That\u2019s led to a lot of confusion about the Defense Department\u2019s policy on what it can and can\u2019t build\u2014confusion that has not been helped by military leaders and officers who\u00a0insist<\/a>\u00a0that they are strictly prohibited from building lethal autonomous weapons. In April 2021, for example, then-Army Futures Command head Gen. John Murray\u00a0said<\/a>, \u201cWhere I draw the line\u2014and this is, I think well within our current policies \u2013 if you\u2019re talking about a lethal effect against another human, you have to have a human in that decision-making process.\u201d But that\u2019s not what the policy actually said.<\/p>\n The updated policy establishes guidelines to make sure that autonomous and semi-autonomous weapons function the way they are supposed to and establishes a working group.<\/p>\n \u201cThe directive now makes explicit the need for an autonomous weapon system, if it’s approved, to be reviewed,\u201d Michael Horowitz, the director of the emerging capabilities policy office in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, told reporters on Wednesday. \u201cIf it changes to a sufficient degree, that a new review would appear necessary. Or if a non-autonomous weapon system has autonomous capabilities added to it, it makes clear that it would have to go through the review process.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Horowitz continued, \u201cThere are essentially a lot of things that were\u2026maybe\u2026not laid out explicitly in the original directive that may have contributed to some of the, maybe, perceptions of confusion\u2026and we wanted to clear as much of that up as possible. By, for example, making sure that the list of exemptions was clearly a list of exemptions to the senior review process for autonomous weapon systems rather than a list of what you can or can’t do.\u201d<\/p>\n