ourguile · 2 years ago

The purpose of a system is what it does. :(

prpl · 2 years ago

Endless scrolling feed

basil-rash · 2 years ago

Wild that this is still a controversial statement on HN, which is otherwise rather forward thinking.

hugodan · 2 years ago

There is no justification for killing.

XorNot · 2 years ago

This is not what the article is about, and not what AI was being used for.

spuz · 2 years ago

The use of AI and the authorisation to kill civilians are unrelated parts of this story. Nowhere does it mention that the AI is being used to justify killing of civilians.

ceejayoz · 2 years ago

Shades of https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/world/obamas-leadership-i....

> It is also because Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.

> Counterterrorism officials insist this approach is one of simple logic: people in an area of known terrorist activity, or found with a top Qaeda operative, are probably up to no good. “Al Qaeda is an insular, paranoid organization — innocent neighbors don’t hitchhike rides in the back of trucks headed for the border with guns and bombs,” said one official, who requested anonymity to speak about what is still a classified program.

RUnconcerned · 2 years ago

They didn't want to kill the aid workers, but the evil AI made them do it.

jijji · 2 years ago

here's another story today from France24 about the over-reliance on AI driven targetting may have been responsible for the airstrike on April 1st 2024 that killed seven aid workers in Gaza [0]

[0] https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20240403-gaza-aid-wo...

prpl · 2 years ago

So the entire family and neighbors family.

Sure would be convenient if Hamas is 6% of the population

dariosalvi78 · 2 years ago

Definitely Palestinians are not going to forget this.

morkalork · 2 years ago

"Our system is 90% accurate if you don't count the 15-20 innocent people taken out for each hit". I know they're measuring the accuracy of target identification but that's laughable when used in this context.

For 100 targets, 90 are 'correct', plus 20x civs per-target is 90/2100 or 4% real accuracy.

Say you use a model that's only 50% accurate and limit yourself to 10 civs per-target, you're at 50/1100 or 4.5% accuracy!

I guess my point is that no self-respecting datascient would release a 50% accurate model, let alone one used to make life or death decisions and yet, in the application of this model, decisions made by humans about its use has made it no better than doing exactly that.

TheGeminon · 2 years ago

With 37,000 Palestinians marked as suspected militants, it would mean they expected up to 555,000 - 740,000 civilian casualties.

NovemberWhiskey · 2 years ago

The law of armed conflict acknowledges that civilian deaths are inevitable, and only prohibits attacks that are directed at civilians; rather than those which are directed at combatants with expected civilian casualties as collateral damage.

The legal question is whether the civilian casualties are proportional to the concrete military value of the target.

A question that's worth considering is whether, when considering proportionality, all civilians (as defined by law) are made equal in a moral sense.

For example, the category "civilian" includes munitions workers or those otherwise offering support to combatants on the one hand, and young children on the other. It also includes members of the civil population who are actually involved in hostilities without being a formal part of an armed force.

The law of armed conflict doesn't distinguish these; albeit that I think people might well distinguish, on a moral level, between casualties amongst young children, munitions workers, and informal combatants.

genman · 2 years ago

It doesn't matter if they used dumb or smart bombs to destroy the target. When their selected target entered the building then the whole building became the target by extension. Smart bomb would have equally destroyed the building. Important comparison between dumb and smart bomb is only the probability to hit the target (the building) and IDF used precise diving maneuvers with dumb bombs and avoided hitting high rises with dumb bombs, making the probabilities close. That is not the issue here.

The main crux of the story is the automated target acquisition and the policy to engage the target in civilian homes - there are intelligence errors and collateral damage.

The questions are: is the intelligence gathering and decision making ethical and is the accepted collateral damage ratio reasonable given the scale.

This is different from for example Russian strategy to target whole neighborhoods to inflict terror in the civilian population by indiscriminate killings.

protomolecule · 2 years ago

The West can stop it in a moment by imposing the same sanctions as it imposed on Russia. Or in a day, if it imposes that same sanctions that Iran or North Korea are subject to.

Instead the West keeps supplying Israel with weapons and munitions.

CubsFan1060 · 2 years ago

I am going to bet the answer to your question is "No"

basil-rash · 2 years ago

No, probably not. When the topic at hand is the selection criteria used to justify the killing of tens of thousands of civilians, your stance on whether the ones killing tens of thousands of civilians are justified in doing so is rather intrinsic.

gizmo686 · 2 years ago

I'm not sure that is possible. The nature and limitations of current AI technology means that it is almost impossible to talk about it without coming to certain conclusions about the party using it.

To put it bluntly, useing AI to decide on targets for lethal operations in unconsiounable given the current and forseable state of technology.

Come back to me when it can be trusted to make mortgage eligability questions without engaging in what would be blatantly illegal discrimination if not laundered by a computer algorithm.

harimau777 · 2 years ago

The issue as I see it is that the tools available don't just determine how a given war is fought, they also determine whether it is fought at all.

If Israel wasn't able to use tools like this, then it probably wouldn't be viable for them to identify much of Hamas (that's kind of the point of guerilla warfare). Since that would make it difficult to fight a war efficiently, they would be more likely to engage in diplomacy.

mempko · 2 years ago

Why not both? Taking a side does not mean you are clouded in judgement on this point.

random9749832 · 2 years ago

By calling it a war you already took a side. Maybe you are just ignorant, but that's hardly a good excuse.

adhamsalama · 2 years ago

Yes, we really should not mention that AI is being used in genocide as we speak.

janice1999 · 2 years ago

> how the world was working in 2001

By the world you mean the US, but yes you are correct.

