Digital Targeting: Artificial Intelligence, Data, and Military Intelligence

Abstract

It is widely believed in global security studies that we are on the brink of another military revolution. Artificial intelligence is about to revolutionize the conduct of warfare, as gunpowder, tanks, aircraft and the atom bomb have in previous eras. In the light of these dramatic developments, scholars working on global security studies have been deeply interested by the military application of AI. AI will revolutionise the effectiveness of weapons, enabling the rise of killer-robots and swarms of autonomous drones. AI’s revolutionary potential lies, like gunpowder, in lethality. This paper takes an alternative perspective. It argues that AI has been primarily employed by the armed forces to process data. It has enhanced military intelligence and especially targeting, not the rise of lethal autonomous weapons. The paper explores this function through two case studies: the British Army mission to support civilian powers during the Covid crisis in Liverpool in 2020, and the US Army's XVIII Corps' assistance to the Ukrainian Armed Forces in 2022.