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Computer Says Kill: The Palestine Laboratory w/ Antony Loewenstein · Computer Says Maybe

• Alix: [00:00:00] Hey there, I'm Alix Dunn, and this is part seven of Computer Says Kill, a series exploring the people, politics, and systems that have ushered AI into the business of war. Last week, we aired an episode of our YouTube series, The Tech Story of the Week, where I was in conversation with journalist Nabih Bulos on how Israel uses AI to generate kill lists. This episode felt super relevant to the conversation we're about to have, so if you haven't listened on the feed or watched it on YouTube, it's worth checking out at some point, 'cause I feel like if you're interested in this, you will definitely be interested in that, and we'll drop a link to it in the show notes. And if you like it, you can subscribe to us on YouTube, where we're putting out a lot more videos covering similar issues and topics in hopefully a bit more of a digestible manner that's easier to share for people that maybe are not like you, listening to us weekly in your ears. So now, back to this series. A lot of what we've covered is about this kind of demonic paradox of what is referred to as, quote, "clean war," where the aim is to kill with absolute [00:01:00] precision, resulting in little or no civilian death. Or at least that's the stated aim. Our guest today, author of The Palestine Laboratory, Antony Loewenstein, is gonna explain how the promise of precision isn't a broken promise, it's kind of just a cover. In the context of the Palestine genocide, the aim of the game is to kill as many people as possible, so how precision factors in is a little bit complicated. Antony is gonna give us a bit of history of the wheelings and dealings that Israel has had with other authoritarian states over the years as part of its contribution, let's say, to the military industrial complex, with technology being Israel's, uh, competitive advantage. But to start us off, he's gonna outline the origins of a wild concept: Silicon Valley in Sparta.[00:02:00] Anthony: My name's Antony Loewenstein. I'm an independent journalist, filmmaker, and author, most recently of the book The Palestine Laboratory, which is also a film and a podcast. The whole book and the film and the podcast thesis is that Israel has used, for decades, the occupied Palestinian territories as a testing ground for weapons and surveillance, which they then sell to the world, and it's been remarkably successful on the one hand, but also unbelievably destructive and ugly. So Israel, in some ways, how it views its defense sector is kind of on one level a contradiction. On the one hand, it says and his- history shows that it engages with well over 120, 30, 40 countries on the planet, has sold weapons and defense shields and missiles and spyware to countless countries, as my book goes into in detail. So it's engaged with the world. It's not suddenly... It's not an island. On the other hand, there is a narrative which is being pushed by particularly someone like Naftali Bennett, former Israeli prime minister, potential future prime minister. There was a speech given recently by Netanyahu, the [00:03:00] current prime minister, which essentially said that Israel's entering, I'm paraphrasing here, Israel's entering a period of moral isolation, much the world doesn't like us anymore. Of course, he said that was 'cause of antisemitism, which I think is bullshit, but that's what he said, and therefore we need to see ourselves really as more of a Sparta. We're kind of essentially an island, and we need to defend ourselves from all the enemies that exist around us. He would mean Iran and Hamas and Hezbollah and whoever else would be in that narrative, and be self-sufficient, essentially, to produce weapons and be a self-sufficient nation. Now, this speech caused a outcry. Many Israelis thought, if that is your vision for the future, that's a pretty grim, depressing future. Essentially an island, which also arguably is not even possible. Israel is a country of 10 million people. If you add the occupied territories, about 15. It's a small country in a region of tens and tens, if not hundreds, in fact, hundreds of millions of people. So the idea that you [00:04:00] can be an island in that region seems delusional, A. And B, then that narrative on top of that, Naftali Bennett came in and said, "Oh, no, this actually is... I see Silicon Valley and Sparta," I think he used those exact words, "as the vision." So what does that mean? That means that Israel continues and deepens a much more domestic arms industry. It produces weapons rather than having to rely on others to give it to them. Since the genocide began, two major countries have provided weapons to Israel, the US of course under Biden and then Trump, and Germany, the biggest providers of weapons. And other countries have also assisted, Serbia amongst others. But it's mostly Germany and the US. So Israel's been super reliant on those nations. If those nations decided tomorrow to stop providing weapons, people often ask me would that mean all these wars would stop? It would be a major problem for Israel, but I think the war would continue because they are increasingly developing this [00:05:00] domestic production capability. So the Silicon Valley part is Naftali Bennett and some of these I would say fairly far right fascist tech heads in Israel who are increasingly aligning themselves with Silicon Valley in Silicon Valley in the US, the Palantirs of this world, Alex Karp, Peter Thiel, and others, not just them, but others, who do see this quite noble, militaristic Silicon Valley Sparta idea as the ideal way to organize your country. Now, that could be obviously they're talking there about Israel, but I would argue that many in Silicon Valley, in Palantir, Alex Karp's vision is kind of similar about how he views the US. I mean, his vision, so to speak, is a Western chauvinist country, the US, and its allies, Israel, amongst others, projecting power and violence on the world. Now, obviously, the US is not Israel. It's a much bigger country, but it's actually a pretty similar worldview. Deeply racist, [00:06:00] chauvinist, blind, I would say, of course. So Silicon