"NSA targets SIM cards for drone strikes, ‘Death by unreliable metadata’"

https://www.computerworld.com/article/2475921/whistleblower-...

iooi · 2 years ago

> how the world was working in 2001 and choosing who to send to Gitmo

"Gitmo" didn't open until 2002

tootie · 2 years ago

Yeah the AI is probably the most ethical part of this operation. The human leadership decided that no amount of collateral damage was too much.

ofiryanai · 2 years ago

They permitted larger numbers of civilians being killed in the pursuit of terrorist barbarics who raped and murdered and dragged babies with their mothers into underground dungeons, and praised themselves for that while hiding between civilians.

huytersd · 2 years ago

Well yeah, they have an “unspoken” 10 to 1 rule about taking 10 Palestinian lives for each Israeli loss.

rozap · 2 years ago

Yea this really seems like more of a weapon of propaganda directed at Israelis. If they didn't want people to know about it, we probably wouldn't know about it. The fact that we're talking about it is probably not an accident, and I guess the play here would be to convince Israelis that the army is technologically advanced and they know what they're doing, so don't question it. But AI or not they were going to commit genocide and violate every international humanitarian law on the book. But for the people that still believe the genocide is justified I think this probably improves the optics.

mupuff1234 · 2 years ago

> It's been clear from the start that they've been targeting journalists, medical staff and anyone involved in aid distribution

I really doubt that's the case, seems more like a "fire first if any suspicion at all and ask questions later" policy. If there was an intentional policy to kills journalists, aid workers and medical staff you'd see a lot more dead.

And you have to be extremely naive or one sided to not realize that Hamas does use those type of roles as cover for their operations.

Not trying to justify Israel's actions because they are fucked up, but based on all the evidence we have you are clearly wrong.

janice1999 · 2 years ago

> AI based killing technology is actually more ethical and safer than warfare that doesn’t use AI

No. It's just a tool. People still configure the parameters and ultimately make decisions. Likewise modern missile do not make conflicts more or less ethical just because they require advanced physics.

harimau777 · 2 years ago

I think that depends on what the alternative is. It seems to me that the problem is that there's no way for Israel to wipe out Hamas without massive collateral damage. However, instead of giving up on wiping out Hamas, they just decided that they are OK with the collateral damage.

r00fus · 2 years ago

No the AI was the scapegoat for IDF deciding to "target" low-level enemies, then bombing them with bunker-buster 2000lb bombs that leveled entire buildings and city blocks around those targets.

The AI did something, but the IDF used it to justify effectively committing a genocide.

mikrl · 2 years ago

I think the concern is that the AI is making life or death judgements against people. Some may of course be lawful combatants under the rules that govern such things, but the fact that an AI is drawing these conclusions that humans act on is the shocking part.

I doubt an artillery system using machine learning to correct its trajectory and get better accuracy would be controversial, since the AI in that case is just controlling the path of a shell that an operator has determined needs to hit a target decided upon by humans.

yonisto · 2 years ago

We need to consider what are the other options in that situation, my thinking is that due to Hamas being fully embedded in the civilian population, the only other "reasonable" method is to carpet bomb... After reading the article I much prefer the AI method.

dudeinhawaii · 2 years ago

This is a bizarre take. I've seen it multiple times, in multiple threads now. Somehow your only options are "kill women and children" in large amounts or carpet bomb. I feel like there are dozens, if not hundreds of other options if anyone gave a damn.

Ultimately, it's a calculus of "us vs them" and which lives are valued or devalued.

Relatedly, are police justified when they shoot at a house with 500 rounds, killing the suspect and their entire family that happened to be in the general vicinity? Is the math "one law enforcement > n lives as long as one was a (potential) badguy"?

If you wanted to do this with minimal civilian casualties, then you bring the ground forces in, block by block, and you clear things the old-fashioned way. You take casualties, but those are casualties who signed up to be "warfighters".

Now this IS inflamatory: I think we have a lot of warfighters and cops who are just plain cowards, that's the mentality. Why have a class of trained and armed people who are so afraid of dying that they'd rather kill anything and everything in their path than potentially be injured or killed?

I thought the ethos of the warfighter and law enforcement was "act as a shield, act as a bulwark, save lives, give my life so that others may be free, etc etc". Nowadays its "nah I'm not going in that school, there's badguys with guns and I might die, just stay outside".

That leads to a failure of imagination where somehow "blow up a building with innocent people as long as you got your target" seems somehow justified because you didn't risk a 'good guy' life. Cowardice.

majikaja · 2 years ago

That's just everyday citizens

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/03/08/middleeast/gaza-israelis-...

stevenwoo · 2 years ago

It’s slightly more complicated a.) looks like male b.) lives here c.) send unguided munition if less than 15 or 100 other non targets depending upon value of target.

d--b · 2 years ago

Should have the ability to turn off comments for these.

dang · 2 years ago

I wrote about this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39920732. If you take a look at that and the links there, and still have a question that isn't answered, I'd be happy to hear it.

BitwiseFool · 2 years ago

Such things have been around for at least a decade. It didn't start with the same kind of AI that's being talked about recently, but there is a large automated scoring component: "Targets are often chosen based on metadata."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposition_Matrix

xdennis · 2 years ago

I don't know about kill lists, but AI weapons kinda make sense.

No weapons are nice, but if the good guys don't develop AI weapons, the bad guys will.

From what I gather, many US engineers are morally opposed to them. But if China develops them and gets into a war with the US, will Americans be happy to lose knowing that they have the moral high ground?

uxp100 · 2 years ago

Depending on your definition of AI they’ve probably been around for a while.

This does seem to be a big step more “AI” than previous systems I’ve heard described though.

throwaway74432 · 2 years ago

They're great because the accountability for fuckups goes on the system, not on the people using the system. "Oops, the system had a bug" doesn't kill careers like "Oops, I made a bad call."

shmatt · 2 years ago

How do you think people are chosen to visit a secret CIA prison, or chosen to get a 12 hour interrogation every time they enter the US?

KingMob · 2 years ago

Can't wait to be killed by drone strike when a GPT hallucinates my name.

mistermann · 2 years ago

Continuously throw enough plot twists and general stimulation at people and they'll never have the time to consider whether they're living in a simulation.

supposemaybe · 2 years ago

Or in the words of Shaggy…

“Saw you blowing up the children…”

“It wasn’t me.”

Nemo_bis · 2 years ago

Bold of you to assume they won't boast about it...

Qem · 2 years ago

In Portuguese, the word for lavender, "lavanda", shares roots with the verb to wash, "lavar". It comes from Latin, and it's due to the blue lavender flowers being used in clothes washing in the past. So I think naming the system Lavender is a cruel joke, and betrays its true purpose. Laundering or whitewashing the killing of civilians, providing cover by automating plausible excuse-making. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavandula

xdennis · 2 years ago

That's a valid point, but a terrible example because AI cars are legal in many places.

rabite · 2 years ago

In all fairness, driving a car is a lot more complicated and full of dangerous edge cases than dropping objects or shooting anyone within a geofence.

