TL;DR
The US's supposedly precise air campaign against Iran has killed large numbers of civilians, exposing the inherent flaws of strategic bombing, with AI serving as a new tool to mask that failure.
On day one of America's 'most precise' bombing campaign in history, an air strike hit the Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School in Iran, killing 150 people, 120 of them children. In the following weeks, more than 20 schools and 10 hospitals were also hit. Defense Secretary Hegseth's talk of precision is hollow.
Blaming AI
The military blamed the Maven Smart System—an AI platform that fuses data from nine sensor types to provide 'real-time' analysis. The school had been built a decade ago, but AI was still using outdated data, and no human checked the latest satellite feeds. The result: a whole school's death.
The fault is not AI's alone but a complete human-machine failure. Why does it keep happening? Because the Air Force is obsessed with rapid strikes, aiming for a thousand targets an hour, leaving an average of three minutes per target. People have no time to think and just defer to the AI.
History's Old Problem, AI Can't Fix
Strategic bombing has never won a war: Korea flattened Pyongyang, killing nearly a million, and ended in stalemate; Vietnam dropped more bombs than WWII and still lost; Afghanistan and Iraq were no better. Hoping AI will cure this old disease is a pipe dream.
Where AI truly excels is tactical support: Ukraine uses AI drones for close combat, with great effect. Perhaps someday we'll let AI decide who dies.
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