Techno Solutionism and the Business of Conflict in United Nations Peacekeeping Operations

For an annual event written off in recent years as a sleepy confab for world leaders, this year’s meeting of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly in New York in late September was anything but. Yet one underlying issue that did not receive much attention was how various UN agencies are increasingly reliant on cutting-edge tech, especially when it comes to supporting UN peacekeeping operations (PKO) and humanitarian activities. 

The reliance on technology ranges from imposed biometric scanning required for vulnerable populations to access cash-based aid, to the use of predictive analytics and unmanned aerial systems (UAS) for surveillance, reconnaissance and data collection. Such dual use tools are also being deployed to facilitate the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), although the UN Secretary General recently noted that rising military spending on these tools, including the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI), was directly endangering peace efforts and implementing the SDGs. 

The use of biometrics, data analytics, UAS and other applications of so-called AI are certainly costly and resource-intensive. Data centers and power facilities require specific resources, hardware, energy and huge amounts of water in order to power AI and algorithmic functioning. In addition, the production of UAS requires many critical minerals to be used, and they often have short battery spans and periodically need costly repairs. Meanwhile, strict data stewardship protocols are lacking within the UN and if the purpose and implementation of such tools is not properly mapped out, their deployment can be counterproductive, resulting in bloated budgets, questionable data practices and underperforming technologies and assets.  

Industry-driven innovations in software and hardware are also making PKO more intertwined with private sector actors. The serious power imbalance between major tech companies and the UN is especially worrisome and affects the neutrality, transparency, and legitimacy of humanitarian operations. But this is not an isolated case. There is also a global trend led by the US to undermine planetary boundaries while deregulating and closely partnering with Big Tech.

PKO missions, for example, are tasked with stabilizing some of the world’s most vulnerable regions deeply affected by conflict and climate change. These PKO are also becoming more dependent on energy-hungry systems and platforms that enable private data mining, unconsented surveillance and algorithmic predictive targeting techniques. Left unchecked, this risks altering the direction of modern peacekeeping, which is already struggling to overcome growing skepticism over its effectiveness stemming from a toxic legacy of sexual abuses by UN personnel and high-profile failures to prevent atrocities in Srebrenica, Rwanda and more recently in Ituri and North Kivu in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

New Tools, Fresh Dilemmas 

For UN PKO and humanitarian activities, the acquisition of technology, goods, and services in particular generally falls into three categories: equipment provided by member states; contracted services procured from external vendors; and UN-owned gear acquired directly by the organization. However, within the UN, no standardized mechanism exists to monitor and assess the risks and outcomes of sharing data with companies and security forces outside the UN – a serious flaw in how data and privacy are managed.   

The UN’s Department of Peace Operations has already begun displaying a pattern of planning tech purchases before determining how to apply them to a mission’s objectives. Sometimes acquisitions even go against host countries’ approval. This modus operandi can produce a trail of subjective budget allocations that later require correction, while also leading to the inefficient use of technologies themselves.  

The United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA) has, for example, been hamstrung by restrictions put in place by the host government in Bangui, which forbids the use of UAS in certain air spaces. The mission has therefore underspent on drones compared to what was originally budgeted. As a result, valuable funding expected to be allocated towards these technologies sits idle when it could be being used in other ways to support MINUSCA’s mandate of protecting civilians and supporting disarmament programs.  

Similarly, the lack of contract standards around UAS usage in UN missions was especially present during the UN mission in Mali (MINUSMA), which ended in January 2024 under pressure from the junta government in Bamako. The mission, which operated for a decade, relied on a rotating door of companies to provide drones to gather intelligence, from Sweden’s Saab to Airbus, the British subsidiary of French defence company Thales, and the Israeli Aerospace Industries. Although, this situation is hardly unique to MINUSMA.  

Such a clear shift toward private military and surveillance contractors raises new concerns about transparency, accountability, and data governance within UN operations. These issues, and others, must be addressed as PKO take place in an increasingly volatile and data-driven era. 

Indeed, the  sheer number of surveillance systems sourced from the private sector comes with inherent data sharing and privacy complications. From AI predictive systems to UAS, today, private military security companies (PMSC) and tech companies are becoming more involved in PKO. For instance, in all PKO with the exception of Lebanon and Western Sahara, the Sage data entry system is used alongside the digital platform Unit Aware to enable “predictive peace”.  A decision to simplify the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara’s (MINURSO) Sage data base, meant the collapse of a large number of community-based militias into a single category for event perpetrators, which increased the risk of wrong attribution and linkages. In Mali, the All Sources Information Fusion Unit (ASIFU) carried out target identification using the proprietary software i2 iBase by IBM, which meant  individual licenses needed to be purchased for every device. 

As for the use of UAS on UN operations, they were first tested in 2006 in the DRC and since then the number in use has escalated. Furthermore, in February 2025, at a global forum in Indonesia focused on peacekeeping reforms needed to adapt to new weapons technology, Colonel Ismael Andrés, Deputy Director of Uruguay’s National System of Peacekeeping Operations said that the Security Council should authorise UAS with defensive capabilities in order to tackle new treats.  

PKO in the 21^st century 

While armed conflict is surging worldwide, the nature of war is also rapidly changing due to huge leaps in the affordability and accessibility of machine learning, visual recognition tools, digital network connectivity, as well as robotics. Enabling this tactical rebirth and innovation in conflict zones are AI models and data processing capabilities originating in the private sector. And primarily in the US .  

Analysis by Synergy Research Group, a market intelligence firm, suggests that by 2030 more than half of global data centre capacity could be concentrated among just three US tech giants: Amazon, Microsoft and Google. These companies also have an increasing presence across the UN’s sprawling agenda. Microsoft, for example, participates in the Inter-Agency Working Group on AI and acts as the digital nerve centre for various UN agencies by managing their cloud infrastructure and apps. The Seattle-based company is also developing an analytical dashboard for early warning human rights violations on behalf of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. In 2020, Microsoft even opened its own office within UN headquarters in New York.  

Yet governments in Europe and elsewhere have recently been spooked by how the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) had his Microsoft email account disconnected in May after President Donald Trump levied sanctions against the ICC for investigating Israeli human rights abuses committed during its attacks on Gaza. The incident sparked fears that US tech giants, both now and in the future, could withhold digital services to multilateral institutions under pressure from a vindictive White House.  

What’s more, thanks to the borderless nature of cyberspace, encrypted messaging apps and porous sanctions, non-state actors and militant groups are closing the gap in tactical capability. A report to the UN Security Council noted that in October 2024 a UN surveillance drone operating in the DRC’s eastern North Kivu province, controlled by militants from the Rwanda-backed M23 group, was taken down by jamming its GPS signal using counter-drone technology.  

Moving forward

The increased role of PMSC and Big Tech in PKO risks accelerating trends of securitisation and creeping techno-solutionism in efforts to solve what most often remain conflicts rooted in political disputes. Such a shift, however, may end up driving the further datafication of peace missions, wherein digital technologies and data systems increasingly shape how peace is understood, managed, and implemented. 

In response, what is needed is not just structural reform, but a fundamental reimagining of peacekeeping governance in the 21^st century. This includes radically rethinking data stewardship beyond mere technical safeguards. Operational mandates must prioritize local actors’ agency. Likewise, the practice of pre-drafting budgets for defence and tech infrastructure must be interrogated as a mechanism that may embed external interests into PKO. 

Absent these changes to the status quo, peacekeeping risks becoming a frontier for profit-making and geopolitical influence amid rapid climate breakdown, the fallout of which is being borne by most populations who have least contributed to environmental degradation, and who are systematically excluded from decision-making processes around global security and climate action.