Valley and Sparta, I would say, finally, is not that sustainable considering the interconnectedness that Israel has always relied on to be, until relatively recently, a very, very, inverted commas, "successful economic country." This is the reality of Israel's history. It is now going into some headwinds, not least the fact that growing amounts of the world population hate what Israel is and what it does and what it stands for. They're having a, an image problem. Can't imagine why. But Naftali Bennett could well be the prime minister by the end of this year, and if that is the vision that he wants to project, I would say good luck with that. Alix: It's interesting, this idea of an island, because a lot of the power being exercised in these networks are networks. They're relationships, and it's people moving between countries. It's people moving between sectors, moving from the private sector to government and then back again, [00:07:00] moving between the technology industries and the military defense technologies industries. So how do you... When you think about the kind of musical chairs of, like, how all these relationships are formed and these sort of transcontinental networks that have built up this muscle to build these technologies and then fuel these wars, any observations about those, like, how that might be changing in the context of hopefully Israel being more ostracized because of the genocide, but maybe, maybe not. Maybe it's now, like, the place for Palantir because of the lack of moral scruples around the deployment of these tools. But, like, what does it look like, that kind of network around Israel? Anthony: I think it's actually what you said, Alix, is both true, that on the one hand, there is growing ostracization. Public opinion in the US, Europe, UK, Australia, and this is based on polling, is massively turned against Israel. Much of the left, which was never a big fan of Israel for the last decades, has very much turfed Israel out, growing parts of the right and the far right as well for various different reasons [00:08:00] Democrats are generally against Israel. Growing numbers of Republicans are. In Europe and the UK, it's not hugely dissimilar. Israel has a major reputation problem on its hand, which is why they're spending, in the coming year, up to a billion US dollars on propaganda. What- What does that mean? Alix: How are they spending it? Yeah. Anthony: Uh, they haven't consulted with me on how they should spend it. But, um, I know what they're doing. They're spending it on influencers being brought over to Israel to talk about the beautiful beaches and the hot men and women on, you know, in bikinis and Speedos, and democracy and freedom and love and gay rights, and that's part of it, so bring influencers over. It is spending insane amounts of money on social media networks and propaganda to try to convince the evangelical community, which historically has always been one of Israel, if not the biggest supporter, who are now fracturing. There are many more evangelicals. This was a bit of a revelation to me in the last few years. My image, and most people's image, is that- Pun intended ... evangelical- [00:09:00] evangelicals are known to being, in general, fanatically pro-Israel. And in general, the leadership is, but that's actually shifting quite fast because of, like all of us have seen images of what's been going on in Gaza for the last two and a half years. So they're spending money on paying, in one particular case, a massive contract with a former Trump colleague, Brad Parscale, who worked on Trump's first campaign. Oh, Alix: yeah, Facebook ads man. Anthony: Yeah. Exactly, and he's doing much more than that now, creating new websites, trying to portray Israel as a noble country. But I think the image in some ways of Israel years ago used to be beautiful, great democracy. Now it's more like we are a proud nation that supports Christians and Jews to live the life that they want. Far more chauvinist, proudly so. And that ties to your question. The alliances that Israel is bridging now is much more with the so-called neo-fascist global right So where you have in [00:10:00] parts of Europe the growth and surge in far-right political parties, France, Germany, sometimes they're in power, sometimes they're not, they are hoping to build a kind of global alliance. Trump is part of that. For example, as we're recording this, there's been a scandal brewing which has barely received any Western media coverage, but I suspect will soon, of a growing alliance between Javier Milei in Argentina, Trump and Netanyahu, and Juan Hernández, the former leader of Honduras, who was found guilty years ago of an insane drug empire in his country. Sent to jail for many years, and Trump pardoned him not that long ago. These people are involved in a massive campaign to try to unseat so-called left-wing political parties in Latin and South America. Now, whether that's gonna succeed is an open question. Paying for websites, paying for propaganda against particularly the leader of Colombia and Mexico, who are seen as more [00:11:00] left-wing and critical of Trump Does that kind of global alliance represent, on the one hand, a neo-fascist group hug? Yes. It means that weapons can be shared and sold and traded between these nations. But let's also be clear. In the last years since the genocide, very few countries have stopped buying Israeli weapons. There's often a disconnect, Alex, between the rhetoric and the reality. So yes, there are countries like Spain who are probably in Europe the most outspoken nation against what Israel's doing. The leader of Spain is a vocal critic of Netanyahu and Trump for that matter, and is le- trying to lead Europe to be far more critical of what Israel is doing. But much of Europe, I mean, the latest figures we have for 2024 for Israeli weapons sales, we haven't got the figures for last year. We'll get them soon. Europe was the biggest purchaser of weapons by far. And I think you will see in years to come, we [00:12:00] don't see as much with Trump yet, obviously, and he's only got two years to go, in theory, unless he decides to kind of hang around, that there's no doubt that in many European countries and elsewhere... There was a piece