HlessClaudesman · 2 years ago

"AI" in this case is probably mostly Oct 6 cell phone locations.

It is obvious that Israel has loosened their targeting requirements, this story points to their internal justifications. The first step in ending this conflict must be to reimpose these standards of self restraint.

treyd · 2 years ago

It sure would be nice if this industry had the tiniest shred of collective consciousness and realized our capacity to exert some level of control over what gets built and what doesn't.

golergka · 2 years ago

Not everyone sees the world as you do. Given this article and other information I know about this system, I would be honoured to work on it and take a significant pay cut, as it actively makes the world a better and safer place.

kjkjadksj · 2 years ago

The people working on these understand the alternative looks like a WWII bombing campaign with greater loss of life

83 · 2 years ago

Not trying to be flippant, I'm genuinely curious. If everyone was as honorable as you and decided to stop working for the military industrial complex - do you think China and Russia would just sit back and say "That's cool - we didn't want Americas land/resources/overseas territories anyway" ?

tsujamin · 2 years ago

Pretty disappointing that Guardian article also got quickly flagged after HN submission

JeremyNT · 2 years ago

This is the now-flagged to death HN thread on the Guardian version [0]

I would hope they can be unflagged and merged, this appears to be an important story about a novel use of technology.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39917727

tguvot · 2 years ago

guardian references 972 as source for report. it's not like it's "the guardian" article

r00fus · 2 years ago

The link between targeting - whether for advertisements or for death - is quite disturbing.

Both use personal metadata, and both can horribly get it wrong.

CommieBobDole · 2 years ago

It's also interesting (and I guess typical for end-users of software) how quickly and easily something like this goes from "Here's a tool you can use as an information input when deciding who to target" to "I dunno, computer says these are the people we need to kill, let's get to it".

In the Guardian article, an IDF spokesperson says it exists and is only used as the former, and I'm sure that's what was intended and maybe even what the higher-ups think, but I suspect it's become the latter.

surfingdino · 2 years ago

It always starts with making a list of targets that meet given criteria. Once you have the list its use changes from categorisation to demonisation -> surveillance -> denial of rights -> deportations -> killing. Early use of computers by Germans during WW2 included making and processing of lists of people who ought to be sent to concentration camps. The only difference today is that we are able to capture more data and process it faster at scale.

bawolff · 2 years ago

> That is, only members of the armed wing of Hamas (not recruiters, weapon manufacturers,..

I think the loop-hole here is that a weapon manufacturing facility is almost certainly a military strategic target, and international law allows you to target the infrastructure provided the military advantage gained is porportional to the civilian death.

So you can't target the individuals but according to international law its fine to target the building they are in while the individuals are still inside provided its militarily worth it.

shmatt · 2 years ago

Gitmo is still open, if the US isnt participating in those laws, I don't see how any of its allies are expected to

throwaway7351 · 2 years ago

By the standards discussed in the article, anyone with a beef with Israel could justify targeting possible a majority of buildings in Israel. After all, most of the population is required to serve in the IDF.

rdtsc · 2 years ago

> Everyone else is a civilian that can only be directly targeted when and for as long as they directly participate in hostilities, such as by taking up arms, planning military operations, laying down mines, etc.

There is some incredible magic that often happens: as soon as anyone is targeted and killed, they immediately transform from civilians to "collaborators", "terrorists", "militants" etc. Of course everything is classified and restricted to avoid anyone snooping around and asking questions.

jibe · 2 years ago

That is, only members of the armed wing of Hamas (not recruiters, weapon manufacturers, propagandists, financiers, …) can be targeted for attack

It seems wrong that you can't target weapon manufacturers, can you cite a source? Weapon manufacturers contribute to the military action, and destroying weapon manufacturers contributes to military advantage.

mschuster91 · 2 years ago

> Only those who have the "continuous function" to "directly participate in hostilities"[1] may be targeted for attack at any time.

The problem with Hamas is that they don't shy away from hiding combattants in civilian clothings or use women and children as suicide bombers. There is more than enough evidence of this tactic, dating back many many years [1].

By not just not preventing, but actively ordering such war crimes, Hamas leadership has stripped its civilian population of the protections of international law.

> Otherwise, the allowed list of targets of civilians gets so wide than in any regular war, pretty much any civilian could get targeted, such as the bank employee whose company has provided loans to the armed forces.

In regular wars, it's uniformed soldiers against uniformed soldiers, away from civilian infrastructure (hospitals, schools, residential areas). The rules of war make deviating from that a war crime on its own, simply because it places the other party in the conflict of either having no chance to wage the war or to commit war crimes on their own.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_child_suicide_bombers_b...

firejake308 · 2 years ago

Practical AI did a podcast episode about the dangers of using AI models as a shield to hide behind in justifying your decisions. The episode was titled "Suspicion Machines" and based on the libked article [1], and I think it's worth a read/listen.

[1]: https://www.wired.com/story/welfare-state-algorithms/

tootie · 2 years ago

That's not exactly a prediction. It was was standard operating procedure for Warsaw Pact nations. They used human intel which was possibly even worse because it could manipulated out of malice.

abtinf · 2 years ago

It would be difficult to deliberately design a set of rules that would prolong war and human suffering even longer than what you’ve described.

logro · 2 years ago

So if you're just an 9-5 office based terrorist doing admin stuff, you're off limits?

BLKNSLVR · 2 years ago

This happens in wartime:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-04-03/world-central-kitchen...

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-04-02/israeli-strike-that-k...

Pretty disgraceful (which itself feels a disgracefully unimpactful thing to say regarding people losing their lives whilst doing charity work).

usaar333 · 2 years ago

I don't understand your point here. They are targeting militants with the system:

> Formally, the Lavender system is designed to mark by all suspected operatives in the military wings of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), including low-ranking ones, as potential bombing targets.

Obviously any judgement is probabilistic.

sgjohnson · 2 years ago

> That is, only members of the armed wing of Hamas (not recruiters, weapon manufacturers, propagandists, financiers, …) can be targeted for attack - all the others must be arrested and/or tried.

