Which factors determine AI's propensity to support military intervention? While the use of AI in high-stakes decision-making is growing exponentially, we still lack systematic analysis of the key drivers embedded in these models. This paper conducts a conjoint experiment in which large language models (LLMs) from leading providers (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google) are asked to decide on military intervention across 128 vignettes, with each vignette run 10 times. This design enables a systematic assessment of AI decision-making in military contexts. The results are remarkably consistent across models: all models place substantial weight on the probability of success and domestic support, prioritizing these factors over civilian casualties, economic shock, or international sanctions. The paper then tests whether LLMs are sensitive to context by introducing different motivations for intervention. The scoring is indeed context-dependent; however, probability of victory remains the most important factor in all scenarios. Finally, the paper evaluates numerical sensitivity and finds that models display some responsiveness to the scale of civilian casualties but no detectable sensitivity to the size of the economic shock.

The use of drones by several African countries in their fight against armed groups is causing significant harm to civilians, according to a new report. More than 943 civilians have been killed in at least 50 incidents across six African countries from November 2021 to November 2024, according to the report by Drone Wars UK. The report, titled Death on Delivery, reveals that strikes regularly fail to distinguish between civilians and combatants in their operations. Experts told Al Jazeera that the death toll is likely only the tip of the iceberg because many countries run secretive drone campaigns. As drones rapidly become the weapon of choice for governments across the continent, what are the consequences for civilians in conflict zones?

After loudly touting the use of artificial intelligence (AI) during their 11-day conflict against Hamas in 2021, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have been fairly tight-lipped about the AI systems they've employed in the post-Oct. Numerous media outlets have speculated that Israel's AI platforms are being used recklessly, but Blaise Misztal, Vice President for Policy at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA), told Fox News Digital that he believes Israel is using AI-powered drone swarms, mapping drones and targeting systems as a means to minimize civilian casualties as they seek out Hamas terrorists hiding among the populace or holed up in tunnel systems laced beneath civilian architecture. Misztal says that available evidence implies drones are a "near constant companion for ground troops as they're maneuvering through Gaza," with the IDF telling JINSA researchers that "each unit has its own mini-Air Force" supporting troop movements. A number of AI-powered drones may be mapping the underground tunnels built below Gaza, or protecting those who are traversing them as they seek out terrorists or hostages. Iris, a ground-based, throwable unit manufactured by Elbit Systems "can enter small and confined spaces, above or underground, to explore hazardous areas while relaying intelligence and reconnaissance information in real-time."

The Israeli military's bombing campaign in Gaza used a previously undisclosed AI-powered database that at one stage identified 37,000 potential targets based on their apparent links to Hamas, according to intelligence sources involved in the war. In addition to talking about their use of the AI system, called Lavender, the intelligence sources claim that Israeli military officials permitted large numbers of Palestinian civilians to be killed, particularly during the early weeks and months of the conflict. Their unusually candid testimony provides a rare glimpse into the first-hand experiences of Israeli intelligence officials who have been using machine-learning systems to help identify targets during the six-month war. Israel's use of powerful AI systems in its war on Hamas has entered uncharted territory for advanced warfare, raising a host of legal and moral questions, and transforming the relationship between military personnel and machines. "This is unparalleled, in my memory," said one intelligence officer who used Lavender, adding that they had more faith in a "statistical mechanism" than a grieving soldier.

Human Rights Watch said Thursday that Burkina Faso's security forces last year killed at least 60 civilians in three different drone strikes, which the group says may have constituted war crimes. The West African nation's government claimed the strikes targeted extremists, including jihadi fighters and rebel groups that have been operating in many remote communities. The accusation by the New York-based watchdog were the latest in a string of similar charges raised by various rights groups. "The government should urgently and impartially investigate these apparent war crimes, hold those responsible to account, and provide adequate support for the victims and their families," HRW said in a new report. A mural is seen in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, on March 1, 2023.

