Machines Like Us S1E10 — Gaza is a Window into the Future of War

August 27, 2024

For nearly a year now, the world has been transfixed – and horrified – by what’s happening in the Gaza Strip. Yet for all the media coverage, there seems to be far less known about how this war is actually being fought. And the how of this conflict, and its enormous human toll, might end up being its most enduring legacy.

In April, the magazine +972 published a story describing how Israel was using an AI system called Lavender to target potential enemies for air strikes, sometimes with a margin of error as high as 10%. I remember reading that story back in the Spring and being shocked, not that such tools existed, but that they were already being used at this scale on the battlefield.

P. W. Singer was less surprised. Singer is one of the world’s foremost experts on the future of warfare. He’s a strategist at the think tank New America, a professor of practice at Arizona State University, and a consultant for everyone from the US military to the FBI. If anyone can help us understand the black box of autonomous weaponry and AI warfare, it’s P.W. Singer.