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Last week, reports emerged that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are using an artificial intelligence (AI) system called Habsora (Hebrew for “The Gospel”) to select targets in the war on Hamas in Gaza. The system has reportedly been used to find more targets for bombing, to link locations to Hamas operatives and to estimate likely numbers of civilian deaths in advance.

What does it mean for AI targeting systems like this to be used in conflict? My research into the social, political and ethical implications of military use of remote and autonomous systems shows AI is already altering the character of war.

Militaries use remote and autonomous systems as “force multipliers” to increase the impact of their troops and protect their soldiers’ lives. AI systems can make soldiers more efficient, and are likely to enhance the speed and lethality of warfare – even as humans become less visible on the battlefield, instead gathering intelligence and targeting from afar.

When militaries can kill at will, with little risk to their own soldiers, will the current ethical thinking about war prevail? Or will the increasing use of AI also increase the dehumanization of adversaries and the disconnect between wars and the societies in whose names they are fought?

AI is having an impact at all levels of war, from “intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance” support, like the IDF’s Habsora system, through to “lethal autonomous weapons systems” that can choose and attack targets without human intervention.

These systems have the potential to reshape the character of war, making it easier to enter into a conflict. As complex and distributed systems, they may also make it more difficult to signal one’s intentions – or interpret those of an adversary – in the context of an escalating conflict.

To this end, AI can contribute to mis- or disinformation, creating and amplifying dangerous misunderstandings in times of war.

AI systems may increase the human tendency to trust suggestions from machines (this is highlighted by the Habsora system, named after the infallible word of God), opening up uncertainty over how far to trust autonomous systems.

The boundaries of an AI system that interacts with other technologies and with people may not be clear, and there may be no way to know who or what has “authored” its outputs, no matter how objective and rational they may seem.

High-speed machine learning

Perhaps one of the most basic and important changes we are likely to see driven by AI is an increase in the speed of warfare. This may change how we understand military deterrence, which assumes humans are the primary actors and sources of intelligence and interaction in war.

Militaries and soldiers frame their decision-making through what is called the “OODA loop” (for observe, orient, decide, act). A faster OODA loop can help you outmaneuver your enemy. The goal is to avoid slowing down decisions through excessive deliberation, and instead to match the accelerating tempo of war.

So the use of AI is potentially justified on the basis it can interpret and synthesize huge amounts of data, processing it and delivering outputs at rates that far surpass human cognition.

But where is the space for ethical deliberation in an increasingly fast and data-centric OODA loop cycle happening at a safe distance from battle?

Israel’s targeting software is an example of this acceleration. A former head of the IDF has said that human intelligence analysts might produce 50 bombing targets in Gaza each year, but the Habsora system can produce 100 targets a day, along with real-time recommendations for which ones to attack.

How does the system produce these targets? It does so through probabilistic reasoning offered by machine learning algorithms.

Machine learning algorithms learn through data. They learn by seeking patterns in huge piles of data, and their success is contingent on the data’s quality and quantity. They make recommendations based on probabilities.

The probabilities are based on pattern-matching. If a person has enough similarities to other people labeled as an enemy combatant, they too may be labeled a combatant themselves.

Some claim machine learning enables greater precision in targeting, which makes it easier to avoid harming innocent people and using a proportional amount of force. However, the idea of more precise targeting of airstrikes has not been successful in the past, as the high toll of declared and undeclared civilian casualties from the global war on terror shows.

Moreover, the difference between a combatant and a civilian is rarely self-evident. Even humans frequently cannot tell who is and is not a combatant.

Technology does not change this fundamental truth. Often social categories and concepts are not objective, but are contested or specific to time and place. But computer vision together with algorithms are more effective in predictable environments where concepts are objective, reasonably stable, and internally consistent.

Will AI make war worse?

We live in a time of unjust wars and military occupations, egregious violations of the rules of engagement, and an incipient arms race in the face of US-China rivalry. In this context, the inclusion of AI in war may add new complexities that exacerbate, rather than prevent, harm.

AI systems make it easier for actors in war to remain anonymous and can render invisible the source of violence or the decisions that lead to it. In turn, we may see increasing disconnection between militaries, soldiers, and civilians, and the wars being fought in the name of the nation they serve.

And as AI grows more common in war, militaries will develop countermeasures to undermine it, creating a loop of escalating militarisation.

Can we control AI systems to head off a future in which warfare is driven by increasing reliance on technology underpinned by learning algorithms? Controlling AI development in any area, particularly via laws and regulations, has proven difficult.

Many suggest we need better laws to account for systems underpinned by machine learning, but even this is not straightforward. Machine learning algorithms are difficult to regulate.

AI-enabled weapons may program and update themselves, evading legal requirements for certainty. The engineering maxim “software is never done” implies that the law may never match the speed of technological change.

The quantitative act of estimating likely numbers of civilian deaths in advance, which the Habsora system does, does not tell us much about the qualitative dimensions of targeting. Systems like Habsora in isolation cannot really tell us much about whether a strike would be ethical or legal (that is, whether it is proportionate, discriminate and necessary, among other considerations).

