[HN Gopher] AI got the blame for the Iran school bombing. The tr...
___________________________________________________________________
AI got the blame for the Iran school bombing. The truth is more
worrying
Author : cptroot
Score : 299 points
Date : 2026-03-27 16:39 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| jameskilton wrote:
| Something that a lot of tech people, especially in Silicon
| Valley, seem to want to forget, is that at every level you still
| have people making decisions. AI is suggesting but someone,
| somewhere, still has to make the decision to act on that
| suggestion.
|
| It's still people doing people things.
| idle_zealot wrote:
| The immediate concern isn't really fully autonomous systems,
| it's that the nature and design of recommender/suggestion
| systems prompt humans to sleepwalk through their
| responsibilities.
| oceansky wrote:
| Which is already happening
| pixl97 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_says_no
| ognav wrote:
| The Guardian carrying water for the AI industry. The distinction
| between Maven and Claude is futile. We get that Maven is
| Palantir, but it integrates Claude:
|
| https://www.reuters.com/technology/palantir-faces-challenge-...
|
| Going into a generic rant about anti-AI people after missing
| sources and believing the Department of War is just extremely
| poor journalism from the newspaper that destroyed evidence after
| a command from GCHQ.
|
| I hope this is a single "journalist" and that the Guardian has
| not been bought.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Better than carrying water for people who blame inanimate tools
| for their own personal and professional failures.
| phillipcarter wrote:
| I assume you actually read the article and didn't just post
| this after a quick skim, yes? Because saying this:
|
| > The distinction between Maven and Claude is futile
|
| Doesn't make any sense at all when you read the article and
| understand what Claude actually does in this equation. From the
| article:
|
| > Neither Claude nor any other LLMs detects targets, processes
| radar, fuses sensor data or pairs weapons to targets. LLMs are
| late additions to Palantir's ecosystem. In late 2024, years
| after the core system was operational, Palantir added an LLM
| layer - this is where Claude sits - that lets analysts search
| and summarise intelligence reports in plain English. But the
| language model was never what mattered about this system.
|
| The _whole point_ here is that whether an LLM is involved or
| not is immaterial to the system as a whole, and it 's a
| _disservice_ to the public to focus on LLMs here.
| niam wrote:
| The article you're responding to is making specific operational
| claims about Claude's (basically non-) relevance. I'd be
| interested to hear if you're directionally correct, but forgive
| me if I need more details than "but it integrates Claude".
| sailfast wrote:
| This is not a correct take at all given the contents of the
| article.
| tunesmith wrote:
| Really fascinating article. Bits of bias here and there, like
| "The US military has been trying to close the gap between seeing
| something and destroying it for as long as that gap has existed"
| -- you can respond to seeing and understanding something without
| destroying it -- but it underscores, to me at least, how much
| denser the "fog of war" has become. The fog of media reporting in
| general. Those first few paragraphs felt like a breath of fresh
| air.
| phillipcarter wrote:
| Worth mentioning that the author wrote about this first on his
| substack: https://artificialbureaucracy.substack.com/p/kill-chain
| machinecontrol wrote:
| Interesting article. Seems like AI-washing isn't just for layoffs
| anymore.
| glouwbug wrote:
| What AI does best is remove accountability and ownership
| thrawa8387336 wrote:
| Makes one think why Mckinsey et. al. are doing poorly ;)
| Lerc wrote:
| "the question that organised the coverage was whether Claude, a
| chatbot made by Anthropic, had selected the school as a target."
|
| This article is the first I have seen mention of Claude in
| relation to this specific incident. There's been plenty of talk
| about AI use in warfare in general but in the case of this school
| most of the coverage I have seen suggested outdated information
| and procedures not properly followed.
| FartyMcFarter wrote:
| It's definitely been reported before that Claude was used for
| Iran attacks, at the beginning of March or earlier:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/mar/01/claude-an...
|
| Edit: Also,
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/03/04/anthrop...
| gowld wrote:
| "The U.S. used Anthropic's Claude to support Operation Epic
| Fury against Iran yesterday, sources familiar with the
| Pentagon's operations tell Axios."
|
| OK. The US probably also used telephones and Diet Coke.
|
| Nothing cited said that Claude was selecting targets or
| informing target selection.
| FartyMcFarter wrote:
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/03/04/anthro
| p...
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| there is a lot of confusion about all this stuff
|
| you, today, can use Claude in Amazon Bedrock, and the way that
| works is, if you want it to be this way: the piece of code and
| model weights and whatever other artifacts are involved, they
| are run on Bedrock. Bedrock is not a facade against Claude's
| token-based-billing RESTful API, where Anthropic runs its own
| stuff. In the strictest sense, Bedrock can be used as a facade
| over lower level Amazon services that obey non-engineering,
| real world concerns like geographic boundaries / physical
| boundaries, like which physical data center hardware is
| connected by what where / jurisdictional boundaries, whatever.
| It's multi-tenancy in the sense that Amazon has multiple
| customers, but it's not multi-tenancy in the sense that,
| because you want to pay for these requirements, Amazon has
| sorted out how to run the Claude model weights, as though it
| were an open-weights model you downloaded off Hugging Face,
| without giving you the weights, but letting you satisfy all
| these other IP and jurisdictional and non-technical
| requirements that you are willing to pay for, in a way that
| Anthropic has also agreed.
|
| This is what the dispute with the Pentagon is about, and what
| people mean when they say Claude is used in government (it is
| used in Elsa for the FDA for example too). Anthropic doesn't
| have telemetry, like the prompts, in this agreement, so they
| have the contract that says what you can and cannot use the
| model for, but they cannot prove how you use the model, which
| of course they can if you used their RESTful API service. They
| can't "just" paraphrase your user data and train on it, like
| they do on the RESTful API service. There are reasons people
| want this arrangement ($$$).
|
| The vendor (Palantir) can use, whatever model it wants right?
| It chose Claude via "Bedrock." I don't know if they use Claude
| via Bedrock. Ask them. But that's what they are essentially
| saying, that's what this is about. Palantir could use Qwen3 and
| run it on datacenter hardware. Do you understand? It matters,
| but it also doesn't matter.
|
| It's a bunch of red herrings in my opinion, and this sort of
| stuff being a red herring is what the article is mostly about.
| kace91 wrote:
| I have heard the claim everywhere.
| rnab147 wrote:
| WaPO writes that Claude selected targets:
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/03/04/anthrop...
|
| This unknown Guardian contributor writes a missive against
| "Luddites" while using the typical AI booster arguments that
| always turn around anti AI arguments.
|
| Just like two five year olds: "You have a big nose." "No, _you_
| have a big nose. "
|
| We learn from this clown that anti AI people suffer from AI
| psychosis because they are reading WaPo and Reuters.
| simonw wrote:
| Both the Washington Post and the Guardian articles agree that
| the system used here was Maven.
|
| The key sentence in that Washington Post article appears to be:
|
| > The Pentagon began to integrate Anthropic's Claude chatbot
| into Maven in late 2024, according to public announcements.
|
| As far as I can tell this is the public announcement - a press
| release from November 2024:
| https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20241107699415/en/Ant...
|
| > Anthropic and Palantir Technologies Inc. (NYSE: PLTR) today
| announced a partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to
| provide U.S. intelligence and defense agencies access to the
| Claude 3 and 3.5 family of models on AWS. This partnership
| allows for an integrated suite of technology to operationalize
| the use of Claude within Palantir's AI Platform (AIP) while
| leveraging the security, agility, flexibility, and
| sustainability benefits provided by AWS.
| 491827-17182 wrote:
| We know that Palantir used AI for target selection in Gaza:
|
| https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/
|
| We know that it integrated Claude and Claude was deemed to be
| a supply chain risk _just before the Iran war_. So it is not
| a huge mental leap to assume what it is being used for.
|
| You won't get an answer from Hegseth. This Guardian "article"
| is by a Substack blogger who also does not have answers.
| simonw wrote:
| That article you are quoting there is from April 2024. The
| Claude + Palantir deal was announced in November 2024.
|
| The "supply chain risk" claims came from a deeply non-
| serious executive team who don't like "woke AI". They're
| not credible.
| ck2 wrote:
| You know how that was done with a Tomahawk
|
| They've now burnt though almost ONE THOUSAND of those
|
| They cost $4 million each, so that's another $4 BILLION that has
| to be replaced too
|
| Imagine several more months of that or even through 2029
| ceejayoz wrote:
| We'll run out long before 2029. The 850 fired so far is about a
| quarter of the entire supply.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/us-uses-h...
| sailfast wrote:
| So far, they are not funded to do this for that long. They have
| floated a $200B bill to congress, which made national news
| coverage. It would start a huge, prolonged fight over the war
| and actually force them to ask permission from congress to
| fight it (barring totally disregarding the constitution which
| is still a possibility).
|
| Unfortunately I can very well imagine several more months and
| years of this. We are still fighting a forever war that started
| in 2001. This is all a generation of Americans will know, and
| that is sad.
