defense

What is the Levander System Used by Israel for Mass Massacres in Gaza?

Use of Artificial Intelligence in Warfare

Artificial intelligence means the control and coordination of the work we do today through automated machines and software. These jobs can be actions performed by humans or actions of other living things.

We use organs such as eyes, ears, tongue, nose, hands, arms and legs. But in artificial intelligence systems, sensors, that is, sensors do the work of our organs.

Chess playing computers, automatic pilots that follow the flight routes of aeroplanes, navigation systems of ships, unmanned submarines are all artificial intelligence systems produced in recent years.

How is Artificial Intelligence Used in Unmanned Systems?

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the military field has been a subject of increasing interest and concern. AI technologies have the potential to revolutionise warfare by improving military capabilities, decision-making processes and strategic planning. However, the deployment of AI in warfare also raises ethical, legal and security considerations.

AI (Artificial Intelligence) is increasingly used in the military field today, from intelligence gathering and analysis to autonomous weapon systems. The integration of AI into military operations brings both opportunities and challenges.

1. Intelligence collection and analysis:

AI can process and analyse large amounts of data to make meaningful detections and extract useful information, assisting military forces in areas such as surveillance, reconnaissance and target identification. AI algorithms can scan large amounts of information to detect patterns, predict enemy movements and identify potential threats.

2. Autonomous weapon systems:

Artificial intelligence can enable the development of autonomous weapons that can independently select and lock onto targets without direct human intervention. These systems can operate with speed and precision, potentially reducing human casualties. However, the development of fully autonomous weapons also raises ethical concerns and challenges related to accountability, human oversight and the potential for unintended consequences.

3. Cyber warfare:

Artificial intelligence has significant implications for cyber warfare. It can be used to detect and respond to cyber threats in real time, identify vulnerabilities in networks and develop advanced malware or defence mechanisms. AI-powered algorithms can rapidly analyse vast amounts of network traffic, detect anomalies and respond more effectively to cyber attacks.

4. Decision support systems:

Artificial intelligence can help military commanders make informed decisions by providing real-time analysis and recommendations. AI algorithms can process complex datasets, simulate scenarios and provide predictions to support strategic planning and tactical operations. This can increase situational awareness and improve response times.

5. Logistics and supply chain management:

AI can optimise logistics and supply chain management by analysing data on resources, demand and transport routes. This can help to efficiently allocate resources, reduce costs and increase the effectiveness of military operations.

However, another important issue is that artificial intelligence is no longer used only in the military field, but in all areas of life.

Autonomous Vehicles (Vehicles that can make decisions on their own and act independently of a centre):

Artificial intelligence can be used to enable autonomous vehicles to travel safely in traffic. Vehicles can analyse their environment through sensors and control movements when necessary.

Industrial Automation:

In factories or production facilities, artificial intelligence can be used to manage production lines, ensure quality control and increase productivity.

Healthcare: Artificial intelligence can be used for medical diagnosis and treatment planning. It can be especially useful in areas such as image analysis, disease diagnosis and drug development.

Weather Forecasts:

Artificial intelligence can help make more accurate weather forecasts by analysing big data and creating models.

Natural Language Processing:

Artificial intelligence can perform complex language processing tasks without humans in areas such as customer service, text analysis and language translations.

Finance and Commerce:

Artificial intelligence can be used for financial analysis, risk assessment and creating trading strategies.

Can Artificial Intelligence be used in Unmanned Systems?

Yes, artificial intelligence can be used in a wide range of unmanned systems. Artificial intelligence can be used to automate complex tasks, perform data analysis, recognise patterns, make decisions and perform various functions without human intervention. Unmanned systems are often systems that can operate in hazardous, remote or harsh conditions, increase efficiency or perform specific tasks.

Drones and Robots:

Artificial intelligence-supported drones and robots can be used in areas such as exploration, rescue, agriculture, and construction. They can understand their environment, detect objects and complete tasks on their own.

Is Artificial Intelligence Dangerous?

Artificial intelligence can be potentially dangerous, but it is difficult to give a general answer on this issue. Artificial intelligence can be used in a wide variety of fields and can have different levels of complexity. Some artificial intelligence systems, for example systems that perform simple tasks or solve specific problems, are generally safe. However, some artificial intelligence systems, especially so-called general artificial intelligence, have the potential to be more complex and can potentially bring some dangers.

