Amir H. Payberah - 2026-03-20

The use of AI in warfare is not new. We have already seen examples of it, for instance, in Gaza. What is different and concerning about the current US-Israel war on Iran is not the presence of AI, but how it is being used and the extent to which it shapes decision-making.

In this approach, AI goes beyond analyzing data and directly participates in making decisions, effectively determining who or what becomes a target. Processes that once took hours or even days are now compressed into seconds, and targets are generated at scale. In this context, human oversight gradually turns into a formality rather than a meaningful safeguard.

The recent strike on a school in Minab, where around 170 innocent lives were lost, has been cited by some as a consequence of this mode of decision-making (although the role of AI in this tragedy has not yet been officially confirmed). But whether or not we can definitively attribute this mistake to AI (or even call it a "mistake") is not the main issue. The deeper problem is the devaluation of human life. But not all humans, those who live in this specific geography: in Iran, Palestine, Lebanon, Afghanistan, and many regions outside the centers of global power. Places where human lives become secondary to efficiency and speed; where people are reduced to numbers, and their deaths become "acceptable errors".

This is the core problem: a form of violence that is not only physical, but epistemic; a violence embedded in the very layers of decision-making and within these AI systems themselves.