Photo: Illustration: Vikas Thakur Photo: Illustration: Vikas Thakur The world is burning.gvg777
In September 2024, thousands of pagers exploded in Lebanon in public streets, grocery stores and people’s homes. The next day, walkie-talkies were blown up. At least 37 people died and 2,931 people were injured. The attacks were carried out by Israel to target Hezbollah supporters known to carry pagers and walkie-talkies for communication and planning military operations.
Hezbollah, a Shia militant group and movement in Lebanon, against whom Israel has a long-standing armed conflict, has been using old-fashioned pagers and walkie-talkies to avoid interception and hacking by Israeli forces. Israel managed to embed explosives in the pagers, which then exploded in Lebanon and Syria. The dystopian attack was widely condemned, especially since it did not account for harm to civilians, and spotlighted concerns about the rise of new types of cyber warfare.
Calling the strikes “a terrifying violation of international law”, a joint statement by UN human rights experts warned that the attacks could constitute war crimes of murder, attacking civilians and launching indiscriminate attacks, in addition to violating the Right to Life.
In the Gaza Strip last year, quadcopters or small drones hovering in the night sky were heard mimicking sounds of crying infants and women. As Palestinians came out into the open to check the sounds, the quadcopters, which are remote-controlled, shot at them. Deploying military technology advances with the additional twist of psychological warfare is far beyond the legal, moral or ethical frameworks that govern the rules of war.
In the Russia-Ukraine theatre of conflict, Ukraine began using facial recognition to identify Russian targets as well as dead Russian soldiers. The technology was offered to Ukraine by Clearview AI, a facial recognition company, free of cost.
The detonation of pagers and walkie-talkies, drones that deceive and kill, and the use of facial recognition to fight wars sound like hellish episodes from the pages of science fiction books or sub-plots of action movies. This isn’t fiction to be consumed vicariously from a distance, but a reality that we live and breathe.
Wars Equipped With AIClearly, war is no longer confined to the traditional remits of land, air and sea. The weaponisation of information flows and cyberspace, and the use of artificial intelligence (AI) are changing how wars are being conceived and implemented. We are already seeing the rise of technology-driven surveillance, cyber hacking and implanting of spyware, most infamously Israeli-origin Pegasus, on phones.
Wars have always provided new testing grounds for militaries to experiment with new technologies. This holds true for AI too, which is being tested out in new theatres of conflict. While AI can be used to minimise harm to civilian populations, the reverse is equally true—it can cause larger-scale devastation much more efficiently. Nowhere was this more evident than in Gaza, where Israel deployed AI-enabled drones and technology to multiply and widen the scale of damage.
A joint investigation by +972 magazine and Local Call showed that the Israeli army developed and used a new AI-based programme, ‘Lavender’, in the Israel-Hamas war. Lavender played a “central role” in the unprecedented bombing of Palestinians, especially during the early stages of the war with the military relying on its outputs as if it were a human decision. This is not the first time that Israel has used AI in its war on Palestine. After the 11-day war in Gaza in May 2021, officials boasted that Israel had fought its “first AI war” using machine learning. In parallel, AI is being deployed in the Russia-Ukraine war theatre too, with Ukraine building AI-enabled war-drones.
The Paradox Of Peace | Outlook's Next Issue On War And DemocracyThe use of autonomous weapons, where critical functions of weapon systems are automated, throws up entirely new dimensions to conflict. According to the International Committee of the Red Cross,“Autonomous weapons can select (including search, detect, identify, track) and attack (use force against, neutralise, damage or destroy) targets without human intervention. After initial launch or activation by a human operator, it is the weapon system itself—using its sensors, computer programming (software) and weaponry—that takes on the targeting functions that would otherwise be controlled by humans.”
Rise in Drone WarfareThe war between Russia and Ukraine saw their armies use tanks, bombs, missiles and conventional artillery, but also the use of drones writes Dominika Kunertova in the journal of Contemporary Security Policy. “Russia and Ukraine have been using drones of all sorts from scouts collecting intelligence to lethal drone bomblets, one-way attack drones, loitering munition, and long-distance strike drones,”Kunertova writes. While these systems are not independently groundbreaking, the proliferation of low-cost drones shows the pace at which such technology is developing.
