Emerging technologies in humanitarian settings: mapping out emerging threats.
- Adrian de Leon
- Oct 12
- 10 min read
Emerging technologies are newly formed or developing technologies that are having, or will have, significant impacts on society, inducing societal, political and economic changes (Laurie et al., 2024). In an age of increasing digitalisation and cybernetics, these technologies relate predominantly to AI-powered instruments such as Large Language Models, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, but also increasingly sophisticated UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles), swarm technologies, and cyberwarfare instruments.
At bleepDigital, we have already highlighted the impact of the proliferation of emerging technologies in healthcare settings and their impacts, from: the convergence of medical devices and the human-machine hybridity, evidence of bias in AI, or the threat of patient-data privacy as data-powered technologies increasingly power our healthcare systems. Concerns regarding the civilian threat from emerging technologies are increasingly coupled with a desire to highlight the impact of emerging technologies in conflict and humanitarian settings.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, our societies have been increasingly digitalised, with technology (re)shaping multiple facets of our experience, and this extends to how war and humanitarian assistance are being conducted. Whether it is in the on and off conflict between Israel and Hamas, the Russian-Ukraine war and the civil wars in Sudan and Myanmar, technology is re-defining the boundaries of the permissible. This is because just as our every-day interactions increasingly take place on the internet, and that our civil infrastructures run on cloud-based platforms, conflict is also transposing onto cyberspace. Kaczmarczyk (2024) denotes two branches of cyberspace conflict: netwar and cyberwar. The former refers to psychological warfare and the infiltration of media, civic institutions and communication channels to propagandise and sow instability in enemy society. The latter refers to the penetration of enemy infrastructure - such as hospital settings or energy grids - to inflict damage on civilian populations.
bleepDigital founder, Dr Isabel Straw, has highlighted how cyberattacks on the NHS and other critical national infrastructure is increasing year on year, whilst research by the University of California, San Diego, has shown that attacks on one hospital cause a spillover effect in which neighbouring hospitals are hit with a surge in patients that lead to worse patient care outcomes (Dameff et al., 2024)We know that hospital settings are particularly vulnerable to cyberattacks due to a combination of outdated infrastructure, a lack of personnel training on cybersecurity and a decentralised security ecosystem that weakens, rather than strengthens, cybersecurity processes (Reed, 2025).
If there has been an increase in research and media attention on the threats posed by emerging technologies and cyberwarfare in the West, less attention has been paid to the use of these same technologies in situations overseas, most notably in the Middle East and Africa. Indeed, research by the European Interagency Security Forum (EISF, 2014), highlights how these technologies are reshaping conflict and impacting the delivery of humanitarian assistance. Citing evidence from conflict settings in Ethiopia, Libya, Sudan and Syria, the EISF denotes the ‘para-militarisation’ of cyber-warfare with private citizens forming online groups that carry out cyber attacks against political and civil opposition. This reality means that humanitarian groups providing assistance in these conflicts are themselves vulnerable. The report denotes how humanitarian organisations are targeted with malware attacks such as Remote Access Terminals (RAT) that, once successfully installed onto a network, can give total access to the target’s computer. Leading to data access, webcam and microphone co-opting, the identification of passcodes through keystrokes and file manipulation.
