War has accelerated technology through the ages. Just two examples are the inventions of the tank in World War I and the atom bomb in World War II—both created by the urgency of war. Today, artificial intelligence—finding its place upon modern battlefields—is a most warlike of sciences, and it is changing warfare both profoundly and unsettlingly.
In the current operations of Israel within the Gaza Strip, the application of AI has been applied to an unprecedented degree. Among the many contentious uses has been “Lavender,” an AI-powered system that identifies suspected terrorists. Lavender churns through a sea of data—from analyses of surveillance footage to intercepted communication—and compiles a list of suspected militants for the Israeli Defense Forces. The lists reportedly included as many as 37,000 names; once somebody is marked on such lists, human intervention is really at a minimum.
Theoretically, such critical military decisions would require extensive human gathering of intelligence, verification from multiple sources, and proof of involvement. However, in the case of Lavender, the process has been largely simplified, with much of the burden now falling upon artificial intelligence. Critics would say at considerable moral cost, since the error rate in Lavender is 10%. Yet, this margin of error allows for mistaken targeting and killing of civilians based on a machine’s analysis. Though the IDF officially denied that it did not use AI in selecting targets, reports say Lavender plays an integral role in Israel’s military.
AI is used in Ukraine, too, but the focus there has been more on strategic enhancement. There, AI-powered drones have become a cardinal asset for Ukraine’s defense against invading Russian forces. While these are not independent to choose targets, they can even beat complex electronic warfare environments and avoid jamming systems to reach objectives. Beyond the drones, AI is used to devise war strategies through the analysis of satellite images, battlefield data, and drone footage, thus enabling Ukrainian commanders to make quicker and better decisions.
The adoption of AI into strategic planning has made Ukraine more adaptable to the modern war, which is arriving at a terrific speed. Ukrainian officials have asked for more sophisticated AI systems capable of finding and independently eliminating enemy targets. This push for further innovation underlines how fast AI is turning into the cornerstone of military strategy.
While the Gaza and Ukraine conflicts have really brought to the fore a demonstration of how much AI is now increasingly being applied in field conflict situations, the element of an arms race in AI supremacy is very much being directed between the world’s two largest military powers: the United States and China. Currently, the U.S. military has over 800 active projects in funding AI, ranging from data analysis to the resupply logistics of weapons. More recently, the US has used AI to target and engage targets in Yemen, Iraq, and Syria—the first examples of how such technologies will be used in real-world combat. Comparative to human capability, AI will be able to process battlefield information much quicker and identify threats with good advantage to the US military.
But it is in the current AI arms race, too, where China is setting the blistering pace. Now, the PLA is currently working on an integrated network of unmanned weapons and sensors through which it can improve intelligence gathering and electronic warfare. These unmanned systems-most likely for the waters surrounding China-will require a heavy reliance on artificial intelligence to process data and make decisions as the PLA disrupts enemy communications and radar systems.
But with the continuous development of AI to become wiser, the underlying ethical weight of deploying it in battle cannot be shrugged off. Very basically, the fact that machines decide on life and death raises some so obvious questions. What if there’s a mistake made by an AI system? As it was with the 10 percent error rate of Israel’s Lavender, who is responsible if AI-driven mistakes cost innocent lives: the creators of the algorithm, military officials deploying it, or AI itself?
New AI in war challenges the established norms of accountability. At the traditional combat line, the human soldiers hold moral responsibility. As opposed to that, as in the case of AI systems such as ‘Lavender’, even while making decisions, the line between human judgment and machine autonomy gets fuzzy. And international law has not yet caught up with such developments, which have caused a dent to oversight and accountability.
Not taking away from all ethical considerations, the plus going for AI, therefore, is that it does boast of undeniable advantages: it processes vast flows of information at a speed which humans cannot even conceive of and thus paves the way for fast and very precise military operations. This constitutes, in combat, the substantial difference between winning and losing. Efficiency will have to balance, however, the moral cost of such an advantage.
The arms race in AI technologies is heating up worldwide. Whatever the future of war might be, in any case, it means rapid automation: Israel, Ukraine, the United States, and China are working to integrate AI into their militaries, and others surely will follow suit. While fully autonomous killing machines are yet to become a reality, the pace at which AI is being developed does portend that it may not be in the too distant future.
The change AI ushers into the realm of warfare is great, yet fraught with risks. While AI will be predominantly used to deduce military strategies and their outcomes in the coming years, how the human mind will sustain its control over the machines remains the question. The silent revolution of AI on the battlefield has begun, and the practical and ethical implications have just begun to unravel.
The author, Syed Tahir Abbas is currently pursuing an MPhil in the History of International Relations at Southwest University, Chongqing, China, with prior experience as a history teacher in Pakistan. They hold a Master's in History from the University of Sargodha and have published several articles on topics such as Chinese history, gender inclusion, and diplomatic relations.
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