Logo: to the web site of the Swedish Defence University

Stressful conditions affect communities at different levels and may involve occupational groups not normally associated with issues of crisis and security. Teachers in the compulsory school system are members of such a group. The purpose of this study is to examine teachers’ view of their own role as crisis management actors in a female-dominated occupation. A Grounded Theory approach applying a gender perspective was used as an analytical tool for data processing. In total, 16 informants from four different schools in two different municipalities in Sweden were interviewed. The analysis of these interviews shows that teachers’ perceptions of risk, crisis, and security are influenced and characterized by social and emotional regulation aimed at (a) reducing vulnerability, (b) increasing the sense of security, and (c) regaining or restoring a sense of order and control. These strategies have been discussed froma gender perspective as teachers do not regard themselves as legitimate crisis management actors.

Social and behavioral science has for decades studied and recognized leadership as a social exchange between leaders and followers. But leadership is rather complex, and as such, it tends to lead to an increased interest within and across different disciplines. This book is an attempt to provide theoretical and empirical framework to better understand leadership challenges in various contexts. The authors cover an array of themes that span from an individual level to an organizational and societal level. In this volume, two sections are presented. The first section based on individual level focuses on different leadership styles and abilities, and the other section provides theories to understand leadership in public administration, in industrial settings and in nonprofit organizations.

The development of gender differences as an area of research has been rapid over the last decades. Varieties of studies have focused on the gender differences as well as the similarities of women and men. The common purpose of the research attempt is to find out the possibilities and even the consequences of gender differences and the impact on human beings on one side, and social and cultural environment on the other. This book is an attempt to provide theoretical and empirical framework to better understand gender differences in various contexts and on different levels. Therefore, the contributions cover an array of themes that span from an individual level to an organizational and societal level.

This narrative is an autoethnographic study of how discrimination and prejudice counteract the academic meritocratic system. In Sweden, which is one of the most gender-equal countries in the world, opposition to gender equality and prejudices against what is considered the Other can be hidden and thus reproduced in decision-making processes and structures. This narrative shows how a professorial recruitment process bypassed the meritocratic system i.e., the system in which qualifications and educational results in combination with the individual’s achievements should play the greatest role in the promotion process. This is a story about how the supposed meritocracy is twisted and manipulated within university contexts and how the “temperament” of a foreign female researcher is utilized to exclude her from entering through the coveted doors of academic departments. Different experiences, characterized by demanding conditions, have been analyzed with the help of gender theoretical perspectives, opposition to gender equality, intercultural perspectives, and a number of social psychological perspectives linked to prejudice. The description is interwoven with previous experiences from younger years, which together contribute to an increased understanding of the individual narrative and its specific context. 

The purpose of this study is to examine, explain and interpret concepts of gender in relation to information management, crisis communication and collaboration within the framework of (crisis) communicator tasks. Since the crisis management realm is malecoded and the communications profession is female-coded, there is reason to gain more knowledge of how these relate to each other. The ambition is to contribute to an underdeveloped area of theory. A total of nineteen participants joined the study. All the interviews were processed according to the guidelines for the thematic analysis method. Analysis showed that three themes are central to understanding the role of communicators in the crisis management system. These are a) crisis communication as a temporary organization; b) requirements imposed on, and expectations from, the role and the individual and c) organizational greed. Results are discussed theoretically from a gender perspective, and practical implications are given as well as proposals for further studies. 

En ledares förmåga att leda påverkas i stor utsträckning av yttre omständigheter. Trots detta finns få böcker som denna som behandlar ledarskap, organisationsutveckling och medarbetarskap utifrån kontextfaktorer. I särskilt fokus är organisationer som arbetar i påfrestande kontexter. Författarna beskriver hur ledarskapet påverkas av exempelvis samhällsförändringar och yttre kriser såväl som av organisatoriska problem och andra typer av faktorer som omger ledaren.

När en kris inträffar ska en organisation kunna agera snabbt. Som ledare kan det finnas många mål och perspektiv att ta i beaktande, samtidigt som beslut måste fattas – ofta under tidspress och med bristande beslutsunderlag. I boken beskrivs ledarskapsutmaningar som uppstår till följd av kontextfaktorer i kombination med krissituationers ovisshet och oförutsägbarhet. Författarna presenterar också ett antal verktyg som stöd för analys och agerande i olika situationer.