In theory, yes. In practice--in which make believe world is this true?

graymatters · 2 years ago

Dresden rules should be applied to Gaza. Israel is way too considerate with Lavender. Every other house in Gaza is full of weapons.

pvaldes · 2 years ago

If they can target "terrorist", unavoidably the system will be upgraded to target "politician" also.

skidd0 · 2 years ago

I think optics of being advanced aren't the main goal. Some form of "justification", no matter how flimsy, especially if it's hard to audit how the "AI" came to it's conclusions, is the goal. Now anyone is a target. Similar to cops in the US "smelling weed" or dogs "signaling". It provides the means to justify any search, or in this case, any kill. The machine grinds away..

stevenwoo · 2 years ago

It's unconfirmed who authorized it but the recent food charity workers killed by Israeli bombing had a security person (death confirmed by family in UK) who is unarmed but by job description clears the way by telling Israeli authorities where the charity team is going to be so the chain of command knew who they were, so one is naturally lead to ask - who would authorize a targeted killing in this situation? The after photos show the missile went right through the roof of the car, ironically next to the food charity's visible logo on top of the car. Israeli defense minister now claims it was a mistake, although if they had hit a real target it might have been acceptable in terms of their rules of engagement with 15-100 unrelated collateral deaths according to the investigation.

selimthegrim · 2 years ago

Good news, though. I’m sure the tombstones will magnanimously be allowed to have more than a 140 character limit

bitcharmer · 2 years ago

HN is the new r/worldnews. Only the correct mindset is allowed.

ulnarkressty · 2 years ago

As a backer on the original Oculus kickstarter, I have such a sinking feeling in my stomach every time this comes up. My money went to enable Luckey to achieve this and I hate myself for it.

luketaylor · 2 years ago

The IDF uses Palantir’s technology, and Palantir is outspoken about its support for the state of Israel:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-10/palantir-...

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/13/palantir-ceo-says-outspoken-...

bitcharmer · 2 years ago

This is not new and dang and the others are absolutely fine with posts getting gang-flagged in a matter of minutes. Just shows how impartial they are.

spxneo · 2 years ago

I'm not sure why its such a shock to many to see the censorship on HN. This isn't a public square.

We are privy to the whims of whatever political views of those that aligned/run/manage/stake in YC and their policies and values.

2OEH8eoCRo0 · 2 years ago

Which war crime was committed?

https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/war-crimes.shtml

harimau777 · 2 years ago

Is there any consequence for inappropriate flagging?

segasaturn · 2 years ago

I don't understand why it was flagged, obviously it is a sensitive topic but AI being used to kill people is very clearly a HN-worthy topic

dguest · 2 years ago

Let's see how long it takes this time! I'd give it 50% odds of lasting 12 minutes.

Edit: Flagged after less than 9 minutes, I overestimated!

hn_throwaway_99 · 2 years ago

As someone who sees both sides of this, and as someone who didn't understand this for some time, it's important to understand that one reason a story is likely to get flagged is because users think it's highly unlikely to lead to productive discussion. It doesn't mean it's a bad story, or even unworthy of discussion, but many types of stories seem to, pretty predictably, lead to a cesspool of comments where it's clear most folks have no desire to listen to opposing points of view.

FWIW, I found this to be a really interesting story that I didn't previously know about, so I hope it stays up, and this is a story I'd be willing to vouch for.

thomastjeffery · 2 years ago

I don't take any issue with people flagging a post, so long as an actual person makes the ultimate decision on whether to keep it up.

This is in contrast to how I feel about a statistical model flagging people to be murdered. That's not even remotely OK, even if the decision to actually carry out the murder ultimately goes through a person. Using a statistical model to choose targets is incredibly naive, and practically guarantees that perverse incentives will drive decision-making.

dang · 2 years ago

This is a typical phenomenon when a topic is divisive, and the Israel/Gaza topic is one of the most divisive.

Edit: We sometimes turn off flags when an article contains significant new information and also has at least some chance of providing a substantive basis for discussion. I haven't read the current article yet but it seems like a reasonable candidate for this, so I turned off the flags.

For anyone who wants more information about how we approach doing that, in the context of the current topic, here are some past explanations:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39618973 (March 2024)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39435324 (Feb 2024)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39435024 (Feb 2024)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39237176 (Feb 2024)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38947003 (Jan 2024)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38749162 (Dec 2023)

tiahura · 2 years ago

Watching i24 news is a little unsettling. They run bits with interrogators announcing how productive torture has been, and make jokes about how it would be much easier if lemons just gave up their juice without being squeezed.

A_D_E_P_T · 2 years ago

> It’s much easier to bomb a family’s home.

Okay, how is this not a war crime?

There are ~2M civilians who live in Gaza, and many of them don't have access to food, water, medicine, or safe shelter. Some of those unfortunates live above, or below, Hamas operatives and their families.

"Oh, sorry, lol." "It was unintentional, lmao, seriously." "Our doctrine states that we can kill X civilians for every hostile operative, so don't worry about it."

The war in Gaza is unlike Ukraine -- where Ukrainian and Russian villagers can move away from the front, either towards Russia or westwards into Galicia -- and where nobody's flattening major population centers. In Gaza, anybody can evidently be killed at any time, for any reason or for no reason at all. The Israeli "strategy" makes the Ukrainians and Russians look like paragons of restraint and civility.

sublimefire · 2 years ago

Isn’t a military person a legitimate target at the time of the war? I think it is, the issue is the collateral damage. But then again this war shows that Hamas is also not following the rules and gets too close to civilians.

xyzelement · 2 years ago

What part of this upsets you vs a baseline understanding of reality?

There's often a criticism of the US military doctrine that our weapons are great but are often way more expensive than the thing we shoot them at (as exemplified in our engagement with the Houthis in the Red Sea.)

If anything, the quote you pulled sounds like its talking about highly precise weaponry, and it seems to me that the way to minimize the overall death in a war is to use your precise weapons to take out the most impactful enemy.

