In military parlance ‘the kill chain’ refers to procedures through which persons become targets for the use of lethal force. In the context of war, the legitimacy of killing under International Humanitarian Law turns on the identification of persons who are in combat and pose an imminent threat to the safety of those in whose names weapon systems are deployed. Building on my past work studying the notion of accuracy in the U.S. Department of Defense, and focusing on investments by the DoD and on the Israeli Defense Force’s current operations in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, this talk will question the frames of war that justify the promotion of AI technologies as means of accelerating the operations of targeting.

Yafit Lev-Aretz is an Assistant Professor of Law at the Zicklin School of Business (Baruch College, City University of New York), and the Director of Tech Ethics program at the Zicklin Center for Corporate Integrity.