Jesse Kirkpatrick

Jesse Kirkpatrick is a research associate professor and the co-director of the Mason Autonomy and Robotics Center. From 2020-2024, Jesse served as the Acting Director of the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy at George Mason University. Jesse is an International Security Fellow at New America and serves as a consultant in the public and private sectors. He has received various honors and awards and is an official “Mad Scientist” for the U.S. Army. Jesse's research focuses on the ethical, societal, and policy implications of emerging technologies. His research is interdisciplinary, cutting across such fields as Computer Science, Philosophy, Political Science, Public Policy, and the Life Sciences.

Jesse received his PhD from the University of Maryland and was a Research Fellow at the US Naval Academy. His work has appeared in numerous journals, including Ethics, Journal of Military Ethics, and Journal of Human Rights. Jesse's work has also appeared in Special Warfare Magazine, Washington Post, Baltimore Sun, and Slate. His current book, Drones, Robots, and Super Soldiers: Emerging Technologies and Military Virtue, is under contract by Harvard University Press.

Recent Work

• Kirkpatrick, J. Drones, Robots, and Super Soldiers: Emerging Technologies and Military Virtue (under contract, Harvard University Press
• Kirkpatrick, J. Pinczuk,Guillermo, Mike Deane, and Jesse Kirkpatrick. Case Studies in Insurgency and Revolutionary Warfare—Sri Lanka (1976-2009), The United States Army Special Operations Command and the Johns Hopkins University/Applied Physics Laboratory, (2015).
• Kirkpatrick, J. “Super Soldiers and Virtue” in Developing the super soldier: enhancing military performance, G. Braun III W., von Hlatky, Stéfanie., and Richard Nossal, Kim. (eds.) The Kingston Conference on International Security series, 2018.
• Kirkpatrick, J. “A Global Human Rights Court?” in Gordon DiGiacomo & Susan Kang (eds.) The Institutions of Human Rights: Development and Practices. University of Toronto Press. (forthcoming)
• Kirkpatrick, J. and Ryan Jenkins. “What the Fatal Uber Crash Doesn’t Tell Us About Self-Driving Cars,” Slate Magazine, March 2018.
• Kirkpatrick, J. and Sarah Welch Denton. “The Future of War and Terrorism” in Michael Bess and Diana Walsh Pasulka (eds.) Posthumanism: The Future of Homo Sapiens. Macmillan Reference USA (2018).
• Kirkpatrick, J., Hanh, Erin and Amy Haufler. “Trust in Human-Robot Interactions,” in Patrick Lin, George Bekey, Keith Abney, and Ryan Jenkins (eds.) Robot Ethics 2.0. Oxford University Press. 2017.
• Kirkpatrick, J. and Andrew Light. “Gene editing’s great potential, and great risks,” Washington Post. Sunday Opinion, December 13, 2015
• Kirkpatrick, J.“Syrian Civil War Heightens Polio Risk,” op-ed, Baltimore Sun, December 9, 2013.
• Kirkpatrick, J. “Drones and the Martial Virtue Courage,” Journal of Military Ethics, 14(3).
• Kirkpatrick, J.“Kirkpatrick’s Reply to Sparrow,” Journal of Military Ethics, 14(3).
• Kirkpatrick, J.“A Retrospective Essay: John MacCunn’s ‘Cosmopolitan Duties,’” Ethics, 125(1).
• Kirkpatrick, J.“A Modest Proposal: A Global Court for Human Rights,” Journal of Human Rights, 13(2)
• Kirkpatrick, J. “Drones and State Responsibility,” in Di Nucci, Ezio and Filippo Santoni de Sio (eds.) Drones and Responsibility: Legal, Philosophical and Socio-Technical Perspectives on the Use of Remotely Controlled Weapons. Ashgate Publishing (2016).