The Israel attack reveals the dangers of reliance on artificial intelligence

American Thinker ^ | 10/29/2023 | Jack Hellner

[SeekAndFind]

Students and people of all ages have been dumbed down intentionally.

They have been indoctrinated to believe certain things whether it is the belief about climate change or anything else. And instead of reading books, they now do Google searches.

We see the results of this all over society now as these kids graduate and move into society.

Students, and the adults they become, are programmed instead of being taught to do research and ask questions. This is especially a problem with the media.

Now we see one result of that which for Israel had lethal consequences, according to ZeroHedge:

 

Hamas’s massacre of Israeli civilians, known as ‘Black Sabbath,’ caught virtually everyone by surprise, even though the group had a long history of violence. One reason for this situation is the lack of information on several aspects of Hamas’s modus operandi. The resulting lacuna has biased the algorithms underpinning search engines that drive artificial intelligence (AI) on the subject.

The AI Challenge

The prominence of AI has profoundly and irrevocably changed the human discourse. From its inception on Google and other search engines to the most recent iteration of chatbots such as ChatGPT or Bard, complex algorithms have increasingly driven this process.

A large literature, mostly highly specialized, has analyzed numerous possible biases of the AI discursive products. Bias is created when one idea/topic/concept is disproportionally weighted against another. Faulty algorithms can introduce bias and need to be adjusted. But other issues are also at play.

[SeekAndFind]

These three sources of bias helped to mask Hamas’s true character as a savage terror group, with many adopting the narrative of a national resistance group fighting to liberate Palestinians from “Israel’s oppression.”

It appears that people throughout the Biden administration were lulled to sleep while they desperately wanted a deal with Iran, which pledges death to Israel and death to America while HAMAS was training and preparing to attack Israel. They Googled instead of studied history.

[Paladin2]

Israel had no border patrols? No reserves positioned near the border? No response to the sabotage of their sensor systems?

[MinorityRepublican]

Israel had no border patrols? No reserves positioned near the border? No response to the sabotage of their sensor systems?

And no land mines.

[Ransomed]

Israel...of all places...didn’t allow their regular citizenry effective small arms to have at least some chance of defending themselves when guys with rifles come knocking...

Freegards

[Widget Jr]

How would Zerohedge know? they are a garbage source. There were several stories earlier this year about Israel and artificial intelligence, for government and military use. Just take those stories, attach them to the Hamas attack and the intelligence failure. Familiarity with other stories gives the appearance of credibility when there is nothing to back it up.

[Ultra Sonic 007]

“ZeroHedge” wouldn’t know, because they didn’t author the piece. They merely mirrored a piece from RealClear Defense; whose author was described as follows:

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Ofira Seliktar is Professor Emerita of Political Science at Gratz College, Melrose Park, PA. Previously, she was Scholar in Residence at the Middle East Research Institute, University of Pennsylvania.

This essay is based on the author’s work: “Slaying the Little Satan: Iran’s War against Israel,” in progress: “Iran, Revolution and Proxy Wars,” Palgrave Macmillan, 2019, co-authored with Farhad Rezaei; and “Is Iran’s Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism Eliminationist or Performative: A Question for the Nuclear Age,” Israel Affairs, 2022.

///

[roving]

It amazes me that anyone still uses Google.

[caww]

Yes they did...they were overwhelmed with the sheer numbers who crashed their border....and how they did it. ....An lets no forget how many Hamas they did kill trying to protect the people in the camp who definitely had security and fought there.

[Liz]

AIPAC-—American Israel Public Affairs Committee
U.S. Security Assistance to Israel-—Briefing Book

The United States has long defined Israel’s survival and security as important to its own national interests. Israel helps the United States meet its growing security challenges through close cooperation and a range of innovative technologies. Through executive commitment and legislative action, America provides Israel with annual security assistance that helps the Middle East’s only democracy defend itself—by itself—against mounting security threats.