Just as infrastructures in the West are being interconnected through the Internet of Things (IoT), humanitarian organisations are carrying out services through IoT devices and computer networks, increasing their vulnerability to cyberattacks. Potential risks include the manipulation of ‘smart boxes’ that regulate the transportation and dispensing of cold-chain vaccines that lead to ineffective vaccines being unknowingly delivered, the compromising of smart toilets that control sterilisation functions, and the corruption of Autonomous Unmanned Vehicles (UAVs), also known as drones (Vasquez and Roll, 2014)
International Humanitarian Law (IHL) explicitly upholds the right of civilians to receive humanitarian assistance, whilst customary international humanitarian law delineates that equipment and objects related to humanitarian relief operations are to be protected from destruction or misappropriation. Therefore, as argued by the EISF, cyberattacks by state-actors, or adjacent state-actors, constitute a violation of IHL. Unfortunately, in today’s international legal infrastructure, there is no universally accepted or codified convention or treaty to regulate cyberwarfare, and any existing laws or norms that are applicable, are not articulated according to the unique parameters and challenges of cyberwarfare (Ahmad et al., 2024). This legal grey zone shines a light on the vacuum that emerging technologies create, as existing institutions, societal norms and material infrastructures continue to lag behind the rapid deployment of innovative emerging technologies. Indeed, it is “evident that the regulation of a substantially different environment from the one in which we currently live and interact cannot be accomplished using traditional customs that emerged a century ago” (Ahmad et al. 2024).
Just as our legal institutions are lagging in their articulation of legal frameworks that take into account the disruptive nature of technology, multilateral institutions are contributing to unforeseen consequences brought on by applying emerging technologies to support marginalised and vulnerable populations. For example, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has been using a biometric identification system in its efforts to support the Rohingya population of Myanmar. In collaboration with the Bangladeshi government, the agency has been registering all refugees from the age of five and collating fingerprints and photographs onto a database to support the delivery and recording of an array of services, from food deliveries to medical interventions. The receipt of humanitarian aid is contingent on them being registered (Thomas, 2018).
This collection of data is problematic because refugees are most often granted such a status as a result of their persecution on the basis of their identity - now, this very same data is being collected onto a database that is vulnerable to hacks, leaks or manipulation. Thomas (2018) relays an internal report by the UN that shines a light on a highly concerning lack of security protocols found within the institution. The internal audit found that the "UNHCR did not consider it necessary to install encryption tools in the laptops used by the litigation teams and to conduct network penetration tests to ensure laptops and network connectivity are protected against any sort of unauthorised intrusion" (Thomas, 2018).
The proliferation of biometric technologies and their inherent vulnerabilities have material consequences for those involved, but they also raise pertinent philosophical and political questions. Indeed, emerging technologies are developed as a direct consequence of a growing migration-security nexus in which an amalgamation of conflict, environmental catastrophes and criminal violence and exploitation is causing a record number of displaced people across the world. In fact, there are now over 122 million people forcibly displaced worldwide - more than the populations of Spain and the United Kingdom combined, and up from 120 million last year, according to the International Rescue Committee (IRC, 2025).
According to Ross (2006), the emergence of what he calls a ‘bionetwork state’ will intensify the cybernetic control of populations, and will make “new forms of human profiling and control inevitable”. This is because collating vital information and turning it into biometric data via eye-scanning devices, facial and voice recognition systems or DNA identification, signifies “the extension of state control into virtual environments, electronic spaces where immigrants – and increasingly citizens – face new forms of disembodied integration and discriminatory categorization”.
Beyond the realm of humanitarian support, emerging technologies in cyberwarfare and traditional warfare have also been deployed by state-actors, raising the vulnerability of civilian populations. In a study linking the use of drone usage in warfare and civilian casualties in Gaza, Rogers (2014), has questioned the lauded ‘humanitarian’ benefits of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), also known as drones. Whilst in office, President Obama praised drones by claiming that “conventional airpower or missiles are far less precise than drones, and are likely to cause more civilian casualties and more local outrage”. This assertion is upheld by a supposed trifecta of drone benefits over manned systems: access, persistence and accuracy. This nexus is said to reduce collateral damage and have thus become a favoured option for conducting warfare.