in The Jerusalem Post just recently saying this, that Israel is realizing, this is the Israeli perspective, Israel is realizing that much of the world turned against them in their moment of need. They didn't support them in their, in their view, justified war in Gaza against Hamas, and therefore we need to find allies that think like us. And of course, they put nations on this list that were mostly other dictatorships or run by the far right. Now, if that's your vision, if that's your worldview, which has always been Israel's worldview, by the way. There's always been a complete narrative disconnect between the reality of what Israel was selling and what it actually was and what it remains, which is an occupying nation that occupies Palestinians for close to, you know, more than half a [00:13:00] century with no end in sight. And if you look at some of the propaganda videos from even two, three decades ago, of course, there's no mention of the occupation. It is only hot people on Tel Aviv beaches And that propaganda still continues. And yes, there are hot people on Tel Aviv beaches, that's true. But literally an hour down the road, there's also genocide in Gaza. Alix: The part of your book that I found newest to me was the history of relationships between the Israeli government and other autocracies. That was really new to me. I didn't realize that in the '70s and '80s they were approaching horrible authoritarian states and saying, "Here's technology to help you, because if we can help you, then in some way we'll build bonds that will protect us." It feels like that's been a politic for a while. Can you talk a little bit about that history? Anthony: Yeah, one of the things I wanted to do in the book is to open people's eyes to the knowledge that Israel, since World War II, and obviously Israel was founded three years later in [00:14:00] 1948, has often been almost America's wing man in supporting autocracies around the world. So on the left at least, and even in parts of the right, there's a knowledge that the US has backed lots of dictatorships in the last 80 years. Some people of course support that. You and I probably don't. But that knowledge is more there. Alix: It's also back in fashion now in a way Anthony: that's a bit disturbing. It's now back in fashion. Totally, right? Alix: But yeah. Anthony: Yeah. Whereas the history of Israel supporting often the same regimes, so who am I talking about? Well, you mentioned the '70s, so 1973, on 9/11 in fact, Pinochet comes to power in Chile. And yes, everyone knows, or those who know history, that America was a key part of that. Kissinger was a big supporter of Pinochet. But in years after that, yes the US was vital in supporting it to be sure, but Israel was equally vital. And in fact at some point became even more central to Pinochet's reign by not just providing weapons, but training and arms to Pinochet. Now, was that because Israel at its time necessarily [00:15:00] believed in everything Pinochet did? I mean, in some ways it's neither here nor there. They backed it like they'd back dictatorships in Africa and Central America and Asia and elsewhere. And one of the things I try to talk about in the book is what that does for Israel's coffers, but also reputation and influence. Back in the day, decades ago during the dictatorship era, Israel was a key backer of the Argentinian regime, even when they knew that Jews particularly, not that others weren't, of course they were, but Jews were particularly being targeted and killed and tortured. And it is, as you say, really concerning to me, not just as a Jew myself, although I'm not religious, but as a human, that Israel is now openly embracing the rise of the global far right. So you have Israel, either in Israel itself or in Europe particularly, and the US too, organizing or attending conferences with the global far right. Political parties from Sweden and France and Germany who are openly [00:16:00] anti-Semitic. Now, of course, these days they don't come out and say, "We hate Jews." These days they say, "We hate Muslims and Islam and multiculturalism and diversity." That's of course how they, as I often say, whitewash their image, because they say, "You can't call us anti-Semites. We love Israel." Alix: We're Israel. Anthony: You know? Like, you can't, you can't think... You know, I, I have lots of examples in my work of far right political parties across Europe who historically were literally made up of Nazis and the far right, who traditionally would hate Jews, and now of course that's shifted over to Muslims and Islam. So Israel's building an alliance with these groups. Now, is it partly political pragmatism? Yes, because other countries are becoming less open to that relationship. But also, I would argue it's an ideological symmetry. Actually makes perfect sense. They generally hate Muslims, they hate Islam, they hate multiculturalism, they hate refugees, they hate openness They hate [00:17:00] diversity. They believe in ethnonationalism. Alix: It's just so wild. I mean, I feel like their one competitive edge then is their capacity to make technology also- Yes ... um, which people want. Yes. In a, in a free market Yeah ... of people trying to procure the best technologies to spy on their domestic populations and the journalists, uh, but also other types of weapons of war. Do you wanna talk a little bit about what types of technology they're making now using the experience of apartheid and then genocide, and like how you think about the kind of menagerie of technology that's coming out of Israel? Anthony: Well, one of the things that has really come to the fore in Gaza, although some of these things were happening before October 7, of course, not, not everything suddenly exploded on that day, is really the growing automation of war, the growing use of AI. Israel had used AI in warfare before October 7. The US had used it years ago too, but there's been a real explosion in that. And what you've seen Israel use, particularly in Gaza, now also in Lebanon [00:18:00] and Iran for that matter, as the US is doing too, is the accumulation of mass data sets into supposed legitimate targets for war. This is what, of course, they argue. So they're hoovering up through satellites, through