Artificial intelligence can be potentially dangerous, but when managed correctly it can bring great benefits. Some situations where artificial intelligence can be dangerous may include:

1. Uncontrolled autonomy:

AI systems may be capable of making complex and autonomous decisions. If the actions and decisions of these systems are uncontrolled, they can lead to unintended consequences.

2. Data bias:

Artificial intelligence systems learn using large amounts of data. However, bias or prejudices in this data may cause AI systems to make wrong or unfair decisions.

3. Incompatibility with human ethics:

AI systems may be limited in their understanding of ethics and human values. In this case, AI systems may make decisions contrary to human values or violate people's privacy rights.

For these reasons, the development and use of AI technology should be carefully managed and ethical and safety standards should be adhered to. It is important that people have control over the effects of artificial intelligence and that there are supervisory mechanisms. Thus, artificial intelligence technology can be used for the benefit of society and humanity. While explaining where Artificial Intelligence is used in unmanned systems, we have previously explained it as intelligence gathering, analysis and autonomous weapon systems.

The use of artificial intelligence in wars

Today, countries have started to apply more artificial intelligence in their defence systems and attack tools to defend themselves. With the effect of competition between countries, the integration of artificial intelligence into battlefields is progressing faster than ever before.

What will be the changes that this technology, which countries have started to apply to all kinds of wars and vehicles, will bring? What awaits us?

With the use of artificial intelligence in attack and defence systems, wars in which borders disappear and humans are not involved may be waiting for us. Vehicles such as aircraft, drones or submarines under the control of an advanced artificial intelligence will be able to conduct the war themselves with the help of sensors placed in the region and the algorithms they have. These machines, which can instantly detect the slightest movement in the enemy area, can intervene much faster than when they are under the control of humans. As an example of these issues, drones controlled by artificial intelligence can be used to find wounded soldiers on the battlefield. Unmanned aerial vehicles are also expected to be used for oil exploration, continental shelf protection, controlling migration routes, preventing uncontrolled human traffic and preventing smuggling.

For example, China utilises a drone army to dominate its airspace. These drones, which can carry mortar rounds, grenade launchers and machine guns, can also come together and carry out coordinated attacks. When the commander receives an attack order from the soldier, the drones take off and automatically hit the target they are locked on in a coordinated manner and return to the main base.

China's Sky Hawk, another unmanned aerial vehicle that cannot be detected by radar, has a significant potential, although it is still in the development process. Similar to the US B-2 bomber, Sky Hawk will be able to travel long distances at high altitudes and warn the army by reconnaissance in the conflict zone, and will be able to communicate with other manned and unmanned aerial vehicles and share this data. It is stated that this type of technology, which can communicate with both manned and unmanned aerial vehicles, will speed up target identification, increase attack power and reduce losses.

Weapons produced by Israel using artificial intelligence

The state of Israel has already begun to apply its technological know-how and R&D resources to Artificial Intelligence and its applications to its own war weapons and vehicles.

The most important feature of the Barak tank, which is described as the ‘fifth generation’ of Israel's Merkava tanks and uses artificial intelligence, is that it can see its surroundings even when its hatches are closed, ‘a large infrastructure of reliable sensors’. The Barak model also works with the ‘Trophy active protection system’, which creates a 360-degree ‘protective shield’ around the tank, while this system instantly detects any threat to the tank and neutralises the approaching anti-tank missile by firing.

The ‘Spark’ programme, developed as part of the ‘Storm Clouds’ programme, the Israeli Air Force's fleet of intelligence gathering and combat support unmanned aerial vehicles, also provides intelligence information to the Israeli army.

The ‘Spike Firefly’ is a model of kamikaze drone weighing only 3 kilos and can carry a versatile warhead weighing 350 grams. This drone can hover over an area for up to 30 minutes and provide remote information to friendly troops up to 1.5 kilometres away. After identifying a target, it returns to base or, if equipped with a 350-gram multi-directional fragmentation warhead, it can strike and destroy the target.

‘Iron Sting’, known as a precision, laser and GPS-guided mortar ammunition, is a 120 millimetre precision-guided mortar ammunition with a range of 1-12 kilometres that can operate in ‘all battlefield scenarios’.