In fact, this nexus, in its ability to increase the accuracy and access of weaponry, seemingly upholds the Just War Theory on the proper conduct of war in which civilian casualties are to be avoided at all costs. However, as Rogers (2014) notes, the wider implications of UAV usage questions this mainstream assertion. Firstly, this same nexus enhances and expands the scope for military action, increasing the risk of civilian collateral damage. Secondly, the launching of drones breaks down space and time, and disconnects the offensive agent from the target, leading to a dehumanisation of targets as they appear as nothing more than a data point on the screen. A situation that may become exacerbated by the progress in Swarm Robotics - a group of robots that perform coordinated tasks and compute complex problem solving skills, mimicking social behaviours in nature.
More precisely, a swarm robotics system refers to a coordination method used in Multi-Robot Systems (MRS), comprising a group of autonomous and relatively simple robots with similar capabilities (Alqudsi and Makaraci, 2025). These robots are equipped with local sensing and communication abilities, enabling them to interact locally among themselves and with the environment. (Alqudsi and Makaraci, 2025). These robots are powered by a plethora of emerging technologies, including AI (e.g. Machine Learning models), and are used to carry out military surveillance and reconnaissance missions, as well as to conduct border patrols and the monitoring of large areas for intelligence gathering. Inherently, any equipment that is powered by algorithms and AI is susceptible to biases that reinforce existing power dynamics when making decisions. Now that these decisions are made autonomously, the chain of accountability will become more blurry.
To curb the nefarious consequences of emerging technologies, questioning their philosophical and moral implications is a salient endeavour. This is because, as Haas (2025) argues “AI systems are trained on data - not experience”. Indeed, the data that feeds these algorithms are not value-free - no social or technological endeavour ever is - and this means that the models may “adopt assumptions that strip away the nuance, emotional weight, and lived realities that humanitarian responses must be built upon.” Data is an approximation of real world life events, and approximations fail to provide the full context of how this data was generated. An example of this is provided by Haas (2025):
Consider systems trained on geospatial data from conflict or disaster zones – satellite imagery, drone footage, Call Detail Records (CDRs), or location-tagged social media posts. If such data clusters around regions with greater media coverage or where donor-funded projects have historically been concentrated, AI models may begin to associate urgency not with humanitarian need, but with historical visibility – reinforcing cycles of over-recognition and neglect.
The above is an example of how data can often reinforce the status-quo and ends-up hypostatising dominant power relations or ideologies. Naturally, raising the alarm on emerging technologies may be considered leaning on a technological over-determinism, or neglecting the clear benefits that these technologies can have in healthcare, civil society and conflict zones. We can consider the work of The Lieber Institute for Law and Warfare at West Point, whose ‘End of War Project’, articulates several instances in which technology may have a hugely beneficial impact in conflict scenarios.
Machine Learning (ML): ML tools have the ability to process huge volumes of data and identify patterns that would escape human cognitive abilities - providing additional context and insight in human decision-making processes. Furthermore, ML can also be used to solve specific complex problems, including supply chain management or resource allocation.
Blockchain: The technology mostly associated with BitCoin can help secure transactions using computing power and exchanges between trusted participants that would enable secure, rapid and immutable recordsharing between stakeholders - securing the biometric data of refugee populations for example.
Autonomous Unmanned Vehicles (UAVs): Pilotless vehicles can provide capabilities such as surveillance or logistics with greater persistence and without risk to human operators. Moreover, drones can be used to deliver medical supplies to populations affected by conflict or even blood to wounded people.
Biometrics: Fingersprints, DNA and other biometric data collating can help secure the safeguarding of vulnerable populations, not only to identify victims, help united families but also to increase efficient medical assistance by providing secure and fast access to medical records.
Undeniably, emerging technologies provide our societies, and our institutions, a golden opportunity to provide better care, support victims, and push the boundaries of the permissible, as we have seen in the medical sector. However, similarly, just as the proliferation of medical devices and technologies without the adequate safety measures or guardrails can have nefarious consequences for patients, we must be equally guarded when it comes to our wider societal concerns. These technologies must be deployed in a manner that helps us further contextualise conflict, victimhood, disease, and not simply streamline our understanding of them(Milivojevic, et al., 2020).
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