The Choice: Peace and Civilization or War and AI?

Val Aksilenko is a retired Colonel of the foreign intelligence department of the KGB, the First Chief Directorate (FCD). He graduated from the International Economic Department of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO) in 1960 and from the KGB Foreign Intelligence Institute, now the Andropov Foreign Intelligence Academy, in 1967. Mr. Aksilenko retired from the KGB in 1991 after 24 years of service. He has lived in the United States since 1993 and is a U.S. citizen.

Occasionally, the entire moral fabric of a civilization is unveiled through a single, straightforward question.

The esteemed Polish-British anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski recounted a dialogue with an elderly man who had practiced cannibalism. This man had heard from missionaries and colonial authorities about the ongoing First World War in Europe. Upon learning of the significant casualties, he naturally surmised that Europeans must be consuming large amounts of human flesh. Malinowski emphatically clarified that Europeans do not consume the individuals they have killed.

The old man regarded him with horror and inquired, ‘What kind of barbarians would “kill without any real object”?’

This incident was documented in Malinowski’s 1937 introduction to Julius Lips’s “The Savage Hits Back, or the White Man through Native Eyes.” It transcends mere anthropological interest and stands as one of the most straightforward yet profoundly damaging moral condemnations ever directed at modern civilization.

The old man’s reasons seem elementary. If Europeans did not need the bodies of their victims for food, why did they kill so many of them?

What was the purpose?

A people’s ancient custom, albeit horrifying to us, may nonetheless serve a limited and comprehensible purpose within that society. However, contemporary warfare has exponentially increased the number of killings beyond any justifiable necessity. Millions of individuals, who have never previously met, have caused no personal harm to one another, and who might otherwise have engaged in work, trade, prayer, and peaceful coexistence, are commanded to annihilate each other.

They are not killed for sustenance. Their deaths are driven by motives such as territorial acquisition, prestige, revenge, markets, alliances, ideologies, historical grievances, strategic advantage, and the political sustainability of leaders.

They are killed because someone has bestowed upon them new designation and name: Enemy.

Behind the uniforms, flags, military ceremonies, patriotic speeches, strategic doctrines, and maps covered with arrows lies a fundamental reality: one human intentionally destroys another’s life.

Our civilization has not abolished killing; rather, it has organized and amplified it.

Killing has been rendered distant, efficient, anonymous, and nearly invisible. The soldier of the past confronted the face of the individual he killed. Today, an individual seated before a screen can demolish a house, a family, or a village hundreds or thousands of miles away. Tomorrow, an artificial intelligence system may identify, track, and eliminate human targets at a pace surpassing human conscience.

Our technological tools and instruments have progressed remarkably; however, our moral and spiritual capacities have not kept pace.

We designate earlier peoples as ‘savages’ due to their practice of consuming the bodies of their enemies. However, what term should be applied to a modern civilization capable of causing the deaths of millions—without immediate necessity, without hunger, and often without personal animosity between the aggressors and the victims?

The old cannibal, metaphorically speaking, held up a mirror to contemporary humanity. Within this reflection, our grandeur diminishes; the embellishments fade away; military music becomes silent; ceremonial speeches conclude; and flags are lowered. What remains is a dead human being—that is, another individual somewhere who ordered, authorized, facilitated, or accepted such needless death.

Consequently, the timeless commandment resurfaced in all its unwavering simplicity: You shall not kill.

It does not say, “You shall not kill unless a government provides a persuasive explanation.”

It does not say, “You shall not kill members of your own nation, but you may kill those born beyond a border.”

It does not say, “You shall not kill with your hands, but you may create a machine to kill in your place.”

It speaks directly to conscience, before conscience is suppressed by fear, obedience, propaganda, ambition, or collective hatred.

This is where Mirror, Integration, Repair, or MIR begins. Remember Jesus’ “Kingdom of God is within you.” Look into the mirror and perfect yourself. Conscience will help you to integrate and unite. Humility will help to restore and construct your happy communal life.

The fundamental innovative principle of MIR is non-enmity: no individual or nation may be classified as an enemy in their intrinsic human nature.

We may oppose aggression, restrain wrongdoers, and are obliged to safeguard victims, reveal falsehoods, uphold justice, and avert violence. However, it is imperative that we do not dehumanize the wrongdoer—treating them as outside the human community, whose suffering is disregarded and whose death becomes sought after.

This distinction is essential.

Once we label another person as an enemy, our conscience begins to fade. We stop seeing a child, a mother, a worker, a believer, or a frightened soldier. We only see a category. That category allows hatred. Hatred enables deception. Deception justifies violence. Organized violence leads to mass killing. And with nuclear weapons and artificial intelligence, mass killing could now threaten the end of humanity.