Wi-Fi signals, through social media content, through on-the-ground human intelligence, a range of sources, putting them into tools that are designed either by companies like Palantir or others. And in Gaza, for example, after October 7, the whole aim of that, what is clearly now a genocide, but initially started off as a war of retribution or revenge, was just that. Alix: It was revenge. Anthony: It wasn't about pinpointing Hamas. It wasn't about going after the so-called bad guys who committed undeniable war crimes on October 7. It wasn't really about that. It was about showing to Palestinians in Gaza, "You will pay an unforgettable price for what Hamas has done." And [00:19:00] frankly, two and a half years on, Israel has gotten away with that because Gaza no longer exists. And in fact, what we're seeing in Lebanon, there was an interesting report I saw recently, LA Times, which sort of backs up some of the sourcing that I've been seeing as well, which is essentially using similar kind of technology as was used in Gaza, which makes sense. Cell phone towers, Wi-Fi signals, social media content to go after supposed enemies. Of course, the problem is often, uh, facial recognition technology. What exactly is being targeted? Are you going after, so Israel claims, terrorists? But that simply is not credible when in Gaza, tens and tens of thousands of people, if not more, have been killed. The vast majority of who are women and kids. Are we saying that a 10-year-old kid is a terrorist? Of course not. Although Israel often questions whether even children are potential terrorists or they say, "Well, they could be terrorists one day." Okay. Right? It's that kind of dehumanization. And you've also seen, which again started before October 7, but [00:20:00] accelerated since, the real buy-in of Silicon Valley big tech into this genocide. Microsoft, Palantir, Amazon, Google, and others either providing the data architecture for these tools or massive cloud services. Israel already had a contract called Project Nimbus, which has existed for a number of years between some of these cloud companies to provide cloud space for all the data. October 7 happens, the war accelerates. They need way more cloud services. Amazon and Google were happy to provide that hugely. So I in f- in some ways see companies like that also using Palestine as a laboratory because in the end, these companies are not doing it just for the money. I'm not saying that Google somehow is philanthropic, but Israel's a small country. The contracts actually aren't that big. It's not really just about the money. It's partly ideological, going back to what we said before, this belief of Western chauvinism supporting Israel in its supposed justified war against [00:21:00] terrorism. So the argument by the Alex Karps of this world would be. And the idea that Google and Amazon can then say to other countries, "You see what we provided to Israel with their amazingly successful war in Gaza," so they would argue. "We can provide that service to you." And so the technology is everything from AI-enabled warfare, obviously killer drones, which have been hugely, quadcopters, which were used extensively in Gaza. We have missile defense shields, which are some of the most popular export defense equipment that Israel has, which is going across all of Europe now after Russia's invasion of Ukraine a number of years ago What Israel I think is trying to do, and I know there's been in the last sort of while I've seen some questioning about the so-called efficiency of some of these tools. I'm not arguing, to be clear, that the aim here is pinpoint killing. That is not what I'm arguing. The Palestine laboratory is not trying [00:22:00] to be a kind of ad for the Israeli arms industry. It's the opposite, in fact. It's saying mass killing or mass occupation is the point. If you are using Palestinians or Lebanese or Iranians, whoever it may be, almost as a testing ground for your new technology, when there is no accountability for mass killing or mass crimes, why would you stop them? So when Israel has killed 70, 80, 90, 100,000 Palestinians in Gaza, thousands in Lebanon, most of whom are civilians, have nothing to do with Hezbollah or Hamas or whatever, that is the marketing tool. Ultimately, Israel is selling this technology as not clean, but inverted commas efficient. That is how they're selling it in their material, in their videos, which are now going on YouTube. When I started, Alex, researching this years ago, Israeli companies weren't putting these ads on YouTube, these ads for their weapons. Now it's very open and public. Not all of them, but some of them [00:23:00] proudly showing Missile X going into a building in Gaza and they say, "See, therefore, the terrorist was killed." Who the hell knows who that person was? Were they a Hamas militant? I mean, it's possible, sure. It's also possible, as we've seen countless videos in the last two and a half years of families and civilians just being blown up by drones. Of course, it's, that's also very possible. And if you as a state or a company don't view Palestinians or Iranians or Lebanese as really human, if you dehumanize them so much, then who cares if 50 or 100,000 die? Who cares? This is the logic of genocide, but also the logic of the Palestine laboratory. Doesn't really matter in the end if you kill insane amounts of people, because endless war is only what keeps you alive politically and militarily. Alix: It's like surviving a news cycle, but with conflict. Like just- Yeah more con- more conflict is the solution. Anthony: Yes. Alix: Um, always. I wanna talk a little bit more about this accuracy point, 'cause I think it's [00:24:00] really, really, really important. But do you wanna describe... 