11 ms·

AI got the blame for the Iran school bombing. The truth is more worrying

• jameskilton 6mo ago
  Something that a lot of tech people, especially in Silicon Valley, seem to want to forget, is that at every level you still have people making decisions. AI is suggesting but someone, somewhere, still has to make the decision to act on that suggestion. It's still people doing people things.
  • idle_zealot 6mo ago
    The immediate concern isn't really fully autonomous systems, it's that the nature and design of recommender/suggestion systems prompt humans to sleepwalk through their responsibilities.
    • oceansky 6mo ago
      Which is already happening
  • pixl97 6mo ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_says_no https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_says_no
• ognav 6mo ago
  The Guardian carrying water for the AI industry. The distinction between Maven and Claude is futile. We get that Maven is Palantir, but it integrates Claude: https://www.reuters.com/technology/palantir-faces-challenge-remove-anthropic-pentagons-ai-software-2026-03-04/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/palantir-faces-challenge-... Going into a generic rant about anti-AI people after missing sources and believing the Department of War is just extremely poor journalism from the newspaper that destroyed evidence after a command from GCHQ. I hope this is a single "journalist" and that the Guardian has not been bought.
  • CamperBob2 6mo ago
    Better than carrying water for people who blame inanimate tools for their own personal and professional failures.
  • phillipcarter 6mo ago
    I assume you actually read the article and didn't just post this after a quick skim, yes? Because saying this: > The distinction between Maven and Claude is futile Doesn't make any sense at all when you read the article and understand what Claude actually does in this equation. From the article: > Neither Claude nor any other LLMs detects targets, processes radar, fuses sensor data or pairs weapons to targets. LLMs are late additions to Palantir’s ecosystem. In late 2024, years after the core system was operational, Palantir added an LLM layer – this is where Claude sits – that lets analysts search and summarise intelligence reports in plain English. But the language model was never what mattered about this system. The whole point here is that whether an LLM is involved or not is immaterial to the system as a whole, and it's a disservice to the public to focus on LLMs here.
  • niam 6mo ago
    The article you're responding to is making specific operational claims about Claude's (basically non-) relevance. I'd be interested to hear if you're directionally correct, but forgive me if I need more details than "but it integrates Claude".
    • fud101 6mo ago
      Directionally correct is the other kind of emdash.
      • niam 6mo ago
        It's my understanding that they predate llms, and internet snivel.
  • sailfast 6mo ago
    This is not a correct take at all given the contents of the article.
• tunesmith 6mo ago
  Really fascinating article. Bits of bias here and there, like "The US military has been trying to close the gap between seeing something and destroying it for as long as that gap has existed" -- you can respond to seeing and understanding something without destroying it -- but it underscores, to me at least, how much denser the "fog of war" has become. The fog of media reporting in general. Those first few paragraphs felt like a breath of fresh air.
• phillipcarter 6mo ago
  Worth mentioning that the author wrote about this first on his substack: https://artificialbureaucracy.substack.com/p/kill-chain https://artificialbureaucracy.substack.com/p/kill-chain
• machinecontrol 6mo ago
  Interesting article. Seems like AI-washing isn't just for layoffs anymore.
  • glouwbug 6mo ago
    What AI does best is remove accountability and ownership
    • thrawa8387336 6mo ago
      Makes one think why Mckinsey et. al. are doing poorly ;)
• Lerc 6mo ago
  "the question that organised the coverage was whether Claude, a chatbot made by Anthropic, had selected the school as a target." This article is the first I have seen mention of Claude in relation to this specific incident. There's been plenty of talk about AI use in warfare in general but in the case of this school most of the coverage I have seen suggested outdated information and procedures not properly followed.
  • FartyMcFarter 6mo ago
    It's definitely been reported before that Claude was used for Iran attacks, at the beginning of March or earlier: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/mar/01/claude-anthropic-iran-strikes-us-military https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/mar/01/claude-an... Edit: Also, https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/03/04/anthropic-ai-iran-campaign/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/03/04/anthrop...
    • gowld 6mo ago
      "The U.S. used Anthropic's Claude to support Operation Epic Fury against Iran yesterday, sources familiar with the Pentagon's operations tell Axios." OK. The US probably also used telephones and Diet Coke. Nothing cited said that Claude was selecting targets or informing target selection.
      • FartyMcFarter 6mo ago
        https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/03/04/anthropic-ai-iran-campaign/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/03/04/anthrop...
