This post is now free for all subscribers. Could AI Wipe Out Humanity? It’s Already at Work.New Film Exposes Israeli AI Death Machine
Never mind the ravages AI Data Centers are inflicting on communities far and wide, the AI world is suddenly all aflutter over the supposed threat that AI will somehow wipe out humanity by 2030. Coxon’s complaint rapidly generated viral coverage on X - 162 million views - press headlines, and congress, where politicians of both parties fell over themselves to decry the spectre of life-threatening AI.
But AI is already killing people on a massive scale, and has been for the past three years. In April 2024, Israeli journalist Yuval Avraham revealed in the magazine +972 that the Israeli military had deployed an AI killing machine in Gaza, fusing the data collected over years by Israel’s intense surveillance of the ghetto to identify and locate any and all individuals with the slightest apparent connection to Hamas or Islamic Jihad. Accordingly, in the first week of the war, the AI system, known as Lavender, had furnished a list of 37,000 names and addresses. These were effective death sentences, as Israeli operators had little time or inclination to check the information (at least ten percent were hallucinations) before dispatching the bombs and missiles, usually to the targeted victim’s home and regardless of whether or not his family would be there. Such was commanders’ faith in the machine, Abraham’s intelligence sources told him, they treated its verdicts “as if it was a human decision.” Needless to say Avraham’s shocking revelations did not stir youthful AI researchers in Silicon Valley (home to companies that partner with the Israeli military machine ) to resign in anguish, or elicit headlines in the Wall Street Journal, or spur Congressmen to demand a special committee, or regulation All that ensued was renewed support for Israel’s efforts, and, this year, legislation fusing US and Israeli development of military AI and other systems. According to Human Rights Watch:
Avraham, who previously won an Oscar for “No Other Land” about Palestinian dispossession on the West Bank, has now, with Rachel Szor, turned his reporting on Lavender into a film, NAZA, greeted at its Venice Film Festival premiere on September 10 with a 25 minute standing ovation. According to Al Jazeera’s report (none such having so far appeared in the New York Times or other mainstream US media),:
It may be that the fevered dreams of Coxon and his fellow ‘doomers’ will come true and AI will have killed us all by 2030. After all, Israeli AI has been leading the way in Gaza. 76,000 down, billions to go. BEFORE YOU GO, PLEASE CLICK THAT ♡ BUTTON! You're currently a free subscriber to Spoils of War. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription. © 2026 Andrew Cockburn |