Morally opposed? A theory of public attitudes and emerging military technologies

Military technology does not exist in a vacuum; it is mediated by difficult choices about development and use. Public attitudes influence these choices, but emerging technologies present a challenge: assessing public opinion without a clear picture of the technology's use. Focusing on autonomous weapon systems, we argue that attitude stability depends on moral conviction and concern with inherent characteristics or outcomes. Combining these dimensions into four reasoning categories creates a new framework for attitudes toward emerging technologies, validated with two Cooperative Congressional Election Study surveys. We find that moral conviction is prevalent, current opposition heterogeneous, and some attitudes depend on outcomes, especially civilian protection.