    • tootie 6mo ago
      Amodei looks absolutely prescient for taking a stand against use of Claude in the kill chain. Not to mention how utterly foolish DoD looks declaring Claude to be a national security threat while simultaneously using to choose targets. No wonder they got humiliated in court.
• rnab147 6mo ago
  WaPO writes that Claude selected targets: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/03/04/anthropic-ai-iran-campaign/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/03/04/anthrop... This unknown Guardian contributor writes a missive against "Luddites" while using the typical AI booster arguments that always turn around anti AI arguments. Just like two five year olds: "You have a big nose." "No, you have a big nose." We learn from this clown that anti AI people suffer from AI psychosis because they are reading WaPo and Reuters.
  • simonw 6mo ago
    Both the Washington Post and the Guardian articles agree that the system used here was Maven. The key sentence in that Washington Post article appears to be: > The Pentagon began to integrate Anthropic’s Claude chatbot into Maven in late 2024, according to public announcements. As far as I can tell this is the public announcement - a press release from November 2024: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20241107699415/en/Anthropic-and-Palantir-Partner-to-Bring-Claude-AI-Models-to-AWS-for-U.S.-Government-Intelligence-and-Defense-Operations https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20241107699415/en/Ant... > Anthropic and Palantir Technologies Inc. (NYSE: PLTR) today announced a partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to provide U.S. intelligence and defense agencies access to the Claude 3 and 3.5 family of models on AWS. This partnership allows for an integrated suite of technology to operationalize the use of Claude within Palantir’s AI Platform (AIP) while leveraging the security, agility, flexibility, and sustainability benefits provided by AWS.
    • 491827-17182 6mo ago
      We know that Palantir used AI for target selection in Gaza: https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/ https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/ We know that it integrated Claude and Claude was deemed to be a supply chain risk just before the Iran war. So it is not a huge mental leap to assume what it is being used for. You won't get an answer from Hegseth. This Guardian "article" is by a Substack blogger who also does not have answers.
      • 6mo ago
• ck2 6mo ago
  You know how that was done with a Tomahawk They've now burnt though almost ONE THOUSAND of those They cost $4 million each, so that's another $4 BILLION that has to be replaced too Imagine several more months of that or even through 2029
  • ceejayoz 6mo ago
    We'll run out long before 2029. The 850 fired so far is about a quarter of the entire supply. https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/us-uses-hundreds-tomahawk-missiles-iran-alarming-some-pentagon-wapo-reports-2026-03-27/ https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/us-uses-h...
  • sailfast 6mo ago
    So far, they are not funded to do this for that long. They have floated a $200B bill to congress, which made national news coverage. It would start a huge, prolonged fight over the war and actually force them to ask permission from congress to fight it (barring totally disregarding the constitution which is still a possibility). Unfortunately I can very well imagine several more months and years of this. We are still fighting a forever war that started in 2001. This is all a generation of Americans will know, and that is sad.
    • Tostino 6mo ago
      [dead]
  • tomasphan 6mo ago
    It’s a tale as old as time: start a war to support the military industrial complex. Imagine a $4 billion investment into public transportation or parks. Every 10 years we can invest into a new city instead of bombing some kids overseas (whose siblings, fueled by hatred, then commit terror attacks on the west).
  • O3marchnative 6mo ago
    The Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) has an updated tally on defensive and offensive munition expenditures. It's likely not 100% accurate due to the sensitive nature of those figures. > 11,294 munitions in the first 16 days of the conflict, at a cost of approximately $26 billion. Several detailed tables are in the link below. https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/over-11000-munitions-16-days-iran-war-command-reload-governs-endurance https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/comme...
• shykes 6mo ago
  You can't have a serious discussion of this bombing without addressing the information warfare component. To this day we don't know what actually happened. Between the general public and the facts, there are many middlemen, all with their own distorting factor: the IRGC; the US government; western press outlets such as the Guardian; and the people quoted by the press. IRGC is making claims that no other party can verify first-hand. Everything from the number of explosions, the extent of the physical damage, the number of wounded and dead, the number of civilians wounded and dead - these are all unverified claims and should be treated as such. Not only is the IRGC obviously biased and incentivized to maximize media pressure on the US and Israel: they are known for information warfare of exactly this nature. To take their statements at face value, and present them as established facts in the opening paragraph, as this article does, is journalistic malpractice. Again, the basic facts on the ground are not known, yes all parties are projecting narratives with a certainty that we should all be suspicious of. Without this stable foundation of knowing what actually happened, and why, the very premise of this article collapses on itself. EDIT: the flurry of responses to this post illustrate the problem. It's difficult to even have a respectful, fact-driven discussion on this topic, because everyone is tempted (and encouraged) to rush to their political battle stations. Nobody wants to discuss information warfare, because they're too busy engaging in it. I think that's worrying and problematic. No matter which "side" you're on, it should be possible to distinguish what is known and what is not; and implementing basic information hygiene. Or do you think you are uniquely immune to disinformation?
