Israel consolidates all military AI under “Bina” as oversight questions grow

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has created a new AI division meant to bring battlefield computation closer to real-time decision-making. This is, of course, preparation for the next decade of warfare, but to critics, the use of AI by Israelis – for example, in Gaza – is already deeply unethical.

The division, named Bina, Hebrew for “intelligence,” will consolidate nearly all of the IDF’s existing AI units under a single command and define how algorithms shape Israeli military operations in the decade ahead.

The aim, according to senior officers quoted in Ynetnews, is not simply administrative streamlining but the creation of a unified engine for data, software, and operational learning across the IDF.

Maj. Gen. Aviad Dagan, head of the IDF’s C4I and Cyber Defense Directorate, said the goal is to build an efficient “machine” for the coming decade, aimed at readiness for war and increasing forces.

“The goal is to turn one tank into a hundred tanks, one soldier into a hundred fighters,” said Dagan.

For example, a software tool that transcribes all IDF radio networks in real-time, cataloging everything into a database processed by AI, was recently developed.

This means that, at least in theory, brigade commanders in the field no longer need a status report. They simply ask, and the system provides an immediate answer.

Judging from official releases, the overhaul is poised to redefine the character of the next war. However, AI is already extensively used by the IDF in Gaza and the occupied West Bank – and the critics say it’s extremely problematic.

Indeed, IDF’s AI-powered systems played a central role in the Gaza war, for instance, drawing up so-called target banks from vast databases and producing bombing targets with limited human oversight. The protocol has been partly blamed for the extremely high number of civilian casualties.

Already in 2021, Yossi Sariel, commander of Unit 8200, Israel’s elite cyber warfare agency, chillingly wrote in his book “The Human-Machine Team” that humans were “the bottleneck” preventing the creation and approval of bombing targets.

Investigators from the Israeli magazine +972 then reported details of how AI was driving the destructive campaign in Gaza.

A November 2023 story revealed that the IDF was using a system called “The Gospel,” selecting buildings as targets far faster than previously. One former intelligence officer described the system as a “mass assassination factory.”

Israel insists that the AI systems the IDF uses are merely tools to help identify targets.

A few months later, +972 reported the existence of the “Lavender” program, already selecting people rather than structures as targets. According to sources, the system selected 37,000 suspected militants and their homes as possible airstrike targets in the early days of the conflict.

Israel insists that the AI systems the IDF uses are merely tools to help identify targets, and that all targets are independently verified by a human intelligence analyst as legitimate to attack.

But +972 sources described a “rubber stamp” approach to the targets flagged by the AI-powered systems, with a mere 20 seconds spent on each one before authorizing a bombing.

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