Ledarskapets kontext vänder sig till personer som studerar ämnen relaterade till krig, kris och säkerhet, men även till yrkesverksamma i insatsorganisationer som vill fördjupa sig i faktorer som påverkar ledarens förmåga att verka under svåra och ibland farliga betingelser.

The study examines Sweden’s strategy for total defense, emphasizing inter-sectoral collaboration at the regional level. Specifically, it aims to identify potential challenges in such collaboration, leading to the following overarching research question: What are the principal challenges linked to cross-sector collaboration within Sweden’s total defense strategy at the regional level. The study is based on interviews and observations from various collaborative exercises. Six participants from different organizations specializing in total defense collaboration were interviewed. In addition to interviews, six observations were conducted during different collaborative exercises, each resulting in field notes forming the basis for analysis. Data collection took place between August 2022 and October 2023. The analysis of collected data identifies three overarching themes – inability, unwillingness, and lack of synchronization – depicting the challenges of collaboration in total defense. These themes intertwine and construct a complex situation, described as “a colossus on clay feet,” referring to various mechanisms of inertia in civil-military collaboration. The study concludes that the identified themes pose significant theoretical challenges, suggesting inherent vulnerabilities in the concept that may impede its effectiveness, with the most concerning aspect being the inability to address fundamental problems even amidst increased resources and determination, necessitating a focused research direction to tackle these dilemmas.

Systemic violence against women in the military has existed for decades, but they have mostly refrained from public resistance. However, in the context of the #Metoo‐movement in Sweden, 1768 women published a call for an end to violence and sexual harassment in the military. We analyze this call as a public resistance effort against the military and find that #Metoo is: 1) challenging the norms of the hyper‐masculine military organization, making resistance towards it visible, and 2) resisting the practices of sexual harassment and lack of responsibility in the military organization. The military organization is questioned when it comes to norms and practices, but there are variations in whether the social order of the military is truly challenged. Still, the call highlights the fragmentation of this “last bastion of masculinity”. More research is needed on the erosion of the militarized norms and practices and the effects of the call.

Armed forces in many Western countries have been facing societal change processes for more than twenty years; including value changes, government savings and, more recently, by the unstable security environment. The starting point here is that there is a relationship between processes of societal change and organizational challenges. The purpose of this study is to examine how military leaders manage and respond to different kinds of organizational challenges, focusing on resistance. The empirical material was collected using a grounded theory approach. Informants possessing wide experience of leadership participated in this study. The qualitative analysis describes the coping strategies, acceptance and resistance found among military leaders when dealing with organizational demands. Challenges caused by societal changes are experienced as negative aspects of organizational structure. This may be an explanation for why military leaders cope with them applying both resistance and acceptance. However, our main conclusion is that resistance to change stays within a culture of obedience.

The purpose of this study was to develop a theoretical understanding of leadership during a complex rescue operation following a major disaster in a foreign country. The analysis followed a grounded theory approach. Seventeen informants from three Swedish authorities were interviewed on leadership in the emergency handling of the 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia. A theoretical conceptualisation was developed which includes three superior categories: antecedent conditions, situational constraints and core aspects of leadership. Within the last-mentioned superior category a core variable was identified: a balance between the need for structure and the need for freedom. Leaders who strive to create structure at the expense of freedom of action are less inclined to delegate and more likely to wear themselves out. Conversely, those who strive to create great freedom of action bypass many links in the organisational chain, thus 'short-circuiting' the organisation as a whole.

In connection with Covid-19 pandemic, employers were forced to change their behavior and adjust to new working life challenges. Firstly, the pandemic became a healthcare disaster, and secondly a crisis with social and emotional consequences for workers. The purpose of this article is to investigate the presence of threats to the social self in the working life context. We are looking for shame or shame-related feelings and behaviors, which can be linked to the pandemic. The threat to the social self can be intentional or unintentional and consist of behaviors and gestures that are perceived as derogatory and in terms of bullying, violations, humiliations, harassment, or organizational changes. 

In connection with the Covid-19 pandemic, employers were forced to change their behavior and adjust to new working life challenges. Firstly, the pandemic became a healthcare disaster and secondly a crisis with social and emotional consequences for workers. The purpose of this article is to investigate the presence of threats to the social self in the working life context. We are looking for shame or shame-related feelings and behaviors, which can be linked to the pandemic. The threat to the social self can be intentional or unintentional and consist of behaviors and gestures that are perceived as derogatory and in terms of bullying, violations, humiliations, harassment or organizational changes. 

