Request to Codify Human Oversight of AI-Enabled Weapons

Request to Codify Human Oversight of AI-Enabled Weapons   I am writing about the U.S. position on the military use of artificial intelligence.   On September 26, 2026, the Washington Post reported that during United Nations talks in Geneva earlier this month, held under the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, U.S. and Russian diplomats worked together to remove several safeguards from a draft agreement on lethal autonomous weapons. According to the report, which cites three people familiar with the negotiations and documents reviewed by the Post, the revised draft no longer requires:          •      human review of targets generated by an AI system before a strike,        •      that such systems operate predictably and reliably, and        •      that ethical considerations be taken into account.   These safeguards matter. On February 28, 2026, a U.S. strike on the Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school in Minab, Iran, killed more than 150 people, most of them children. Bloomberg has reported that an unreleased Pentagon review attributes the strike to outdated intelligence, compressed targeting timelines, and over-reliance on an AI-enabled targeting system. It has also been reported that the Pentagon's civilian harm mitigation staff was cut by about 90 percent before the war.   Current Department of Defense policy requires "appropriate levels of human judgment over the use of force," but that is administrative policy, not law, and it can be changed at any time.   I respectfully ask that you:          1.    Support legislation that puts human oversight of lethal AI-enabled weapons into law, such as the bipartisan Human Authority over Autonomous Weapons Act (H.R. 9729) or comparable Senate measures.        2.    Support strong human-judgment and accountability requirements for military AI in the FY2027 National Defense Authorization Act and related legislation.        3.    Support oversight hearings on the U.S. negotiating position at the Geneva talks.        4.    Request public release of the Pentagon's review of the Minab strike, with appropriate redactions.        5.    Ensure the Department of Defense has adequate staff to assess and prevent civilian harm.   Thank you for your attention to this matter.