This chapter consists of two parts. The first part is an account of the influence that military technological advancements have had on development of the law governing armed conflict. Beginning in the 1860s, it recalls the points at which new weapon technologies have prompted legal responses in the form of treaties, declarations and other instruments. It concludes with the establishment of the International Criminal Court after discussing the two developments of most relevance to the book: the drafting of the Additional Protocols to the 1949 Geneva Conventions and the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, the latter being the convention under which regulation of autonomous weapons is being debated. The second part discusses the public debate about autonomous weapons beginning with the growth of broad public interest in the early 2000s and the contributions of roboticists, ethicists and other academics. It then covers the involvement of the United Nations and ends by summarising the process by which the regulatory debate in connection with the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons began.