Update 9/18, 7 a.m. EST: In a press conference Wednesday, Lebanese Health Minister Firas Abiad updated the casualties, saying close to 2,800 injured and 12 dead in yesterday's exploding pager attack. An 11-year-old boy, in addition to an 8-year-old girl, are among the dead.
It's not clear at this juncture whether theexploding Hezbollah pager attack in Lebanon that has so far killed nine people — including an 8-year-old girl — and injured nearly 3,000 — including Iran’s ambassador, who was using Hezbollah’s phone network— was a between-meal snack or an amuse bouche preceding a lavish entrée.
Reports indicate this was a coordinated attack and a significant breach of the militants’ communications system. Presumably the Israelis, if they intend to strike, will want to do so while Hezbollah’s command and control is disrupted.
Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant has been eager to commence some sort of large-scale operation in the north; this is why he has been a proponent of a Gaza ceasefire. Apparently, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made the return of Israeli civilians to their homes in the north a war aim. He has said this publicly but more importantly directly to the senior U.S. official monitoring the situation. (For the record, Washington has noted that a war in the north would preclude the return of internally displaced Israelis to northern towns.)
Apart from Israel’s exploitation of Hezbollah communications to enable the detonation of thousands of pagers, there have not been any obvious precursors to a large-scale Israeli ground attack. It is possible, of course, that the IDF is content to stage an incursion with a smaller force than would seem prudent, along the lines of the one currently deployed to the northern front (1 active and 1 reserve division). But the operational risk could be considerable. So for the moment, it’s wait and see.
Steven Simon is the visiting professor of practice in Middle Eastern studies at the Jackson School of International Relations, University of Washington, and Senior Research Fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Previously, he was the Robert E. Wilhelm Fellow in International Affairs at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He served as the National Security Council senior director for counterterrorism in the Clinton White House and for the Middle East and North Africa in the Obama White House. He is the author of "Grand Delusion: The Rise and Fall of American Ambition in the Middle East" (2023).
A person is carried on a stretcher outside American University of Beirut Medical Center (AUBMC) as people, including Hezbollah fighters and medics, were wounded and killed when the pagers they use to communicate exploded across Lebanon, according to a security source, in Beirut, Lebanon September 17, 2024. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir TPX
Ronald Lamola, South Africa Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, with Joy Reid, National Press Club, Washington, 9/17/24. (Khody Akhavi/Quincy Institute)
In his first official visit to Washington since his appointment in June, Ronald Lamola, South Africa's Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, was quite frank about global obligations regarding Gaza.
“We are clear in our condemnation of what we believe is genocide that is happening,” he said of the Israel war in the Gaza Strip and the case that South Africa has brought to the International Court of Justice. The court in January agreed there were "plausible" grounds for South Africa to make a case that what is happening in Gaza is genocide. The ICJ has not made a final ruling on the question of genocide under the 1948 Genocide Convention (of which Israel is not a member).
As for South Africa's other case, on the impact of Israel’s illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, Lamola likened his own country’s history with apartheid to what Palestinians are enduring in the territories.
“(It’s) similar to what we had gone through as a country,” he said at the event hosted by the Quincy Institute at the National Press Club Tuesday morning. “We have a moral obligation, more than any other country in the world, to stand up and say what Israel is doing is unlawful… having lived the experience of what Palestinians are currently experiencing.”
He was responding to a question asked by interviewer and MSNBC host Joy Reid, who noted that a world-wide campaign of boycott and divestment had led to the collapse of the apartheid government in South Africa in 1990. Should the world be doing the same for Palestinians, she asked, acknowledging that this is a radioactive issue in Washington and in many states, which have tried to ban BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movements against Israel for years.
Lamola didn’t hesitate. “There is no reason that there should not be action taken by member states to put the necessary pressure on the state of Israel,” to stop fueling its military operations (which South Africa believes is a genocide) against Palestinians in Gaza, he said, and that includes an arms embargo. Right now Israel has no “disincentive” to end the war, he added. He did not say anything about the war crimes charges against Hamas leaders or the group's obligations to release the hostages taken during its Oct. 7 attack on Israel, which began the war 11 months ago.
Since January the ICJ has issued several orders to Israel, including opening up Gaza to humanitarian aid, to stop its illegal occupation, and to not invade Rafah. The court has no enforcement powers and depends on member states to put on the pressure. The U.S., which is a member, has chosen to rebuke the court for its rulings. Meanwhile, accounts by journalists who have been allowed to see Rafah have said the place is now decimated.
Lamola said more countries are "pushing for change" and "beginning to say something is wrong." South Africa already had strong support for its cases from the Global South. As of June more than 10 countries have officially joined or broadcast intention to join the genocide case, including Turkey, Egypt, and Spain. In February, some 52 countries spoke in favor of South Africa’s case against Israel’s occupation policies.