| tomasphan wrote:
| It's a tale as old as time: start a war to support the military
| industrial complex. Imagine a $4 billion investment into public
| transportation or parks. Every 10 years we can invest into a
| new city instead of bombing some kids overseas (whose siblings,
| fueled by hatred, then commit terror attacks on the west).
| O3marchnative wrote:
| The Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) has an updated tally
| on defensive and offensive munition expenditures. It's likely
| not 100% accurate due to the sensitive nature of those figures.
|
| > 11,294 munitions in the first 16 days of the conflict, at a
| cost of approximately $26 billion.
|
| Several detailed tables are in the link below.
|
| https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/comme...
| lb1lf wrote:
| Incidentally, $26B is a sum in the same ballpark as the cost
| of eradicating homelessness in the US, ending large-scale
| hunger worldwide or making significant progress towards safe
| drinking water for all or the eradication of malaria.
| michaelteter wrote:
| But how would any of those activities increase the wealth
| of the decision makers (in the short term)?
| gambutin wrote:
| Don't worry. The Saudis and UAE will happily pay all costs of
| the war.
| thrawa8387336 wrote:
| I think more than one. One and then another 1 hour after
| shykes wrote:
| You can't have a serious discussion of this bombing without
| addressing the information warfare component. To this day _we don
| 't know what actually happened_. Between the general public and
| the facts, there are many middlemen, all with their own
| distorting factor: the IRGC; the US government; western press
| outlets such as the Guardian; and the people quoted by the press.
|
| IRGC is making claims that no other party can verify first-hand.
| Everything from the number of explosions, the extent of the
| physical damage, the number of wounded and dead, the number of
| _civilians_ wounded and dead - these are all unverified claims
| and should be treated as such. Not only is the IRGC obviously
| biased and incentivized to maximize media pressure on the US and
| Israel: they are known for information warfare of exactly this
| nature. To take their statements at face value, and present them
| as established facts in the opening paragraph, as this article
| does, is journalistic malpractice.
|
| Again, _the basic facts on the ground are not known_ , yes all
| parties are projecting narratives with a certainty that we should
| all be suspicious of.
|
| Without this stable foundation of knowing what actually happened,
| and why, the very premise of this article collapses on itself.
|
| EDIT: the flurry of responses to this post illustrate the
| problem. It's difficult to even have a respectful, fact-driven
| discussion on this topic, because everyone is tempted (and
| encouraged) to rush to their political battle stations. Nobody
| wants to discuss information warfare, because they're too busy
| engaging in it. I think that's worrying and problematic. No
| matter which "side" you're on, it should be possible to
| distinguish what is known and what is not; and implementing basic
| information hygiene. Or do you think you are uniquely immune to
| disinformation?
| 20k wrote:
| Everyone acknowledges that the US killed a whole bunch of kids,
| including the US
| shykes wrote:
| This is incorrect. The US government (via Secretary Hegseth)
| has only confirmed that they are investigating the incident.
|
| What the US has _NOT confirmed_ :
|
| - that they are responsible for the bombing
|
| - _who_ hit the school
|
| - whether the school was an intended target of US strikes
|
| - whether it was struck intentionally
|
| - that it was mistaken for a military site
|
| - any casualty count
|
| - whether there were civilians or children in the casualty
| count
|
| The US has explicitly _DENIED_ :
|
| - That they deliberately target civilian targets
|
| These are the facts about what the US has actually confirmed.
| We are all entitled to our _opinion_ of what happened. But we
| should be able to acknowledge that they are just that:
| opinions. We don 't actually know what happened. And I find
| it scary and dangerous that so many people, on hacker news
| and elsewhere, are acting like they do.
|
| Sources:
|
| - https://www.war.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript/Article/442
| 1...
|
| - https://www.war.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript/Article/443
| 4...
| TaupeRanger wrote:
| I'm not sure why the other reply here was flagged and killed.
| The US absolutely has NOT acknowledged that they killed
| school children. The DoW and other government officials have
| only publicly stated that an investigation is taking place.
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| I think its fair to treat things that the Trump administration
| and the Iranian military agree on as facts. If they were
| distortions that favored one side, we would see pushback from
| the other. _Maybe_ there are distortions that somehow benefit
| both of these parties, but it seems unlikely. At minimum, then,
| this was a school, the Americans bombed it, and children died
| as a result.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > To this day we don't know what actually happened.
|
| I feel like we know enough already. A school was bombed, the
| ones who did it sucks big time and should be held responsible.
| Currently, the US and Israel is waging a war against Iran, and
| one of them dropped the bomb(s), unless suddenly Iran got their
| hands on American weapons, then that needs to be investigated
| too, because someone surely dropped the ball at that point.
|
| The basics remain the same, investigations have to be launched
| to figure out where exactly in the chain of command, someone
| made a mistake, and then hold that person(s) responsible for
| their fuck up.
|
| Have those investigations been launched?
| shykes wrote:
| I think it's likely that the explosion was caused by a US
| strike. But we don't actually know for sure that that's what
| happened - the US government has not confirmed it.
|
| We also don't know anything about casualties - we only have
| the IRGC statements, and they are not reliable.
|
| > _Have those investigations been launched?_
|
| Yes, according to the US government, an investigation is
| underway. But its starting point is determining _what caused
| the explosion_.
| YZF wrote:
| How long does it take to look at the coordinates programmed
| into the cruise missiles? Or to review existing satellite
| imagery for the location and other intelligence sources?
|
| If this was a school (which seems likely at this point) and
| if this was a US TLAM that hit it (which also seems likely
| at this point) then we should expect a lot of casualties
| when it's hit during school time (which also seems likely).
| And yes, we shouldn't trust what the IRGC is saying.
|
| I think I'm on your side but in this case the correct
| course of action for the US would have been to quickly own
| up to the mistake. There is really not a lot of ambiguity
| here. This doesn't seem to be a case like "shots were fired
| from the school window" or some sort of dual use with IRGC
| having offices in the school. If there was a reason for the
| targeting then presumably we'd have a statement about it
| already.
|
| Mistakes can be made and are always made in war. Leaving
| this open like this is damaging to the war effort.
| basisword wrote:
| >> the US government has not confirmed it
|
| What have they done to deserve your trust? They started a
| war that they deny is a war. They told us a year ago they
| set Iran back a decade. Then they tell us 9 months later
| they're weeks from a nuclear bomb. I wouldn't trust the
| warmongers to admit they're child killers.
| shykes wrote:
| I haven't said anything about trusting them. I am simply
| correcting statements about what the US has supposedly
| "admitted".
|
| It's one thing to say "I think the US did XYZ".
|
| It's quite another to say "It is an objective truth that
| the US did XYZ, in fact they even admitted it".
|
| Transposed to the Guardian, if they want to write "we
| think the US did XYZ", they should clearly frame it as an
| opinion piece. Instead they are writing "it is an
| objective truth that the US did XYZ" - which is false.
| That is journalistic malpractice.
| YZF wrote:
| You're not wrong but what we can tell from open sources is:
|
| - The building does seem to have actually been a school and
| "detached" from the rest of the military complex.
|
| - The school the Iranians claim it was does seem to exist even
| if it's not 100% clear that's the identical location.
|
| - At the time of the attack school would have been in session.
|
| - The signature of the attack seems similar between all the
| buildings attacked and we have footage showing a Tomahawk
| hitting the area.
|
| Another thing we can tell is that the US has to know the truth
| here and isn't coming out with an official statement.
|
| And I'm saying this as someone who thinks the Iranian regime is
| evil, needs to be struck down, was trying to acquire nuclear
| weapons etc.
|
| As to the numbers I agree they are to be treated with
| suspicion. The Iranians are obviously motivated to lie, inflate
| them, and treat all casualties as civilians. But we can still
| try and estimate given the size of the building what would be
| the number of students. We can also estimate the outcome of the
| missile hitting the building and correlate with the photos and
| satellite imagery, and until we have better data use those
| estimates.
| shykes wrote:
| I agree with all of that. My worry is that the Guardian
| article is not doing _any of it_ , and in fact is damaging
| the framework for even having such a conversation.. Instead
| they are repeating IRGC statements without attribution, and
| establishing them as background truth in the first paragraph.
| Then building an entire article on that flawed premise.
| Essentially, their article exists in the narrative universe
| create by the IRGC. I find that incredibly worrying.
| YZF wrote:
| My bar for present day journalists and the Guardian
| specifically is pretty low. The goal for the Guardian is
| apparently to get clicks and advance their agenda.
| Journalism and real news reporting is apparently dead. My
| commentary is more on the specifics of the incident.
|
| Agree the first paragraph is garbage journalism.
| basisword wrote:
| >> Again, the basic facts on the ground are not known
|
| Think for a second WHY that is! They can find and kill the
| Iranian leaders who will be doing the utmost to conceal their
| location and yet that can't tell us whose bomb blew up a
| specific building? Of course they can. They're waiting until
| people forget and they can final release the result of their
| 'investigation'.
| shykes wrote:
| That's your opinion and you're entitled to it.