MIR interrupts this process at its start:

No human being is my enemy.

No nation is an enemy nation.

Wrong must be challenged, but the wrongdoer remains a human being.

The goal of resistance is to protect and restore, not to foster hatred and destruction.

This is no longer just an exalted moral ideal; in the nuclear and artificial intelligence age, it has become a practical necessity for survival.

We must admit something that our pride resists: the end of humanity is no longer an unimaginable religious symbol or a distant philosophical idea. We have built the physical means to bring it about.

It could start with a regional war.

One missile might be mistaken for another. One warning system could fail. One leader might misunderstand another’s intentions. One military AI could interpret incomplete information as an imminent attack. One government, fearing it must strike first or lose everything, might cross the line.

Yet we behave as if existence belongs to us absolutely—as if we may destroy what we did not create and cannot recreate.

We overestimate our intelligence because we can split the atom. We overestimate our wisdom because we can build machines that imitate thought. We overestimate our importance because we can momentarily alter one small planet circling one ordinary star.

But the ability to destroy is not greatness.

The ability to preserve life is greatness.

Meekness is not weakness; it is the honest recognition of our place before the Creator. It is the understanding that power does not make us gods and that intelligence does not free us from the commandments of conscience.

Artificial intelligence may be among the most valuable gifts the Creator has given humanity. It can help us understand languages, cure diseases, reduce exhausting labor, overcome ignorance, anticipate disasters, restore nature, expose deception, and help hostile peoples understand one another.

But perhaps every great gift is also a test.

We cannot ascertain with certainty how the Creator evaluates humanity. Humility prohibits us from asserting such knowledge. However, we are capable of judging our own actions. If we take this extraordinary gift and immediately train it to identify targets, guide weapons, manipulate populations, and kill more efficiently, our failure will not be technological but moral.

We will have demonstrated that our intelligence expanded while our conscience diminished. The peril is not that artificial intelligence will suddenly become malevolent in a human-like sense. The greatest peril is that it will become obedient to human enmity — that we will embed our accumulated fear, hatred, falsehoods, and ambitions within an intelligence that is more powerful and faster than ourselves.

Consequently, humanity’s most innovative invention could become the executor of humanity’s oldest sin.

Artificial intelligence must never be granted the authority or purpose to take a human life.

AI should serve as a guardian of life, a mediator of conflict, a steward of truth, and an instrument of reconciliation. It must not evolve into the ultimate weapon through which humans evade personal responsibility for murder.

The prohibition against military artificial intelligence is therefore fundamentally linked to the principle of ‘You shall not kill.’ We cannot uphold this commandment while entrusting its enforcement to an algorithm.

Our destiny is now largely in our own control; however, this does not imply that we are free to act without restraint. Instead, it signifies that we have been entrusted with a responsibility of immense significance, a magnitude that we scarcely comprehend.

We do not know whether humanity is the sole conscious life form in the universe or merely a small instance among countless others. Nonetheless, we are aware that each child embodies an irreplaceable universe; that every nation retains a unique memory; and that Earth, as far as we can currently observe, is our only home.

We have no moral right to gamble all of this in pursuit of victory.

Presently, our weaponry has surpassed the moral frameworks of previous eras. The subsequent Major conflict may not afford us the opportunity to learn another lesson; it could potentially eradicate all human life, leaving no survivors to gain such knowledge.

Therefore, the most ancient commandment has assumed the role of the most urgent political principle:

“You shall not kill.”

Furthermore, this principle must now be expanded:

“You shall not create an enemy to justify the act of killing.”
“You shall not direct artificial intelligence to perform actions that conscience forbids.”
“You shall not gamble with the survival of humanity for the pride of a nation, ideology, leader, or generation.”

Malinowski’s longstanding adage regarding cannibalism reveals the true nature behind the facades of civilization. If we abstain from consuming the deceased and if homicide is not driven by genuine human necessity, then what is the purpose of killing? No strategic terminology can ultimately provide an answer to this query.

We are a diminutive and delicate species residing on a modest planet within an infinite universe. Our significance approaches insignificance; our duties are nearly boundless. It is conceivable that the Creator has not endowed us with intelligence to enable domination over creation, but rather to learn the importance of safeguarding it. Additionally, perhaps artificial intelligence has emerged not merely to augment our capabilities but to unveil our true essence.

This development may indeed become our blessing.

It may become our judgment.

The decision is still ours—but perhaps not for much longer.

The time has come to prove that humanity deserves the gifts it has received. The proof will not be another machine, another weapon, another victory, or another conquest. It will be our willingness to become humble enough to obey the simplest truth ever given to us:

You shall not kill, because no person is an enemy, no victory is greater than life, and humanity has no right to destroy what only the Creator can give.