Investigating the Military-Technological Complex: an overview of AOAV’s event on AI and Warfare aoav.org.uk/2026/investi...

Investigating the Military-Technological Complex: an overview of AOAV's event on AI and Warfare - AOAV

AOAV and SOAS brought together journalists, researchers and experts to examine how artificial intelligence, surveillance, big tech and automated targeting are reshaping warfare, civilian harm and the ...

aoav.org.uk

Anatomy of an AI Kill Chain A visual project from Airwars and @ainowinstitute.bsky.social breaks down how artificial intelligence is transforming every aspect of war - and how militaries are offloading life and death decisions to flawed technologies ai-killchain.airwars.org

Interactive: Anatomy Of An AI Kill Chain

Breaking down how militaries are offloading life and death decisions to flawed technologies

ai-killchain.airwars.org

Everyone who uncritically repeats "hospitals used for military purposes become legitimate targets" has a role to play in this epidemic of attacks against healthcare facilities in war! A) The law is more demanding than that! B) Without concrete evidence for "use" attacks are presumptively illegal.

The Guardian@theguardian.com · last wk.

From Ukraine and Sudan to Gaza: why have hospitals become a target of war?

"Minab is illustrative of this more general transformation in which the friction necessary for legal and factual assessment is being progressively eroded by design, resulting in a targeting environment in which outdated or uncertain intelligence is continuously reproduced as actionable truth." 1/2

Dr Zena Assaad@zenaassaad.bsky.social · 2w ago

This blog post by @jessicadorsey.bsky.social & Taylor Woodcock analyses the growing information around the Minab school bombing and highlights the issues with this attack in the context of IHL ➡️ opiniojuris.org/2026/07/17/a...

AI warfare is much discussed, but often little understood A partnership between AI experts, conflict specialists, and storytellers, Anatomy of a Kill Chain is a visual project illustrating how AI is transforming all aspects of war Online launch tickets: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/launch-ana...

Launch: Anatomy of an AI Kill Chain

A new visual project from Airwars and AI Now breaking down how artificial intelligence is transforming every aspect of war

eventbrite.co.uk

No, no and no. These weren't "rogue AIs" -- what happened here is that OpenAI kicked off a software process and let it run. OpenAI was always in control and could have stopped the process (or actually paid attention to what it was doing) at any time. >>

My new article is out in open access @iojournal.bsky.social. The norms for armed conflict are usually seen as state-centric. Drawing on archival work in Algeria & Southern Africa, I show how armed groups shaped them too, from the margins, and why that matters. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

First an elementary school in Minab, now a paediatric cancer hospital in Ahvaz. Catalogue this along with the many hospitals and schools targeted and destroyed by the "world’s most moral army” in Gaza. www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/7/...

Iran condemns ‘barbaric’ US attack near children’s cancer hospital

Iran accuses US of 'cowardly war crime' as doctor says blast was 'so close' they thought the hospital was struck.

aljazeera.com

More war crimes: In its fourth strike on water infrastructure, the US has destroyed two water tanks in Sirik, Iran, completely cutting off water distribution in all villages of the Bemani district and the city of Kohstak, the Hormozgan Water and Sanitation Authority says.

"We trace coalition metrics back to concerns about consequence management, showing how martial considerations about optimizing violence—rather than moral concerns about constraining violence—governed the enumerative enterprise." 1/2

Cambridge University Press Political Science & IR@cambup-polsci.cambridge.org · 3w ago

#OpenAccess from Ethics & International Affairs - Enumerating Civilian Harm: Experience, Ethics, and Erasure - https://cup.org/4gvGDwL - @tom-gregory.bsky.social, Craig Jones, @hmkinsella.bsky.social, Nisha Shah & Lina Aburas #FirstView

For anyone without a short-term memory, this brings back memories of Talon Anvil, the U.S. military strike cell that ostensibly targeted ISIS but was later found to have repeatedly killed Syrian civilians.