History and Terms
The United States has supported Israel politically since its reestablishment in 1948. But it was not until the late 1960s that it began to regularly provide security assistance to the Jewish state. Since then, America has consistently provided Israel with security assistance to help it stay strong and deter its enemies.

U.S. security assistance to Israel promotes our national security and our economy, and helps our ally defend itself against growing threats.

Security Assistance: By means of its annual foreign aid, U.S. security assistance to Israel is the most tangible manifestation of American support for the Jewish state. Assistance primarily takes the form of funding for Israel to purchase the arms needed to defend itself from its adversaries.

QME: A core element of U.S. policy is to maintain Israel’s qualitative military edge (QME)—the ability to counter and defeat any credible conventional military threat while sustaining minimal damages and casualties. In 2008, Congress wrote America’s longstanding commitment to Israel’s QME into law and required the president to continually assess whether it is being maintained.

Memoranda of Understanding: In 1998, the United States and Israel signed their first 10-year “Memorandum of Agreement on Security Cooperation” to increase security assistance to Israel while phasing out economic aid. Under the agreement, the United States committed to providing Israel $21.3 billion in security assistance. In 2016, America committed to provide $38 billion under a new 10-year Memorandum of Understanding (MOU).

Serving American Interests
U.S. provides security assistance to key allies around the world. Current law ensures this aid can only be used for “internal security, for legitimate self-defense.”

Anchor of Stability: In an increasingly uncertain Middle East, Israel is the one stable democratic ally upon which America can consistently depend. Cooperation between the two countries in intelligence, homeland security, missile defense and counterterrorism has helped the United States meet its growing security challenges. U.S. support for Israel helps deter regional conflict by making clear to potential foes that they cannot defeat the Jewish state.

Israeli Innovation: As a result of the strong friendship between Israel and the United States, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the U.S. military share technologies and techniques that greatly benefit both nations.

Israel has pioneered cutting-edge technologies in cyber defense, unmanned vehicles, sensors and electronic warfare systems, and advanced defenses for military vehicles. In addition, Israeli battlefield medical technologies have saved countless American lives. The innovative use of U.S. military equipment by the IDF, coupled with shared know-how, has helped the U.S. military improve its own equipment and tactics.

Stockpiles: Established in the 1980s, the War Reserves Stock Allies-Israel program consists of up to $3.4 billion of U.S.-owned and -managed weapons and equipment stored in Israel for use by the U.S. military. The IDF may access these reserves during emergencies, if authorized by the U.S. government.

Crucial to Israel’s Security
Mounting Threats: The ongoing instability gripping the region directly threatens the Jewish state. To its north, Israel faces Hezbollah in Lebanon and a growing Iranian presence in Syria; to its south, Israel faces Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) in Gaza while ISIS-affiliated terrorists roam the Sinai Peninsula; to its west, militant terrorist groups are gaining strength in the West Bank. Israel’s greatest threat remains Iran, which is attempting to surround the Jewish state with terrorist proxies while developing the capability to produce nuclear weapons.

Increasing Costs: To deal with the region’s mounting threats, Israel—a tiny nation the geographic size of New Jersey—has been forced to spend more on defense as a percentage of its GDP than any other nation in the industrialized world. The rising costs of advanced weaponry only compound Israel’s challenges. For example, a single F-35I “Adir” Joint Strike Fighter will cost Israel more than twice that of an F-16I fighter jet purchased under the first U.S.-Israel aid agreement in 1998.

THE WAY FORWARD
As part of its strategic alliance with Israel, the United States has agreed to provide security assistance through 10-year MOUs. Beginning in 2019, the new MOU stipulates an annual sum of $3.3 billion in foreign military funding and $500 million for cooperative missile defense. Congress must now fulfill this commitment by legislating full funding as called for in the MOU. Congress must also work to expand joint innovation, ensure Israel’s QME and consider upgrades to the value of U.S. stockpiles in Israel.