For some time, drones have been equipped with stealth technology wherein they can evade being detected by enemies. Swarm drones include a group of drones that collectively perform tasks such as surveillance or coordinate attacks. Swarm drones are able to communicate with each other and act in coordination. These too were seen in action in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
Developments in CBRN WeaponsSwift-paced developments in chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) weapons (more commonly known as weapons of mass destruction) are also unfolding. Annually, governments across the world are spending billions of dollars to finesse and fine-tune these weapons.
Despite the destruction of chemical weapons stockpiles by member states of the Chemical Weapons Convention, the re-emergence of certain chemicals continues. Recent history is testimony to the use of toxic chemicals by states and non-state actors. A prime example is Syria, where chlorine gas was deployed by the Syrian government and sulphur mustard by terror group ISIL. Both Gaza and the Russia-Ukraine war are theatres where chemical weapons are being deployed with impunity with civilians suffering the worst of it.
War is no longer confined to the traditional remits of land, air and sea. The weaponisation of information flows and cyberspace, and the use of AI are changing how wars are being conceived.The use of chemical weapons isn’t new by any means. The US sprayed millions of gallons of ‘Agent Orange’ in the 1960s and 1970s during its invasion of Vietnam, with lasting repercussions for health and environment. AI is the new worrying addition to chemical warfare. Combined with chemistry and biology, AI is being used to develop and deploy newer toxic chemicals.
Nuclear Weapons ProliferationAfter the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, people hoped that its horror and aftermath would be enough to deter nations from using nuclear weapons. In fact, A grassroots movement of the survivors of those atomic bombings, the Hibakusha, was awarded the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize for “its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again”.
Meanwhile, South Korea were knocked out by the defending champions, India, with a 1-4 defeat in the semi-final. In their pool stage encounter, South Korea had previously played to a 2-2 draw against their next opponent, Pakistan.
But here we are in 2025, perched on the nuclear precipice with nuclear flashpoints between Iran and Israel, North and South Korea, India and Pakistan, to name a few.
Consider how advances in AI are being used to finesse nuclear energy production and what this means for the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
Oklo Inc, a California-based company worth $3.33 billion in market capitalisation, started trading on the New York Stock Exchange in 2024. Its chairman is Sam Altman, the CEO of Open AI, the pathbreaking generative AI company. Why is Altman investing in nuclear energy? One reason is that the AI industry is eager to shed the ‘dirty’ label since it uses massive amounts of electricity to process data.
spincasinoWar And The New World OrderAI’s alliances with the nuclear industry, as documented by physicist MV Ramana in his recent book Nuclear is Not the Solution: The Folly of Atomic Power in the Age of Climate Change allow whitewashing or greenwashing of AI and its power requirements and present itself as a clean technology.
But there is another reason too, as Miles Pomper and Yanliang Pan suggest in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
Advances in nuclear reactors, such as the micro-reactors being built by Oklo, clubbed with the application of AI increases the chances for proliferation of nuclear weapons. It could “increase the availability” of fissile materials such as weapons-grade uranium needed to build nuclear weapons in “less time, and lower detectability”.
BioweaponsThe use of bioweapons, not new by any means, presents an entire gamut of ethical and moral concerns. Biological weapons disseminate disease-causing organisms or toxins to harm or kill humans, animals or plants. They can be deadly and highly contagious. Diseases caused by such weapons may not be confined to national borders and could spread rapidly.
CRISPR, a gene editing technology allows the rewriting of DNA sequences in any cell and has positive applications such as cancer therapy and exploring how to remove genetic illnesses. But then, CRISPR could also be weaponised to enable easier and widespread manipulation of pathogens and make targeted populations resistant to vaccines and treatments.
At least three reasons exist for the current state of war.
A giant military industrial complex where arms companies profit from wars through government contracts, a United Nations held hostage by the veto power of a narrow clique of countries, and the unchecked rise of technology for destructive purposes are taking conflict into deadly, uncharted waters.
(Views expressed are personal)
Urvashi Sarkar is an independent journalist based in Mumbai. She writes on international affairs and nuclear power
(This appeared in the print as 'Enemy At The Gates')gvg777