Heavy investment on both sides of the border reaffirms the central role of AI in war.
The Israeli military campaign in Gaza – which began after the deadly October 7 last year, in which more than 1,100 people were brutally killed – has entered its tenth month and more than 40,000 people have been killed.
As violence rages in the Gaza Strip, Israel has opened another front in the West Bank, another Palestinian territory. The massive military operation in the West Bank has entered its second day and at least 16 people have been killed.
As Israel’s ‘war’ drags on for ten months, the focus is back on Israel’s AI tools that have been used extensively in its bombing of the Gaza Strip.
‘Gospel’, ‘Alchemist’, ‘The Death of Wisdom’ and ‘Lavender’ are not the titles of a novel, but names of the artificial intelligence (AI) tools that have been used to process large amounts of data and identify suspects have ties to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad and to attack them.
A detailed investigation by +972 Magazine and local conversation reveals some disturbing details from Israel’s bombing campaign, especially how the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) relied entirely on a tool for their bombing missions.
‘Lavender’ and its usage scenario
Developed by Israel’s elite intelligence unit, Unit 8200, Lavender functions as an AI-powered database designed to identify potential targets linked to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). Lavender uses machine learning algorithms and processes massive amounts of data to identify individuals considered ‘junior’ militants within these armed groups.
Lavender initially identified as many as 37,000 Palestinian men associated with Hamas or PIJ. The use of AI to identify targets marks a significant change in the way Israel’s intelligence apparatus, Mossad and Shin Bet, functions, relying on more labor-intensive human decision-making.
Soldiers often made decisions within 20 seconds to determine whether to bomb these identified targets based on Lavender’s information, primarily to determine the gender of the target. Human soldiers often followed the machine’s information without question, despite the AI program’s margin of error of up to 10 percent, meaning it could be incorrect up to 10 percent of the time.
According to the report, the program often targeted individuals with minimal or no ties to Hamas.
Gospel: Israel’s new AI arm
“Systems such as ‘Gospel’ are used to enable automatic instruments to produce targets at a rapid pace, and work by improving accurate and high-quality intelligence material in accordance with requirements,” the IDF said.
“Using artificial intelligence and through the rapid and automatic extraction of updated intelligence, it provides a recommendation to the researcher, with the aim that there will be a complete match between the machine’s recommendation and the identification made by a person . the IDF added.
The AI platforms process data to select targets for air strikes. The subsequent raids can then be quickly put together using another artificial intelligence model called Fire Factory. Bloomberg reports this. Fire Factory calculates ammunition loads, prioritizes and assigns thousands of targets to aircraft and drones, and proposes a schedule, the report said.
The +972 Magazine report mentions the book ‘The Human-Machine Team: How to Create Synergy Between Human and Artificial Intelligence That Will Revolutionize Our World’. The author ‘Brigadier General YS’, who is said to be the commander of Israel’s 8200 Intelligence Unit, advocates the use of AI in ‘deep defense’ and provides scenarios that could threaten Israel in the future.
In the chapter “Deep Defense:” New Potentials, the author says: “Deep defense is the ability of national institutions to use the Human-Machine Team concept to address security challenges and expose problems in new ways that have hitherto were impossible.”
The Human-Machine Team should have the ability to identify tens of thousands of targets before the battle begins, and thousands of targets should be identified every day. The author makes the case explaining why it is important to create such tools so that the military can attack the right targets at the right time with less collateral damage.
What about AI in the war between Russia and Ukraine?
AI begets AI. The use of automated tools like unmanned FPV drones and robots has reduced the human risk factor for warring countries but increased the dependence on technology which seems like a win-win situation for a country but the ethical and legal issues of using AI are always followed by the benefits of the technology.
The war between Russia and Ukraine is a testing laboratory for future tools of combat warfare. The concept of drone strikes has spread to various conflicts in different regions, especially non-state actors such as Houthi rebels and Hezbollah fighting Israel.
The use of automated drones not only defines the use of AI in conflict.
AI is mainly used to analyze geospatial intelligence by processing satellite images and decoding open source intelligence such as videos and photos available online. Surveillance drone imagery, human ground intelligence (HUMINT), satellite imagery and open source data are all combined and processed by AI tools to deliver a result that is used to carry out missions. This represents the use of data analytics on the battlefield.
According to a report by National Defense magazine, Ukraine is said to have used Clearview AI, a facial recognition software tool from a US-based company, to identify dead soldiers and Russian attackers and combat disinformation. American companies like Primer have deployed tools to decode Russian encrypted messages sent over the radio.
Meanwhile, Ukraine is working on developing drones with AI technology to combat radio interference. Cheap FPV drones, which have been widely used for several months, have witnessed a drop in hits due to jamming of radio signals, a form of electronic warfare that the Russians are masters at.
“We are already working with the concept that soon there will be no more connection on the front line” between pilot and UAV, Reuters reported thisquoting Max Makarchuk, the AI leader of Brave1, a defense technology accelerator set up by the Ukrainian government.
Radio interference blocks the operator’s contact with the munition (a drone) by forming a protective, invisible layer around the target, causing damage to the drone. Automating the final part of the drone’s flight can enable success.
In the meantime, Russia focuses on the development of AI systems to counter the West and fight Ukraine on the battlefield. If the numbers are compared, Russia is far ahead of Ukraine in terms of military prowess, but the Red Army has suffered huge losses on the battlefield.
Areas such as increasing command, control and communications with AI-based decision-making, developing smarter weapons, which it calls “intellectualization of weapons,” and developing more unmanned air/ground vehicles and AI-based missile guidance systems, are in the focus of Moscow. .
The maker of the Russian Kamikaze drone KUB-LA, ZALA Aero Group, claims to be able to select and attack targets using AI. The Lancet-3 loitering munition is highly autonomous and through the use of sensors it can locate and destroy a target without human guidance, and even return to the operator if no target is found.
A Russian in May S-350 VityazA surface-to-air missile reportedly shot down a plane in autonomous mode, which was claimed as the first missile kill using AI. The system detected, tracked and destroyed a Ukrainian air target without human assistance. The claim remains disputed.
Heavy investment on both sides of the border reaffirms the central role of AI in war and how future wars can be co-driven by technology and a human.