'Cause using the word laboratory, to me implies an intentional set of experiments where you emerge with a more refined technology that then you can sell to someone else using those experiments to justify its value. Can you describe a little bit about What makes it a laboratory? Like, what does it look like for Israel to experiment in Palestine? Anthony: In some ways, what a daily grind of occupation allows a state like Israel, and for that matter, other states that also occupy people indefinitely, as the US did in Iraq or Afghanistan, of course, it was only 20 years roughly in both those countries, as opposed to half a century plus in Palestine, is that you're able to, in inverted commas, refine the technology. So one of the examples I give in the book, and I know it's deepened in the last years, is, is come sort of Red Wolf and, and Blue Wolf. It's basically essentially a [00:25:00] surveillance tool that soldiers have on their phones when they are occupying the West Bank. So they are gathering personal data on every single Palestinian in the West Bank and increasingly in Gaza as well. Everything from personal information, what work they're doing, where they're studying, if they're studying, their irises, biometric data. They're building a massive database, essentially of every single person, and that's increasingly being done in Gaza as well. It existed before October 7, but it's hugely accelerated since. Now, obviously, a lot of people in Gaza are now living in refugee camps or living-- I wouldn't even call them refugee camps. They're living in squalor, essentially. They're living in, in tent cities at best But what endless occupation allows a state like Israel to get away with is building a obviously completely non-transparent database. I've never seen the database. Palestinians, of course, can't access it. No other state. I suspect the US does get [00:26:00] access to that intelligence because we know often there are cases of Palestinians who want to go to the US or go elsewhere who are refused under, inverted commas, "security questions." And God knows what that actually means. And in the vast majority of cases, that's not because they're a present security threat, but because Israel doesn't like them or they advocate for their people's rights or whatever, you know? So what endless occupation, I think, allows in a place like Palestine is a detailed gathering of personal information of every single individual that exists there. There's about 3 million in the West Bank and about 2 million in Gaza. And in some ways, although that's, the intensity of that's quite unique, as we know, I know your show has talked about this, what do we think the NSA and others are doing in the US as well? What do we think is happening in other countries around the world as well? This is what's happening to many, many states now, this idea of creating a database on every [00:27:00] single individual. It's almost like what parts of China is doing, like a sort of social credit score, really. And in fact, when years ago I started writing about China 20-odd years ago, people thought what China was doing was draconian and repressive, and I would argue that it certainly was and is. But increasingly, Western states are doing exactly the same thing. That's probably because of technology, ideology. I'd say Western capitalist insecurity, inferiority complex, small dick syndrome. I mean, there's lots of reasons going on here. And I think inc- increasingly Western elites feel paranoid and scared. I mean, they say it themselves. Why do you think all the growing Silicon Valley leaders have hundreds of millions of dollars of bunkers in Hawaii or New Zealand? There is a reason for that. Alix: I think that's right. And I, I wonder, um, when we talk about big tech, oftentimes you think of American tech companies and watching how the private tech sector in the US is increasingly fused with an American state in very similar ways, it [00:28:00] seems like, to the way that Israel engages with the technology industries within Israel. Like, do you have reflections on how that is shaping the trajectory of, you know, where the US might be in 5 to 10 years in terms of its willingness to at scale use emerging technologies for brutality globally? Like, are we just going along the same path as Israel and we'll meet in the middle at some point? Anthony: Well, obviously they're working with each other. I mean, I think the US and Israel- Yeah ... are different countries. I mean, I think the US in some ways, is at a bit of a fork in the road. Do they continue down a Trump-like future? After Trump, is it a Vance or Rubio or someone else we don't even know yet? Not that I have any hope in the Democrats either, but is it a different path, which is far less Western Christian chauvinist? I don't know the an- no one knows the answer, though I think it worries me if that's the direction the US is going. I mean, it's always been a Christian chauvinist country, but certainly at least at times has been more welcoming. So what Israel has been doing for [00:29:00] years, and the US has also done it for a long time, but it's becoming far more overt now, is, yes, a lot of the, these tech companies in the US and Israel are private, but they're private really in name only. Not because Netanyahu is telling them what to do or Trump is, although he sometimes does. I'm sure he is quite close to Palantir and obviously Peter Thiel. I don't think he's directing Palantir's policies day to day. They don't need to. They have leaders of these companies which generally have a similar worldview. I mean, Alex Karp and Peter Thiel's vision is remarkably Trump-like. I mean, that's not a secret, right? And many of the Israeli companies that I've investigated over the last 10 years are private in name, but actually are an arm of the Israeli state. Netanyahu and others use it, use these companies to, in inverted commas, make friends, to get influence, to get intel on enemies. I mean, there's a whole still very, very murky story that has never really fully come out yet about The use [00:30:00] by Israel against the International Criminal Court, both the former chief prosecutor and the current one, Karim Khan, who recently stepped aside for sexual assault allegations. He was then cleared of that and now it's still very unresolved. There's no doubt Israel had been gathering intel on some of those stories and leaking it. It's very dark and murky what's happened there. My point in saying that is that they would probably have been using some private Israeli companies in the use of that intelligence gathering along with the Mossad, their intelligence unit. Alix: Whereas the US may just use Microsoft. Like they cut- Yes ... them off of their Microsoft email