Grounded Theory (GT) is a research method that allows the researcher to make discoveries withouta priori knowledge, and allows an open mind not an empty head. The use of this method is also desirablefor serendipity to occur in the research process. This article therefore aims to chronologically presenthow serendipity has grown over time in the use of the GT method in a field of research focusing onhighly demanding conditions such as disaster management and military operations. We will discussa new concept, namely, reflexive serendipity, which encompasses the conditions required for makingdiscoveries in the interview analysis. These may be contextual aspects and the role of the researcher,which includes having an open mind and the necessary perseverance and discipline to be able tosucceed with GT and serendipity.

Syftet med denna kvalitativa studie var att få djupare förståelse för förskollärarnas och barnskötarnas upplevda organisatoriska arbetsvillkor så som de beskrevs i vittnesmålen i den 689-sidor långa förskoleuppropet #pressatläge. Studien baserades på anonymiserade vittnesmål från personal i barnomsorgen från hela Sverige. Analysen av datamaterialet resulterade i tre huvudsakliga teman: a) prekariserande arbetsförhållanden, b) förskolemiljön som en krisplats och c) barns utsatthet nu och i framtiden. Slutsatsen av studien visar att konsekvenser av dåliga arbetsvillkor i en kvinnodominerad yrkesgrupp är kortsiktiga i form av psykisk ohälsa men också långsiktiga vad gäller barnens bästa och verksamhetens framtida utveckling.

Swedish healthcare has undergone continuous development over several decades. Today, legal responsibility is shared on the local and regional levels, i.e. between municipalities and county councils. The purpose of the present study is to gain a deeper understanding of boundary spanning roles and strategies involved in municipal and county council collaboration. A grounded theory approach was used. Fifteen informants from several Swedish health care authorities were interviewed. A tension exists between preserving boundary strategies that stifle collaboration and boundary spanning strategies that facilitate it. The way boundary spanners manage their role is assumed to influence the centre of gravity for this tension and thus the combination of favourable boundary spanning strategies and favourable boundary spanning roles is one way of getting the current form of collaboration to work.

Affect and friendship change the way we think about research (epistemology) and conduct research (methodology). This article accounts for affect and friendship as feminist methods in peace research. It argues that affective feminist conversations, practices and actions through friendship can drastically modify how we think about peace. Based on fieldwork conducted in Colombia (2019 and 2022) with female ex-guerrilleras from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People’s Army (Farc-ep), it (1) draws upon the concepts of camaradería and being insurgent proposed by the women of the Farc-ep to (2) trace how affect and friendship can change the way we do peace research. Ultimately, the article proposes four aspects for the adoption of friendship as a method in peace research by: 1) deconstructing the linearity in peace research methods; 2) multiplying data collection’s methods; 3) including affects throughout the whole research process and 4) advocating for an insurgent peace research that vindicates long-term ‘transversal politics’ and translocal coalition-building.

Background: Answering calls for an interactionist approach that would help clarify the complexity of organizational socialization, this study applied a person-centered analytic approach aiming to examine the role of proximal socialization outcome profiles for distal outcomes. Organizational socialization concerns the learning and adjustment process enabling newcomers to adapt to an organizational role. Proximal outcomes (or adjustment indicators) are assumed to reflect how well individuals adjust on their way to become organizational insiders, while distal outcomes reflect the ultimate organizational socialization outcomes. Thus, proximal outcomes precede distal outcomes, mediating effects of various organizational and individual socialization factors (known as antecedents) that foster the socialization process.

Method: In this study, a person-centered analytic approach was used to examine the role of proximal socialization outcome profiles for distal outcomes. Data from new police officers in Sweden (N = 430), from three time points (T0 = Application process [spring 2008], T1 = Near end of field training [end of 2010], and T2 = Near end of first work year [end of 2011]), were analyzed. First, latent profile analysis (LPA) was performed to identify proximal outcomes profiles. Then, the identified profiles were validated by a complementary analysis, which examined differences in antecedents and distal socialization outcomes among officers with different profiles.

Results: Among the new police officers, three proximal outcome profiles were identified – a vulnerable (35%), a troublesome (11%), and a successful (54%) – with profiles exhibiting distinct patterns in the proximal outcome indicators role conflict, task mastery, and social integration. Complementary analysis showed subgroup differences in some antecedents (e.g., personality and psychosocial working conditions) and distal outcomes (e.g., organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and work-related anxiety), thus emphasizing the role of personality and psychosocial working conditions in organizational socialization.

