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As the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran continues, we look at how the Pentagon is using artificial intelligence in its operations. The system, known as Project Maven, relies on technology by Palantir and also incorporates the AI model Claude built by Anthropic. Israel has used similar AI targeting programs in Iran, as well as in Gaza and Lebanon.

Craig Jones, an expert on modern warfare, says AI technology is helping militaries speed up the “kill chain,” the process of identifying, approving and striking targets. “You’re reducing a massive human workload of tens of thousands of hours into seconds and minutes. You’re reducing workflows, and you’re automating human-made targeting decisions in ways which open up all kinds of problematic legal, ethical and political questions,” says Jones.

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: As the U.S. and Israeli war extends into its 19th day, we turn now to look at how the U.S. is using artificial intelligence to identify and prioritize targets. The system, known as Project Maven, was created by Palantir, and it incorporates the AI model Claude, built by Anthropic. The Pentagon is investigating if the AI system played a role in the U.S. strike on the Iranian girls’ school that killed over 170 people, mostly girls.

This is CENTCOM Commander Admiral Brad Cooper talking about the use of AI in Iran.

ADM. BRAD COOPER: Our war fighters are leveraging a variety of advanced AI tools. These systems help us sift through vast amounts of data in seconds so our leaders can cut through the noise and make smarter decisions faster than the enemy can react. Humans will always make final decisions on what to shoot and what not to shoot and when to shoot, but advanced AI tools can turn processes that used to take hours, and sometimes even days, into seconds.

ADM. BRAD COOPER: Our war fighters are leveraging a variety of advanced AI tools. These systems help us sift through vast amounts of data in seconds so our leaders can cut through the noise and make smarter decisions faster than the enemy can react. Humans will always make final decisions on what to shoot and what not to shoot and when to shoot, but advanced AI tools can turn processes that used to take hours, and sometimes even days, into seconds.

AMY GOODMAN: Israel has used similar AI targeting programs in Iran, as well as in Gaza and Lebanon. The Pentagon also reportedly used the AI tools during the recent military attack on Venezuela when U.S. Special Forces abducted the Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.

Pentagon Threatens Retaliation If Anthropic Bars Use of AI for Mass Surveillance

This comes as a major rift has emerged between Anthropic and the Pentagon after Anthropic moved to restrict the use of its technology for mass surveillance of Americans and for fully autonomous weapons. In late February, President Trump ordered federal agencies to stop using Anthropic products. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth declared the firm a supply chain risk, effectively cutting it off from government contracts and related work. It marked the first time the Pentagon has designated a U.S. company as a supply chain risk, prompting Anthropic to sue. On Tuesday, CNN reported that nearly 150 retired federal and state judges have filed an amicus brief supporting Anthropic in its lawsuit against the Trump administration.

We’re joined now by Craig Jones, senior lecturer in political geography at Newcastle University, author of The War Lawyers: The United States, Israel, and Juridical Warfare. He’s the co-author of a new article in The Conversation headlined “Iran war shows how AI speeds up military ‘kill chains.’”

Why don’t we start there, Professor Jones?

CRAIG JONES: Thank you.

Yeah, I mean, the U.S. military, the Israeli military, as your headlines have said, using AI, the kill chain is a bureaucratic mechanism whereby militaries go from trying to designate targets, to identify enemies and military targets, to the process of actually killing them. They’re in the process across the 20th century, early 21st century, of speeding that process up. Military drones have helped greatly with that. And the latest front of that is AI. As Bradley Cooper talked about, you’re reducing a massive human workload of tens of thousands of hours into seconds and minutes. You’re reducing workflows, and you’re automating human-made targeting decisions in ways in which, I think, you know, open up all kinds of problematic legal, ethical and political questions.

AMY GOODMAN: The U.S.-Israel war in Iran is being described as the first AI war. Explain what that means, Craig.

CRAIG JONES: Yeah, I would say it’s not quite the first AI war. As you mentioned, Israel has used AI in Gaza. I think this was the first major use of AI in warfare. I think, actually, the history goes back a little longer, with computer programs partially enabled with AI have been used in the background of military systems for several years now. It was used in a major way in Gaza in the first few months, where we saw tens of thousands of targets put in a target bank opted by military intelligence. Up to 35,000 suspected Hamas combatants found themselves on this list as Israel worked through that to assassinate them, as well as tens of thousands of targets that are ultimately part of the civilian infrastructure. As you’ve said, the U.S. has used it with Maduro, and now Israel and the U.S. are also using these systems in Iran.

The key innovation here is twofold. It is the use of AI for intelligence analysis. Intelligence, military intelligence, is multi-format. There is so much of it. It hoovers up what they call signals intelligence, so mobile phones, internet traffic, SMS, mobile phone tracking, all kinds of things. And the AI systems are being used to spot what militaries call patterns of life — you know, who meets with who, who talks with who, what are the nature of the messages, how are they interacting in ways which are deemed suspicious. And the AI systems look for those patterns and make recommendations, which is the second innovation, for targets. They nominate targets to this bank of targets, which then has — which we can talk about — some technical human oversight. And that’s problematic, I think. It’s problematic because that’s a really persuasive technology. It’s nominating hundreds, thousands of targets potentially a day, and it’s working at speeds which are just beyond, you know,........

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