Click here to view a downloadable PDF: https://aipacorg.box.com/s/uawwyq8z73mxoejdgm3ozy66jn7bvygk

[Liz]

Jewish Virtual Library.org
Israel Strategic Intelligence Collaboration——Evolution of Alliance

One of the most significant contributions Israel has made to U.S. security has been shared intelligence. The truth is the United States has little alternative but to depend on Israel for much of its Middle Eastern human intelligence because the CIA’s capability has diminished. In post-revolutionary Iran, the CIA no longer had a presence and the CIA’s Lebanon station was virtually wiped out in the 1983 bombing of the U.S. embassy in Beirut. The United States relies on the Mossad and other Israeli intelligence agencies for information about terrorism, radical Islamic movements, weapons proliferation and other Middle East-related events.

For many years, Israel played a key role in assisting U.S. intelligence through the capture and transfer of Soviet weapons systems. For example, Israel supplied the United States with valuable intelligence about Soviet fighters and their avionics. This occurred as recently as 1989 after a Syrian pilot defected in an advanced model of a MIG-23 and American officials were allowed to examine the plane.

A Russian passenger plane travelling from the Egyptian city of Sharm el-Sheikh to St Petersburg, Russia, crashed in the Sinai Peninsula on October 31, 2015, killing all 224 passengers. After weeks of investigations it was determined that a bomb brought down the plane. U.S. and British intelligence services used information gathered from Israeli security sources during the investigation of the crash. Communications from terror groups in the area were intercepted by Israeli security and later given to U.S. and British investigators.

Stuxnet Slows Iranian Enrichment
In 2010, Iran announced that uranium enrichment at Natanz had stopped several times because of a series of technical problems. News reports suggested that as many as 1,000 centrifuges used to enrich uranium were damaged. It was subsequently reported that the destruction was likely caused by sabotage. In June, anti-virus experts discovered a sophisticated computer worm dubbed “Stuxnet,” which spreads via Microsoft Windows and targets Siemens industrial software and equipment used by Iran to control centrifuges used to enrich uranium at its Natanz plant.

The New York Times subsequently reported that Stuxnet is part of a U.S. and Israeli intelligence operation called “Operation Olympic Games,” initiated by President George W. Bush and expanded under President Barack Obama (New York Times, June 1, 2012). At the time the worm was reportedly infecting the Iranian machines, IAEA cameras installed in Natanz recorded the sudden dismantling and removal of approximately 900–1000 centrifuges. These were quickly replaced, however, and Iran resumed uranium enrichment (Washington Post, February 16, 2011). Although Stuxnet was discovered, it is believed that the United States, Israel and others continue to use cyberwarfare in an effort to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program.

Infiltrating ISIS
U.S. diplomats reported in 2014 that Israel has been assisting in the fight against the Islamic State (ISIS) by providing the United States with intelligence information, including lists of Westerners who have joined ISIS. Israel has also provided vital intelligence in the form of drones flying over ISIS territory. This information is then used to carry out air strikes and plan coordinated attacks.

In 2017, it was disclosed that Israeli cyberoperators penetrated a cell of bombmakers in Syria. Israel passed on information indicating ISIS had learned to make explosives resembling laptop computer batteries, which can evade detection by airport X-ray machines and other screening devices. The information prompted the United States to ban large electronic devices in carry-on luggage on flights from 10 airports in eight Muslim-majority countries to the United States and Britain. President Trump is believed to have revealed the intelligence to Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, and the ambassador to the United States, Sergey I. Kislyak during during a meeting the Oval Office in May 2017 (David E. Sanger and Eric Schmitt, “U.S. Cyberweapons, Used Against Iran and North Korea, Are a Disappointment Against ISIS,” New York Times, (June 12, 2017).

snip

[Liz]

CSIS.org
Commentary
by Jessica Davis, Tricia Bacon, Emily Harding and Daniel Byman
Published October 25, 2023

Experts React: Assessing the Israeli Intelligence and Potential Policy Failure

The devastating Hamas attack surprised Israel and represented a massive failure for its intelligence services. A collection of CSIS experts examine different aspects of this failure. Jessica Davis explores the failure to detect the attack’s financing, decades after 9/11 made terrorist financing a priority. Tricia Bacon argues that the failure likely occurred because Israel failed to properly understand Hamas’s intent. Emily Harding contends that Israel may have relied too much on technology in its monitoring of Gaza. Finally, Daniel Byman assesses the overlap between intelligence and policy failures, both driving factors for the future of the conflict.