  • 20k 6mo ago
    Everyone acknowledges that the US killed a whole bunch of kids, including the US
    • shykes 6mo ago
      This is incorrect. The US government (via Secretary Hegseth) has only confirmed that they are investigating the incident. What the US has NOT confirmed: - that they are responsible for the bombing - who hit the school - whether the school was an intended target of US strikes - whether it was struck intentionally - that it was mistaken for a military site - any casualty count - whether there were civilians or children in the casualty count The US has explicitly DENIED: - That they deliberately target civilian targets These are the facts about what the US has actually confirmed. We are all entitled to our opinion of what happened. But we should be able to acknowledge that they are just that: opinions. We don't actually know what happened. And I find it scary and dangerous that so many people, on hacker news and elsewhere, are acting like they do. Sources: - https://www.war.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript/Article/4421037/secretary-of-war-pete-hegseth-and-chairman-of-the-joint-chiefs-of-staff-gen-dan/ https://www.war.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript/Article/4421... - https://www.war.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript/Article/4434484/secretary-of-war-pete-hegseth-and-chairman-of-the-joint-chiefs-air-force-gen-da/ https://www.war.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript/Article/4434...
• nahuel0x 6mo ago
  [flagged]
  • csmpltn 6mo ago
    [flagged]
  • lukifer 6mo ago
    Sufficiently advanced negligence is indistinguishable from malice. This is not to say that this administration is definitely not targeting civilians or infrastructure on purpose; just that the end result, and the moral culpability, are the same in either case.
  • YZF 6mo ago
    Check out this example: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjw4egp7lwno https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjw4egp7lwno "As we pass through Khan Shaykhun, we come across a street painted in the colours of the Iranian flag. It leads to a school building that was being used as an Iranian headquarters." "On the wall at the entrance of the toilets, slogans read: "Down with Israel" and "Down with the USA". It was evident that these headquarters were also evacuated at short notice. We found documents classified as "highly sensitive"." This is a BBC reporter reporting from Syria after the fall of Assad. It is strategy for the IRGC and Hamas to operate from civilian infrastructure like schools to gain immunity. That's what's "not a human error".
    • bigyabai 6mo ago
      Help me understand how this justifies the collateral damage.
      • YZF 6mo ago
        I am countering the parent's statement that seems to indicate the US and Israel are intentionally targeting civilian infrastructure systematically for no reason. A lot of this infrastructure is targeted for good reason because it is used for military purposes. This is totally unrelated to the topic where it seems the one school in question was incorrectly targeted based on what we know today (though not intentionally). The general framework for justifying collateral damage is that enough care has to be taken to minimize it vs. the value of the military objective being achieved. Attacking an IRGC headquarters intentionally based in a school (e.g. if the example in Syria was to be attacked by Israel for example) still needs to pass this test. I.e. Israel would have to take measures to minimize collateral damage which would be proportional to the military value it gains by hitting the IRGC. But the (Syrian) school would have been considered a legitimate military target and the outrage should be towards the IRGC setting up camp there.
• amarant 6mo ago
  >The targeting for Operation Epic Fury ran on a system called Maven. Nobody was arguing about Maven. Would it be poor taste to make joke about gradle being superior here? The dad in me really wants to make that joke...
  • 20after4 6mo ago
    Replacing one java tool with another doesn't solve anyone's problems. If they'd only used Rust then lives would have been saved.
    • amarant 6mo ago
      Meh, that sounds like a cargo-cult to me ;)
      • kevin_thibedeau 6mo ago
        Don't go there.
