Airstrikes by the US and Israel on Iran continue, with thick smoke rising over the capital Tehran on March 1, 2026. Photo: IC

Media outlets reported that the US and Israel employed AI technologies in the strikes on Iran, which sparked discussions about the military use of AI. A Chinese expert told the Global Times on Tuesday that while AI can assist human operators in warfare, it must not play a decisive role, stressing that decision-making authority must remain firmly in human hands, otherwise AI risks becoming a blunt instrument that could harm the humanity.

Anthropic's AI model, Claude, was reportedly used by the US military in the barrage of strikes as the technology "shortens the kill chain," reported The Guardian on Tuesday.

According to The Times of Isreal, this is shortly after the US administration claimed that the military would no longer use the tool.

In 2024 the San Francisco-based Anthropic deployed its model across the US Department of War and other national security agencies to speed up war planning. Claude became part of a system developed by the war-tech company Palantir with the Pentagon to "dramatically improve intelligence analysis and enable officials in their decision-making processes," reported The Guardian.

Apart from the US side, since October 2023, the Israeli military has deployed AI systems at a scale that allegedly has no precedent in the history of urban warfare. The most extensively documented of these is a system called Lavender, reported an American magazine The News Republic on Monday.

The Israeli military's bombing campaign in Gaza used this AI-powered database that at one stage identified 37,000 potential targets based on their apparent links to Hamas, according to intelligence sources involved in the war, reported The Guardian in April 2024.

The related reports sparked debates on the military applications of AI.

The Guardian cited experts as saying that the use of AI tools to enable attacks on Iran heralds a new era of bombing quicker than "the speed of thought," amid fears that human­decision-makers could be sidelined.

Liu Wei, Director of the human-machine interaction and cognitive engineering laboratory with the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, told the Global Times on Tuesday that AI can indeed assist humans in warfare and boost operational efficiency, but it should not be the decisive factor.

He noted that, in war, AI's strengths lie in processing massive data, high-speed computing, precise target recognition (such as drone target identification), and sustained operational capability (like the high-intensity deployment of unmanned systems). However, the decisive factor should always be human beings. 

AI should remain under human control, and given its current limitations, it still requires human oversight, he said. Current AI's data-driven rationality cannot distinguish battlefield deception, ethical gray areas, or shifts in public sentiment. Without human intuition to see through enemy disguises, flexible strategy to set the limits of strikes, and moral principles to restrain lethal impulses, AI risks becoming a blunt weapon harming both sides, Liu further explained.

In addition, Xiang Ligang, director-general of the Zhongguancun Modern Information Consumer Application Industry Technology Alliance, was cited by chinanews.com as saying that what truly warrants vigilance is the fact that the underlying logic of future warfare is undergoing profound change. From the Russia-Ukraine conflict to India-Pakistan aerial clashes, and from Gaza to the Persian Gulf, AI has become deeply embedded in modern warfare.

Xiang summarized future warfare as having seven major characteristics: systematization, modularization, intelligentization, miniaturization, precision, unmanned operations, and low cost. At the core lies precision. Breakthroughs in AI's capabilities in positioning, communication, sensing, and identification have made precision strikes increasingly feasible.

The report said that the real disruption is taking place beyond the battlefield, as technology companies are emerging as a new type of arms supplier.

The application of AI in the military sphere will reshape not only the technological landscape, but also the global order, and potentially the trajectory of human civilization itself, Xiang added.