Implications: The study showed that proximal socialization outcome indicators may form profiles that characterize subgroups of newcomers following different socialization paths. Depicting how the socialization process may differ among subgroups is a significant theoretical contribution that adds nuance to traditional stage models. Findings also emphasize that both psychosocial working conditions and personality are important antecedents, which support viewing organizational socialization as an interactive process including both the individual and the environment. Accordingly, the study suggests the person-centered approach as promising for gaining new insights regarding organizational socialization processes. Further, this study indicates that the socialization process was successful for most new police officers. Still, for a fairly large proportion (i.e., the Vulnerable and Troublesome groups), the proximal outcome profiles indicated a less favourable adjustment. The differences in proximal outcome profiles suggest that the Troublesome and the Vulnerable groups struggled with somewhat different adjustment challenges, which may yield organizational challenges. From an applied perspective, the findings suggest that targeting the challenges and needs that characterize different groups of newcomers may help organizations to tailor actions facilitating learning and adjustment among newcomers. Moreover, to facilitate newcomers’ socialization, organizations may also benefit from monitoring newcomers’ experiences of their working climate as well as their personality.

On April 29, 2003, a catastrophic flood occurred in the Argentina city of Santa Fe de la Vera Cruz. Soon, the disaster became a political issue, as they had made serious accusations against the authorities and decision makers regarding negligence, corruption and lack of disaster preparedness. A local protest movement emerged, claiming both the allocation of responsibilities and financial compensation for the losses suffered by the victims. This article analyses the role of material memory and oblivion on the post disaster scene, more specifically, how different social actors in Santa Fe used places and objects in the contentious making of a disaster memoryscape. The analysis is based on ethnography from transtemporal translocal and field research conducted in Santa Fe between 2004 and 2011, and applies anthropological and sociological theories of memory to analyse these processes.

This special issue focuses on the phenomena of disasters and crises, and how such extraordinary and disruptive events can be understood from the perspective of social anthropology. Critical events are not unique to Latin America, yet the impact of hydro-meteorological and geological disasters have dramatically increased in the region in the last century (IDB 2010, UNISDR and Corporation OSSO 2013) and many countries have historical and recent experience of profound social, political and economic crises. They are complex challenges for societies to manage, mitigate and reduce, which is why social science has a major contribution to make in understanding both the causes and the effects, and forward sustainable solutions. This special issue presents four articles based on empirical cases from Latin America, with an emphasis on Argentina and Brazil, which demonstrate the anthropological contribution to the understanding of critical events. The authors make no claim to provide a complete view of the anthropology of disasters and crises in Latin America, but rather to account for a growing research field in the region, which is already making important contributions to multidisciplinary studies of critical events, and to the policy development of disaster risk reduction and crisis management.

Flooding has long been a recurrent problem in the Argentinian city of Santa Fe, mainly affecting the poverty-stricken suburban outskirts. In 2003 one of the worst floods ever occurred, which also affected residents in the middle income sectors who had never been flooded before and who reacted with an extraordinary process of commemoration and protest against the government for its lax disaster management. Paradoxically, most other past disastrous floods in the city’s history seem to dwell in the shadows of social oblivion. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in the years 2004–2011, this article analyzes how local flood memories are made through daily life practices and places in the suburban outskirts, more than through public commemorations, which has implications for vulnerability and risk.

Numerous risks threaten modern society. Some are new, while others have existed since the beginning of time, but none have been governed on a societal level since their inception. Despite the abundance of literature addressing the governance of various risks, the processes by which they become governable in the first place have gotten little attention. As a result, this paper aims to improve our knowledge of how risk is governmentalised in modern liberal democracies. It empirically examines the recent problematisation of flood risk mitigation in a specific area to investigate the underlying processes of such governmentalisation. The research employs a mixed theoretical perspective, based on governmentality and new institutionalism, to a case study of the governing of flood risk mitigation in Lomma municipality and the Höje catchment area in Southern Sweden.