      • esseph 6mo ago
        Telling my children that "cargo cults" happened because of Rust :)
• beloch 6mo ago
  "Three clicks convert a data point on the map into a formal detection and move it into a targeting pipeline. These targets then move through columns representing different decision-making processes and rules of engagement. The system recommends how to strike each target – which aircraft, drone or missile to use, which weapon to pair with it – what the military calls a “course of action”. The officer selects from the ranked options, and the system, depending on who is using it, either sends the target package to an officer for approval or moves it to execution." ---------------- Maven is a tool for use in the middle of a war. When both sides are firing, minutes saved can mean lives saved for your side. Those lives, at least partly, balance the risks of hitting a bad target. This was not a strike made in the middle of a war. If Maven was used in the strike that took out a school, it was being used as part of a sneak attack. Nobody was shooting back while this was being planned. Minutes saved were not lives saved. There should have been a priority placed on getting the targets right. Humans should have been double and triple checking every target by other means. This clearly didn't happen. The school was obviously a school that even had its own website. Humans would have spotted this if they had done more than make their three clicks and move on to the next target. Whoever made the choice to use Maven to plan a sneak attack without careful checking made an unforced error when they had all the time in the world to prevent it. Whether it was overconfidence in their tools or a complete disregard for the lives of civilians that caused this lapse, they are directly responsible for the deaths of those little girls. I sincerely hope there are (although I doubt there will be) consequences for this person beyond taking that guilt to their grave.
  • jvanderbot 6mo ago
    I recommend looking closely at the New York Times analysis. There were factors that might have mitigated this as a strike target, but it also really did look like a part of the compound (and it originally was!). Yes, with hindsight, we can definitively know, and with sufficient time each target could probably have been positively ID'd, but there was precisely one mis-strike in 1000s of sorties, so this already is a low error rate. TFA discusses 50 specific strikes all of which missed via automated analysis. That doesn't seem the same. I don't disagree there. But this is not a case of hallucination, and an existing website is a signal, not a determinant, of the real situation on the ground. However, you have made a very, very strong assumption that these targets were not carefully evaluated. One that does not seem to be present in TFA or any analysis that I've read. In fact, the article itself quotes those in the know who believe this should have been eliminated as a target.
• gowld 6mo ago
  [flagged]
  • Ylpertnodi 6mo ago
    American bases in europe have schools on them. Fair targets?
    • csmpltn 6mo ago
      [flagged]
      • dang 6mo ago
        You can't post slurs here. We've banned this account. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. (p.s. I'll add, since this always come up, that yes this standard applies regardless of who is being slurred.)
        • deleted 6mo ago
          [deleted]
        • csmpltn3 6mo ago
          Could not care any less. Who else have you banned here? How about you also ban the rest of the Christian/Jew-hating regalia that's on this thread? Or are you too woke for that?
          • dang 6mo ago
            We certainly ban accounts that post like you did against other groups. Here's an example from yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47532748 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47532748. We need specific links, though. People always assume that we see the same posts they do—in fact we don't come close to seeing everything (even in the same thread) and rely on users to tell us about the worst comments. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=likeliest%20explanation%20by%3Adang&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
• burnte 6mo ago
  When AI gets something wrong, it's the operator's fault, IMO.
  • tovej 6mo ago
    and the vendor's. And, to an even larger extent, the organization that put a semi-automomous computer system in between an operator and a targeting system.
• throwaway613746 6mo ago
  AI isn't an excuse for war crimes. Remember this at, and after, election time.
• csmpltn 6mo ago
  [flagged]
• keiferski 6mo ago
  Before it was the gods, then God, then Nature, and now AI. Human beings really have a fundamental issue with accepting responsibility for their actions. From a certain angle, the entire industrial and computer age looks like a massive effort to remove all responsibility for our actions, permanently.
  • atomic_reed 6mo ago
    [dead]
• sva_ 6mo ago
  Turning a military building into a girl's school, and then having this school right next to other military buildings - is this something that happens often? Or were there ulterior motives behind it?
  • qat-1209 6mo ago
    Yes, the US has 160 schools on military bases: https://www.militaryonesource.mil/education-employment/for-children-youth/what-schools-are-available-to-children-on-military-installations/ https://www.militaryonesource.mil/education-employment/for-c...
  • platevoltage 6mo ago
    Yeah man. Who's ever heard of a military base with a school on, or near it besides every military officer with a family ever?
• Betelbuddy 6mo ago
  Its not a war crime if the AI does it?
• albatross79 6mo ago
  Had Iran done anything to the US as heinous as this one "mistake" in the last 50 years that compares? Imagine if some country did this to us and just brushed it off as a mistake.