|
| But I'm noticing that you are only interested in guessing the
| motives and actions of the US.
|
| Does the IRGC not have motives and agency of their own?
| Perhaps the explosion was caused by a malfunction of their
| own missile? Perhaps they lied about children being present?
| Perhaps they intentionally placed children in a location they
| knew would be struck? Based on their incentives, doctrine and
| past behavior, you could make a reasonable case for all of
| those scenarios.
|
| It's fine to speculate on who did what, and why. But that
| methodology can be applied in both directions, not just the
| one that suites your political preference.
| basisword wrote:
| Yes, I'm more concerned with the motives and actions of the
| aggressors.
| nahuel0x wrote:
| Israel and the US are bombing lots of schools and hospitals and
| civilian infrastructure, this is not the only case. This is
| intentional genocide, not a software/organizational/human error.
| lukifer wrote:
| Sufficiently advanced negligence is indistinguishable from
| malice.
|
| This is not to say that this administration is definitely _not_
| targeting civilians or infrastructure on purpose; just that the
| end result, and the moral culpability, are the same in either
| case.
| YZF wrote:
| Check out this example:
| https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjw4egp7lwno
|
| "As we pass through Khan Shaykhun, we come across a street
| painted in the colours of the Iranian flag. It leads to a
| school building that was being used as an Iranian
| headquarters." "On the wall at the entrance of the toilets,
| slogans read: "Down with Israel" and "Down with the USA".
|
| It was evident that these headquarters were also evacuated at
| short notice. We found documents classified as "highly
| sensitive"."
|
| This is a BBC reporter reporting from Syria after the fall of
| Assad.
|
| It is strategy for the IRGC and Hamas to operate from civilian
| infrastructure like schools to gain immunity. That's what's
| "not a human error".
| bigyabai wrote:
| Help me understand how this justifies the collateral damage.
| YZF wrote:
| I am countering the parent's statement that seems to
| indicate the US and Israel are intentionally targeting
| civilian infrastructure systematically for no reason. A lot
| of this infrastructure is targeted for good reason because
| it is used for military purposes.
|
| This is totally unrelated to the topic where it seems the
| one school in question was incorrectly targeted based on
| what we know today (though not intentionally).
|
| The general framework for justifying collateral damage is
| that enough care has to be taken to minimize it vs. the
| value of the military objective being achieved. Attacking
| an IRGC headquarters intentionally based in a school (e.g.
| if the example in Syria was to be attacked by Israel for
| example) still needs to pass this test. I.e. Israel would
| have to take measures to minimize collateral damage which
| would be proportional to the military value it gains by
| hitting the IRGC. But the (Syrian) school would have been
| considered a legitimate military target and the outrage
| should be towards the IRGC setting up camp there.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| To anyone responding to this be aware that this is one of
| the worst zionists we have on this website.
| nahuel0x wrote:
| I think nobody with a couple of neurons still buys the "every
| school and hospital in Gaza were Hamas, so we bombed them"
| nazi-zionist rhetoric.
| nailer wrote:
| > This is intentional genocide
|
| Do you think it's genocide when the IRGC kill 30-40K Persian
| civilians? Or only when Americans missiles aimed at a military
| base miss their target?
| amarant wrote:
| >The targeting for Operation Epic Fury ran on a system called
| Maven. Nobody was arguing about Maven.
|
| Would it be poor taste to make joke about gradle being superior
| here? The dad in me _really_ wants to make that joke...
| 20after4 wrote:
| Replacing one java tool with another doesn't solve anyone's
| problems. If they'd only used Rust then lives would have been
| saved.
| amarant wrote:
| Meh, that sounds like a cargo-cult to me ;)
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Don't go there.
| esseph wrote:
| Telling my children that "cargo cults" happened because of
| Rust :)
| beloch wrote:
| "Three clicks convert a data point on the map into a formal
| detection and move it into a targeting pipeline. These targets
| then move through columns representing different decision-making
| processes and rules of engagement. The system recommends how to
| strike each target - which aircraft, drone or missile to use,
| which weapon to pair with it - what the military calls a "course
| of action". The officer selects from the ranked options, and the
| system, depending on who is using it, either sends the target
| package to an officer for approval or moves it to execution."
|
| ----------------
|
| Maven is a tool for use in the middle of a war. When both sides
| are firing, minutes saved can mean lives saved for your side.
| Those lives, at least partly, balance the risks of hitting a bad
| target.
|
| This was not a strike made in the middle of a war. If Maven was
| used in the strike that took out a school, it was being used as
| part of a sneak attack. Nobody was shooting back while this was
| being planned. Minutes saved were not lives saved. There should
| have been a priority placed on getting the targets _right_.
| Humans should have been double and triple checking every target
| by other means. This clearly didn 't happen. The school was
| obviously a school that even had its own website. Humans would
| have spotted this if they had done more than make their three
| clicks and move on to the next target.
|
| Whoever made the choice to use Maven to plan a sneak attack
| _without_ careful checking made an unforced error when they had
| all the time in the world to prevent it. Whether it was
| overconfidence in their tools or a complete disregard for the
| lives of civilians that caused this lapse, they are _directly
| responsible_ for the deaths of those little girls. I sincerely
| hope there are (although I doubt there will be) consequences for
| this person beyond taking that guilt to their grave.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| I recommend looking closely at the New York Times analysis.
| There were factors that might have mitigated this as a strike
| target, but it also really did look like a part of the compound
| (and it originally was!). Yes, with hindsight, we can
| definitively know, and with sufficient time each target could
| probably have been positively ID'd, but there was precisely one
| mis-strike in 1000s of sorties, so this already is a low error
| rate. TFA discusses 50 specific strikes all of which missed via
| automated analysis. That doesn't seem the same.
|
| I don't disagree there. But this is not a case of
| hallucination, and an existing website is a signal, not a
| determinant, of the real situation on the ground. However, you
| have made a very, very strong assumption that these targets
| were not carefully evaluated. One that does not seem to be
| present in TFA or any analysis that I've read. In fact, the
| article itself quotes those in the know who _believe this
| should have been eliminated as a target_.
| SlinkyOnStairs wrote:
| > Yes, with hindsight, we can definitively know, and with
| sufficient time each target could probably have been
| positively ID'd, but there was precisely one mis-strike in
| 1000s of sorties, so this already is a low error rate.
|
| This is giving them too much credit.
|
| Hegseth has already shown himself to entirely disregard the
| notion of War Crime, _even by the US military 's own already
| controversial standards_. The double strike on the boats in
| the caribbean are literally the textbook example in US
| military textbooks of what not to do, and that it is a
| warcrime.
|
| This was no mistake. It was the obvious outcome of a pattern
| of reckless action.
| dwa3592 wrote:
| >>I recommend looking closely at the New York Times analysis.
| There were factors that might have mitigated this as a strike
| target, but it also really did look like a part of the
| compound (and it originally was!).
|
| What a ridiculous take. What does "originally was" mean?
| Maybe you wanna say "previously was"? That building was
| converted to a school 10 years ago! The intelligence they
| relied on is 10 years old!!!!! It's recklessness and
| stupidity dressed as bravery and courage.
| zippyman55 wrote:
| It seems these targets get reviewed and excluded if they
| are no longer targets. To me, it looks like someone was not
| paying attention for ten yrs.
| dbt00 wrote:
| How many American schoolchildren have Iran killed in the last
| 25 years? How many Iranian schoolchildren have America
| killed?
|
| Where's your moral justification for this war of choice if
| "oops, 137 dead kids is a normal expected outcome"?
| jazz9k wrote:
| If we had all military bases next to elementary schools,
| things might be different.
| vkou wrote:
| There are plenty of military bases next to elementary
| schools in the US.
|
| Where do you think the kids of soldiers go to school?
| sophacles wrote:
| The us has over 150 elementary schools on military bases.
| If you use a more colloquial definition of military base,
| many many national guard armories are on the same block
| as elementary schools or even right next to them.
|
| Can you cite anything that says all iranian military
| bases are next to elementary schools? If they are on ALL
| bases, that makes hitting an elementary school on base
| less forgivable, not more, because if its a fact of every
| iranian military base, it's a lot harder to claim good
| intelligence and also that they didn't check that the
| part of base being bombed was the school.
|
| Also, how is that relevant?
| pphysch wrote:
| We do. Grocery stores (commissaries) and residential
| units as well.
| gruez wrote:
| This feels like moving the goalposts. The OP and the
| preceding comments are pretty clearly talking about the
| targeting mistake aspect of this incident, not the war
| itself. You're moving the discussion from the former to the
| latter to it easier to argue that US is in the wrong, but
| if the argument is that the war was unjust to begin with,
| then do you really need a school getting bombed to push you
| over the edge? After all, even if they bombed an IRGC
| compound and only killed soldiers, those soldiers are still
| people's sons, fathers, husbands. Even if there's no
| deaths, you could still make the macroeconomic argument
| that any economic losses are impoverishing the Iranian
| people.
| kakacik wrote:
| No, I am fine with parent's take. We treat children as
| absolutely innocent (which they are, regardless of the
| way anybody tries to spin this or ie Gaza), and killing
| children is extra heinous crime compared to killing
| adult, same with rape etc. Children rapist get extra
| special treatment in jails, often from other murderers
| and society is largely fine with that.
|
| As a parent, even when cutting off most of the emotions
| related to this horrible war crime, I am unfazed and
| unconvinced by such, even if well meaning whataboutism.
| gruez wrote:
| >I am unfazed and unconvinced by such, even if well
| meaning whataboutism.
|
| No, it's not whataboutism, it's moving the goalposts.
| Consider the following exchange:
|
| Alice: "McDonalds mistreats its workers by paying them
| below the minimum wage"
|
| Bob: "No they don't. They all get paid at or above the
| local minimum wage"
|
| Charlie: "Well that doesn't matter, because McDonald's
| still mistreats its workers because it's a capitalist
| institution, which by definition means they're siphoning
| the fruits of the worker's labor"
|
| Even if you agree with Charlie's point, at the very least
| it's in poor taste to bring it up in a conversation
| specifically talking about the minimum wage. Otherwise
| every discussion about some aspect of [thing] just turns
| into a plebiscite about [thing].
