Summary of "Digital Battlefields: AI, Infrastructure, and Power in the Israel-Iran-U.S. War"

Webinar summary: AI, data, and digital infrastructure in modern warfare

This webinar examined how AI, data, and digital infrastructure are reshaping warfare in the Middle East and beyond — increasing speed, scale, and coordination while creating legal, ethical, and accountability gaps.

What the panel described

AI as a force multiplier: Militaries are deploying AI-enabled decision‑support systems to fuse large streams of sensor, camera, social‑media, and signals data into real‑time “threat scores,” target nominations, and automated tasking. This enables unprecedented volumes of strikes and near‑instant coordination across units and allied partners.
Layered intelligence and rapid kill‑chains: LLMs, cyber intrusions, human intelligence, and surveillance feeds are being combined. Fast data flows between coalition systems help explain how senior targets have been located and struck quickly in recent conflicts.
Black‑box systems and traceability problems: Many systems are proprietary, opaque, and poorly documented. Militaries have sometimes been unable to trace where a particular targeting nomination originated, undermining accountability, after‑action review, and model improvement.
Risk of error, bias, and “hallucination”: AI models can misclassify, amplify biased inputs, or hallucinate—errors that are far more dangerous when they feed targeting decisions or false public claims.
Erosion of legal and civic safeguards: Panelists argued that while international humanitarian law (IHL) is robust in principle, enforcement is weak and political. Widespread reliance on AI, mass surveillance, and industrialized targeting increases the risk of unlawful strikes, and practices like setting casualty “thresholds” raise legal and ethical concerns.
Civilian harm and dual‑use infrastructure: Attacks on or disruption of civilian infrastructure (data centers, communications, energy, Internet links) are increasingly part of campaigns. Distinction and proportionality questions become harder when civilian systems are used for military purposes or when that line is deliberately blurred.
Information warfare and platform dynamics: AI makes deepfakes and fabricated content easier and faster to produce. Platform moderation policies and algorithmic amplification can worsen misinformation. Internet shutdowns and delayed/withheld satellite imagery also hamper verification by journalists and investigators.
Private‑state entanglements and sovereignty: Militaries increasingly rely on private tech, cloud, and analytics firms (examples discussed included Palantir and various LLM/analytics packages). This creates dependencies, potential commercial incentives to sell capabilities, and confusion about legal responsibility and state digital sovereignty.
Accountability paths beyond courts: Legal suits matter but are insufficient alone. Political oversight, institutional safeguards, investor pressure, whistleblowers, civil‑society investigations, OSINT, and press scrutiny are critical accountability tools. Example: public/investor pressure led a major Dutch pension fund to divest from a contractor cited in reporting.
Practical and normative responses suggested: Build “responsibility by design” into AI systems (upstream in R&D, procurement, and verification); require militaries/vendors to document provenance and battle damage assessment (BDA) capability; expand parliamentary and institutional oversight; mobilize investors and civil society; and protect OSINT/imagery flows used for verification.

Points of debate and risk

Whether AI will ever be reliably combined with nuclear command‑and‑control: panelists strongly warned against putting AI in charge of nuclear decisions. Some argued political and technical barriers make full automation unlikely in the near term; others noted tactical/narrow nuclear scenarios and intermediate options remain worrisome.
Enforcement and geopolitics: meaningful accountability will be difficult unless enforcement becomes less selective and more politically consistent across states and companies.

Concrete pressures highlighted

Insist on vendor transparency and contractual IHL compliance at procurement.
Support and protect OSINT and investigative capacity (journalists, planetary/imagery providers, labelling and fact‑checking).
Use investor leverage and whistleblower protections to surface abuses.
Treat state use of private systems as state responsibility under international law.

Presenters / contributors

Andrew (moderator) — Senior Program Coordinator, ARI (Tech & Society)
Jessica Dorsy — Assistant Professor of International Law, Utrecht University; director, Realities of Algorithmic Warfare project
Nabir (Nib) Bulos — Middle East chief, Los Angeles Times (journalist)
Basant Hassib — Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of London branch (European University in Egypt campus)