Which part of this is different than how you see the world so that reading this quote threw you?

tokai · 2 years ago

Its rich when the argument for the system is that the targeting is the bottleneck.

chasd00 · 2 years ago

>> “You don’t want to waste expensive bombs on unimportant people — it’s very expensive for the country and there’s a shortage [of those bombs]”

expensive relative to what? a single rifle bullet? jdam kits are not expensive, easy to manufacturer, and there's plenty of 500lb dumb bombs lying around. If a country has access to precision guided bomb tech then I'd say the should be obligated to use it for bombing exclusively.

jessepasley · 2 years ago

It shows Israel in a bad light.

93po · 2 years ago

HN, both its community and the moderators, flag posts that generate a lot of conflict in the comments. The comments on this are especially bad by HN standards and therefore the flagging is inline with how the site is openly operated.

I am pro Palestine and not simping for Israel. I think visibility on Israel's actions matter, but HN is also very clearly not the appropriate website for a lot of politically involved news.

dang · 2 years ago

I wrote about this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39920732. If you take a look at that and the links there, and still have a question that isn't answered, I'd be happy to take a crack at it.

nemo44x · 2 years ago

I think the algorithm, in this case, makes a suggestion and then a human evaluates it. The article claims they've only looked at the sex of the target (kill if male) but also claims 90% effectiveness. I'm curious if 90% is a good number or not? War will always have collateral damages but if technology can help limit that beyond what only a human could do then I'd say it's a net positive. I think the massive efficiencies the algorithm brings to picking targets is a bit frightening (nowhere to run or hide now) but there's no real turning back.

People thought this way about the machine gun, the armored tank, the atom bomb. But once the genie is out there's no putting it back in.

As an aside, I think this is a good example of how humans and AI will work together to bring efficiency to whatever tasks need to be accomplished. There's a lot of fear of AI taking jobs, but I think it was Peter Thiel who said years ago that future AI would work side by side humans to accomplish tasks. Here we are.

instagib · 2 years ago

The code names for secret operations can be dead on or funny at times. I remember a few being emoji’s. It’s only a matter of time until USA or other allied countries secrets are released for using AI enhanced information.

How do you think they process millions of call records, intercepted messages, sim swaps, etc?

tmnvix · 2 years ago

Or to do away with the concept of starting and stopping wars altogether. Just constant AI based justifications for killing.

Wouldn't be surprised if this hasn't already been the case in Israel-Palestine already. AI targeting of Palestinians long before October 7th in other words.

barbazoo · 2 years ago

> Also, can an AI commit a war crime? Is it any defence to say, “The computer did it!” Or “I was just following AI’s orders!”

It's not that the "AI" described here is an autonomous actor.

> During the early stages of the war, the army gave sweeping approval for officers to adopt Lavender’s kill lists, with no requirement to thoroughly check why the machine made those choices or to examine the raw intelligence data on which they were based. One source stated that human personnel often served only as a “rubber stamp” for the machine’s decisions, adding that, normally, they would personally devote only about “20 seconds” to each target before authorizing a bombing

Obviously all this is to be taken with a grain of salt, who knows if it's even true.

diggan · 2 years ago

> How far does the AI system go… is it behind the AI decision to starve the population of Gaza?

No, the point of this program seems to be to find targets for assassination, removing the human bottleneck. I don't think bigger strategic decisions like starving the population of Gaza was bottlenecked in the same way as finding/deciding on bombing targets is.

> is it also behind the decision to kill the aid workers who are trying to feed the starving?

It would seem like this program gives whoever is responsible for the actual bombing a list of targets to chose from, so supposedly a human was behind that decision but aided by a computer. Then it turns out (according to the article at least) that the responsible parties mostly rubberstamped those lists without further verification.

> can an AI commit a war crime?

No, war crimes are about making individuals responsible for their choices, not about making programs responsible for their output. At least currently.

The users/makers of the AI surely could be held in violation of laws of war though, depending on what they are doing/did.

thomastjeffery · 2 years ago

> Also, can an AI commit a war crime?

"An AI" doesn't exist. What is being labeled "AI" here is a statistical model. A model can't do anything; it can only be used to sift data.

No matter where in the chain of actions you put a model, you can't offset human responsibility to that model. If you try, reasonable people will (hopefully) call you out on your bullshit.

> There’s so much about this death machine AI I would like to know.

The death machine here is Israel's military. That's a group of people who don't get to hide behind the facade of "an AI told me". It's a group of people who need to be held responsible for naively using a statistical model to choose who they murder next.

luketaylor · 2 years ago

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/972-magazine/

dfxm12 · 2 years ago

https://www.972mag.com/about/

avtar · 2 years ago

Another site covering this story:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/03/israel-gaza-ai...

throwaway240403 · 2 years ago

Bad UX, it's hiding under the hamburger menu in the top left https://web.archive.org/web/20240401100849/https://www.972ma...

dfxm12 · 2 years ago

Most of the mainstream media has historically glossed over the atrocities, but it is impossible to ignore them today because of what we see live on the scene thanks to smaller outlets having a broader reach and social media.

It's mostly business as usual. The technology makes the brutality more efficient, though:

Describing human personnel as a “bottleneck” that limits the army’s capacity during a military operation, the commander laments: “We [humans] cannot process so much information. It doesn’t matter how many people you have tasked to produce targets during the war — you still cannot produce enough targets per day.”

...

By adding a name from the Lavender-generated lists to the Where’s Daddy? home tracking system, A. explained, the marked person would be placed under ongoing surveillance, and could be attacked as soon as they set foot in their home, collapsing the house on everyone inside.

“Let’s say you calculate [that there is one] Hamas [operative] plus 10 [civilians in the house],” A. said. “Usually, these 10 will be women and children. So absurdly, it turns out that most of the people you killed were women and children.”

Using Google search, you can search new articles in previous years. You'll find older articles about Israel killing aid workers, for example. This is from 2018: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/aug/24/i...

