SPRING 2016 261
SHINING A REGULATORY SPOTLIGHT
ON NEW LASERS: REGULATION OF
THE USE OF NANOLASER TECHNOLOGIES
IN ARMED CONFLICT
Kobi Leins
*
ABSTRACT: The purpose of this article is to consider potential legal implications of
deployment of nanolaser technology in armed conflict. Nanotechnology will undoubt-
edly enhance the performance of many weapons systems, including autonomous sys-
tems,
1
with better energy storage, more rapid computations, and lower power
consumption, to name just a few features, but in this article I consider just two types of
technology purportedly utilizing nanolasers. Firstly, I will discuss the Laser Weapons
System (LaWS), a directed energy weapon already in use.
2
LaWS is often wrongly
described as nanoenhanced; I will explain why the descriptor is fallacious while also
discussing the legal implications, if any, which arise from the deployment of the system
(and whether this error has any legal implications). Secondly, I will examine optoge-
netics, which uses nanolaser light-delivery technology to effectively switch neurons
“on” and “off” to alter brain function. This technology is currently at the research stage
with mice, and has not yet been used by the military. I plan to identify the key legal
implications if such technology were to be used in humans in armed conflict.
Two key legal issues arise in relation to both technological developments. One
involves the responsibility of States Parties to Additional Protocol I
3
of the Geneva
Conventions to review and supervise the use of emerging weapons technology to en-
sure compliance with the law of armed conflict (LOAC) and the second involves identi-
fying what specific and general rules may apply to such technology.
4
General legal
principles have relevance to all means and methods of warfare and so apply as much to
nanolaser weapons systems as to any other category of lethal or nonlethal weapon.
*
Kobi Leins (LL.B.) (B.A.) (Hons. First Class) is a Ph.D. candidate at the Melbourne Law
School and a member of the Program on the Regulation of Emerging Technologies at the Asia Pacific
Centre for Military Law. Her Ph.D. is focused on the legal implications of developing and deploying
weapons systems using nanotechnology. The research for this Ph.D. is supported by the Australian
Research Council’s Discovery Projects funding scheme (project number DP130100432).
Enormous thanks are sent to Richard Ziolkowski, the University of Arizona, College of Optical
Sciences and Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, for going above and beyond in
answering my technical questions with patience and encouragement. The responsibility for the
present text, however, remains my own.
1. Autonomous weapons systems may be broadly defined as “those with some significant
capacity to manage their own operation.” Tim McFarland & Tim McCormack, Mind the Gap: Can
Developers of Autonomous Weapons Systems Be Liable for War Crimes?, 90 I
NT’L L. STUDIES
361, 367 (2014); see also U.S. Dep’t of Def., Directive No. 3000.09, Glossary (Nov. 21, 2012),
http://www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/corres/pdf/300009p.pdf.
2. Media Release, David Smalley, Contractor for ONR Corp. Strategic Comm., Off. of Naval
Res. Pub. Aff., Historic Leap: Navy Shipboard Laser Operates in Persian Gulf (Dec. 10, 2014),
http://www.onr.navy.mil/Media-Center/Press-Releases/2014/LaWS-shipboard-laser-uss-ponce.aspx.
3. Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and Relating to the
Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts, arts. 36, 82, opened for signature June 8,
1977, 1125 U.N.T.S. 3 [hereinafter Protocol I] (entered into force Dec. 7, 1978).
4. Id. arts. 36, 82.
