Drone Warfare and Just War Theory: Aquinas on the Virtuous Use of Violence I Prof. Michael Krom

The Thomistic Institute

Christianity, Religion &Amp; Spirituality, Society & Culture, Catholic Intellectual Tradition, Catholic, Philosophy, Religion & Spirituality, Thomism, Catholicism

4.8 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 27 August 2025

⏱️ 42 minutes

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Summary

Prof. Michael Krom analyzes the ethics of drone warfare through the lens of Aquinas’s just war tradition and virtue ethics, addressing moral principles of discrimination, proportionality, and the indispensability of human judgment in the use of violent technology.

This lecture was given on March 18th, 2025, at Virginia Military Institute.

For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.

About the Speakers:

Michael Krom started reading Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae shortly after his conversion at the end of college. Upon learning about Flannery O’Connor’s “hillbilly Thomist” habit of reading Aquinas every night, he started studying two articles a day and completed the Summa while in graduate school at Emory University. As a professor at Saint Vincent College, he saw the urgent need for collegians and seminarians to receive a solid foundation in Aquinas’s philosophical theology. In 2020, he published Justice and Charity: An Introduction to Aquinas’s Moral, Economic, and Political Thought (Baker Academic Press), and teaches a Thomistic philosophy course each fall. In addition to continuing work on the moral, economic, and political topics covered in the book, his current research is on the influence of monastic spirituality on Aquinas; he is working on a monograph tentatively entitled Aquinas Among the Benedictines.

Keywords: Artificial Intelligence in Warfare, Christian Ethics, Double Effect Principle, Drone Warfare, Ethics of Technology, Human Judgment, Incendiary Weapons, Just War Tradition, Proportionality, Virtue Ethics

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Tumistic Institute podcast.
0:05.0	Our mission is to promote the Catholic intellectual tradition in the university, the church, and the wider public square.
0:12.0	The lectures on this podcast are organized by university students at Tumistic Institute chapters around the world.
0:18.0	To learn more and to attend these events, visit us at
0:21.7	Thomistic Institute.org. I'm not an engineer or even a techie. If anything, I incline more toward
0:28.4	the low tech than the high tech. And do not devote time to reading up on the latest advances
0:34.2	and technology of any sort. That being said, I'm thankful for the opportunity
0:39.7	this talk provided for doing research on at least a few of the ways that drones are being used
0:44.9	for civilian and military purposes. And I will use some examples to illustrate moral issues
0:50.2	we need to address tonight. But even these examples are likely to be outdated soon.
0:56.0	It is literally true that every day there is a press release on a new technology that
1:01.0	does not exist yesterday. And sadly, especially in Ukraine and in the Holy Land, each day
1:07.0	experimental weapons are combat tested and the results reported to us in sometimes
1:11.8	gruesome detail.
1:13.8	So whatever I say today about drone technology will have to be qualified tomorrow.
1:19.3	Yet whether or not new technologies, such as the Epirus Corporation's Leonitis, a software-defined
1:25.4	solid-state, long-pulse, high-power microwave system, counter-electronic
1:29.3	device will prove effective in protecting our troops from drone attacks.
1:34.3	This will not change the moral issues posed by drone warfare.
1:38.3	These moral principles that govern the right use of violence are unchanging and written
1:42.3	not an algorithmic code, but on the human
1:45.1	heart. Second, I will not be passing judgment on specific military operations involving drones.
	...

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