Clouds of impunity: AI militarism, big tech, and the future of human rights open-source investigation

Abstract

This paper explores how the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into military decision-making poses new challenges to human rights focused open-source investigation (OSI). It identifies three key epistemic risks emerging from AI’s role in the military ecosystem. Across these risk areas, AI’s perceived neutrality and rationality create feedback loops of impunity, where human oversight is symbolic or compromised—obscuring both the messy realities of warfare and the potential culpability of military decision-makers. The paper then argues that to continue exposing AI-driven military violence, OSI practices must reorient their methodologies. Rather than treating AI as a discrete, technical tool, OSI must focus more systemically and systematically on the dispersed material infrastructures and political forces underpinning AI militarism. By refocusing investigative practices onto these systems, investigators can better reveal concealed networks of accountability linking state and corporate actors. Such a shift also enables OSI to move beyond narrow legalistic frameworks and engage with structural forms of violence that often evade formal accountability. This could support more expansive, justice-oriented investigations—amplifying marginalised perspectives, mapping complicity, and aligning OSI with broader struggles against systemic harm. Detached from the procedural demands of law, OSI can become a more active, politically mobilising practice, amplifying marginalised perspectives, mapping networks of complicity, and supporting grassroots struggles for justice beyond the courtroom.