For its part, Israel has said the questions put to the court are biased and false and that the rulings undermine the delicate peace process. The U.S. government has largely supported Israel’s responses to the ICJ since the beginning of the year.
"We have been clear that Israel's program of government support for settlements is both inconsistent with international law and obstructs the cause of peace," a State Department spokesperson said after the ruling on occupation in June. "However, we are concerned that the breadth of the court's opinion will complicate efforts to resolve the conflict," the spokesperson added.
Lamola said South Africa supports not only the broader peace process, but current talks in Doha for a ceasefire.
He has similar thoughts on the Ukraine conflict too. When asked by Reid what South Africa’s response to Russia’s refusal to return lands taken from Ukraine in that war, Lamola said South Africa (which has pursued a more neutral stance than the West) supports diplomacy, not further war. South Africa supports Ukraine’s rights to "territorial integrity and independence,” but “we don’t see how you can resolve the conflict without engaging both parties," he said. "This is our view. Russia must be brought to the table, to engage with these issues and to find a resolution. The same with Palestine."
The 2021 National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI) final report (chaired by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt) declared that we are actively in an AI arms race by stating that “If the United States does not act, it will likely lose its leadership position in AI to China in the next decade.”
This race dynamic is unique because unlike other arms races (such as nuclear weapons), the vast majority of the breakthroughs in AI come from industry, not government. As one scholar puts it, “the AI security dilemma is driven by commercial and market forces not under the positive control of states.” Illustrating this dynamic, in August of 2023, Schmidt created White Stork, a military startup which is developing AI attack drones for Ukraine to deploy against Russia.
Thus the key actors to understanding AI in the military context are the companies that are developing AI and increasingly lobbying lawmakers and the public on the need to avoid regulation and to build AI into military systems. Actors in this space may have a mix of motivations, the most notable being a desire to generate profits and a desire to support U.S. military power by maintaining technological superiority over China. These motivations are often intertwined as individuals, corporations, and think tanks (such as the Schmidt-funded Special Competitive Studies Project) collaborate to promote a message that we need to build AI first and worry about the potential consequences later.
In particular there is an obsession with speed — winning the race is determined by whoever runs fastest. The NSCAI report bemoans that “the U.S. government still operates at human speed, not machine speed” and warns that “delaying AI adoption will push all of the risk onto the next generation of Americans — who will have to defend against, and perhaps fight, a 21st century adversary with 20th century tools.” According to this perspective, the risk posed by AI is failing to be first.
The downside of a race is that running at top speed doesn’t leave time for questioning if the race itself is creating dangers as the nuclear arms race did. And unfortunately the argument that we have to race ahead on AI has been weaponized by the tech industry as a shield against regulation. This timeline depicts the increasingly close collaboration between the tech industry and national security or political figures to frame competition with China as a key reason to avoid regulation of the tech industry and specifically AI.
This lobbying goes beyond the companies that are focused on developing AI for defense applications such as Palantir, to the biggest public companies — namely Meta. Meta in particular has shown a reckless lack of concern for potential misapplication of the frontier AI models that it publishes open source.
Open sourcing the most advanced models is unique among cutting edge AI developers and this public available code allows safety restrictions to be easily removed — which took place within days of their latest model release. Meta has spent over $85 million funding a dark money influence campaign lobbying against AI regulation through a front group, the American Edge Project, which paid for alarmist ads that describe AI regulation as “pro-China legislation.” As Helen Toner, a prominent AI safety expert, put it: the cold war dynamic of fearing China’s AI and a corresponding “…groundless sense of anxiety should not determine the course of AI regulation in the United States.”
Unfortunately this race rhetoric has already resulted in a near total block for meaningful federal legislation. While a number of bills have been introduced, Steve Scalise, Republican House Majority Leader has said that Republicans won’t support any meaningful AI regulation in order to uphold American technological dominance.
Former President Donald Trump has vowed to repeal the Biden Executive Order on AI on day one. Marc Andreesen, a prominent libertarian tech investor, has stated that his conversations about AI in D.C. with policymakers shift from them being pro AI-regulation to “we need American technology companies to succeed, and we need to beat the Chinese” when he brings up China. In an interview I conducted, AI journalist Shakeel Hashim explained, “very experienced lobbyists are talking about China a lot, and they are doing that because it works. Take the very hawkish Hill and Valley Forum, or the Meta-funded American Edge Project. The fact they, and others, are using the China narrative suggests that they are seeing it work."
While more conventional economic arguments about the need for unrestricted innovation have also been deployed widely by industry advocates when trying to shut down California’s AI regulation Senate Bill 1047, it seems that arguments of national security are especially potent at the national level and allow AI lobbyists to frame any potential regulation as unpatriotic.
The problem of AI development isn’t that any particular AI technology will necessarily be fatally flawed. The problem is that in the race to be first, concerns about the risks of particular AI projects or applications (whether internal or externally raised) will not be given sufficient weight.