The paper mixes structural and interpretative methods. Data were collected through 217 interviews with all actors actively contributing to flood risk mitigation in the area, together with numerous documentary sources. The findings reveal remarkable spatial, temporal, and functional fragmentation in the regime of practices mitigating flood risk, a concentration of responsibility for flood risk mitigation in municipal administrations, and an escalating penetration and diffusion of the market in its governing. Four constituent processes of governmentalisation can be identified. Reductivisation refers to the process of conceptualising the complex problem in smaller, disconnected parts. Projectification captures how the problem is addressed through piecemeal projects. Responsibilisation is the process by which responsibility is transferred to an actor with less power and who lacks appropriate resources, and commodification refers to seeing the solution to the problem as the aggregation of standardised modules that can be sourced on the market. While these processes are fundamental for flood risk to become governable in the first place, they are intrinsically linked and combine to seriously undermine flood risk mitigation. This nexus may be a general feature of the governmentalisation of risk in advanced liberal democracies, albeit to various degrees and in different ways depending on the penetration and diffusion of neoliberalism.

A policy entrepreneur is a distinct political actor aiming to affect change. The theoretical narrative regarding policy entrepreneurs is underpinned by their commitment to a policy solution, the multi-dimensional strategies they use to promote that solution, and a suite of attributes and skills facilitating their actions. Policy entrepreneurs reveal themselves through their attempts to transform policy ideas into policy innovations and, hence, disrupt status quo policy arrangements. Indeed, policy entrepreneurs share sensibilities with entrepreneurs in the market, whose conceptualisation serves as a heuristic for their counterparts in policy and politics. The emphasis on change borne out of innovative solutions distinguishes policy entrepreneurs from many other actors who aim to maintain current institutional settings and power relations. The growing scholarship on policy entrepreneurship assumes intentionality as inherent to the policy entrepreneur and their actions, foregrounding the image of the tenacious political actor set on steering their a priori pet policy to a suitable problem. This article draws from the market theory on entrepreneurship, contrasting proactive policy entrepreneurship (entrepreneurship by opportunity) and reactive policy entrepreneurship (entrepreneurship by necessity). We conduct a comparative social network analysis of three municipalities in southern Sweden focused on flood risk mitigation. We demonstrate two different logics of policy entrepreneurship (as a result of seizing opportunities versus as a reaction to vertical pressure), and we explore the consequences for enhancing our understanding of policy entrepreneurship.

This book offers a new research agenda for intelligence studies in contemporary times.

In contrast to Intelligence Studies (IS), whose aim has largely been to improve the performance of national security services and assist in policy making, this book takes the investigation of the new professionals and everyday practices of intelligence as the immediate point of departure. Starting from the observation that intelligence today is increasingly about counter-terrorism, crime control, surveillance, and other security-related issues, this book adopts a transdisciplinary approach for studying the shifting logics of intelligence, how it has come to involve an expanding number of empirical sites, such as the police, local community, prison and the Internet, as well as a corresponding multiplicity of new actors in these domains. Shifting the focus away from traditional spies and Anglo-American intelligence services, this book addresses the transformations of contemporary intelligence through empirically detailed and theoretically innovative analyses, making a key contribution to existing scholarship.

This book will be of much interest to students of intelligence studies, critical security studies, foreign policy, and International Relations.

Receiving support and help for physical injuries when returning from a military operation is natural and fully acceptable. As far as doing the same thing when having mental illness is not as likely to happen. The shame of admission in front of the people around you holds you back.  The problem might be stigma; you do not want to be seen as odd or different, seen as someone who mentally could not cope with the experience.

If the need for care is unknown to the Armed Forces then there will be an unknown number of individuals who do not receive the support they are entitled to by law.

This thesis aims to investigate how much impact the fear of stigmatization is after an international military operation.

Since military operations in international settings often place a greater emphasis on cooperating with indigenous forces and working within local populations the understanding of cultural factors - what is commonly referred to as cultural awareness - is frequently stressed in military training. This article presents a slightly dissenting view from mainstream cultural awareness training and critically analyses the 'primacy of culture perspective', concluding that cultural factors will not significantly alter human nature and that military commanders often tend to overcomplicate the issue of culture. This article will argue that most human behaviours are universal - not cultural - and that although understanding cultural factors may appear to be an operational necessity, they do not fundamentally change the principles of warfare, military strategy or the military profession. Culture is one factor to consider in military operations, but by no means the most crucial. This article also considers the perspective that cultural awareness has to start with an awareness of our own culture and how we will be perceived in international operations.

Purpose – This study aims to examine how authentic leadership relates to risk perception in safety critical organizations (SCOs). It is hypothesized that authentic leaders influence risk perception through the mediating effect of safety climate.

