WASHINGTON, March 12 – A U.S.-Israeli airstrike that destroyed a girls' school in southern Iran last month may have resulted from faulty intelligence or a critical failure in artificial intelligence targeting systems, according to a Washington Post investigation citing multiple officials.

The report indicates initial confusion among officials about why the school appeared on a target list. While a core intelligence error in locating the objective is considered the most probable cause, the role of AI systems remains a pressing, unanswered question. Both militaries employ Palantir's Maven platform to process vast streams of reconnaissance data and flag potential targets.

The U.S. variant of this system reportedly integrates technology from Anthropic's Claude. Sources suggest that in the rapid execution of the large-scale operation, dubbed "Epic Fury," AI-selected targets might not have undergone sufficient human review. This incident follows a reported Pentagon demand, refused by Anthropic, for unrestricted military access to Claude. The company maintained that AI systems are not yet reliable enough for autonomous use in warfare and require stringent human oversight.

The February 28 strike, which killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and over 1,300 others according to Iran's UN envoy, marked the conflict's opening salvo. Iran has since conducted retaliatory strikes against U.S. and Israeli positions in the region. The tragedy has ignited a fierce internal debate on the accelerating integration of algorithmic tools into life-and-death combat decisions.

Source: RIA Novosti