The interesting thing about how this conflict is developing is that this story is full of quotes from Israeli intelligence. Most plainly say what they're doing. Western outlets may put a positive spin on it (because our governments generally support Israel), but the Israeli military themselves are making their intentions clear: https://news.yahoo.com/israeli-minister-admits-military-carr...

xk_id · 2 years ago

The weaponisation of online media for manipulating the perception of global audiences about the conflict, has definitely ramped up recently. For example, the official Twitter account of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has posted videos of muslim preachers appearing to denounce lgbt culture during public service in Palestinian mosques. Hamas themselves are denying their involvement in the 2023 massacre and accusing Israel of staging the graphic footage that was disseminated. This greatly polarises the debates on social media and it’s much more common now to see people who are deeply invested emotionally in the narrative of either side.

kjkjadksj · 2 years ago

When the US dropped napalm indecriminately over the vietnamese jungle or absolutely leveled dresden in one bombing run or unleashed nuclear hellfire over japan, they probably killed a lot of journalists and doctors and food workers as well. Interestingly, western media did not beat itself into a frenzy over it at the time. Its easy to get cynical about it all seeing how easily narratives are manufactured and controlled to serve political ends.

bitcharmer · 2 years ago

Given how gang-flagging as a form of censorship became prevalent here on HN I think they should consider removing flagging functionality for submissions entirely. It should of course stay for comments but posts typically get flagged for political reasons and nothing else.

HDThoreaun · 2 years ago

It's been pretty clear to me for a while now that Israel's long term plan for the Palestinians is to expel them all. Starvation isnt a requirement for that, but it is probably the path of least resistance. I will say that its happening a lot faster than I expected though, Israel definitely taking advantage of the situation here.

gryzzly · 2 years ago

what do you mean "bribed and blackmailed"?

ben_w · 2 years ago

> And then you have countries like Germany where you get thrown in jail for being upset at Israel.

Back in 2002 or so, a friend of mine swore blind that an American had been arrested for wearing a "give whirled peas a chance" T-shirt — which is an anecdotal way of saying: are you sure you've got the full story?

I'm learning German by listening to „Langsam Gesprochene Nachrichten“ by Deutsche Welle, and it definitely looks like a lot of people are less than enthusiastic about how Israel's forces are conducting themselves in war despite the constant note that Hamas is (1) a terror organisation that (2) started this particular round by killing 1000 civilians: https://www.dw.com/en/israel-withdraws-from-gazas-devastated...

Germany is also extremely sensitive to every aspect of this due to the events of 80 years ago.

Reports I've seen from the BBC show that there are significant protests in Israel, by those who consider the war to be justified, against their own government, not only for dropping the ball by failing to prevent the initial attack, but also for driving a wedge between them and their closest allies with the conduct of the war: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68722308

lupusreal · 2 years ago

> But what is even sadder is that the supposedly morally superior western world is entirely bribed and blackmailed to stand behind Israel.

Add religious indoctrination to that. A huge number of Americans are evangelical Christians who unconditionally support Israel because they are utterly convinced that the continued existence of Israel is a necessary prerequisite for the reincarnation of their god.

jcranmer · 2 years ago

There is something like a generational divide going on here. Much of the older generation remembers the wider Israeli-Arab conflict (ongoing since 1948, and arguably even decades before that) as "Israel's neighbors repeatedly invade it to try to wipe it off the map." But the last such war was 1973; even the Second Intifada ended in 2005. For the younger generation, the conflict is largely "Israel repeatedly invades its neighbors to tamp down on terrorism." In other words, Israel has largely shifted from being the aggressee to the aggressor in the conflict, and sympathy naturally tends to lie with the aggressee.

That said, there's also something noticeably different about this conflict. For the first time, the reporting I've seen in the mainstream press has generally been trending negative towards Israel. For example, the Washington Post has had a recent article on a press tour the IDF led of the burned-out remains of the hospital it attacked, clearly part of a campaign to justify why it was necessary, and the entire article was dripping with subtext of "we don't buy what the IDF is saying". And even the political headlines are generally framed in a way to keep you asking "should the US even be supporting Israel?"

Israel has already squandered all the sympathy it got from the terrorist attacks last October, and it's well on the way to squandering all residual sympathy from the Holocaust. And the Israeli political and military establishment seems to have zero clue that this is going on.

nickpsecurity · 2 years ago

That’s not true. Within a short time of forming, all the surrounding nations attacked Israel to ensure they wouldn’t exist there. Israel’s opponents regularly targeted civilians with indiscriminate bombings since that’s what their morals produce. They planned to keep doing that over time, too. Keep that in mind when interpreting everything else.

At times, Israel allowed for a two-state solution but Hamas wanted every Jew there dead or gone. They’d push them into the ocean itself if allowed. People called for Israel reducing their presence in Gaza for peace. Doing that led to more attacks instead of more peace.

Recently, Hamas killed and kidnapped civilians on purpose. Whereas, Israel warned people to leave before the invasion where they then focused on military targets. If people stayed and were connected to those, they’ll likely die during the invasion. The OP is about people who stayed that are mostly connected to militants. OP writer pities their families but not all the non-militant families Hamas killed.

While both sides are plenty guilty, one is actually aiming for peace, focusing on military targets, and reducing civilian casualties. The other broke peace, attacked civilians, and called for more genocide. The difference between these two strategies shows that anyone wanting long-term stability with less murder in the area should support Israel.

Also, Israel is allied more with us while their opponents keep funding terrorist groups, including our own enemies. They’re also strong, economic partners. Why on earth would we ditch our friends to back people who do little for us and support our enemies?

Stevvo · 2 years ago

It is and they are.

stale2002 · 2 years ago

To actually answer your question, it is because the word "genocide" has a very specific meaning that is different from "They did something bad".

You can think that what they are doing is bad, but thats unrelated to the highly specific claim of genocide, which requires specific intent.

jauntywundrkind · 2 years ago

So frustrating how easy it is for those of a certain zeal to wipe off mention of that which they find inconvenient.

There could hardly be a more pertinent issue for tech right now. Just sweepingly wild shit that we should be grappling with.

binarymax · 2 years ago

I really want to support this, but the website is pretty bad. Blinding colors, poor and sparse information, and a links to shop/donate without a notion as to what or who the org is.

mathandstuff · 2 years ago

Actually, The Campaign to Stop Killer Robots fired its campaign manager Ousman Noor as a result of him advocating against the IDF's killings in Gaza. The Campaign initially denied that it was over his Gaza advocacy, but eventually admitted that it was because of him speaking to diplomats which he met through the Campaign. Many members of the campaign support the IDF's arguable genocide, despite how surprising that might be.

tech_ken · 2 years ago

I like this point, and I do think you're rightly pointing out that the issue is that selection of targets may be done badly, not that AI specifically is in the loop. With that said, I think an important detail you're overlooking is the frictionless-ness of this process. That quote people are throwing around about something like "efficiently producing the largest volume of human targets" gets to this point pretty directly I think. The problem is not just that the evidence might be flimsy, it's also that it's extremely easy to generate massive lists of targets.

