Data, Decisions, and Death: Examining the Role of AI in Contemporary Warfare

In this essay I wrote for the Arab Reform Initiative, I examine how AI decision support systems have interacted with existing military doctrines, operational practices, and international humanitarian law to produce a civilian death toll that has outpaced other contemporary conflicts. The argument is not that AI caused this outcome, but that it has amplified existing failures, and in the process amplified the speed at which those failures translate into civilian deaths, and the obscuring of accountability behind the veneer of data-driven precision.