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Please ask yourself if there is true evil in the world.
| People who are willing to kill children _on purpose_ , or
| maim them, or burn them with acid, or commit other bad
| things I wont get into.
|
| Then ask yourself if bad things can happen despite good
| intents. Truly horrible things, in fact, despite effort to
| prevent them.
|
| Then, ask if this bombing was part of group A or group B.
|
| And ask if we were _trying_ to target people from group A
| or group B.
|
| This is not an "ends justify the means" argument, I hope.
| But if _you_ want to count bodies as some kind of
| justification for or against war because apparently morals
| can be reduced to addition and subtraction, you might as
| well at least classify the dead and causes correctly.
| bdangubic wrote:
| We (US) are definitely in Group A. We killed and are
| continuing to kill more innocent people (including
| children) than everyone else combined but are always
| hiding under "oh, we really good guys here, just shit
| happens while we are bombing around the world for decades
| for no particular reason until we eventually lose and
| leave")
| zmmmmm wrote:
| > Then, ask if this bombing was part of group A or group
| B.
|
| false dichotomies are a common rhetorical method (and
| sometimes useful) to argue your way to a moral
| justification, but that doesn't make them reflect reality
|
| There is no A and B. You want to force a situation where
| B is pure good intent and we either have to choose that
| or choose A where there is only bad intent. The reality
| is, this war is about ego, power and money as much as it
| is about any "good intent". The decisions to start the
| war were made with a full knowledge of the risks and
| costs it would entail, with almost all of those being
| externalised to other people than those taking the
| choices.
|
| Nobody taking those choices should get to just opt out of
| moral responsibility with some easy "A / B" logic.
| yibg wrote:
| Group A also include starting a war for bad reasons and
| then "accidentally" killing school children as a result.
| ashdksnndck wrote:
| The only reason Iranian bombs aren't hitting America is
| because their range isn't long enough. Iran-commanded
| forces (located in Iran, Lebanon, Yemen) have been
| targeting civilians for many years.
| lejalv wrote:
| This is just your opinion. The tragedy here is that there
| are people with similar opinion and bombs at their
| disposal that feel complete impunity and go around
| murdering in the world
|
| Also, remembe the CIA co-staged a coup in Iran in 1953.
| That's one fact, nor just opinion.
| baublet wrote:
| I suspect if the IRGC accidentally blew up a school next
| to a military base in Oklahoma, they would find it in
| them to condemn those who made such an innocent mistake.
| lejalv wrote:
| That's all speculation. What we know is that the US
| agressed Iran without provocation and in the midst of
| negotiations and started by blowing up a school and not
| owning up to it. And now they have threatened multiple
| times with destroying the civilian energy infrastructure,
| which is a war crime.
| cramsession wrote:
| The only reason Iran would attack the US is because we
| back the terror colony of Israel. No Israel, no war.
| ashdksnndck wrote:
| So to clarify, your argument is it's ok to target
| civilians with bombs as long as they are located in a
| nation that practices terror?
| cramsession wrote:
| Iran has never targeted the US but if they did, I would
| assume they would hit military targets.
| ashdksnndck wrote:
| Iran and its proxies frequently target civilians. They
| would make an exception for the US?
| cramsession wrote:
| How many American civilians have Iran killed? I would not
| consider Zionists to be civilians, they're literally
| living on stolen land.
| Denzel wrote:
| So I read the entire TFA, where do you see "quotes [from]
| those in the know who believe this should have been
| eliminated as a target"? I saw no such quotes about the
| school in TFA. Maybe I missed it.
|
| > there was precisely one mis-strike in 1000s of sorties
|
| How did you verify this? Because I'll remind you, the U.S.
| administration denied responsibility for some time before
| owning up to this due to public pressure. Absent public
| pressure, I guess we would've had zero mis-strikes.
|
| > so this already is a low error rate
|
| As a father of similarly aged daughters, I can't express
| enough how grotesque and disturbing the term "error rate" is
| here.
|
| We targeted and killed young children. Plain and simple.
|
| > However, you have made a very, very strong assumption that
| these targets were not carefully evaluated.
|
| Let's take the opposing assumption that this target was
| carefully evaluated then. Please reason through the
| implications now?
| jvanderbot wrote:
| I will try to respond to all these independent threads, but
| we can't continue all of them at once.
|
| > . "These aren't just nameless, faceless targets," he said
| later. "This is a place where people are going to feel
| ramifications for a long time." The targeting cycle had
| been fast enough to hit 50 buildings and too fast to
| discover it was hitting the wrong ones.
|
| > The air force's own targeting guide, in effect during the
| Iraq war, said this was never supposed to happen. Published
| in 1998, it described the six functions of targeting as
| "intertwined", with the targeteer moving "back" to refine
| objectives and "forward" to assess feasibility. "The best
| analysis," the manual stated, "is reasoned thought with
| facts and conclusions, not a checklist."
|
| > A former senior government official asked the obvious
| question: "The building was on a target list for years. Yet
| this was missed, and the question is how."
|
| ---
|
| > Please reason through the implications now?
|
| It was a mistake. My girls are about to enter this level of
| school, as well (cool parent card). A mistake/error/tragedy
| can all accurately be used to describe this. It's horrible
| it happened. All I'm saying is that no process is perfect.
| It is not excusable, but it is unfortunately understandable
| how it happened in this situation.
|
| > 1000s
|
| 1000s is fairly easily understood. 1/1000 is inferred b/c
| as you say, "public pressure" sprang up immediately after
| this one bombing. Iran regularly posts pictures and videos
| online, and human rights orgs are clamoring to find
| evidence. Either we are _really good at suppressing the
| world except for this one case_ or there aren 't that many
| schools being bombed. We cannot be simultaneously horrible
| at picking targets and suppressing evidence and also great
| at it in every other case. Planet labs themselves provided
| the pictures - they are freely available.
|
| Yes maybe the machine lumbers on, stomping on kids, or
| maybe we've learned our lesson and are now perfect, but
| this _seems_ like the kind of mistake that can happen, and
| it _seems likely_ that the analysts involved here are now
| benched and I wouldn 't be surprised if _some_ corrections
| are happening internally. These are human beings, despite
| what the article would have you believe, that are doing the
| best they can.
|
| > we targeted and killed young children
|
| We killed young kids, but not on purpose. We targeted a
| building and intent matters. I refuse to believe anyone in
| the decision chain would move forward if they believed kids
| were going to be killed. If you do - how can you? Why would
| they?
|
| We're going to quickly get into hypotheticals here. There's
| a lot of open threads, and believe me I hate with the
| fullest extent of the word violence against children. We
| can leave it at that.
| burkaman wrote:
| > If you do - how can you? Why would they?
|
| I can't answer why they would do it, but I don't think
| it's unusual for these people to knowingly strike
| civilian targets that they believe will have children
| present. In the famous Pete Hegseth leaked Signal chat,
| they were discussing bombing a residential apartment
| building in the middle of the night because they thought
| a single target was there visiting his girlfriend.
| Obviously that carries a high risk of killing children,
| and in that particular case the Secretary of Defense and
| Vice President were intimately involved and celebrated
| after learning that the building had collapsed. If those
| at the very top are willing to move forward with bombing
| civilians asleep in a residential building, I have to
| believe that everyone below them in the chain of command
| is expected to follow their lead.
| stickfigure wrote:
| No evidence has shown up suggesting there was some sort
| of compelling target in the school. As foul as Trump and
| Hegseth may be, they aren't cartoon character villains.
| The Occam's razor explanation is that this was an
| intelligence failure and a tragic mistake.
| worik wrote:
| It is possible that two things are true
|
| 1. this was an intelligence failure and a tragic mistake.
|
| 2. Trump and Hegseth are (like) cartoon character
| villains.