Instead of the Milosevic example I'd say it's analagous to Dehomag machines during the Holocaust. The Nazis didn't need advanced database systems to attempt a genocide, but having access to them made it far far easier to turn the whole process into a factory line: something predictable and constant that allowed it to achieve a pace and scope far beyond what they would have been able to do otherwise. Similar here, or in other cases where advanced technology is brought to bear in war. Anything that makes human death more automated is, IMO, abhorrent and worth of criticism in it's own right.

gregw134 · 2 years ago

Risk any American soldiers? Definitely not. Support with drone strikes, sanctions, intelligence? Already doing that.

dang · 2 years ago

I wrote about this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39920732. If you take a look at that and the links there, and still have a question that isn't answered, I'd be happy to take a crack at it.

amarcheschi · 2 years ago

This literally looks like any aborrhent ai "predicting" system such as the ones we've heard a ton about in the past, with the same mistakes (I wonder if they're really mistakes, bugs, or ahem... Features)

Mountain_Skies · 2 years ago

Maybe it's like Amazon's cashierless stores that turned out to be mostly powered by 1000 humans working behind the scenes.

wara23arish · 2 years ago

Im curious, if you’re realpolitik american.

Can you explain why would the USA support one country instead of appeasing 300 million in the area?

What are the benefits out of being so pro israel?

dang · 2 years ago

Posts don't get deleted on HN, except on rare occasions when the author asks us to delete something (and usually then only if they didn't get replies).

Posts do get flagged and/or killed, whether by user flags, software, or mods, but you can always see all of those if you turn 'showdead' on in your profile. This is in the FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html.

If you notice a post getting flagged and/or killed that shouldn't have been, you can let us know and we'll take a look. You can also use the 'vouch' feature, also described in https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html.

Georgelemental · 2 years ago

I'm a realpolitik American that wants America's best interest, which is why I 100% oppose Israel's war. Israel has spent decades playing us for fools, disregarding all our concerns and making the world hate us while taking billions of our money. Here is how Netanyahu talks about us: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lW8TxOwYte0

https://ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/

Sporktacular · 2 years ago

In another post, my comment about Act.IL and Hasbara Fellowships were not only mass downvoted, but after being killed the commenter indicated this was their intention and wished me a nice day. Felt creepy. Dang brought it back up, to his great credit.

https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=Sporktacular&next=39...

surfingdino · 2 years ago

War has always been scary. We are busy inventing new ways of killing each other and there is no sign of stopping.

bawolff · 2 years ago

I'm sorry, you think this is new?

War is terrible. War has always been terrible. It was almost certainly worse in the past, but it still sucks now. Most of the things you mention were way worse 100 years ago.

Sure, AI didn't write the propaganda, instead humans did. The affect was the same.

skilled · 2 years ago

The world has been at a perpetual war for forever! That is actually quite interesting in of itself.

There has been no mass self-correction to my knowledge that would avert this kind of destructive behavior.

But in saying that, I am fully aware that most of such behavior stems from people who are in charge of the world at a political level.

Is it implausible to think that this is something that will have to change in order for the world to change?

The war doesn’t serve anyone but a few rotten minds who are trying to make decisions on behalf of millions if not billions of people.

And we share a similar nudge. I do think that was is happening in the world today is a mere preparation (of society) for a massive power struggle in various parts of the world that will inevitably lead to a full-blown war. But this is only my personal feeling/interpretation.

cgh · 2 years ago

Judged by number of war-related deaths per capita, we are living in the most peaceful time in human history. The last major conflict was the Second Congo War in the ‘90s, which killed around 5.4 million people and involved a bunch of African nations. If you want to talk about scary wars, try reading about that one.

I realize this seems almost unrealistically upbeat, and most people don’t want to believe it given what we see in the media every day. Note that I’m not arguing against increasing global instability, which will become worse if Russia triumphs in Ukraine (whatever form that could take) or the US continues to turn its back on its allies.

Disinformation and AI fakery via social media are probably the scariest things to me on your list. Twitter is now a garbage dump for this stuff, but the good news is that it is hemorrhaging both users and money.

readyplayeremma · 2 years ago

> B., a senior officer who used Lavender, echoed to +972 and Local Call that in the current war, officers were not required to independently review the AI system’s assessments, in order to save time and enable the mass production of human targets without hindrances.

> “Everything was statistical, everything was neat — it was very dry,” B. said. He noted that this lack of supervision was permitted despite internal checks showing that Lavender’s calculations were considered accurate only 90 percent of the time; in other words, it was known in advance that 10 percent of the human targets slated for assassination were not members of the Hamas military wing at all.```

So, there was no human sign-off. I guess the policy itself was ordered by someone, but all the ongoing targets that were selected for assassination were solely authorized by the AI system's predictions.

This sentence is horrifically dystopian... "in order to save time and enable the mass production of human targets without hindrances"

yrro · 2 years ago

"A computer can never be held accountable, therefore a computer must never make a management decision"

The IDF only read the first half of the classic IBM slide!

tmnvix · 2 years ago

> I wonder what the alternative is in a case like this.

It seems obvious to me that the alternative would be a slower process for picking targets leading to fewer overall targets picked and the guarantee that a human conscience is involved in the process.

robbomacrae · 2 years ago

Disturbing indeed. I've been worried a push back in AI is coming and this sort of story could be a tipping point and certainly would justify a period of reflection.

And your probably right that the alternatives maybe worse, the folks behind Lavender could probably even prove it with data.. but there should be a moral impetus to always have a human in the loop regardless. And any such attempt to justify it won't capture the publics attention like a sky-net doomsday happening over the civilians in Gaza.

solardev · 2 years ago

Is having a human make those decisions really better? It was humans who ordered the Holocaust, My Lai, Wounded Knee, Rwanda, Tiananmen, etc.

