Meet James

James Patton Rogers is Lecturer in Security and Technology within the Department of War Studies at Kings College London, where where he is Principal Investigator of the US$1.5 million Andrew Carnegie Foundation-funded Crossroads of War project.

James has published four books, including Drones: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press) and Precision: A History of American Warfare (Manchester University Press). He is currently working on his fifth book, the forthcoming War Path: The Rise of Drones and Autonomous Weapons. His research has appeared in leading international journals, including International Affairs, Contemporary Security Policy, and the European Journal of International Security.

Alongside his academic research, James advises governments, international organisations, militaries, civil society, and industry on emerging technologies and international security. His work with the United Nations has contributed to international efforts to prevent the proliferation of autonomous and remotely operated systems to violent non-state actors, including the Delhi Declaration (2022) and Abu Dhabi Principles (2024). Between 2026 and 2028, he is leading a new international research programme with the UN Office of Counter-Terrorism (UNOCT) and partners examining the proliferation of lethal autonomous weapons among violent non-state actors.

James is a TEDx speaker and regularly writes for The Washington Post, TIME, and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. His work has informed investigations and reporting by The New York Times, NPR, CBS's 60 Minutes, the BBC, HBO's Last Week Tonight, and The Wall Street Journal. He has also appeared as a commentator or presenter for CNN, Netflix, National Geographic, PBS, History Hit, and the History Channel. Between 2020 and 2024, he hosted the Warfare podcast, which ran for more than 400 episodes and reached listeners in over 180 countries.

Before joining King's, James was the founding Executive Director of the Cornell Tech Policy Institute at Cornell University and previously Associate Professor in War Studies within the Danish Institute for Advanced Study at SDU (Denmark). He has held research fellowships at Yale, Stanford, and Oxford, together with visiting appointments at Sandia National Laboratories, the U.S. Air Force Air Command and Staff College, and LSE IDEAS.