Since September 11, the international community has made financial intelligence, and counterterrorist financing, a key pillar of counterterrorism. Shortly after 9/11, President Bush announced that the United States “will continue to work with our allies to disrupt the financing of terrorism” and that it will “identify and block the sources of funding for terrorism, freeze the assets of terrorists and those who support them, deny terrorists access to the international financial system, protect legitimate charities from being abused by terrorists, and prevent the movement of terrorists’ assets through alternative financial networks.” So where was the financial intelligence warning about this attack, and how was Hamas allowed to finance this operation?

It is incredible that Hamas planned, procured, and financed the attacks of October 7, likely over the course of at least two years, without being detected by Israeli intelligence. The fact that it appears to have done so without U.S. detection is nothing short of astonishing.

The attack was complex and expensive. It is too soon to say what it might have cost—that will require a careful analysis of the various components of the attack, ranging from pre-attack training to weapons procurement (and much more). But what is known is that one of the most expensive attacks in history was September 11, 2001. Adjusted for inflation, that attack cost $850,000. These attacks involved a combination of thousands of rockets and thousands of armed Hamas fighters breaching a border fence and attacking on motorboats and paragliders. The October 7 attacks will undoubtedly cross the million-dollar mark, probably by a wide margin.

The fact that Israeli intelligence, as well as the international intelligence community (specifically the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing network), missed millions of dollars’ worth of procurement, planning, and preparation activities by a known terrorist entity is extremely troubling. And some of this financing over the years was happening in plain sight—with cryptocurrencies. While cryptocurrencies are often thought to be anonymous, in practice, the transactions are largely visible to anyone who cares to look. And while attributing those transactions to terrorist entities can be a challenge, the swift reaction by U.S. and Israeli officials in the aftermath of the attack suggests that good intelligence on who exactly was benefiting from these transactions existed.

The truth is that Hamas has not been a counterterrorism focus for many years. Some of the most recent estimates on Hamas financing are years old; many countries, including those with known Hamas finance and facilitation networks operating in their borders, such as Turkey, Algeria, and even the United Kingdom, have been silent on the issue for years. Members of the G7-founded Financial Action Task Force, the global standard-setting body for efforts to counter the financing of terrorism, are going to have to answer some hard questions about efforts (or the lack thereof) to counter Hamas’s financing. If Israel and the United States, and indeed members of Five Eyes, can miss what might be the most expensive terrorist plot in history, it will certainly raise questions about the collection, use, and utility of financial intelligence in detecting and disrupting terrorist attacks.

Assessing the threat from militant groups requires understanding both their capability and intent. Capability refers to an organization’s ability to engage in attacks and violence, while intent is its calculus about when, how, and against whom to use that capability.

For years, the U.S. intelligence community has focused on the threat from al Qaeda and the Islamic State: two groups that have the intent to strike the United States but have limited capability to do so. To counter that threat, the United States has proven adept at collecting and assessing intelligence to devise measures to degrade the capability of both groups, such as disrupting their safe havens, conducting targeted strikes, and executing special operations. The hostile intent was, correctly, taken as a given.

For intelligence officials, identifying changes in a group’s intent is particularly challenging, especially when dealing with highly capable organizations like Hamas. Accurately assessing intent requires regular access to the leaders’ deliberations. And highly capable organizations are hard to infiltrate—they are savvy in their communications to avoid interception, and they employ denial and deception tactics.

