Israel's Lavender System, AI Targeting and Battlefield Informatics
The only thing worse than having AI targeting is not having AI targeting
Informatics is the application of information technology (IT) to solve problems in various domains. It encompasses the collection, storage, processing, analysis, and dissemination of data to support decision-making and problem solving.
FPV Drones and munitions like the M7 Spider use informatics to specifically service individual units. Fifth generation fighters like the F-35 use informatics to dominate situational awareness. UTAMS uses informatics to instantly target the point of origin for mortar rounds.
When it comes to AI/ML Informatics being used for targeting, the question is whether the speed of targeting outweighs the possibility of making mistakes. If the adversary has AI targeting and is more casualty-tolerant, they may gain a significant advantage in battle.
In a perfect world, Israel should have captured each and every Hamas member and brought them to trial, without any its own casualties (civ or mil) and any Palestinian casualties. Everything else is a waste of life and resources. The other extreme is just kill everyone on the enemy side and the problem is gone (40k casualties is nowhere near that extreme). So the question is where Israel draw the line and what is the near future and long future cost of drawing that line. That decisions are made by politicians, but also made every second by the boots on the ground. By 20 year olds, if they are junior officers or sargents. And if those boots on the ground can have better data by using AI, I am all for it.
I read the +972 article and have a few comments.
The author is Yuval Abraham. From his Wikipedia we know him to be very anti-Israeli: in American terms, equivalent to Jane Fonda. His claims are all allegedly based on unidentified sources from inside the Israeli's 8200 unit of Military Intelligence. We know that many of the unit's operatives were involved in the anti-government protests that preceded October 7.
Both of these facts do not prima facie invalidate any factual statements Abraham makes, but is certainly a factor to be considered when reading the article.
The article follows with many evocative statements that imply a massive number of civilian deaths per strike. The problem is that these statements do not match the reality we know. If we accept Hamas casualty figures, then the Israelis are killing 2 non combatants for every combatant, which compares favorably to the 3:1 deaths in Iraq. As an aside, my guess is when the dust settles we will find that the total number of Gazans killed is 20,000, of which 10,000 are non combatants killed by both sides. But we can just look at Abraham's data to see it makes no sense.
Abraham alleges the Israelis attacked suspects' homes killing them with their families. Since fighters are not stupid, we expect that in less than a week, no one goes home anymore they simply go and fight. This implies we should have seen massive civilian casualties in the first week, all identified as family of Hamas fighters, followed by relatively few civilian deaths. Hamas data is that the number of civilian deaths increase monotonously.
Although we can be certain that something like Lavender exists, using ICD-203 we can conclude that Abraham's dramatic claims are very unlikely to be true.
I can't find information about Abraham's age (probably less than 30) or education (maybe art or education), but certainly he is not a military or computer guy so he doesn't know what he is talking about. My guess, he is an unwitting pipeline for Iran intelligence.
Lavender or something like it certainly exists in every law enforcement agency (e.g., FBI, CIA), is no different than how Google's profiling works and might or might not be AI. Simply put, any item of information about a specific person is given a score related to how likely a Hamas fighter would be characterized by that information. For instance, travelling to Lebanon would be a high score, your phone often being in proximity of a Hamas leader would be a middle score, and shopping at Al Sahaba supermarket would not have a score at all.