Intelligence Video raises doubt over IDF denial it finds targets using AI

Footage of an Israeli intelligence chief describing using machine learning to help identify Hamas targets in Gaza has raised questions over Israel's insistence that it "does not use an artificial intelligence system that identifies terrorist operatives".

- Harry Davies, Bethan McKernan

A video has surfaced of a senior official at Israel's cyber intelligence agency, Unit 8200, talking last year about the use of "data science magic powder" to help identify Hamas targets in Gaza.

However, a recent statement about by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it "does not use an artificial intelligence system that identifies terrorist operatives or tries to predict whether a person is a terrorist".

In the video, the head of data science and artificial intelligence (AI) at Unit 8200-named only as "Colonel Yoav" said he would reveal an "example of one of the tools we use", before describing how the division used machine learning techniques in 2021 for "finding new terrorists".

"Let's say we have some terrorists that form a group and we know only some of them," he said. "By practising our data science magic powder we are able to find the rest of them." Descriptions in the video of technology used by Unit 8200 bear similarities with recent testimony from six IDF insiders about their use of an AI tool called "Lavender" during its offensive on Hamas.

They said the AI-generated database had been used to assist intelligence officers involved in the May 2021 bombing campaign in Gaza, helping to identify tens of thousands of potential human targets.

In its rebuttal, the IDF said some of the accounts were "baseless".