| pegasus wrote:
| There are no cartoon villains in general, that's the
| point GP is making by using the word "cartoon". Let's use
| some common sense, it's not like Trump and Hegseth got
| together and sneaked in the school on the list of targets
| just because they liked the idea of children being
| killed. It's naive to suggest this is a possibility worth
| considering.
| tastyface wrote:
| Given their glee at droning unarmed fishermen in the
| Caribbean, I would argue they are much farther along this
| axis than you realize.
| fud101 wrote:
| Yeah, going to have to go ahead and disagree with you
| there boss. The man Hegseth in all his 'no quarter'
| bravado is only affirming his own mother's claim that he
| is a piece of shit. respectfully of course, I would not
| put it past him to kill some kids for a political or
| terrorism reason (the parents).
| pasquinelli wrote:
| just because you assume that trump and hegseth aren't
| cartoonishly evil, doesn't mean they aren't. looking at
| america's actions for a long time, the occam's razor
| explanation is that america is cartoonishly evil. the
| reason you struggle with that is about emotions, not
| logic. and i get it.
| pegasus wrote:
| This is very different from targeting civilians as a goal
| in itself, which is what it would have had to be if this
| was not just negligence, but intentional, as GP
| suggested. Parent correctly points out that there's both
| no political incentive for that, and that it's not
| realistic from a psychological point of view, given
| reasonable assumptions about human nature.
| burkaman wrote:
| The claim I'm responding to is "I refuse to believe
| anyone in the decision chain would move forward if they
| believed kids were going to be killed." I agree it's
| unusual for anyone in the US military to drop a bomb
| primarily because they want to kill some children. I
| think it is not unusual for people involved in bombing
| campaigns to anticipate killing children and move forward
| anyway.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| _> This is very different from targeting civilians as a
| goal in itself_
|
| Targeting a single person which might be a valid target
| had war been declared, while also intentionally striking
| many civilians around them, is the same as targeting
| those civilians. You knew the bomb you dropped was going
| to kill them, and you pressed the button. It makes no
| difference who the primary "target" is.
|
| Otherwise, countries would just bomb all the civilians
| and all their infrastructure and medical facilities and
| schools with the excuse that they heard from an unnamed
| source that there was a combatant nearby, like israel
| does in Palestine.
| cyberax wrote:
| Ask yourself this: the 9/11 bombings damaged economically
| valuable targets for the US, and the Pentagon is a
| straightforwardly valid military target.
|
| Can your logic be used to justify these strikes?
| lovich wrote:
| > I refuse to believe anyone in the decision chain would
| move forward if they believed kids were going to be
| killed. If you do - how can you? Why would they?
|
| Because they're openly callous and contemptful of anyone
| they don't consider a heritage American? Because the
| admin has already abused children to lure out parents in
| their anti immigrant push?
|
| And that's before getting into the Epstein file
| allegations and if he raped and killed kids already.
|
| I'm gonna throw it back on you, how can you believe that
| this admin cares if foreign kids die?
| stickfigure wrote:
| Nobody deliberately produces propaganda for their
| enemies. The people involved may be evil and stupid, but
| nobody is _that_ evil and stupid.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| we are speaking politicians who make a habit of bluster
| and liking "shows of force" and are openly contemptful of
| the lives of those who don't agree with or look like them
|
| some of them believe that it is their religious duty to
| start this war and make it heinous enough to start ww3
| and bring forth the return of jesus christ
|
| I think you are ascribing a level of systems thinking and
| care about consequences which one cannot simply assume is
| there
|
| if you were to, say, start with an assumption that some
| of the actors have the mental patterns and world model of
| an angsty, self-centered teenager, or younger, then you
| might draw different conclusions
| shadowgovt wrote:
| The terrorists that struck the World Trade Center
| targeted a building too.
|
| If we aren't going to have a military doctrine that cares
| about who's in the building, we will be treated the same
| by our enemies. I don't think we want that.
| shevy-java wrote:
| Which terrorists exactly though?
|
| If I recall we saw two planes. We did not see any
| individual as such in the planes, did we? We saw some
| passports; not sure that this proves much at all. We also
| had WTC 7 going down and the strike on the other building
| (was it in Washington) but not much aside from this.
|
| I am not saying the-cake-is-a-lie, everything was
| fabricated, mind you. What I am saying is that IF we are
| going to make any conclusions, we need to look at what we
| have, and then find explanations and projections to what
| is missing. For instance, any follow-up question such as
| damage to a building, can be calculated by a computer, so
| this is not a problem. The problem, though, is IF one can
| not trust a government, to then buy into what they show
| or present to the viewer. Hitler also used a fake
| narrative to sell the invasion of Poland, for example:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleiwitz_incident
|
| That does not mean everything else is a false flag or
| fake, per se, but I do not automatically trust any
| allegation made by any government. You can look back in
| history and wonder about attempts to sell explanations,
| such as Warren Commission and a magic bullet switching
| directions multiple times. Again, that can be calculated
| via computers, so that's not an issue per se; the issue
| is if they made claims that are factually incorrect
| and/or incomplete.
| sirfz wrote:
| It's incredible, after all the grotesque stories about
| rape, torture and murder of children, men and women
| during the Iraq war, active support of genocide (and 10s
| of thousands of children murdered by Israel, on purpose),
| prisoners rape and child imprisonment, a "secretary of
| war" and president publicly admiting to war crimes and
| saying things like "negotiate with bombs" you still
| "refuse to believe" that anyone in decision chain
| wouldn't do anything like this.
| xrd wrote:
| "it is unfortunately understandable how it happened in
| this situation."
|
| I think you and I disagree on what the situation is here.
| I don't think it was necessary to bomb Iran and it feels
| like you are saying we did.
| tunesmith wrote:
| It feels like an appreciation for hypotheticals or givens
| is missing here. One can simultaneously be against the
| war and the bombing in general, and also accept it as a
| given and then think about a certain situation being
| understandable within that given.
| nostrademons wrote:
| Just pointing out that this...
|
| > Either we are really good at suppressing the world
| except for this one case or there aren't that many
| schools being bombed. We cannot be simultaneously
| horrible at picking targets and suppressing evidence and
| also great at it in every other case.
|
| ...is a logical fallacy (false dichotomy). It presumes a
| level of intent that isn't necessarily present.
|
| For an example of how these might coexist, I'd encourage
| The Toxoplasma of Rage, which is a long essay that
| frequently comes up here:
|
| https://www.slatestarcodexabridged.com/The-Toxoplasma-Of-
| Rag...
|
| The idea is that _rage is its own, self-replicating
| emotion_ , and given the medium of the Internet, it's
| possible that some memes have no purpose other than self-
| perpetuation. A story about a girls' school being blown
| up is self-replicating: it gets people riled up enough to
| share it. A story about a random factory, or some dead
| person's house, or an empty patch of desert is not
| really. It's entirely possible that attacks on these
| happened hundreds of times in the Iran war, but _if it
| did, I would never know about it_. I probably wouldn 't
| care about it. Those are not stories that go viral, they
| don't have enough emotional valence to make people care.
| And the media knows this, and so they don't bother to
| seek them out or run them.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > So I read the entire TFA, where do you see "quotes [from]
| those in the know who believe this should have been
| eliminated as a target"? I saw no such quotes about the
| school in TFA. Maybe I missed it.
|
| TFA is from The Guardian while GP you responded to
| specifically called out the NYT analysis. These are
| different things. Maybe reading the GP's suggested source
| would leave you with a different set of questions?
| gopher_space wrote:
| What are you doing?
| yabutlivnWoods wrote:
| Wouldn't have been looking for targets if senile old fucks
| looking to deflect from their personal liabilities hadn't
| started shooting.
|
| AI didn't do shit here. Stupid people built the AI and the
| weapons and applied them. Any other argument is intentional
| obfuscation.
|
| You all are falling for propaganda.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| That is actually the point of the article, if you had read
| it
| yabutlivnWoods wrote:
| Why? You just saw I got the point without reading it.
|
| Am aware content of media coming from either side is so
| normalized there is little value giving either my
| attention for free. I am not susceptible to Fox News fear
| mongering and already read 1984 among others. Neither are
| going to say anything novel. They're just engaged in
| barter for food and shelter.
|
| I spent the time engaged in more useful endeavors to
| those around me and myself.
| torginus wrote:
| It's almost as if AI's purpose is to shift blame, saying
| that the 'computer did it', in which case these
| deliberately unreliable AI systems are used, so that
| responsibility can be avoided, or smeared across the
| command chain, so every person was only responsible for an
| innocious part of the whole disaster.
|
| _A computer can never be held accountable Therefore a
| computer must never make a management decision_
| megous wrote:
| For someone that interested in precision of supporting claims
| with evidence, you make pretty ridiculous and completely
| unsupported claims yourself, like "there was precisely one
| mis-strike in 1000s of sorties".
| spaghetdefects wrote:
| The New York Times are the same people who spread the lie
| about Iraq having WMDs, they are not credible, and in fact
| have been proven to be incredibly biased when it comes to
| wars in the Middle East.