AI should support democratic ideals, not undermine them. Trust in governments, institutions, and militaries is eroding and needs to be restored if we plan to apply AI across a range of military practices.

We need to deploy critical ethical and political analysis to interrogate emerging technologies and their effects so any form of military violence is considered to be the last resort. Until then, machine learning algorithms are best kept separate from targeting practices. Unfortunately, the world’s armies are heading in the opposite direction.

Bianca Baggiarini is Lecturer, Australian National University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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In her recent stop in Dubai, US Vice-President Kamala Harris outlined five principles for postwar Gaza, after emphases on Palestinian civilian casualties. 

True, she gave passing lip service to the terrorist attacks of October 7 that started the war and the casualties, though without emphasizing the difference: that civilian casualties on October 7 were by design, whereas in Gaza casualties to Israel’s actions were consequence of the war – which Hamas could have avoided.

I must guess that the vice-president never read late president Harry Truman’s letter of August 11, 1945, responding to Samuel Cavert, general secretary of the Federal Churches of Christ in America, reprinted below:

Substitute “Israel” for “the United States” and “Hamas” (or Hezbollah, ISIS, or any other Islamist group) for “Japan” and Truman’s points stay as valid now as then. This letter may also help close debates about “proportionality.”   

One difference between the situation Truman faced then and Israel now is that Japan was a “state” with which the United States could negotiate and responsible and accountable for respecting treaties, having one government and one army.   

Gaza is not a state, and Hamas is just one of a number of armed units operating within the territory. Although countries around the world have recognized Palestine as a “state” – on paper –  it is not a state either. It does not have a government willing and able to disarm the many armed cells even in the West Bank, never mind disarming Hamas and other armed units. 

This situation also suggests that discussion of using the 1967 borders cannot be a starting point in negotiations. Egypt, which ruled Gaza until 1967, does not want anything to do with it, and is building a wall to ensure that. 

Jordan does not want the West Bank, and Syria is a failed state with dozens of armed groups operating and controlling territories within the pre-1967 borders. Same with Lebanon: Hezbollah has a massive army within it, its declared goal being the destruction of Israel. Thus the discussion of a Palestinian state and borders at present appears little more than hallucination on paper.  

Once a Palestinian government emerges willing and able to disarm all the various armed units, then there will be meaning to negotiating borders and treatise. Israel did just that back in 1948: After the creation of the Israel Defense Forces, there were Jewish armed units within Israel that did not want to put down the arms and continued importing them.

Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, understood that you cannot create a state while allowing armed units running around, and ordered the IDF to shoot at a ship (the Altalena) that was smuggling arms to these units, killing some 16 Jews on board.

This was a shocking act, happening just a few years after the Holocaust. However, the rebellious cells put down their arms. No such political will and ability exist among Israel’s neighbors with whom it is supposed to negotiate.          

Kamala Harris, though, outlined in her speedy Middle East tour the present US administration’s thinking about what to do after fighting ceases that would pave the way toward a Palestinian state. 

She outlined the following: “Five principles guide our approach for post-conflict Gaza: no forcible displacement, no reoccupation, no siege or blockade, no reduction in territory and no use of Gaza as a platform for terrorism.”

Nice, but irrelevant. It does not appear that Israel wants or can displace some 2 million people living in Gaza. It does not want to occupy it: Actually, it left it in 2005, leaving behind thriving innovative agricultural hothouses that the World Bank donated to Gaza, and which the locals destroyed in no time.  

Israel imposed no siege: In contrast to Egypt, it supplied water, fuel and, when Gaza did not export terror to Israel, it allowed Gazans to come and work in Israel. For few months before October 7, some 20,000 Gazans were passing the border. As to Gaza not becoming a platform for terrorism, sounds nice on paper, but who will enforce it? Who will prevent the import of arms?  

Probably the best strategy Israel could pursue after the war is to emulate Egypt. If Egypt can build a wall and strictly control movement of people and goods across the border, so can Israel. Since some 70% of Gazans still support Hamas after the October 7 events, Israel has no obligation to assist it in any way. 

Truman’s sharply worded reasoning applies. Moreover, the fact that Gaza would then be closed on the south by Egypt, and east and north by Israel, walled in – has precedent in the Middle East, and it does not imply inability to prosper.

The precedent is … Israel. Before 1967, it was closed by Egypt on the south (at one point Gamel Abdel Nasser, Egypt’s late president, also closed the straits preventing ships to get to Eilat), on the east Syria and Jordan closed it, and Lebanon in the north. 

Since the Gazans still do not want anything to do with Israelis except kill them, Israel has no obligation to assist them.

Perhaps Egypt’s and Israel’s walls – like fences – can eventually, gradually make for better neighbors.

Reuven Brenner is the author of History: The Human Gamble, Force of Finance, and series of analyses about the Middle East and anti-Semitism.

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