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‘Rarely discussed in public these days is how technology and AI, in particular, are making wars more unprecedented and unpredictable in scale and impact’
Two weeks before the world marks the first anniversary of the unprecedented October 7 attack of Hamas in Israel, we’re faced with what a top United Nations official has described as an “imminent catastrophe” in the Middle East. A situation that some of us might have imagined as an episode in a binge-worthy dystopian series has happened in real life: war exploding right at the fingertips of protagonists.
Let’s pause for a moment and situate the past week’s bursting pagers and walkie-talkies in Lebanon in our own context. A country that is no stranger to deadly conflicts and is now, in fact, locked in a tit-for-tat with China in its own seas, the Philippines should be concerned about how technology is drastically changing the nature of wars.
What Israel has shown the past week is what some security analysts point to as a hit-button capability to micro-target adversaries — such microtargeting inflicting more terror on the psyche than on the body.
So this question begs to be asked: What would stop states and non-state actors from trying to learn the same skills in the future? Not even the US had anticipated the hi-tech attacks that Israel mounted against the Lebanese-backed Hezbollah last week; in January, senior Biden administration officials had taken the optimistic view that neither Israel nor Hezbollah were showing any “clear desire” to go to war even if Hezbollah had, by then, been firing rockets at northern Israel as a show of support for Hamas’ October 2023 attacks.
- In this Rappler’s Best piece, we tackled the retaliatory attacks last April by Iran — one of Hezbollah’s principal backers — against Israel. This followed months of ferocious missile exchanges on the border between Israel and Hezbollah.
- On September 17, a beep on Hezbollah members’ pagers set out explosions in the devices in various locations in Lebanon — some of them were in public markets, on their motorbikes, and other public places. The day after, their walkie-talkies exploded, too. At least three dozen militia members and civilians have been killed in the blasts, and more than 3,000 wounded.
- Our neighbors, Taiwan and Japan, were inadvertently dragged into the fray. The pagers carried the logo of Taiwan-based Gold Apollo, which denied having a hand in their production and pointed to BAC Consulting in Hungary as the one that produced and sold the type of model that was purchased by Hezbollah. A New York Times investigation, as mentioned by the BBC, said that BAC Consulting was a front for Israeli intelligence.
- The Japanese handheld radio maker ICOM also disowned any link to the walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah, saying it has halted the production of the model that exploded last week.
- Hezbollah vowed to punish Israel for the attacks. Israel has not shown signs of backing down, unleashing heavy everyday strikes in southern Lebanon till the weekend and killing Hezbollah’s top commander and other senior figures.
- While eyes were on Lebanon, Israel raided the bureau of Al Jazeera in the West Bank, which it has been branding as a “mouthpiece” of Hamas. This move continues to narrow the space for reporting in a region that is also flooded with propaganda and disinformation.
- Israel’s brinkmanship is making the US and UN look like hapless, clueless third parties in a conflagration that is going out of hand. And the so-called axis of resistance (or evil, if you so desire that term), is not going to take such brinkmanship passively, either. At stake for that part of the Arab world is reputation, pride, the past, the future.
Rarely discussed in public these days is how technology and AI, in particular, are making wars more unprecedented and unpredictable in scale and impact. The humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza is the best proof of how the most tech-savvy defense force in the world has used all modern tools at its disposal to track and attack targets — whether buildings or houses or tunnels or people — from the big data that it has amassed over time.
Which reminds me of the “heartbeat” narrative of the Philippine National Police at the height of its hunt for the now-detained Pastor Apollo Quiboloy in his massive compound in Davao City. Cops boasted they had monitored Quiboloy’s “multiple heartbeats” in his underground bunker, which explained their confidence that he was there and had not escaped. A tracking device courtesy of Uncle Sam?
Tech is good when it’s used for good, yes? But how can we stop it from being used in never-ending wars? Some food for thought as we begin the work week. – Rappler.com
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