|
| Israel and the US targeted many schools in Gaza. They killed
| tens of thousands of children. This strike was clearly
| intentional and very much in line with all other Zionist
| actions.
| scuff3d wrote:
| I'm sure it's a comfort to the parents and families of 150
| dead kids that this is actually a very low error rate.
| antinomicus wrote:
| You seem to be ignoring the fact that the US should not be in
| this war at all. How people have already moved on from that
| to making monstrous posts like this makes me sick.
| torginus wrote:
| And a very very true one. If the US military had maps at
| least the quality of local tourist ones, or Google Maps, they
| could have know basically the location of every ice cream
| shop, supermarket, school, and military building.
|
| I would say that should be pretty much a prerequisite for
| launching an attack, (at least map out the city block around
| the target). The US has been eying to strike Iran for
| decades.
|
| Mapping enemy targets is basically one of the biggest tasks
| (in scope) intelligence agencies undertake, and can be done
| in peacetime.
|
| There was no extreme time pressure here, this was just a lack
| of due diligence and operational sloppiness.
|
| One of the key stated goals of this war, is to have the
| Iranian people topple their totalitarian government, thereby
| avoiding having to fight a ground war, and as such, goodwill
| is extremely important.
|
| The damage this strike did to that goodwill outweighs any
| potential military advantage the US possibly could get out of
| it.
| indubioprorubik wrote:
| What if the enemy sets up hopsitals and schools on military
| bases?
| sosomoxie wrote:
| The US has hospitals and schools on military bases.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Not sure if astonishingly credulous or just pretending. Iran
| claims 600 schools have been damaged, with over 1000 students
| killed. I doubt the veracity of those numbers, but not as
| much as I doubt the US claims of benign omniscience in
| targeting and invulnerability from being targeted.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| I agree with your overall sentiment, but how realistic is it?
| Israel/US says they've been hitting thousands of targets (so
| reality might mean ~hundreds, still a lot), how are they
| supposed to verify this at all?
|
| > Humans should have been double and triple checking every
| target by other means.
|
| How practically would this happen? The US/Israel don't want
| people on the ground, and people on the ground is exactly the
| only way you can actually verify stuff like this, not every
| place in the world is on Google Maps or have a web presence at
| all, so the only realistic way to verify this would be to
| visually inspect it in person, something neither parties who
| started this war want to do.
|
| Even better, don't make attacks against other soverign nations
| that don't pose an immediately and critical threat to you, and
| this whole conflict could have been avoided in the first place.
|
| But no, the president has to be involved in some sort of child-
| trafficking scheme, so pulling the country into a war seemed
| preferable to being held responsible, and now we're here,
| arguing about fucking details that don't matter.
| ok_dad wrote:
| In this case, they would have discovered it was a school with
| a Google search, basically. There's no excuse.
| Tostino wrote:
| Or the vast satellite network we run. Pretty easy to see
| it's school children going in and out of the area.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| To be fair, we don't really have the capacity to run
| satellite surveillance on each and every target we select
| to engage in a sneak attack.
|
| I think sometimes people watch hollywood movies and get
| the impression that it represents a kind of cataloging of
| our military capabilities. A demonstration of what we can
| do to our enemies. With the underlying subtext being
| "don't mess with us."
|
| I just want to gently suggest that not everything we see
| in movies is factual with respect to military or
| intelligence capabilities.
|
| I'm an old timer. I got off the bus at Quantico in 1991.
| But even though I'm not in right now, I'd feel confident
| in betting that we don't have the capacity to surveil
| that many targets via satellite for, say, 1 week, prior
| to our attack.
|
| (Of course, when I got off the bus at Quantico in '91 I
| also would have been just as confident in betting that
| the US would never engage in a first strike. So what do I
| know?)
| ok_dad wrote:
| So don't sneak attack. Easy solution.
| AngryData wrote:
| That is true for an active war but I don't believe it is
| true if you have literally months and months to plan an
| attack. Unless of course there was no plan until just a
| few days before and you stupidly threw a ton of your
| advantage right into the trash.
| jdross wrote:
| I'm pretty sure this is the school that was on the corner
| of a military base, and the school building hit was
| previously part of the military base.
| jmye wrote:
| Does that make it not a school, somehow? Or are we cool
| with killing kids just because their parents might be in
| the military? I'm not clear what the excuse being made
| actually is.
| hackerstuff wrote:
| It's definitely not cool to have a school adjacent to a
| military base. Not saying this specific attack was
| justified, but whoever allowed this, let alone if it was
| done intentionally as a strategy, also has blood on their
| hands.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Where do you think the children of our armed forces go to
| school? There are _hundreds_ of schools on or adjacent to
| military installations in the US. The only people with
| blood on their hands for bombing a school _are the people
| who bombed the school_. It's really not more complicated
| than that.
| ok_dad wrote:
| Bro, American bases have schools all over them, houses
| with families, etc.
| jmye wrote:
| > It's definitely not cool to have a school adjacent to a
| military base. Not saying this specific attack was
| justified
|
| I mean, you kind of _are_ saying it was justified, given
| the entirety of your focus is on justifying it. The blood
| is solely on the hands of the useless, dumbshit military
| that couldn 't identify a school and avoid bombing it.
| And that's the _charitable_ interpretation of their
| actions.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| That's a non excuse.
|
| I live near a military base, and there is a daycare,
| school, rec center, pub, ice rink, church, and grocery
| store, open to the public, and not managed by the
| military. All of it is on land owned by the military, but
| outside the wire.
|
| The fact that these facilities exist on military land
| near a base (which a hostile government would surely
| argue IS the base) does not mean that the people in those
| buildings have it coming.
| free_bip wrote:
| The school literally had its own website. If the AI involved
| was as smart as the media hype machine makes them out to be,
| it would have found the website and marked it as a non-
| target. It never even would have made it to human review.
| btown wrote:
| I agree with everything you said - but it's also the case that
| a set of parameters were created that, instead of requiring
| multi-person validation of target validity and provenance,
| prioritized speed to provide decision makers with options.
|
| This certainly doesn't absolve the person implementing those
| parameters, but it is equally the responsibility of the very
| top of the decision-making structure.
| YZF wrote:
| I couldn't find a web site for the school when I searched for
| one and I also noticed that while schools are generally marked
| on Google Maps in Iran this school was not. Both are IMO not
| really relevant or reliable sources of targeting data anyways.
| I found very little evidence searching online for the school
| but I did find something that looked like a blog about a school
| trip. Again though the Internet is not a reliable source of
| data for targeting - should be obvious.
|
| The main way targets should/would be selected is by direct
| intelligence. E.g. the targets should be identified through
| satellite or other observations. It's hard to imagine that a
| building that has operated for some length of time as a school
| would not have patterns that are visible from satellite vs.
| military facilities with different patterns. You also don't
| just randomly attack structures in this sort of surprise
| attack, you're presumably aiming for some specific people or
| equipment with some priority/military goal in mind, so you
| really want to have observed the targets and patterns and have
| up to date information on their usage.
|
| I think what likely happened here is that the entire base was
| the "unit" of targeting and the mistake was in identifying
| which buildings were part of the base. In the satellite view
| the military buildings and the school look very similar (since
| the building as I understand it used to be part of the base but
| was repurposed as a school).
|
| It's not true that whoever made the error had all the time in
| the world. Presumably once the order was given there was time
| pressure given that the strike was to be timed with the other
| intelligence.
|
| In theory the US military should/is supposed to have good
| processes around this stuff. So we are told. Obviously failed
| in this case. It is a tragedy.
| megous wrote:
| Missing the forest for the trees, are you? Wars of aggression
| are against UN rules, and US is in the wrong regardless of
| what it hit.
|
| Feels like we're talking here about whether rapist should
| have known that the rapee was a child or an adult, and they
| had a good reason to believe it was an adult person (there
| was mother of the girl standing next to it, so, hard to
| distinguish...), so yeah, obviously a tragedy they raped a
| child instead, but it happens sometimes when you rape a lot
| of people at once. A tragedy, but let's get on with raping
| more...
| YZF wrote:
| Iran has been waging war since the Islamic Revolution and
| the US claims that there was a threat of attack on US bases
| and US interests and therefore the attack was in self
| defense. The body that decides is the UNSC and given the US
| has veto powers it's not going to obviously declare the US
| attack illegal.
|
| From Israel's perspective there's an even stronger self
| defense argument given the amount of missiles aimed at
| Israel from Iran and the enrichment of nuclear material to
| military grades while constantly threatening the
| elimination of Israel. So the US argument that they knew
| Israel was planning the attack and they knew Iran would
| retaliate against US interests seems at least on the
| surface to bad valid.