  • buttersicle 6mo ago
    Yes. They funded Hamas' invasion of Israel, a close ally of the US, which intentionally killed over 1000 civilians. They have also repeatedly threatened to use nuclear weapons on Israel and were in the process of developing such weapons.
    • albatross79 6mo ago
      >> has A attacked B? > Yes, C attacked D
    • platevoltage 6mo ago
      I've never seen anyone with negative karma on HN. Who decides who gets to have nukes? Why doesn't Israel lead by example?
  • csmpltn 6mo ago
    [flagged]
    • albatross79 6mo ago
      Unsanctioned flights between Iran and a third country is tantamount to waging a war on the US in your view?
      • csmpltn 6mo ago
        [flagged]
        • lejalv 6mo ago
          Yes please, but start a bit earlier and tell me the white house version of how the US staged a coup against Mossadegh in 1953 to install the Shah regime and control oil (ring a bell?)
• EtienneDeLyon 6mo ago
  Isn't it a more reasonable explanation that the IDF deliberately had this school bombed because those schoolgirls were the children of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officers? The intentional murder of enemy children is a tactic of the IDF. They've done it for decades.
  • kakacik 6mo ago
    kakacik's razor - Never attribute to incompetence of IDF/Mosad that which is adequately explained by laser focus intent to murder and exterminate enemy at all costs, via all avenues, all is allowed.
  • thomassmith65 6mo ago
    That theory seems unhinged to me. Somebody is divorced from reality. Hopefully not me. There are rumors that the IRGC has started to recruit adolescents (again). I'd have an easier time believing that, but where the Middle East is concerned, there is an endless amount of propaganda and hyperbole, so I don't automatically believe what I read. Pardon my condescension, but it would make the comments sections better if everyone did likewise.
• sessionfs 6mo ago
  Ai makes mistakes, we all know that.
  • pimlottc 6mo ago
    That is not what this article is about at all.
  • platevoltage 6mo ago
    Yeah no big deal right?
• ZeroGravitas 6mo ago
  The House of Saud put out an interesting think piece suggesting the whole war might be a result of AI psychosis. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47540422 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47540422 The submission here is flagged dead though.
• coffinbirth 6mo ago
  The US is a morally and ethically bankrupt country, that's why something like this happens. Not the first time either[1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiriyah_shelter_bombing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiriyah_shelter_bombing
  • lejalv 6mo ago
    Time for a massive boycott to all US-American products? Or what else will stop the thugs?
    • WarmWash 6mo ago
      Being comfortable with China playing America's role.
      • lejalv 6mo ago
        For a change, yes
        • tootie 6mo ago
          China will be worse. Either Europe steps up or we just try living life without a hegemon.
          • epolanski 6mo ago
            Why do I have to keep believing China will be worse? It's not china mass survelling the planet, the US is. It's not china starting wars, kidnapping foreign leaders, it's the US. It's not china threatening their allies, not even going short of mentioning annexations, the US is.
            • efreak 6mo ago
              China does these things to their own citizens, so really only better for those out of range.
• DrProtic 6mo ago
  It’s well known that US doesn’t commit war crimes, they just make mistakes.
  • csmpltn 6mo ago
    [flagged]
• tacheiordache 6mo ago
  I wonder if the coordinates for the school were passed to US intel on purpose to have US deeper entrenched into a war with Iran.. Who would benefit from this?
  • kayodelycaon 6mo ago
    I 100% believe this was done by somebody inside our administration. It’s totally in character for them. Look at what they do to immigrants and our own citizens. They intentionally target children. But if you wanna look externally, you can’t rule out Israel. They have intentionally bombed a school to kill children in the past, well before Gaza. Before you take out your pitch fork, remember what the US did in Vietnam. Ugly stuff happens in ideological wars. It is not controversial to say Israel has done similar things. Also, someone in our very pro-Israel administration claimed they got us into this war. Israel manipulating an ally is completely unsurprising. But it doesn’t stop at Israel. I think every single ally we have in the Middle East would do the same thing. Everyone they’re fighting already does.
    • csmpltn 6mo ago
      [flagged]
• expedition32 6mo ago
  Are Americans not even aware of their own history? The US carpet bombed the SHIT out of Korea and Vietnam. All it did was convince their enemies to fight. And then in Afghanistan and Iraq the US terrified of every shadow blew up anything that looked suspicious- again only serving their enemies. It is all just so damn tiresome and America never learns because it literally cannot go 5 years without starting some unnecessary and ultimately futile conflict. Imagine how much money China is saving.