Israeli command system identified 850,000 targets in Gaza and Lebanon wars, says supplier

Elbit Systems supplied Tzayad digital army programme to map people, vehicles and other objects in real time

theguardian.com

"Groups that are often labelled “terrorists” by states - or even by the international community as a whole - are sometimes more willing to respect the basic principles of international humanitarian law than states themselves."

Boyd van Dijk@boydvandijk.bsky.social · last mo.

fascinating interview on armed groups and IHL- with director general of Geneva Call shadaislam.substack.com/p/what-is-hu...

"Messages indicating the intelligence was based on years-old intelligence that needed to be re-vetted were embedded in a system used for developing targets and required a senior officer to approve adding a site to the strike list, according to the sources." www.cnn.com/2026/07/07/p...

Exclusive: US commanders bypassed warnings about outdated intelligence ahead of strike that hit school in Iran, sources say | CNN Politics

Senior US military commanders bypassed warnings in critical databases that intelligence about potential targets in Iran was severely out of date and approved some strikes — including one that hit a sc...

cnn.com

"In this convergence, the synthetic and the documented have fused into a single continuum of representation -- a feedback loop in which anticipation and action constantly reinforce one another."

Roland Meyer@bildoperationen.bsky.social · last mo.

«By extending the archival function into the domain of prediction and fabrication, generative AI does not merely record or recall the world, but it prefigures it. The future archive … becomes a mechanism for scripting and legitimizing futures before they unfold …» Donatella Della Ratta

"[T]he US & Israel declared hitting more than 17,000 separate targets in 40 days – a rate of strikes near unprecedented in modern conflict...Tehran bore the brunt of these attacks, with 87 civ casualty events recorded in Tehran province – more than half of those reported in heavily populated areas.

Airwars@airwars.bsky.social · 2mo ago

NEW: With all eyes on the faltering US-Iran peace deal, the human cost of warfare is often forgotten. Our new research brings together - for the first time - all cases where civilians were killed: 1,000 incidents in 40 days across 14 countries. airwars.org/the-human-co...

To name more than 150 people killed or injured in the school strike on Minab, our team worked with hundreds of sources and built on community-led memorials by Iranian groups. We group the children who died by age, starting with the six year olds. airwars.org/civilian-cas...

Put simply, long-range OWA drones are enabling belligerents to conduct punishment attacks on civilian populations. As these systems spread, we will see more civilians impacted. 'Ukraine hit Moscow with nearly 200 drones in its largest-ever attack on the city' giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

Ukraine hits Moscow with largest-ever drone attack

Almost 200 drones strike Russian capital, several damaging the city’s largest oil refinery

giftarticle.ft.com

Killed walking home from school: why did Somali children become targets of US drone strikes?

Killed walking home from school: why did Somali children become targets of US drone strikes?

Six months ago, at least 12 people, including eight children, died during a US attack. The US has never admitted the civilian deaths. Here, the Guardian pieces together what happened that day

theguardian.com

New report by @privacyinternational.org & @paxforpeace.nl out today: 'When algorithms go to war Tech giants, the arms industry and the weaponisation of AI paxforpeace.nl/publications...

When algorithms go to war  - PAX

Tech giants, the arms industry and the weaponisation of AI

paxforpeace.nl

"[S]hifting the blame to an “AI problem” to avoid responsibility is another long-standing concern raised by the US’ use of AI in Iran. The intel failure was more likely a result of poor human judgement, which may have been exacerbated by the employment of AI systems in contexts of pressure & speed."

LSE US Politics and Policy blog - USAPP@lseusablog.bsky.social · 3mo ago

US use of AI in the Iran conflict highlights the continuing debate around the role of people in warfare blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/20...

"But democracies that stop systematically counting civilian deaths risk abandoning something fundamental: the principle that the use of force must remain publicly accountable to the societies in whose name it is exercised."