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| >Iran has been waging war since the Islamic Revolution
|
| On who?
| alex43578 wrote:
| At various times, and potentially via proxies: Iraq Saudi
| Arabia Israel Kurdish Rebels The US "All countries" via
| actions against shipping in the Red Sea and the Strait of
| Hormuz
| energy123 wrote:
| They've colonized the whole region with their proxies,
| from Lebanon to Yemen to Iraq, previously Syria which
| they attacked with Hezbollah to support the Russia-backed
| Assad. About 1 million dead people from all this proxy
| warfare. Lebanon in particular wants to be a normal
| liberal democracy but their proxy militia assassinates
| any politician who stands in their way.
| sumeno wrote:
| How many dead from the US's proxy wars?
| dylan604 wrote:
| This is irrelevant to the topic at hand. Not dismissing
| your point, but it's really not a useful follow up. The
| two things can be bad at the same time.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > the US claims that there was a threat of attack
|
| What the US claims is really not a strong source of
| anything, and I'm saying that as an American. The most
| compelling reasoning is that Israel was going to do
| something so US decision makers decided joining was the
| best worst decision, and I'm being very bend over
| backwards generous with that. Anything else is just
| excuses trying to cover it up. It seems obvious now that
| there was no stopping Israel from their strike on Iranian
| leadership. It was too ripe of a target, they have been
| emboldened by current US admin, so at that point it was
| in for a penny, in for a pound mentality.
|
| If the US thought an Iranian retaliation from an Israeli
| strike would be to attack US assets, then the world would
| possibly have some sympathy. No rational person could
| condone an outright first strike just because we thought
| something was going to happen. Yet the fact that in the
| "we think they will do something" spit balling never
| suggested shutting the down the strait seems very suspect
| as well.
| leereeves wrote:
| > If the US thought an Iranian retaliation from an
| Israeli strike would be to attack US assets
|
| A reasonable belief, because Iran in fact responded to
| the US+Israeli strikes by attacking US allies and even
| neutral nations like Qatar.
|
| Why should we doubt that Iran would have closed the
| Strait of Hormuz even if the US had not attacked, leaving
| Israel to attack alone? The strategic calculation
| (threaten the world economy so other nations oppose the
| war) would have been the same.
| cma wrote:
| > the enrichment of nuclear material to military grades
| while constantly threatening the elimination of Israel.
|
| Iran has supported a treaty on elimination of weapons of
| mass destruction in the middle east, Israel has been the
| blocker of it, only actor in the region that has nukes,
| and isn't in the NPT.
|
| As a non-signer of the NPT, military aid to Israel is
| also illegal under US law, so we play along with
| strategic ambiguity and pretend they don't have them.
| gruez wrote:
| >It's hard to imagine that a building that has operated for
| some length of time as a school would not have patterns that
| are visible from satellite vs. military facilities with
| different patterns.
|
| You might be overestimating how much satellite capacity there
| is to do this level of analysis for every target.
| lejalv wrote:
| Well, but this is irrelevant. You can't possibly say
| 'listen, the richest army on Earth does not have the means
| to prevent bombing a school'
| fragmede wrote:
| Was the Iran War Caused by AI Psychosis?
|
| https://houseofsaud.com/iran-war-ai-psychosis-sycophancy-rlh...
| torginus wrote:
| I'm not sure how true that is. Enemy factories and command
| centers don't grow out of the ground overnight.
|
| Nor do planes get maintained, armed, fueled and flown to the
| target zone in the matter of minutes.
|
| In preparing such an operation, I'm sure the critical path even
| with traditional planning methods, is in other places.
|
| While I agree, that there are certain scenarios where an
| important enemy commander or an expensive mobile launcher gets
| detected, and you only have a window of minutes to hours before
| its gone, this is not one of those cases.
|
| I feel like the military bought some fancy new hammers, and
| wanted to show the purchase was justified.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| And fundamentally, this is aUS doctrine issue. The US is
| willing to strike targets in foreign soul with no boots-on-the-
| ground confirmation of target nature.
|
| It's how the Obama administration drone-struck a wedding before
| this and how a missile got dropped on a Chinese embassy before
| that. The doctrine itself is flawed.
| originalvichy wrote:
| You have clearly articulated what I've personally explained to
| people. Thank you for that. The nature of the strikes as a part
| of a thoroughly pre-planned surprise attack lays the entire
| blame at the planners, approvers and those who executed the
| strike.
|
| The lack of comprehension some people have baffles me, as I've
| had the displeasure of reading several dozens of online posts
| asking why kids were at school during the strikes. Even giving
| these people the benefit of the doubt that they do not know
| that not all countries observe the same weekday/weekend split
| as in the case of Iran, how in the world is a teacher or a
| child supposed to know when to hide from a surprise attack?
|
| The easier it gets to give people the tools and power of lethal
| force, the more preventable injuries and death happen to
| innocent people. The cover of military conflict should not
| protect from consequences in cases like this.
|
| Knowing the demographics of this website, it will not make
| anyone here safer that there is credible proof of Israel using
| Whatsapp metadata to source location data of adult men, and
| executing strikes based on that information. Western media
| already shared stories of how ordinary cell phone metadata was
| used to conduct strikes that killed innocent civilians. 15-20
| years later the exact same deadly inaccurate methods are being
| used to quench the leaders' and planners' thirst for any
| results. One day a bomb might fall on any of our homes purely
| based on some circumstantial proof that wouldn't even be enough
| for a traffic violation...
| puelocesar wrote:
| > Knowing the demographics of this website
|
| Any chance of elaborating on that? I'm new here, so I don't
| get it
| pasquinelli wrote:
| > Whether it was overconfidence in their tools or a complete
| disregard for the lives of civilians that caused this lapse
| _snip_
|
| it could be both, but we know no. 2, the complete disregard for
| the lives of civilians, is in play because, whatever else was
| going on, america was initiating war for the purpose of
| destabilizing a country, afaict at least, the reasoning has
| been unclear. destablize means to try to make things fuck up,
| and that tends to kill people. what people? how? who knows?
| things fucking up means out of control. at that point it's up
| to physics, not people.
|
| it's like, if i set a house on fire, then later defended that
| action by claiming to have not known where i started the fire
| was a nursery.
|
| back in the war on terror days america had a habit of blowing
| up weddings, and then claiming it was an accident. and i would
| think, accident how? did the missile fire itself?
| dylan604 wrote:
| We learned that Israel was going to strike, so the US decided
| to jump on board. Do we know how long of a notice Israel gave
| the US? What you're attributing to as a thought out plan of
| attack seems to imply plenty of time. I don't think it's
| unreasonable for Israel to have learned of the meeting with
| little notice, deliberated internally for however long, and
| then told the US about it with not much time. I could totally
| see where under current Pentagon leadership, three clicks would
| have been the reaction. Yes, the US had been saber rattling and
| building pressure. That's probably part of why the Iranian
| leadership decided to meet. Whatever plans the US might have
| had went out the window when Israel called up and said we're
| striking now.
| burnte wrote:
| When AI gets something wrong, it's the operator's fault, IMO.
| throwaway613746 wrote:
| AI isn't an excuse for war crimes. Remember this at, and after,
| election time.
| keiferski wrote:
| Before it was the gods, then God, then Nature, and now AI. Human
| beings really have a fundamental issue with accepting
| responsibility for their actions.
|
| From a certain angle, the entire industrial and computer age
| looks like a massive effort to remove all responsibility for our
| actions, permanently.
| sva_ wrote:
| Turning a military building into a girl's school, and then having
| this school right next to other military buildings - is this
| something that happens often? Or were there ulterior motives
| behind it?
| qat-1209 wrote:
| Yes, the US has 160 schools on military bases:
|
| https://www.militaryonesource.mil/education-employment/for-c...
| platevoltage wrote:
| Yeah man. Who's ever heard of a military base with a school on,
| or near it besides every military officer with a family ever?
| Betelbuddy wrote:
| Its not a war crime if the AI does it?
| albatross79 wrote:
| Had Iran done anything to the US as heinous as this one "mistake"
| in the last 50 years that compares? Imagine if some country did
| this to us and just brushed it off as a mistake.
| buttersicle wrote:
| Yes. They funded Hamas' invasion of Israel, a close ally of the
| US, which intentionally killed over 1000 civilians.
|
| They have also repeatedly threatened to use nuclear weapons on
| Israel and were in the process of developing such weapons.
| albatross79 wrote:
| >> has A attacked B?
|
| > Yes, C attacked D
| platevoltage wrote:
| I've never seen anyone with negative karma on HN. Who decides
| who gets to have nukes? Why doesn't Israel lead by example?
| EtienneDeLyon wrote:
| Isn't it a more reasonable explanation that the IDF deliberately
| had this school bombed because those schoolgirls were the
| children of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officers?
|
| The intentional murder of enemy children is a tactic of the IDF.
| They've done it for decades.
| kakacik wrote:
| kakacik's razor - Never attribute to incompetence of IDF/Mosad
| that which is adequately explained by laser focus intent to
| murder and exterminate enemy at all costs, via all avenues, all
| is allowed.
| thomassmith65 wrote:
| That theory seems unhinged to me. Somebody is divorced from
| reality. Hopefully not me.
|
| There are rumors that the IRGC has started to recruit
| adolescents (again). I'd have an easier time believing that,
| but where the Middle East is concerned, there is an endless
| amount of propaganda and hyperbole, so I don't automatically
| believe what I read. Pardon my condescension, but it would make
| the comments sections better if everyone did likewise.
| sessionfs wrote:
| Ai makes mistakes, we all know that.
| pimlottc wrote:
| That is not what this article is about at all.
| platevoltage wrote:
| Yeah no big deal right?