• worik 6mo ago
  https://youtu.be/01-2pNCZiNk?si=b9GSPaNpnTGAI1wA https://youtu.be/01-2pNCZiNk?si=b9GSPaNpnTGAI1wA
• tristanj 6mo ago
  A similar situation happened a few weeks ago when the US/Israel started targeting Iranian police facilities. They bombed a public park in Tehran called "Police Park" because it has the name "Police" in it. It's a normal park. https://x.com/clashreport/status/2029574288253026510 https://x.com/clashreport/status/2029574288253026510 https://x.com/tparsi/status/2029555364262228454 https://x.com/tparsi/status/2029555364262228454 If you asked AI to "list the top 100 police facilities in Tehran", this location would appear on the list. It's clear they're using AI to pick targets.
  • csmpltn 6mo ago
    [flagged]
  • nailer 6mo ago
    Give me a source that says Police Park was hit. AFAICT while the place exists, this story was made up.
    • nailer 6mo ago
      Not complaining about moderation, but rather making a point that the site is genuinely going downhill - HN downmodded asking for a source for a major event to -3. There's not a single mainstream news outlet on https://www.google.com/search?q=Police+Park+iran https://www.google.com/search?q=Police+Park+iran that points to this location being attacked.
  • deleted 6mo ago
    [deleted]
• jmward01 6mo ago
  I blame everything on the air force AOC concept and the joint targeting cycle. They are, at their core, an attempt to manage every aspect of a war from one room. It 'works' in peace time when you have exactly 3 real decisions to make a day and a staff of hundreds to orchestrate it but in war it is completely unresponsive, blind because all information comes through the telephone game and bought 100% into the idea that 'if all you have is a hammer, everything is a nail' problem. We have bombs. Let's bomb them. This is why we loose wars. Our operational level of war is junk. We have forgotten how to create a task force that has has a clear mission with a clear duration, resources, battlespace, ROE and, most importantly, authority to act. McChrystal 'rediscovered' empowering small teams that every flag officer rediscovers eventually in war. If your supporting the commander's cycle means enabling them to make all the decisions then you have just decided to loose the war. They can't make all the decisions. They need to expand that decision making power. That is their job. Build teams that have the authority and resources. Let those teams, if needed, also build teams if the problem is too big. Most importantly though, let those teams act. If you can't trust those commanders to make decisions and act on them then you shouldn't have put them in the job. Divide and conquer is the only solution here and the JTS/AOC model of warfare is the antithesis of this.
• nailer 6mo ago
  The school was located adjacent to (or on the border of) an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) naval compound/base. Evidence (satellite imagery, verified videos, missile fragments consistent with a US Tomahawk cruise missile, and geolocation) shows the area was targeted as part of strikes on that military site > Within days, the question that organised the coverage was whether Claude, a chatbot made by Anthropic, had selected the school as a target. Really? Everyone thought the US had *missed*.
  • molszanski 6mo ago
    This is how organizations like IRGC work. There is always a big campus like area where there is everything, including schools for indoctrination and new future recruits.
• pugchat 6mo ago
  [dead]
• plorg 6mo ago
  Did anyone seriously believe this was the AI's fault? The modern military use of LLMs is very clearly for the purpose of creating vaguely plausible targets while distancing any person from the decision to murder people. Surely if we cared at all about accomplishing a strategic goal we would have had a set of well documented targets ready to go. Instead the goal seems to be to drop as many bombs as possible, hope the computer's good enough that they mostly hit people who have relevance to things we don't like, and loudly proclaim that it's more important to kill people than it is to have any goal at all.
• basisword 6mo ago
  Not sure how you could live with yourself if you were building software that was used to kill children. I know tools can be used in ways you can't anticipate but if you're actively supporting the military in their use of it which in my eyes makes you responsible.
• 01100011 6mo ago
  The west should have just used cluster munitions in ballistic missiles. Apparently you can target civilians with those and no one will accuse you of war crimes. Drones hitting residential buildings, airports and critical energy infrastructure? No problem. If you use an F-35 and smart munitions we expect perfect accuracy though. This war is stupid, poorly planned, and likely to kick off a global recession. Trump and his cabinet lacks intelligent people. All of that is true. But there is also a shocking moral relativism going on that is embarrassing and disheartening to watch.