Before October 7, it was well established that Hamas was more capable than its recent operations demonstrated, but its seemingly pragmatic intent restrained the scope of its actions. It still conducted periodic attacks against Israel, but those attacks were not as frequent or lethal Hamas’s capability could have produced. Under these circumstances, the Israelis did engage in some kinetic responses against Hamas, but the two sides exercised some restraint and appeared to have developed parameters to manage the conflict and avoid escalation. Kinetic means used to diminish capability—like those the United States has used against al Qaeda and the Islamic State—can risk inadvertently provoking a greater threat by changing a group’s intent. But, as was clear on October 7, that calculus fails when a highly capable group manages to conceal a change of intent. Ultimately, though Israel will have to investigate how Hamas managed to successfully penetrate its defenses and conceal planning for the attack, the core intelligence failure was not detecting the change in Hamas’s intent.

In the Jack London short story “To Build a Fire,” the main character ignores warnings and walks into an icy wilderness on the coldest day of the year. London describes him as “quick and alert in the things of life, but only in the things, and not in the significances.” He knew it was cold and the journey was far, but he failed to grasp the threat of the cold and died as a result.

Much like the man in the story, intelligence services can collect facts, but they need more than data points to understand the significances. Israeli intelligence services are among the best in the world—clearly focused on mission, creative, and technologically advanced. Their tech has handed them some impressive intelligence wins in the past, but in October 2023 an overreliance on technology likely contributed to an intelligence failure.

In the days before the October 7 attacks, the Israeli services would have felt confident in robust technical capability. A high-tech border fence surrounding Gaza provided tactical warning, serving as both a physical and electronic barrier. A series of cell towers communicated information from motion sensors and cameras back to command posts. Those cell towers also communicated with remote control guns along the border fence meant to push back anyone approaching. The result was an illusion of control with a hidden single point of failure. Hamas capitalized, using their own tech—drones—to attack the cell towers, simultaneously blinding the cameras and neutering the guns.

The Israeli services also would have been confident in their signals intelligence (SIGINT) collection. An attack this large took months of planning and coordination. Israel, leaning on its technological prowess, would have assumed a large attack would show up somewhere in technical surveillance: chatter over cell phones, emails over vulnerable lines, or someone who forgot to leave a cell phone outside a room when planning was discussed. But it seems a combination of strong Hamas defensive tradecraft and missed signs in collection meant a failure to warn.

Technical surveillance can give you information on the things in life, but rarely their significances. That’s where human intelligence (HUMINT) shines. A well-placed human source can provide facts, like who was in what room on what day, but can also interpret the significance. A human source flagging an “unusual” level of activity, or the appearance of a stranger speaking Farsi, or a delivery of a crate of Iranian drones could have been the difference between a tragedy and day without headlines.

An eventual Israeli intelligence review will reveal the collection posture for human sources. Gaza is a difficult operating environment—recruiting sources is hard and keeping them harder. In the final accounting, Israel will need to carefully evaluate whether an overreliance on tech and an under-reliance on humans was a central cause of the tragedy.

Intelligence agencies are convenient scapegoats: they are meant to be apolitical, and intelligence at its best is far from perfect. But their failures should not excuse the policy decisions that shaped intelligence priorities and capabilities and the very nature of the threat.

Intelligence and policy are interwoven: policymakers determine what a state’s priorities are and the resources given to intelligence agencies, among many other roles. Intelligence agencies, however, often struggle to convince policymakers of a threat. Richard Betts, a senior scholar of intelligence, warns that many supposed intelligence failures stem from policymaker disbelief. Other intelligence failures are borne from inappropriate prioritization by policymakers. Before 9/11, for example, the policy community did not sufficiently resource counterterrorism intelligence, lacked in homeland security, and had a Middle East policy that did not prioritize counterterrorism.

