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The algorithm goes to war

KR · · Korea Times

There is a moment in the history of every transformative weapon when it stops being a tool and starts being a doctrine. The machine gun remade European civilization, burying a generation in Flanders mud. The atomic bomb ended one war and restructured global politics for generations — producing a permanent architecture of mutual dread we still inhabit. Each time, the technology moved first. Accountability scrambled after. We are at that inflection point again. Artificial intelligence (AI) is not approaching the battlefield. It is already there — identifying targets, compressing decision cycles, reshaping the fundamental grammar of modern warfare. The question is no longer whether AI transforms how wars are fought. It does. The urgent, uncomfortable question is whether democratic societies actually "chose" this — or simply woke up inside it. Project Maven, the Pentagon's flagship AI targeting program, began modestly enough. Analysts drowning in drone footage needed relief. Let machine vision sort the imagery, the argument went, and free human judgment for what matters. Track motorc