  • jLaForest 6mo ago
    The US is currently threatening to bomb power plants across Iran, which is a war crime. Yesterday the US spread land mines across a city that have already killed civilians. These are the actions of my government and it's my duty to stand up and be critical of war crimes being committed by my government. The idea that I am also obliged to criticize irans actions is bullshit. I hold my government to a higher standard, that's surprising to you?
  • wiseowise 6mo ago
    > The west US, let’s not try to drag the West into this.
• indubioprorubik 6mo ago
  [flagged]
  • squibonpig 6mo ago
    Buddy
• cedws 6mo ago
  The US under Trump is behaving exactly like a country with intentions of damaging the Western order and antagonising enemies to open new front lines. I think writing off Trump's actions as stupid is wrong, he's malicious.
  • herbst 6mo ago
    Also making new enemies in their own row of allies. That can't be a side effect on how efficient he is doing it.
• shevy-java 6mo ago
  > Within days, the question that organised the coverage was whether Claude, a chatbot made by Anthropic, had selected the school as a target. I don't buy into that story. While in theory many possibilities may exist, I think this was a targeted hit by the decision-makers in the US military. There are some reasons as to why I think this is the case - for instance, under Hegseth and Trump the lies amplified in general, and truth dies first in war. Fishing boats were claimed to be drug boats. Or the iranian ship that was taken down by a torpedo - that was also deliberate. So, all of what the current mafia in charge does, has a purpose: an evil purpose, but a purpose. I could list some more reasons I think this was not an accident, but I believe the most convincing one is actually that there is a prior incident to this. Not of a school (or, at the least perhaps there was, but I don't quite recall it), but of the chinese embassy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_bombing_of_the_Chinese_embassy_in_Belgrade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_bombing_of_the_C... This happened in 1999. The USA initially also claimed it was an accidental hit. Various other sources then pointed out that this explanation made no sense; a simple one I remember is that a statistics scientist pointed out that the "random hit" theory made no sense. There were others who came to the same conclusion but from a different angle; the statistics example I remember because I read it in a book about statistics a few years after that (that is, I read the book a few years lateron, the initial writing happened much closer to 1999). The current invasion Trump is doing also carries a strong "contain China" attempt with it. To me, I think it is much more likely that the hit on the school was deliberate. The tactic that is being employed here is to commit to the invasion. This is why you can not buy anything Trump says - you'll see that there is a step-wise escalation path coming from the USA right now. Trump is just the decoy on top; the commitment already happened. You'll see more ground troops being committed as the next step. People really should not buy into ANYTHING that is coming out of the current US administration. Hegseth also recently went for a copy/paste job from the movie Pulp Fiction, when Samuel Jackson cites a bible verse before violence. Hegseth did not use the same words, of course, and the objective was more aimed on christian fanatics in the country, but they are really trying to push every button here. See also how they tried to sell this as a video game via ads. This government is a lost cause and dictators who want war, be it Putin or Trump, should never ever be trusted anywhere.
• teleforce 6mo ago
  Here it goes.... Palantir is the designer of the lethal US missile targetting system that has ten years outdated data information [1],[2],[3]. For the love of God, who's the Palantir design architect that approved and relied on a single (outdated) database information system for mission critical missile operation? [1]>In 2018, more than 4,000 Google employees signed a letter opposing the company’s contract to build artificial intelligence for the Pentagon’s targeting systems. Workers organised a walk out. Engineers quit. And Google ultimately abandoned the contract. Palantir Technologies, a data analytics company and defence contractor co-founded by Peter Thiel, took it over and spent the next six years building Maven into a targeting infrastructure that pulls together satellite imagery, signals intelligence and sensor data to identify targets and carry them through every step from first detection to the order to strike. [2]> A chatbot did not kill those children. People failed to update a database, and other people built a system fast enough to make that failure lethal. By the start of the Iran war, Maven – the system that had enabled that speed – had sunk into the plumbing, it had become part of the military’s infrastructure, and the argument was all about Claude. [3]>The building in Minab had been classified as a military facility in a Defense Intelligence Agency database that, according to CNN, had not been updated to reflect that the building had been separated from the adjacent Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps compound and converted into a school, a change that satellite imagery shows had occurred by 2016 at the latest.
• herbst 6mo ago
  It wouldn't matter either way. The US is doing war crimes and can't even say sorry properly. This might will be a point we think back to in future.
• jpfdez 6mo ago
  The rules of international law are being broken once again.