An overreliance on technology by Israel's intelligence agencies and military has continued to shape the current conflict in Gaza, analysts say, while also being partially responsible for the failure to detect the Hamas attack on October 7. Hamas's surprise attack on army outposts and surrounding villages in southern Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,200 Israeli and foreign nationals, mostly civilians, took the Israeli intelligence agencies by surprise. Hamas fighters also took about 240 people captive. Israel, in its brutal military response, has killed more than 17,000 Palestinians in Gaza since then. Within both Israel and the wider Arab region, many have asked how Shin Bet, one of the world's most respected and feared intelligence agencies, which is responsible for Israel's domestic security, could have been outmatched by Hamas using bulldozers and paragliders. The world's disbelief has sparked a bounty of conspiracy theories in some quarters.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have used artificial intelligence (AI) to improve targeting of Hamas operators and facilities as its military faces criticism for what's been deemed as collateral damage and civilian casualties. "I can't predict how long the Gaza operation will take, but the IDF's use of AI and Machine Learning (ML) tools can certainly assist in the administratively burdensome targeting identification, evaluation and assessment process," Mark Montgomery, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies' Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation, told Fox News Digital. "Similar to U.S. forces, the IDF takes great effort to reduce collateral damage and civilian casualties, and tools like AI and ML can make the targeting process more agile and executable," Montgomery added. "AI tools should help in target identification efforts, expediting target review and approval," he said. "There will inevitably still be humans in the targeting process but in a much accelerated timeline."

It is easy to get distracted by US officials pledging to rally support for a "humanitarian pause" and reducing the number of civilian casualties in Israel's bombardment of Gaza. But what matters is the actions of the Biden administration, not empty platitudes. In early November, the US State Department approved a $320m sale of guided bomb kits, reportedly assisting Israel to more precisely hit targets in Gaza. According to The New York Times, "Modern militaries generally add the guidance systems on their bombs with the goal of minimizing civilian casualties, although the damage can still be devastating, especially in urban areas." The United Nations and every major human rights group in the world have routinely condemned Israeli actions in Gaza, along with the Hamas barbarism on October 7, and accused the Israeli army of potentially committing war crimes. Human Rights Watch has rightly called for a suspension of all weapons transfers to Israel and Hamas.

For a year, U.S. officials have been saying that taking out a terrorist threat in Afghanistan with no American troops on the ground would be difficult but not impossible. Last weekend, the U.S. did just that -- killing al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri with a CIA drone strike. Other high-profile airstrikes in the past had inadvertently killed innocent civilians. In this case, the U.S. carefully chose to use a type of Hellfire missile that greatly minimized the chance of other casualties. Although U.S. officials have not publicly confirmed which variant of the Hellfire was used, experts and others familiar with counterterrorism operations said a likely option was the highly secretive Hellfire R9X -- know by various nicknames, including the "knife bomb" or the "flying Ginsu."

Shortly before 3 a.m. on July 19, 2016, U.S. Special Operations forces bombed what they believed were three Islamic State (IS) group "staging areas" on the outskirts of Tokhar, a riverside hamlet in northern Syria. They reported 85 fighters killed. In fact, they hit houses far from the front line, where farmers, their families and other local people sought nighttime sanctuary from bombing and gunfire. More than 120 villagers were killed. In early 2017 in Iraq, an American war plane struck a dark-colored vehicle, believed to be a car bomb, stopped at an intersection in the Wadi Hajar neighborhood of West Mosul. Actually, the car had been bearing not a bomb but a man named Majid Mahmoud Ahmed, his wife and their two children, who were fleeing the fighting nearby. They and three other civilians were killed. In November 2015, after observing a man dragging an "unknown heavy object" into an IS "defensive fighting position," U.S. forces struck a building in Ramadi, Iraq. A military review found that the object was actually "a person of small stature" -- a child -- who died in the strike. None of these deadly failures resulted in a finding of wrongdoing. These cases are drawn from a hidden Pentagon archive of the American air war in the Middle East since 2014. The trove of documents -- the military's own confidential assessments of more than 1,300 reports of civilian casualties, obtained by The New York Times -- lays bare how the air war has been marked by deeply flawed intelligence, rushed and often imprecise targeting and the deaths of thousands of civilians, many of them children, a sharp contrast to the U.S. government's image of war waged by all-seeing drones and precision bombs. The documents show, too, that despite the Pentagon's highly codified system for examining civilian casualties, pledges of transparency and accountability have given way to opacity and impunity. In only a handful of cases were the assessments made public. Not a single record provided includes a finding of wrongdoing or disciplinary action. Fewer than a dozen condolence payments were made, even though many survivors were left with disabilities requiring expensive medical care. Documented efforts to identify root causes or lessons learned are rare. The air campaign represents a fundamental transformation of warfare that took shape in the final years of the Obama administration, amid the deepening unpopularity of the forever wars that had claimed more than 6,000 American service members. The United States traded many of its boots on the ground for an arsenal of aircraft directed by controllers sitting at computers, often thousands of kilometers away. President Barack Obama called it "the most precise air campaign in history." This was the promise: America's "extraordinary technology" would allow the military to kill the right people while taking the greatest possible care not to harm the wrong ones. The IS caliphate ultimately crumbled under the weight of American bombing.