Israel's Use of AI in War

The IDF has, in its war against Hamas, used a database that it “painstakingly compiled” over many years, detailing home addresses, tunnels and other infrastructure critical to the terrorist group.

However, it has also used an elaborate artificial intelligence tool called “Habsora,” meaning “the Gospel,” to quickly generate hundreds of more targets.

The use of AI to quickly fill the target bank of the IDF allows the military to continue without interruption.

These programs, according to some experts, are part of the most advanced military AI initiative to ever be deployed.

In response to some who question the IDF’s use of AI and its alleged endangering lives, the IDF told the Washington Post that “[T]he more ability you have to compile pieces of information effectively, the more accurate the process is. If anything, these tools have minimized collateral damage and raised the accuracy of the human-led process.” In addition, the IDF requires a sign off on any recommendations from its systems, and these systems do not make decision autonomously.

Current leader of the IDF’s signals intelligence division Yossi Sariel has transformed the work and intelligence gathering practices of the division, known as Unit 8200, and the overhaul of the division has intensified since 2020.

The Gospel, according to Sariel, is a machine learning software built on hundreds of predictive algorithms. This allows soldiers to quickly query a massive trove of data known in the military as “the pool.” The algorithms, after reviewing data from intercepted communications, social networks and satellite footage, spit out the coordinates of military targets, such as tunnels and rockets. A senior officer puts recommendations that survive an intelligence analyst’s vetting into the target bank. The software utilizes image recognition, which helps soldiers see subtle patterns, “compressing a week’s worth of work into 30 minutes.”

AI also helps the IDF predict how likely someone is to be part of a terrorist group and assess how civilians will be affected by a strike.

“Technological superiority is what keeps Israel safe. The faster Israel is able to identify enemy capabilities and take them off the battlefield, the shorter a war is going to be, and it will have fewer casualties,” Blaise Misztal, vice president for policy at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, who was briefed by the IDF’s intelligence division on its AI capabilities in 2021, said.

However, some argue that even the best AI cannot replace humans, and that the focus on AI may have caused Israel to be caught off-guard for the Oct. 7 terrorist massacre. According to the Post, the department made it difficult for analysts to raise warnings to senior commanders, since it overemphasized technological findings. One former military leader, speaking anonymously, called the department “an AI factory,” adding that “the man was replaced by the machine.”

Originally published in Newsmax.

Israel’s Use of AI in War