Air strikes on Iran by the US and Israel continue, and on March 1, 2026, thick smoke rises over the capital, Tehran. Photo: IC
Media reports that the United States and Israel used AI technology to attack Iran have sparked a debate about the military use of AI. A Chinese expert told the Global Times on Tuesday that while AI can assist human operators in war, it should not play a decisive role, stressing that decision-making power must remain firmly in human hands or AI risks becoming a blunt weapon that can harm humanity.
Anthropic’s AI model Claude has been used in mass attacks by the US military as a technology to “shorten the kill chain,” The Guardian reported on Tuesday.
This comes shortly after the US government said the military would no longer use the tool, according to the Times of Israel.
In 2024, San Francisco-based Anthropic deployed its model to the U.S. Department of the Army and other national security agencies to accelerate war planning. Claude is part of a system developed by military technology company Palantir in collaboration with the Department of Defense to “dramatically improve intelligence analysis and enable officials’ decision-making processes,” the Guardian reported.
Separately from the US side, the Israeli military is said to have been deploying AI systems since October 2023 on a scale unprecedented in the history of urban warfare. The most extensively documented of these is a system called Lavender, American magazine The News Republic reported on Monday.
In April 2024, The Guardian reported that sources involved in the war said the AI-powered database was used in Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza, identifying 37,000 potential targets at one stage based on their apparent ties to Hamas.
A related report has sparked a debate about military applications of AI.
The Guardian newspaper quoted experts as saying the use of AI tools to enable attacks on Iran would usher in a new era of bombing faster than the “speed of thought” amid concerns that human decision-makers would be sidelined.
Liu Wei, director of the Human Machine Interaction and Cognitive Engineering Laboratory at Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, told the Global Times on Tuesday that while AI can certainly support human warfare and increase operational efficiency, it should not be the deciding factor.
He pointed out that the strengths of AI in warfare lie in the processing of large amounts of data, high-speed computing, accurate target recognition (e.g., drone target identification), and sustained operational capabilities (e.g., high-density deployment of unmanned systems). However, the deciding factor should always be humans.
He said AI should be under human control and still requires human oversight given its current limitations. The data-driven rationality of current AI cannot distinguish between battlefield deception, ethical gray areas, and shifts in public sentiment. Without human intuition to see through enemy disguises, flexible strategies to set the limits of attack, and moral principles to restrain lethal impulses, AI risks becoming a blunt instrument that harms both sides, Liu further explained.
Furthermore, Xiang Ligang, director of the Zhongguancun Modern Information and Consumer Application Industrial Technology Alliance, was quoted by chinanews.com as saying that what is truly alarming is the fact that the underlying logic of future wars is undergoing major changes. From the conflict between Russia and Ukraine to the air conflict between India and Pakistan, from Gaza to the Persian Gulf, AI is deeply integrated into modern warfare.
Xiang summarized that future warfare will have seven major characteristics: systemization, modularity, intelligence, miniaturization, precision, unmanned operations, and low cost. Accuracy is at the heart of it. Breakthrough advances in AI’s capabilities in positioning, communication, sensing, and identification are making precision attacks increasingly feasible.
The report said technology companies are emerging as a new type of weapons supplier, and the real disruption is occurring outside the battlefield.
The application of AI in the military sector will reshape not only the technological landscape, but also the world order and potentially the trajectory of human civilization itself, Xiang added.
