Iran war heralds era of AI-powered bombing quicker than speed of thought'

"The AI machine is making recommendations for what to target, which is actually much quicker in some ways than the speed of thought. So you've got scale and you've got speed, you're [carrying out the] assassination-style strikes at the same time as you're decapitating the regime's ability to respond with all the aerial ballistic missiles. That might have taken days or weeks in historic wars. [Now] you're doing everything at once."

"In 2024 the San Francisco-based Anthropic deployed its model across the US Department of War and other national security agencies to speed up war planning. Claude became part of a system developed by the war-tech company Palantir with the Pentagon to dramatically improve intelligence analysis and enable officials in their decision-making processes."

"Academics studying the field say AI is collapsing the planning time required for complex strikes—a phenomenon known as decision compression, which some fear could result in human military and legal experts merely rubber-stamping automated strike plans."

AI systems, particularly Anthropic's Claude model, have been deployed by the US military and integrated with Palantir's war-tech platform to accelerate military operations. These tools analyze vast amounts of intelligence data—including drone footage, telecommunications intercepts, and human intelligence—to make targeting recommendations at unprecedented speed. The technology compresses the traditional kill chain, reducing what historically took days or weeks into simultaneous operations. During strikes on Iranian targets, nearly 900 attacks occurred within 12 hours. Experts warn this decision compression could reduce human military and legal experts to merely approving automated recommendations, fundamentally altering warfare dynamics and raising concerns about human decision-making authority in combat operations.

Read at www.theguardian.com