accounts which implies they have access to those accounts. Yes. And I can very much imagine- Yeah ... some sharp elbows coming from the Trump administration saying, "Hey, these are now persona non grata. We will come up with- Yes some legal pretense." Anthony: Um, you can- For sure. And I mean even the recent- Yeah ... in the recent war between Israel, Iran, and the US, there's no secret that the US was using tools from Anthropic [00:31:00] and from Palantir in data selection. I mean, I found the conversation months ago a bit delusional around, you know, the media was framing Anthropic has taken a stand against the Defense Department. I'm thinking, right, so they did sign a deal with the US government last year. I'm not sure what they thought was happening last year compared to this year and obviously we'll see how that plays out. So much of the Western media coverage was Anthropic has taken a real stand against the Trump administration where literally I think the week after their tools were used by the Trump administration in targeting in Iran, including targeting civilian infrastructure. So they're complicit and I mean in my ideal world, Alex, some of these companies would one day face trial. I'm not talking about US officials. Oh, yeah. I'm talking about corporations- Alix: Oh, yeah ... Anthony: right? For complicity in- Alix: Yeah ... Anthony: war crimes whether it's in Iran or Gaza or- Or Alix: Myanmar. Or Myanmar. Like Mark Zuckerberg should be in jail for what they did in Myanmar. Anthony: And yet he's [00:32:00] building a bunker in Hawaii worth $300 million. Alix: So how, like how do we, how do you tease apart the like propaganda of Israel as this, "They're only doing this because the rest of the Arab world has twisted their arms" or, or whatever, "Hamas has put them in this situation," with like the technology piece of this which connects to an argument about accuracy improving over time and that these systems are the worst that they'll ever be and these kind of wild assertions about how this technology is just improving so much and like h- how do you, yeah, how do you unpick accuracy, precision, civilian casualties, we're a country that cares, et cetera? Anthony: There's two ways to see that. On the one hand there's no doubt and we've all seen this in the last months including in Iran that if Israel wants to target person X literally in a room in a building they can do so And kill them. I don't support them doing that, but they can. And that's obviously through satellite imagery and human intelligence and various other tools, like for example, the [00:33:00] killing and obviously at the beginning of the recent Iran war of a supreme leader and many people around him, and various other nuclear scientists that Israel and the US have killed in the last while. So on the one hand, yes, there is an ability to use certain kinds of technology in a more pinpointed way. However, and it's a very important however, what you've seen in Gaza, what you've seen in Southern Lebanon is really the opposite of that, but deliberately so. So yes, I'm aware that Israel has claimed that they are trying to pinpoint so-called terrorists in Gaza or Hezbollah in Lebanon. And when they are destroying a building with a supposed Hamas militant or Hezbollah militant, we're very sorry that innocent people might be around there, but well, they shouldn't have been in the building or whatever the so-called justification is. I don't really accept that because knowing, speaking to various sources I have over the years in [00:34:00] Israel and seeing some of the reporting, mass killing was the point In Gaza. That was the intention. It was not just to kill the Hamas leader and his lieutenants. That was not the point. The point was what has happened in Gaza. That was the intention. The intention was revenge and mass killing and mass destruction, to make it essentially unlivable, which has been an Israeli right-wing dream for decades. And I guarantee you, if something similar had happened from the West Bank, militants had come into Israel from the West Bank and done something similar to October 7, the West Bank would no longer exist either. And that is the fear that I have now, that there is so much understandable anger and, I mean, the West Bank is under essentially permanent lockdown. Life becomes impossible. If something like an October 7 happened from the West Bank, you would find, I fear, a very similar [00:35:00] Western support for Israel doing exactly the same thing in the West Bank than they did in Gaza. Exactly the same. Israel needed, inverted commas, an excuse for justification to do in Gaza what they did. They've been obviously going into Gaza blowing it up for years, but they have not done what they did in the last two and a half years, until October 7 was their inverted commas justification. So you can, not you, but one dresses up AI warfare as pinpoint and clean and surgical. And as I said, there are cases where, yes, it can be used that way. But the fear I have is, and I've seen this in practice in Gaza and Lebanon and elsewhere, the point often is the opposite. The point is to just kill huge amounts of people. The ultimate Israeli vision, if I can call it that, is as few Palestinians as possible in Palestine. So of course, AI warfare is a [00:36:00] central part of how they fought their war. But if there wasn't AI, Alex, you know what? They would- they just would've carpet bombed the place, and there would've been exactly the same result. So ... And obviously at times they did just drop lots of bombs on Gaza. It's not like the whole thing was just done by precision warfare. Of course it was not. So I guess I'm, and I know this is the perfect program to do this, so deeply skeptical of the claims by AI experts. And again, I'm not suggesting there's not an ability to use the technology to literally kill someone in their bed, in a building, in a room. There is, and we've seen it. I'm not denying that reality. Whatever the tool you're gonna use, AI or just B-52 bombers, the end result's no different. It's mass civilian death. And I'm just finally on this point, one thing that... And I think the smarter people in Israel realize this, none of this is making them safer or more secure. It's a [00:37:00] delusion of security. It's a delusion of saying, "We have made everyone in the Middle East petrified of us." And there's some truth in that, that's true. But this idea somehow that you as a Jewish ethno-nationalist state are more secure or safe because you have decimated all these countries around you is a delusion. Because if it's not Hamas or Hezbollah or ISIS or Al-Qaeda, there'll be some other group that emerges next week, next month, next year, with the same grievances. Does anyone honestly think you're gonna kill 70 to 100,000 Palestinians in Gaza and not see massive opposition and resistance to that at some point? I don't know when It's going to happen. And the cynical side of me says that's exactly what Israel needs to survive. They need that inverted commas threat to survive and get global support, Western support. It's worked for them for over years. And Alix: domestic- Exactly ... and domestic power consolidation. Anthony: Yeah. Exactly. But whether it's Netanyahu or [00:38:00] Bennett, it doesn't make a big difference who it is. That narrative is there. Alix: God, that's so dark. I mean, I think that the ... That's what I ... I mean, reading the coverage of Lavender and Where's Daddy, it, it didn't feel like there was this kind of, um, ascent of precision. Um, but the, the main thrust was just scale destruction, and that AI was assisting in targeting, not for the purpose of precision, but just literally telling the missiles where to go. Like, the, like the vol- the sheer volume of bombs dropping, you had to have computers involved to sort of say where things should go, but it never felt in good faith. Anthony: No. Well, it clearly wasn't. And I mean- Yeah ... one of the things I heard from some Israeli sources of mine was that after October 7, Israel quickly realized that their so-called target bank, that's their word, was running dry very quickly, that they had numbers of people in their system that they thought, "Right, in the next war, we know where Hamas commander X lives with his wife and kids and whatever." But they ran out of that target [00:39:00] bank so quickly because they, as people may remember, very soon before soldiers didn't enter Gaza till the end of October 2023, but there was a bombing campaign. I think it started on October 7 or the October 8, very much- Alix: That Anthony: was- Pretty much straight away ... Alix: catastrophic. Anthony: Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. It was devastating, and it was killing huge amounts of civilians as well. They ran out of targets very quickly. So they were wondering, "Well, what are we gonna do here?" And there was an o- there was a perceived need, and I wonder who this was really for, for some kind of legal sign-off for these. I often wonder who that was for because Netanyahu didn't really care. The Americans certainly didn't care. The Europeans didn't care. The Arab states, frankly, were cheering the war. They didn't say that publicly, but the Arab elites were. They fucking hate Hamas. So the Palestinians were basically alone. But there was kind of this idea they need to get legal sign-off for- Alix: I know ... Anthony: mass killing. So- And they, and they were receiving it. And I'd Alix: like to think- But it's like a phantom limb of accountability. You know? Exactly. They're like- Anthony: Yes ... " Alix: I feel like we should [00:40:00] do something that like- Yes ... makes this legal." Yeah. Anthony: Yes. And I hope that those lawyers, by the way, we spoke before about corporations being held on war crimes, I'd like those lawyers, who are mostly faceless, I'd like those people to also face accountability Alix: Yeah, totally. Okay. Well, I feel like one thing throughout this whole conversation is that there is this very potent, very well-resourced narrative that connects a little bit to the interplay between Israel as a state and a Jewish identity and, uh, antisemitism and the rise of antisemitism globally. Plus this, like, innovation washing, new technologies will make war more fair. Nation states that are waging war with technology are more fair. There's kind of like a logical fallacy that's hap- Yeah ... that's happening there. Anthony: Yeah, Alix: yeah. Um, do you have any advice based on writing the book, the reception to the book, in how to help people along in untying those things that feel very bound together, which makes it extremely difficult to, [00:41:00] like, orient yourself in what's happening and feel grounded in, I don't know, you must have a cousin or something that's like, "What? What is, what is this book?" Um, like, how do you help people understand? Anthony: Yeah. Well, the book came out first in May 2023, which obviously was before October 7th. Very well timed, yeah. The book initially was not about October 7th at all, though I've released a new edition which does talk about October 7 and what Israel's done since. But yes, the timing was, I guess, thank you Verso for I mean, you know, I didn't choose the date, but yes, it was quite prescient and the book has become this quite surreal global bestseller in, like, you know, 15 languages and I think I see almost every day, Alex, in some country, people messaging me about how they see the language and understanding of that book makes them understand so much of the moment that we're in, in terms of the growing militarization, not just about Israel for that matter, but the US and Europe and elsewhere. This idea [00:42:00] of how central the arms and defense sector is. Although, as you know, the book is not just about that. It's actually about ideology and dehumanization and history and the Holocaust in many ways, and many other issues. I mean, the only thing that I would say to give people a little bit of hope, because frankly, it's all pretty damn dark, is that I would never have imagined, I've been writing about Israel-Palestine for 25 years, that the amount of public support and shift in the last two and a half years has been unprecedented. I'm talking about a growing understanding and awareness of the threat that Israel poses to Palestinians, of course, but to the global order by its use of mass violence, the desire for greater Israel. And that's reflected in public polling showing, as I said before, massive