The role of American artificial intelligence in Israel’s aggression against Gaza

Mehr News Agency, International Group: Artificial intelligence is a phenomenon that has affected various sciences, including military sciences, in the last decade. After the beginning of the war in Gaza, the occupying regime has used all the tools at its disposal to target the people. In the meantime, artificial intelligence is one of the options that can be seen among the equipment and weapons that America provided to this regime.

Artificial intelligence in the military field

Artificial intelligence dates back to the 1940s and this phenomenon has been widely used in the military and security fields since then. The new generation of military weapons are permanent weapons in the defense forces of countries. Nowadays, many countries are looking to strengthen their robotic arsenal. For example, China held the first place until 2012 by unveiling 27 different models of armed robots. Depending on the degree of autonomy, robots are divided into remote control (early examples of drones), semi-autonomous (MQ-9 Reaper drone) and fully autonomous. Artificial intelligence has emerged mostly in the third type. These weapons have the ability to search, identify, select and attack targets in a predefined environment. without simultaneous control by the operator. Currently, autonomous weapons are used with caution. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute has classified the Brimstone two-mode guided missile as an operational guided munition with autonomous target selection.

The use of artificial intelligence in command and control, especially to enhance cognitive, biological and analytical functions, is gaining momentum.

America and Military Artificial Intelligence

The ability of artificial intelligence to improve efficiency and increase productivity in the military field is of strategic importance for the US government. US policymakers believe that advances in artificial intelligence and its use to excel in semiconductor manufacturing and quantum computing are disrupting traditional arenas of military competition such as missile stockpiles and troop numbers. According to a survey by the American Chamber of Commerce, 80% of Americans believe that the country’s leadership in artificial intelligence is a must, and the proposition is quite clear that whoever leads the development of artificial intelligence will lead the world economy. A Tortoise Intelligence report shows that total AI investment in 2021 will reach $77.5 billion, a significant increase from the previous record of $36 billion in 2020. America is the leading country in the world in this field and has the most investments in this field.

The increase in American investment in this field increased from the Obama era and peaked during the Trump era. In the Trump era, in the National Security Strategy document of 2017, in order to maintain Washington’s competitive advantage, he mentioned emerging technologies for the growth of security, such as artificial intelligence, especially for automatic weapons, and the risks posed by competitors by collecting information and their ability to analyze data. Based on artificial intelligence and machine learning, it pointed against America. In February 2019, Trump also issued an executive order entitled Sustaining America’s Leadership in Artificial Intelligence, which outlines the technology’s role in national security and protecting American values. During the Biden era, the 2021 National Security Strategy document listed artificial intelligence and quantum computing technologies that are being contested by great powers and have the ability to change the economic and military balance between countries.

American aid and the regime’s use of artificial intelligence in the 2023 war in Gaza

The cooperation of the United States with the Zionist regime as its strategic ally is ongoing, like other fields in the field of artificial intelligence. Initially, the White House announced that the two sides plan to support research to enable artificial intelligence in healthcare. In addition, in 2022 and on the eve of the arrival of US President Joe Biden in Tel Aviv; Yair Lapid, the Prime Minister of this regime, stated that: “Israel and the United States announce the beginning of strategic cooperation in the field of advanced artificial intelligence and quantum technologies.” The Zionist regime’s use of artificial intelligence in the war with Gaza has been mentioned by various sources.

The Guardian newspaper in a report on December 1, 2023 titled “The Bible: How Israel is using artificial intelligence to select bombing targets in Gaza” mentioned the regime’s use of artificial intelligence. It is related to the period of the 11-day war of 2021, Gaza 2021, which conducted its first artificial intelligence war using machine learning and advanced computing. But the October 2023 war gave the regime’s military an unprecedented opportunity to use such tools in a much wider operational arena, and in particular to deploy an artificial intelligence target creation platform called “Anjil” that increased the lethality. At the same time, the use of this technology in the Gaza war has different dimensions:

identification and prosecution of people

One ​​of the cases of the regime’s use of artificial intelligence to identify people under prosecution and suspects has been mentioned. According to the information published by some officials of the Zionist regime in the publication 972+, the artificial intelligence tool has made it easy to identify the target in Gaza and this tool can determine the targets in specific categories before the attack and before issuing the order to attack the number of civilians that are possible. be killed, analyze and estimate. They also stated that they use a program called Lavender in this process. According to them, in the first weeks of the war after October 7th, the regime’s army relied completely on the Lavender software, and army officers could freely rely on the Lavender list to target people without having to re-examine the reason for selecting the people on this list. evaluate or re-examine the raw data that led to this choice.

The Guardian, in a report examining this issue, stated that “Israel’s use of powerful artificial intelligence systems in the war with Hamas has raised a host of legal and ethical questions and the relationship It has changed the relationship between military personnel and machines. Immediately after the publication of this information, the spokesperson of the American National Security announced that the country is investigating these reports. On the other hand, the Israeli army denied the use of artificial intelligence to track down people and announced in a statement that the army does not use any artificial intelligence system to identify terrorist activists or try to predict whether or not a person is a terrorist.

UAV industries

New generation drones are one of the most important weapons in which artificial intelligence is used. Some military sources believe that in the current war in Gaza, the Zionist regime destroyed more than 11,000 houses. has targeted residential areas using artificial intelligence. Meanwhile, Tel Aviv leaders who use smart drones only to monitor and identify military bases. Brandon Tseng, the American founder of Shield artificial intelligence, believes that users can use the NOVA-2 drones that the regime’s army uses to search for snipers and civilians. It is used in places belonging to Hamas, personalize it.

Artificial intelligence in fighters

The new generation American fighters delivered to the regime are equipped with artificial intelligence systems. Most of the attacks based on artificial intelligence in the Zionist army are carried out by these fighters with this technology, including the American F-16s. According to regime officials, one of the most important targets in Gaza hit by regime planes are tactical targets. Such targets include standard military targets such as military headquarters, weapons depots, missile launchers, anti-tank missile launchers, launch pits, mortar bombs, and observation posts.

Result

Artificial intelligence is one of the most important and practical equipment in recent decades in the military field, where the United States is one of the countries It is considered the best in the world. Despite this, it seems that Washington has tried to provide technologies based on this technology to the Zionist regime. It seems that this has spread to this regime especially after Biden’s visit. At the same time, many of the weapons exported, including some airplanes and many drones of this country to the occupied territories, which have been on the rise during the current war in Gaza, have this technology.

Sajad Moradi Kalardeh; Researcher of international relations