Boyd van Dijk@boydvandijk.bsky.social · 3mo ago

"UK and US have claimed that [they're] waging ‘civilised war’ and they distinguished [themselves] from the indiscriminate violence they condemn in others. But two recent developments suggest that such a moral high-ground is no longer being so brazenly claimed." aoav.org.uk/2026/britain...

"There is also moral value in recognising and naming the terrorism committed by the Trump administration within the Unites States and abroad. Doing so reveals the illegitimacy of the administration’s actions and highlights the extraordinary toll inflicted by these actions on innocent people..."

Jessica Wolfendale@jessicawolfendale.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Trump's weaponization of "terrorism" hides the administration's own uses of terror and reveals the threat of arbitrary power. Sharing this op ed I wrote for ABC Religion & Ethics www.abc.net.au/religion/jes...

Reporting on an investigation into the victims of US extrajudicial killing in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific, identifying 13 of the victims. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

13 men killed by US military boat strikes identified: ‘These were flesh-and-blood people’

All victims of US strikes in eastern Pacific and the Caribbean identified so far came from extremely poor communities

theguardian.com

Countries need to strengthen their ability "to review intelligence provided by the U.S. at a time when Washington has removed many of the institutions and teams responsible for mitigating harm to civilians." Megan Karlshoej-Pedersen on what steps the Dutch are taking:

The Netherlands Sets New Path for Investigating Evidence of Civilian Harm in Modern Conflict

Dutch investigation of Mosul airstrikes reveals how outdated intelligence and flawed assessments led to civilian death, and what militaries must change.

justsecurity.org

NOT TO BE MISSED: Insightful interventions by @gaborrona.bsky.social on the connections between aggression and the (mis)application of IHL and the use of AI in targeting and by @eliavl.bsky.social on the legal relevance of the US President’s rhetoric and the vain logic of reprisals.

Is it possible to legally evaluate US targeting in the air war against Iran, 28 February-8 April? In this discussion I defended why a preliminary legal analysis is possible & necessary and address 4 types of targets struck by the US (& Israel) in Iran that raise distinct legal questions:

NEW: Airwars-supported cross-border investigation identifies victims of US boat strikes. Journalist collective reveals victims are labourers, fishermen, cab drivers. Almost 200 have been killed since Sept 2025. No trial, no defence. 🔗 www.elclip.org/los-bombarde... #LosBombardeados

Los Bombardeados: sin derecho a la defensa

Una investigación que busca revelar quiénes son las víctimas y cuáles han sido los efectos colaterales de los bombardeos de Estados Unidos a supuestas narcolanchas en el Caribe y el Océano Pacífico de...

elclip.org

Haven't watched it yet, but given the speaker list ( @kevinbaker.bsky.social, @sophiagoodfriend.bsky.social, @beenwrekt.bsky.social, and Lily Hu), I am sure this will be excellent!

Artificial Reason

A conversation on AI, rationality, and violence.

bostonreview.net

Pesky EU regs (sarcasm): "Microsoft's investigation uncovered "usage patterns" consistent with terms of service violations. Some of Microsoft's services to Israel are delivered via Europe—abuse of which which could put Microsoft in legal trouble w/ European regulators."

"Unethical use of Azure" leads to the firing of Microsoft Israel leaders

Microsoft fires several senior Israeli staffers an internal investigation reportedly uncovered "unethical" use of its products.

windowscentral.com

"[D]aily usage hit approx 20 billion tokens. For comparison, in civilian contexts, a single Q&A w/ a chatbot can require several hundred tokens, while an individual power user w/ a high-level paid account—someone using AI to write code, for instance—can burn up to a quarter-million tokens a day."

Breaking Defense@breakingdefense.com · 3mo ago

‘Insatiable appetite’ for AI: Maven usage surged for strikes on Iran, Pentagon AI chief says https://breakingdefense.com/2026/05/insatiable-appetite-for-ai-maven-usage-surged-for-strikes-on-iran-pentagon-ai-chief-says/