shift in support towards Palestine. So if you ask people, if you drill down into that, they're not gonna probably know a lot about what that [00:43:00] actually means and what their vision is, and that's fine. I mean, ultimately, what happens in the Middle East, in my view, should be up to the Palestinians. And there's going to need to be a reckoning and accountability and truth and reconciliation. We are obviously a long, long, long way away from that now. But public opinion has now become a weapon of its own, and the question is, what do we do with that public support for Palestine? You are seeing that playing out in the US in Technicolor. What does that mean for the next federal, the US election? What does it mean for the Democratic Party? What does it mean for whether the US should still be sending weapons and money to Israel? Netanyahu himself did an interview with 60 Minutes recently and sort of said, "Oh, look, you know, we're doing wonderfully well on every single front," and I'm paraphrasing, "We're losing the propaganda war 'cause everyone suddenly hates Jews. Everyone hates Jews who are winning." Right. Nothing to do with maybe what the world has been seeing Israel's been doing for the last two and a half years on [00:44:00] their phones day in, day out. And therefore, he, in his view, of course, we need to spend more money on propaganda. It's a comms problem rather than a reality problem. And that, to me, is the, is the hope that we have to live with, that there is a need to harness that public support to both understand that there needs to be, in my view, far more dissent within the tech sector. I mean, I really want to see far more tech workers rising up who do work for the Amazons and Googles and Palantirs. So I suppose I do see it at a sense of how to harness public anger and not turn that into a hatred of Jews. Now, that might be an obvious thing to say, but I, as someone who is Jewish, though I'm not religious at all, I am very concerned about the regular slippage that is occurring online in the real world between Israel and Jews. There is desperate need for a moral [00:45:00] reckoning within the Jewish world about what essentially many in our communities are supporting. There's only about 16, 17 million Jews in the world, roughly half in the US, half in Israel, and the rest scattered around the world. It's a small population, and when you have virtually every mainstream Jewish organization in the world supporting Israel's genocide, West Bank occupation, bombing Lebanon, bombing Iran, bombing Syria, bombing Yemen, what does that do? Again, I say this as a non-religious person. What does that do to how people view Jewish people? And it's pretty obvious. And again, some people hate Jews because they hate Jews, but clearly Israeli actions are radicalizing people to hate all Jews, some people. And that worries me, which is why I'm so skeptical of the Candace Owens and the Tucker Carlsons and obviously the Nick Fuentes for that matter, who come out and use the word genocide. And they are attracting many people on parts of the left who say, "Well, we [00:46:00] can be allies with these people." I remain so skeptical of that, to put it mildly, because they are nativists and deeply racist on a range of issues. And maybe they say Israel's committing genocide, which well done, but they also have profoundly draconian, ugly views on 1,000 other issues. Hate trans people, want all migrants to leave. I mean, whatever the issue is. So- and have no issue with Trump's ICE programs, mass deportations. They say nothing about that. I guess I'm wary of some of those growing alliances, which worries me because come 2028 for the US election, I think if someone like a Tucker Carlson becomes a presidential candidate, possible, or someone like him, and uses a very anti-Israel stance as a selling point, which has never really happened in the US for a mainstream candidate on either sides of politics, I think a lot of people are gonna be very confused, and I worry where that [00:47:00] takes us. Again, as someone who profoundly opposes what Israel is doing. So we need to harness support for Palestine, but in a way that doesn't empower the far right. The end. Alix: I think that's absolutely right. I find it quite, I don't know, like M.C. Escher, antisemitism and to Israel. Like, it all just kind of, like, gets very confusing, and I think people that aren't paying a lot of attention get confused, and I think they also check out, and I think it's really important to draw attention back to the humanity of Palestinians, the humanity of- Anthony: And the facts on the ground. Um, and of course what's made more difficult- Yeah ... this finally is that it's hard when most of the so-called Democratic politicians who have stature are so weak and hopeless on this issue. Like a Chuck Schumer or even AOC, who could be a candidate in 2028. I mean, it seems like she's flirting with the idea. And she has said, I think, genocide, to her credit, but also when she often speaks about this issue, it's quite, I think it's a little bit confused. And someone like Carlson [00:48:00] is far more straightforward, and people find that very attractive. Direct and not Alix: abstract. Anthony: Yes. Alix: Totally. I feel like there's lots of threads to pull on there at the end about what to do about it, and I appreciate that 'cause I know that's not an easy triple Axel to land into something positive, and you did. Anthony: Yeah. No, no, but I wanted to mention, though, 'cause that, it's something that's on my mind about- Alix: Yeah, I mean, we can't live on the fumes of, you know, the war crimes of autocrats. Like, I mean, you gotta, like- Anthony: I mean, you can ... you Alix: gotta... You can. Yeah. Oh, God. Anthony: Not ideal. Alix: No. Next week is gonna be our final episode of Computer Says Kill, and I will be joined by Heidi Clough. We're gonna finish the series off talking about AI safety, so how it got co-opted by the tech industry who use AI for violence constantly, and what we might need to reverse that. Thank you as usual to those on the team who help make the show possible, Sarah Myles, Georgia Iacovou, Van Newman, Kushal Dev, Marion Wellington, and Zoe Trout, and we will see you next [00:49:00] week