do ICS-ULisboa e online.

Abstract:

In this talk, I will discuss a project which I am currently preparing with colleagues from Canada and the US. This project proposes to examine machine learning technologies which are given license to mark persons or places for destruction in the context of war and/or execute the destruction of persons or places so marked. Two problems motivate our research questions. First, because AI requires vast amounts of domain specific data to train models, it is possible that AI weapons are being trained on populations in current war zones, raising questions about the economic value of violence for the AI industry. Furthermore, it is not clear that these systems can reliably distinguish between ‘civilians’ and ‘combatants’, calling into question their ability to comply with International Humanitarian Law. Second, these technologies require vast computing capabilities, so-called “kill clouds”, which have in some cases been outsourced to Big Tech because they outstrip state-controlled computing capabilities. AI weapons’ reliance on vast computational infrastructures thus raises questions about the geopolitical power of Big Tech in the global AI weapons race. Drawing on Science and Technology Studies and theories of racial capitalism, the project will analyze the racial political economy of algorithmic warfare, and the implications of global AI armament for changing geopolitical relations. The overarching theoretical aim is to conceptualize what we call ‘necro-extractivism’: how war benefits digital racial capitalism. In the context of new global fascist formations, a crumbling international order, the specter of a new world war, and the fact that automated weapons are virtually unregulated, it is urgent to understand the global entanglements between war and the AI industry to work towards demilitarization. Ultimately, supporting ongoing work towards demilitarization is the societal goal of this project, and we will contribute towards it by providing actionable data and analyses to the public, and by organizing three knowledge mobilization workshops with abolitionist and tech worker activists who are organizing for an international ban of automated weapons systems.

Bio: Norma Möllers is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Queen's University in Canada, where she researches and teaches about the roles of science and technology in producing state power and state violence. Her forthcoming book with MIT Press, Against Bias, offers an ethnography of how computer scientists make algorithmic surveillance technology, and her current project aims to better understand the geography of empire by examining infrastructures of algorithmic warfare. Currently, she is thinking a lot about the global rise of fascism(s), how it is connected to technoscience and digital (racial) capitalism, and what roles intellectuals can play in the struggle against it.

Norma's talk will be complemented by two brief inputs by Miguel Duarte, Iscte and Nina Amelung, CIES-Iscte.

Bios:

Miguel Duarte is a black hole physicist turned PhD student of political economy at Iscte, Lisbon. He dedicates his studies to understanding how borders are constructed and what the role of restrictions to the freedom of movement is in contemporary capitalism. Outside academia, he is a sea rescuer in the Mediterranean sea and organizes in a local migrants' rights collective called HuBB - Humans Before Borders. In 2025, he participated in the Global Sumud Flotilla, attempting to bring humanitarian aid to Gaza.

Nina Amelung, sociologist, is integrated research fellow at CIES-Iscte. Her research interests lie at the intersection of critical migration and border studies and science and technology studies. In her research she focusses on datafied migration and border control regimes, data activism, migrants' rights movements and resistance.