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Abstract

The accelerating integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into military systems[i] raises major concerns across fields such as security studies, international public law, and critical technology studies. As warned in 2023, “[t]he world’s major military powers have begun a race to wire AI into warfare. […] No one is inviting AI to formulate a grand strategy, or join a meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But the same seductive logic that accelerated the nuclear arms race could over a period of years, propel AI up the chain of command.”[ii] In the military domain, algorithmic systems function as epistemic infrastructures that order populations into classes of threat, permissible kill, or collateral risk. The opacity of AI systems then becomes a mechanism of governance, which often reconfigures military norms, rendering algorithmic judgments as evidence of objectivity even when they rest on contested data and assumptions.[iii] Thus, the “algorithmic gaze” is not simply observational; it is classificatory, prioritizing some lives over others and reproducing existing hierarchies of value (often privileging state violence over civilian protection). Consequently, since AI‑driven targeting systems extend the logics of surveillance and “kill‑chain” decision-making, the claim that AI enhances accuracy must be problematized.

Nowhere has this transformation been more evident than in Israel’s conduct in Gaza, where AI-driven targeting systems have been used to automate the identification of targets, including individuals, residential blocs, and civilian infrastructure.

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