Israel's artificial intelligence target detection programme: ‘levander’

As we have learned from the news published in the world media and on the internet, and from the article published by Yuval Abraham in +972 Magazine on 3 April 2024, it is understood that another artificial intelligence application is Israel's intelligence unit that integrates artificial intelligence with the army. This unit has written and developed an artificial intelligence-based intelligence analysis programme called Levander. The Levander programme processes thousands of images, phone calls, in short, all kinds of collected data on individuals in Palestine and Gaza within seconds and marks Palestinians and people in Gaza as potential targets.

To assist Levander, two other artificial intelligence systems named ‘Where is Dady’ and ‘The Gospel’ serve the Israeli army. Where is Dady follows the targets marked by Levander. The Gospel, on the other hand, marks the buildings and infrastructure systems to be hit. According to these artificial intelligence detections, the resulting targets are bombed by the Israeli army.

37 Thousand Targets Identified

Speaking to the Israel-based ‘+972 Magazine’, 6 intelligence officials also provided information about the artificial intelligence-based killing machine. According to intelligence officials, Levander has been the main actor in the Gaza war. Levander labels those whom it classifies as Hamas members as targets to be bombed. According to these sources, this artificial intelligence machine rated almost every person in Gaza on a scale of 1 to 100 to determine how likely they were to be militants. In the first few weeks of the war, Levander identified 37,000 targets for bombing. The Israeli army attacked the targets identified by the Levander programme without hesitation, ‘as if taking orders from its commander’. Stating that only one thousand of the 37 thousand targets identified in the 6-month period were hit, the source said, ‘There are 36 thousand more targets waiting in the wings.’

Levander Programme has a 10 percent margin of error

The Israeli army did not check the death list determined by the artificial intelligence. However, an intelligence official said that Levander identified its target in just 20 seconds and that Israel attacked the target without hesitation, despite a 10 per cent margin of error. The official stated that the killing machine labelled people with links to Hamas regardless of age, and that sometimes the system also labelled people with weak links to Hamas, and sometimes showed people with no links at all as potential targets.

The Israeli army bombed these people, who were detected and marked as targets by artificial intelligence, without questioning them, especially at night when they were at home and their family members were with them. ‘We realised that the target was at home at 20.00 p.m. Finally, the air force bombed the house at 03.00 p.m.’ said the intelligence officer, ‘Then we learned that he managed to move to another house with his family. There were two other families with children in the building we bombed. They were killed by mistake.’

In Gaza, the use of biased data in artificial intelligence, such as targeting only Palestinians, and bombing was carried out without paying attention to whether there were hospitals, schools or other places that should not be bombed around the detected targets, that is, whether there were innocent people and targets called Collateral Damage (Collateral Damage). By acting in this way, thousands of civilians, elderly and sick people being treated in hospitals, newborn children in hospitals, and even all innocent people, Muslim or Christian, in their places of worship were massacred in this way.

From the information available on this subject, we can understand that the ethnic and identity-based extermination of people in Gaza was initiated by Israel long ago.

What can be done by people to make artificial intelligence safe?

The following measures can be taken by humans to make artificial intelligence safe:

Developing Ethical Principles and Standards:

Ethical principles and standards should be established to develop artificial intelligence on the basis of ethical values and human rights. These principles ensure that AI systems observe justice, transparency, accountability and human welfare.

Safety Tests and Audits:

Independent security tests and audits should be conducted to assess the security of artificial intelligence systems. These tests help to determine whether systems are vulnerable to unexpected errors or malicious attacks.

Data Confidentiality and Privacy Protection:

It is important that AI systems are compliant with data privacy and confidentiality issues. Security measures should be taken in the collection, storage and processing of data, and appropriate encryption and security protocols should be used to protect personal data.

Responsibility and Accountability:

Decision processes and results of artificial intelligence systems should be understandable. Humans should understand how the decisions made by artificial intelligence are formed and take the necessary measures to ensure that the systems are accountable.

Human Control and Oversight:

Instead of artificial intelligence systems being completely autonomous, they should work under human supervision and oversight. Humans can evaluate the decisions of artificial intelligence, take corrective measures and intervene in unexpected situations.

Education and Awareness:

Training and awareness activities should be carried out on the safety and ethics of artificial intelligence. Professionals and decision makers working in the field of artificial intelligence should be aware of security and ethics issues and follow developments.

These measures encourage the safe development and use of artificial intelligence. People playing an active role in this issue helps to reduce the potential dangers of AI technology and protects the welfare of society.