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| The House of Saud put out an interesting think piece suggesting
| the whole war might be a result of AI psychosis.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47540422
|
| The submission here is flagged dead though.
| coffinbirth wrote:
| The US is a morally and ethically bankrupt country, that's why
| something like this happens. Not the first time either[1].
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiriyah_shelter_bombing
| lejalv wrote:
| Time for a massive boycott to all US-American products? Or what
| else will stop the thugs?
| WarmWash wrote:
| Being comfortable with China playing America's role.
| lejalv wrote:
| For a change, yes
| DrProtic wrote:
| It's well known that US doesn't commit war crimes, they just make
| mistakes.
| tacheiordache wrote:
| I wonder if the coordinates for the school were passed to US
| intel on purpose to have US deeper entrenched into a war with
| Iran.. Who would benefit from this?
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| I 100% believe this was done by somebody inside our
| administration. It's totally in character for them. Look at
| what they do to immigrants and our own citizens. They
| intentionally target children.
|
| But if you wanna look externally, you can't rule out Israel.
| They have intentionally bombed a school to kill children in the
| past, well before Gaza.
|
| Before you take out your pitch fork, remember what the US did
| in Vietnam. Ugly stuff happens in ideological wars. It is not
| controversial to say Israel has done similar things.
|
| Also, someone in our very pro-Israel administration claimed
| they got us into this war. Israel manipulating an ally is
| completely unsurprising.
|
| But it doesn't stop at Israel. I think every single ally we
| have in the Middle East would do the same thing. Everyone
| they're fighting already does.
| expedition32 wrote:
| Are Americans not even aware of their own history? The US carpet
| bombed the SHIT out of Korea and Vietnam. All it did was convince
| their enemies to fight.
|
| And then in Afghanistan and Iraq the US terrified of every shadow
| blew up anything that looked suspicious- again only serving their
| enemies.
|
| It is all just so damn tiresome and America never learns because
| it literally cannot go 5 years without starting some unnecessary
| and ultimately futile conflict.
|
| Imagine how much money China is saving.
| worik wrote:
| https://youtu.be/01-2pNCZiNk?si=b9GSPaNpnTGAI1wA
| tristanj wrote:
| A similar situation happened a few weeks ago when the US/Israel
| started targeting Iranian police facilities. They bombed a public
| park in Tehran called "Police Park" because it has the name
| "Police" in it. It's a normal park.
|
| https://x.com/clashreport/status/2029574288253026510
| https://x.com/tparsi/status/2029555364262228454
|
| If you asked AI to "list the top 100 police facilities in
| Tehran", this location would appear on the list. It's clear
| they're using AI to pick targets.
| nailer wrote:
| Give me a source that says Police Park was hit. AFAICT while
| the place exists, this story was made up.
| jmward01 wrote:
| I blame everything on the air force AOC concept and the joint
| targeting cycle. They are, at their core, an attempt to manage
| every aspect of a war from one room. It 'works' in peace time
| when you have exactly 3 real decisions to make a day and a staff
| of hundreds to orchestrate it but in war it is completely
| unresponsive, blind because all information comes through the
| telephone game and bought 100% into the idea that 'if all you
| have is a hammer, everything is a nail' problem. We have bombs.
| Let's bomb them. This is why we loose wars.
|
| Our operational level of war is junk. We have forgotten how to
| create a task force that has has a clear mission with a clear
| duration, resources, battlespace, ROE and, most importantly,
| authority to act. McChrystal 'rediscovered' empowering small
| teams that every flag officer rediscovers eventually in war. If
| your supporting the commander's cycle means enabling them to make
| all the decisions then you have just decided to loose the war.
| They can't make all the decisions. They need to expand that
| decision making power. That is their job. Build teams that have
| the authority and resources. Let those teams, if needed, also
| build teams if the problem is too big. Most importantly though,
| let those teams act. If you can't trust those commanders to make
| decisions and act on them then you shouldn't have put them in the
| job. Divide and conquer is the only solution here and the JTS/AOC
| model of warfare is the antithesis of this.
| nailer wrote:
| The school was located adjacent to (or on the border of) an
| Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) naval compound/base.
| Evidence (satellite imagery, verified videos, missile fragments
| consistent with a US Tomahawk cruise missile, and geolocation)
| shows the area was targeted as part of strikes on that military
| site
|
| > Within days, the question that organised the coverage was
| whether Claude, a chatbot made by Anthropic, had selected the
| school as a target.
|
| Really? Everyone thought the US had *missed*.
| plorg wrote:
| Did anyone seriously believe this was the AI's fault? The modern
| military use of LLMs is very clearly for the purpose of creating
| vaguely plausible targets while distancing any person from the
| decision to murder people. Surely if we cared at all about
| accomplishing a strategic goal we would have had a set of well
| documented targets ready to go. Instead the goal seems to be to
| drop as many bombs as possible, hope the computer's good enough
| that they mostly hit people who have relevance to things we don't
| like, and loudly proclaim that it's more important to kill people
| than it is to have any goal at all.
| basisword wrote:
| Not sure how you could live with yourself if you were building
| software that was used to kill children. I know tools can be used
| in ways you can't anticipate but if you're actively supporting
| the military in their use of it which in my eyes makes you
| responsible.
| 01100011 wrote:
| The west should have just used cluster munitions in ballistic
| missiles. Apparently you can target civilians with those and no
| one will accuse you of war crimes. Drones hitting residential
| buildings, airports and critical energy infrastructure? No
| problem. If you use an F-35 and smart munitions we expect perfect
| accuracy though.
|
| This war is stupid, poorly planned, and likely to kick off a
| global recession. Trump and his cabinet lacks intelligent people.
| All of that is true. But there is also a shocking moral
| relativism going on that is embarrassing and disheartening to
| watch.
| indubioprorubik wrote:
| We have a ghazillion incidents- where islamists use kids as human
| shields. Now the sponsor power of that whole ideological block
| gets attacked- and im supossed to worry about target selection?
| Like, you lied, a million times in my face. You used
| disenfranchised and the trampled of the west as puppets for your
| islamo-supremacist scheming, like any other empire. And now you
| get whats coming to you and im supossed to fall, one last ride,
| for the "puppies in danger". By the same regime, that send
| thousands of basdisch child soldiers, tied together with ropes,
| plastic keys to heave, into the mine fields of the shat-el-arab?
| Is there anyone out there, giving the time of day at this point?
| cedws wrote:
| The US under Trump is behaving exactly like a country with
| intentions of damaging the Western order and antagonising enemies
| to open new front lines. I think writing off Trump's actions as
| stupid is wrong, he's malicious.
| shevy-java wrote:
| > Within days, the question that organised the coverage was
| whether Claude, a chatbot made by Anthropic, had selected the
| school as a target.
|
| I don't buy into that story. While in theory many possibilities
| may exist, I think this was a targeted hit by the decision-makers
| in the US military. There are some reasons as to why I think this
| is the case - for instance, under Hegseth and Trump the lies
| amplified in general, and truth dies first in war. Fishing boats
| were claimed to be drug boats. Or the iranian ship that was taken
| down by a torpedo - that was also deliberate. So, all of what the
| current mafia in charge does, has a purpose: an evil purpose, but
| a purpose. I could list some more reasons I think this was not an
| accident, but I believe the most convincing one is actually that
| there is a prior incident to this. Not of a school (or, at the
| least perhaps there was, but I don't quite recall it), but of the
| chinese embassy.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_bombing_of_the_C...
|
| This happened in 1999. The USA initially also claimed it was an
| accidental hit. Various other sources then pointed out that this
| explanation made no sense; a simple one I remember is that a
| statistics scientist pointed out that the "random hit" theory
| made no sense. There were others who came to the same conclusion
| but from a different angle; the statistics example I remember
| because I read it in a book about statistics a few years after
| that (that is, I read the book a few years lateron, the initial
| writing happened much closer to 1999).
|
| The current invasion Trump is doing also carries a strong
| "contain China" attempt with it. To me, I think it is much more
| likely that the hit on the school was deliberate. The tactic that
| is being employed here is to commit to the invasion. This is why
| you can not buy anything Trump says - you'll see that there is a
| step-wise escalation path coming from the USA right now. Trump is
| just the decoy on top; the commitment already happened. You'll
| see more ground troops being committed as the next step.
|
| People really should not buy into ANYTHING that is coming out of
| the current US administration. Hegseth also recently went for a
| copy/paste job from the movie Pulp Fiction, when Samuel Jackson
| cites a bible verse before violence. Hegseth did not use the same
| words, of course, and the objective was more aimed on christian
| fanatics in the country, but they are really trying to push every
| button here. See also how they tried to sell this as a video game
| via ads. This government is a lost cause and dictators who want
| war, be it Putin or Trump, should never ever be trusted anywhere.
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