Reports of what Israeli military intelligence and Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, which has responsibility for Gaza, told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his senior advisors about Hamas’s intentions and capabilities, are still unfolding—yet these agencies are already taking responsibility for a massive failure. However, Israeli policymakers probably also bear considerable responsibility. They prioritized Iran and the growing violence in the West Bank, as well as the turmoil in Israel itself. Some of the Israeli policy response might have stemmed from a careful consideration of intelligence analysis, but it also could be due to Israeli leaders’ own sense of Israel’s interests, their belief that the Hamas challenge was effectively managed, and their political priorities, such as appeasing the settler community that is expanding its presence on the West Bank.

Perhaps most important, political leaders also have a hand in shaping the threat itself. Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians, and toward Gaza in general, affect both Hamas’s intent and capability as well the attitudes of ordinary Palestinians. Determining why Hamas acted when it did requires assessing how the Netanyahu government’s policies shaped the terrorist group—an assessment of one’s own government that is politically fraught for any intelligence agency.

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Commentary is produced by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a private, tax-exempt institution focusing on international public policy issues. Its research is nonpartisan and nonproprietary. CSIS does not take specific policy positions. Accordingly, all views, positions, and conclusions expressed in this publication should be understood to be solely those of the author(s).

© 2023 by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. All rights reserved.

[Angelino97]

Although the link is to American Thinker, the story is from Zero Hedge.

Which makes me wonder, why aren't we allowed to link Zero Hedge directly?

There are some good stories on Zero Hedge.

[Liz]

finance.yahoo.cpm
Reporting by Steven Scheer and Ari Rabinovitch
Editing by Bernadette Baum
Sun, October 29, 2023

Israel’s Leading Businessman urges Netanyahu be replaced immediately
Netanyahu causes uproar; says intel chiefs never warned him of attack plans

JERUSALEM, Oct 29 (Reuters) - The head of self-driving auto technologies firm Mobileye and one of Israel’s leading businessmen, Amnon Shashua, on Sunday urged the immediate ouster of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government.

Shashua, in a high-profile public rebuke from Israel’s private sector, said Netanyahu’s government was guilty of “failures, dissonance and incompetence” since Hamas gunmen crossed from Gaza in a deadly rampage of southern Israeli towns on Oct. 7.

“We must cut our losses and do it quickly. The only solution to the current situation in Israel is to replace the government, and it needs to happen immediately,” Shashua wrote in an opinion piece in financial daily Calcalist.

Netanyahu caused his own uproar on Sunday by taking a jab at his intelligence chiefs, saying they never warned him Hamas was planning its attack, but later retracted his comments and issued an apology.

Netanyahu’s office, asked by Reuters, declined to comment on Shashua’s editorial.

The government, Shashua said, which seemed more concerned about its political survival than “the good of the country,” could be replaced without calling a new election, minimizing political turmoil, with the formation of a new coalition within the current parliament.

Netanyahu has not taken responsibility over intelligence and operational failures, saying only that there would be time to ask tough questions, including of himself, after the war.

Israeli officials have said events leading up to and including the handling of the Hamas attack would be investigated, but that the current focus was on the conflict.

Shashua co-founded Mobileye firm in 1999. It was bought by Intel in 2017 for $15.3 billion and last year again went public. He also founded One Zero digital bank and AI firm AI21 Labs.

[Iron Munro]

If you like the way auto-spell check screws up your texts you will like living in an A.I. world.
Couple that with people like the Biden administration who look for ways and tools to cover-up, misdirect and white-wash what they do and you can expect things to blow up now and then.

Americans 100 and 200 years ago had a reputation for being sharp witted, shrewd and hard to get the best of.

Today we have arrogant leaders who are so stupid they don't realize they're stupid.
They even exceed the ridiculous arrogance and stupidity of "The Emperor's New Clothes".

The world openly laughs at Uncle Stupid while taking the USA for everything they can.

[Ciexyz]

I have my own hunch about October 7th. Gut feeling that some foreign power scrambled the Israeli AI security controls so that the enemy could surprise them and overwhelm them. Israel can’t admit it at this point. (No evidence for this, but add it to theories of insider traitor complicity and the desire of socialist Israelis to bring down the damaged Netanyahu... )