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Artificial intelligence, neural networks, speech and behavior recognition systems, drones, autonomous robotic systems - all of these and many other technologies are widely used by the military to create a new type of lethal weapon programmed to independently decide to use military force. According to experts, production of such weapons will be a revolution in military affairs, the same kind of revolution that the creation of nuclear weapons made back in the days.

Adoption of fully autonomous combat systems raises a number of ethical and legal issues, the major of which is a destruction of a supposed enemy’s manpower by a robot without a human command. This article focuses on the legal aspects of creating autonomous combat systems, their legal status and the prospects of creating an international document prohibiting lethal robotic technologies.

As the result of the study, the authors came to a conclusion that there is no direct legal restriction on the use of fully autonomous combat systems, however, the use of such weapons contradicts the doctrinal norms of international law. The authors also believe that a comprehensive ban on the development, use and distribution of robotic technologies is hardly possible in the foreseeable future. The most possible scenario for solving the problem at an international level is only a ban on the use of this type of military equipment directly during an operational activity of an armed conflict. At the same time, the authors consider it necessary to outline the acceptable areas of application of robotic technologies: medical and logistical support of military operations, military construction, the use of mine clearing robots and similar humanistically justified measures.

The article problematizes the functioning, on the one hand, of traditional value-normative regulators, ensuring socio-cultural integrity and social and political dynamics, and on the other, the development of standards for the development and application of digital algorithms, autonomous robotic systems and artificial intelligence. It discusses various approaches and theoretical and practical positions that argue and model the development of a socio-political organization in the digital era, and describe fundamental changes in political communication, law and order, public-power interaction, etc.

The authors argue that the introduction of digital algorithms and robotic technologies radically changes the basic sociocultural meanings and the socio-political landscape, the formation of new types of social relations, where people, things, machines together form special modes of functioning, specific relations. The work proves that these cardinal changes require fundamentally new theoretical and methodological approaches to research, and new tools for political modeling and forecasting. The problems of legislative and ethical regulation of the processes of informatization and technological development of the society are discussed separately. The final part of the research shows that modernity poses the fundamental problem of correlating digital and socio-cultural trends in the development of political space, their contradictions and the inevitable convergence of socio-cultural, traditional socio-political dominants of development with digital trends and life forms. The article proves that harmonization of existing value-normative regulators and standards of digital algorithms and artificial intelligence systems being developed is necessary, since the latter can be a key guarantee for the formation of an effective system of social system development and its stability in the digital age.

The key idea of the study is the question of the relationship between such categories as “national sovereignty” and “cyberspace”. The authors consider that the current theory of law and positive legal regulation at the present stage do not offer reasonable options for interaction and coexistence of these concepts.

In the conditions of the dramatic changes in the existing realities over the past 30 years, the question arises of the differentiation of legal regulation, which is still more intended to the social relations that existed in the 20th century. Today technical progress is significantly ahead of social, in particular, legal regulation, which, in turn, is seriously tied to the state or, as any law student confirms, “territorial organization of power in a society with sovereignty...”. And here the main question arises about the reasonableness of the above formulation. Is it suitable for existing realities? Or is it itself an obstacle to legalization? The article analyzes various approaches to the legal settlement of relations in cyberspace, as well as offers two options for supranational regulation of these legal relations - through the development and establishment of an extraterritorial international body that will have not only the ability to control public relations within cyberspace, but also special instruments of coercion to influence the citizens of any state, either through the creation of a global system of international acts that will regulate most of the existing questions about the interaction of persons in cyberspace and included a clear mechanism to respond quickly to the emergence of new relations in this sphere.

The authors also consider that the inability at theoretical level to conceptualize the relationship between these categories could lead to the discrediting of such notions as “national state” and “national sovereignty” in the future.