Design/methodology/approach – Using a survey design, the variables were assessed in a cross-sectional sample of 293 offshore oil installation workers from a single company.

Findings – The authors’ findings show that follower ratings of authentic leadership are negatively related to risk perception and positively associated with ratings of safety climate. Controlling for personality characteristics and leadership responsibility among respondents, the results confirm the hypothesis in that safety climate mediates the relationship between authentic leadership and risk perception. Safety climate had the strongest relationship with risk perception when assessed as a higher order construct.

Originality/value – This study is one of the first to investigate the relationship between authentic leadership and safety. The results indicate that authentic leadership and safety climate are important factors that relate to risk perception in SCOs. The authors’ findings suggest that SCOs should consider recruiting and developing authentic leaders to foster positive safety climates and risk management.

Previous research has shown that psychological capital (PsyCap) is associated with desired employee behavioral and performance outcomes. Extending previous research, we examine, in two studies, if the PsyCap of Norwegian air traffic controllers is related to their perceptions of safety climate. Based on bootstrapping procedures, results from Study 1 (N = 77) and Study 2 (N = 38) revealed that PsyCap was positively correlated with safety climate. In Study 1, PsyCap explained 31% of the variance in safety climate. Controlling for mediating effects of positive and negative emotions in Study 2, PsyCap explained 15.5% of the variance. These results provide first-time empirical evidence linking PsyCap to safety climate in safety critical organizations.

Ett antal faktorer som Försvarsmaktens (FM) volymminskning, värnpliktens vilande och avsaknaden av en mera akut nationell hotbild, har lett till att försvarets förankring i samhället inte är lika självklar som tidigare. Detta kan bland annat ge negativa effekter på FM personalförsörjning liksom på förståelsen i samhället för FM verksamhet och i förlängningen befolkningens stöd för verksamheten. Syftet med denna studie var att hos företrädare för FM högre nivåer kartlägga uppfattningar av vad som är viktiga faktorer för förankringen i samhället. I rapporten redovisas informanternas uppfattningar om bland annat allmänhetens syn på FM, om relationen mellan FM och den politiska nivån samt politikernas respektive FM ansvar för myndighetens förankring i samhället. Rapporten lämnar förslag på åtgärder som FM kan göra för att positivt förbättra förankringen. Inom projektet har det tidigare tagits fram en forskningsöversikt och gjorts en intervjustudie med informanter från näringsliv, andra myndigheter, lokala politiker och politiska ungdomsförbund.

Social workers working with individuals, who are vulnerable and in need of help in different situations, face great demands. They need to be able to respond to people with different kind of needs, yet at the same time handle organizational requirements. The purpose of this study, therefore, is to contribute to an increased understanding of the phenomenon of job satisfaction, its meaning for professionals in the field of social work, and what affects job satisfaction. The study was performed in accordance with classic grounded theory, and all data were collected through three semistructural interviews. The results of the study generated a theoretical model that illustrates how the phenomenon of “work satisfaction” can be understood and reached through a process of balancing, maintaining, and recreating professional pride and dignity in the field of social work. The discussion ends with suggestions for further studies, methodological discussion, and proposals for practical implications.

This master thesis examines army officer's view of the social implications of AI within the Swedish Army, as well as what is required of researchers to understand the implications of AI. The thesis is based on an interpretive study of the army officers' narrative and is supported by contemporary research on AI for military use. The theoretical framework includes ideas on social contracts, transrational sentiments, emotions (like love) as meaning making, human life as Holy and bounded rationality. The theme of the Holiness of human life opens up a discussion about the value of trust, hope and love within the activities of the Swedish Army. The analysis describes how the view of AI is partly positive, while simultaneously containing skepticism and fear that technical optimism will lead to a destructive use of it. Participants in the study describe AI's rationality in contrast to human rationality, and war is presented as a non-rational social process. This leads the study to an interpretation of the meaning of the officers distancing and fear towards AI. It addresses the risks of a higher AI usage rate in war, which include; decision makers loss of credibility, devaluation of life and the appearance of war as nonsensical and meaningless, which could contribute to an indifference towards human life and suffering. The conclusion addresses human life as a human responsibility because its meaning and value is socially constructed, the benefits of exploring AI capabilities and the significance of understanding the social culture where the AI is to be used - as it affects the application outcome.