At least AI pretends to look at some data instead of just defaulting to tribal bloodlust... who's to say it can't be more ethical? It doesn't take much to beat our track record.

cm2187 · 2 years ago

We crossed the line of machines that automatically kill a long time ago. A heat seeking missile, or a shell that detects and target tanks [1] are effectively doing that. Software selects the target. The soldier only points in the general direction. AI is only a small technical increment.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMArt_155

underlipton · 2 years ago

>I wonder what the alternative is in a case like this.

Don't Create The Torment Nexus

I think that once you start from the viewpoint that you're not going to create the Torment Nexus, it becomes a lot easier to avoid creating the Torment Nexus.

0x457 · 2 years ago

This system bassicaly just gave everyone a score from 1 to 100 of how luckely they are part the military wing of hamas.

Another system would signal that target is at home and it's time to bomb. This system was using phone to geo-locate and due to nature of living in Gaza phones transfer hands often.

Without Lavender they would have dropped less bombs IMO.

BriggyDwiggs42 · 2 years ago

Look I know this is gonna sound cliche but the thing they should do is not engage in an offensive asymmetrical war and bomb a dense urban area full of innocents for basically no reason. Then they wouldn’t need the little ai.

kromem · 2 years ago

There would have been slower target selection.

A lot of news around the bombing called out the uniquely large scale and rapidity of the campaign.

This was a preview of future conflicts.

We're entering the WWI phase of new technology being brought without rules to conflicts where the abuses will be horrific until rules are finally put in place.

ahmadss · 2 years ago

What does that even mean? 972 is a local Israeli outfit, with contributors from Israel and Palestine. They have sources within the IDF, sources who may be center-left leaning and are "done" with how the far-right coalition is running this war and they are blowing the whistle on this practice.

tmnvix · 2 years ago

May have been involved, but I believe in that case there was an explicit human decision made after referring to a senior. I recall somebody quoting an official to this effect.

jhallenworld · 2 years ago

This should be asked explicitly.

peeters · 2 years ago

It seems unlikely based on what has been revealed about the system. It seems like Lavender is a classification AI that plugs static details about a person into a NN of some sort and spits out a score of how likely they're to be involved with Hamas. Score above a certain threshold and your home becomes a target for a dumb bomb.

The World Central Kitchen attack appears to have used smart munitions (missiles from a drone) on a mobile truck.

worddepress · 2 years ago

Morally it doesn't up the ante of course, they are already well into a genocide. But optically killing westerners, especially when they are clearly doing aid and you can't throw "they terrorist" shade on it. The World Central Kitchen incident has increased the strength of the platitudes coming from other countries. But not seeing any arms or trade sanctions yet, and no "pausing of funds while we investigate" type stuff reserved for anyone supporting Gaza people.

jhallenworld · 2 years ago

My guess: facial recognition. It's easy, if you're a male of fighting age you're a Hamas terrorist.

The social media input is terrifying: show any Palestinian sympathies (sentiment analysis) in your posts and you're on the list.

monocasa · 2 years ago

> Are Palestinians using IDF tapped cell towers?

That's my understanding. That the whole of the Gaza strip is essentially watched under the equivalent of stingrays and all traffic out is monitored with room 641a style taps.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_phone_tracker

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A

cad31 · 2 years ago

do you have any examples of a military using a statistical model that names targets, which were then killed without any human vetting?

steviedotboston · 2 years ago

> Given the total failure to achieve any of its stated objectives, has this use of AI benefited the IDF at all?

Hamas has been considerably diminished. It's not accurate to say the war has been a "total failure".

gizmondo · 2 years ago

> Given the total failure to achieve any of its stated objectives, has this use of AI benefited the IDF at all?

Their invasion of the Gaza city went way better than expected by most analysts, with minimal casualties among Israeli. So probably? Hard to compare with the alternative reality where they select the targets the old way.

That their stated objectives are likely unachievable is a different issue.

gorbachev · 2 years ago

I'm starting to get convinced the stated objective isn't the objective IDF is really after.

They say the objective is to destroy Hamas and save the hostages.

I think the actual objective is to murder as many palestinians as possible. At the very least that is the actual objective of some IDF soldiers. They've said as much publicly.

Whether or not that's the actual objective intentionally or unintentionally is just arguing semantics at this point.

GordonS · 2 years ago

I think they're real objectives are to murder as many Palestinians as possible, and to occupy the north of the Gaza strip. Why? Two reasons: oil & gas, and beach-front real estate. Israel has already dished out licenses to oil producers for fields in Palestinian waters, and the new "aid" pier the US is building for them is rather suspect.

GaryNumanVevo · 2 years ago

To be fair, IBM was directly enabling the Nazis to carry out a genocide only 2 decades before that quote.

frob · 2 years ago

That is genocide.

pphysch · 2 years ago

opensecrets.org has some of it, which is used by other groups like the @trackAIPAC Twitter/X account.

cypherpunks01 · 2 years ago

A much more concise list could be made of members of Congress that don't want to send money towards offensive weapons in Israel.

It's a vanishingly small list. Virtually everyone wearing a (D) or (R) hat is extremely interested in sending our tax money towards this purpose, which fund programs exactly like in this article.

Georgelemental · 2 years ago

It's not about the tech, it's about how humans use it. In this case, the IDF seems to be using tech to commit mass murder of civilians. The issue is the mass murder, not the tech.

Chilko · 2 years ago

> Drones, targeted missiles and now AI allow you to be ruthlessly efficient in killing an enemy

I understand what you are getting at, but if you read the article this is not how this technology is being used, rather the opposite. The AI seems to use very broad criteria / flimsy evidence to decide who is a target, and then it is chosen to strike them specifically when they get home and would typically be surrounded by civilians (mostly women and children).

Their own testing showed 1 in 10 selected targets were not actually militants, but because it is statistically 'correct' (despite loose definitions of correct) 90% of the time all targets will be bombed. Add the fact that collateral damage of 15-20 civilians is accepted even for the lowest ranking militants (and much higher for commanders) who are then targeted with unguided munitions, which makes this quite a lot less 'targeted' and 'efficient' than e.g. US drone strikes in Afghanistan.