On the commercial side we have already seen this dynamic play out with the gutting of OpenAI’s safety team. At OpenAI, the commercial market pressures to be at the forefront of AI led to product development taking the imperative over the concerns of the internal safety team. Jan Leike, the former head of the safety team, resigned and highlighted that his team wasn’t given access to promised resources and that safety had “taken a backseat to shiny products.” Lack of transparency does not enable us to identify similar incidents of safety being sidelined in the context of military AI development, but it’s not hard to imagine safety concerns being sidelined.
Unfortunately, AI regulatory efforts will likely face greater resistance over time as more companies perceive their economic interests as being best served by minimal regulation. This dilemma was identified by David Collingridge, author of “The Social Control of Technology,” who has noted that it is easier to regulate a technology before it is threatening, but difficult once it has become integrated into the world and the economy.
This challenge subsequently became known as the Collingridge dilemma. The only solution to the Collingridge dilemma is to take bold action now and heed the calls of AI experts that the risks stemming from AI are real.
keep readingShow less
A photograph, taken during an embed with the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and reviewed by the IDF censorship office prior to publication, shows Israeli soldiers guarding a tunnel in the Tel al Sultan area. Credit: Ilia Yefimovich/dpa via Reuters Connect
Hamas terrorists were responsible for the deaths of 1,139 Israelis – mostly civilians – on October 7, 2023. The Israeli government was fully within its rights to bring the terrorists to justice.
But nearing the one-year mark of Israel’s resultant war against Hamas, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may now be an impediment to peace rather than providing a path to it.
No one can question Israel’s right to seek justice for Hamas’s bloody massacre on 10/7 and few challenge Washington for providing military support to Israel as it seeks to punish Hamas. Yet it is entirely reasonable to question how Israel is conducting its operations, especially if it becomes apparent the Israeli government pursues a course of action that is ineffective — or worse — is making Israel less secure.
I have argued, as far back as November of last yearon CNN that Netanyahu has been using military power to pursue a political objective that cannot succeed: the total elimination of Hamas. The reason is simple: one cannot kill an idea with bombs and bullets.
Israel unequivocally has the single most powerful military in the Middle East. In the aftermath of suffering a terrorist attack that caused large scale civilian casualties, it is an understandable and seductive temptation to use that military power to crush one’s enemy. But using a hammer to do a job more suited to a surgeon’s knife was always going to produce results that were anywhere from ineffective to outright self-defeating.
The task facing the Israeli government following 10/7 was monumental: how to bring justice to the political and military force of Hamas (numbering somewhere around 30,000 fighters) who were interwoven within a civilian population of approximately 2.3 million? Taking no action was never an option, so the only question was how best to conduct lethal military operations to justly degrade Hamas.
Doing the job right would have been costly to the Israeli Defense Forces in terms of both time and troops lost. Generally, the IDF could have cut the Gaza strip into sections, isolating one from the rest. They could have screened and then temporarily relocated all the civilians into other secured areas, and then methodically moved through the cordoned area to either capture or kill all the fighters. Once an area was cleared, the civilian residents could have returned, and the IDF would move to the next cordoned area.
Collateral damage would have resulted everywhere Hamas fighters chose to stand and fight, but it would have been limited. Once an area had been cleansed of terrorists, the area would be secured by other troops to limit other Hamas fighters from returning. Meanwhile the civilian population would then be allowed to return and have a safe place to live.
As the U.S. Army did with mixed success in similar scaled urban operations in Iraq, the IDF could have prioritized protecting the civilian population, keeping them supplied with internationally provided relief supplies, and sought their help in identifying and removing Hamas. If the people were given motivation in helping to eliminate Hamas and given a legitimate path to even limited self-governance with a new political entity, it is possible the Palestinians could have made the IDF’s job less difficult.
That’s what Israel could have done; that’s what using a scalpel would have looked like.
What the IDF chose to do instead, however, is to use a sledgehammer to systematically destroy virtually everything inside the Gaza strip. Tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians have been directly killed by IDF operations and hundreds of thousands more suffer from injury and disease; virtually the entire population is now at risk of famine. However many actual Hamas fighters Israel has killed are likely dwarfed by the number of Palestinian males who now hate Israel and desire revenge for the death of loved ones.
I observed firsthand in both Iraq and Afghanistan how U.S. military operations that inadvertently killed innocent Afghan and Iraqi citizens always produced more enemies for us to face. The last decade of the Afghan war — including the surge and a total of 140,000 U.S. and NATO troops supporting over 350,000 Afghan security forces — saw the number of Taliban fighters against us explode from an estimated 20,000 in 2014 to over 75,000 by 2021.
The number of men willing to take up arms against Israel today is likely many times more than the 30,000 it was last October.
The damage done to Israeli security interests over the past 11 months has been incalculable. We likely won’t know for years to come just how much damage has been done. But before any more harm is done, before Netanyahu’s sledgehammer strategy produces even worse results, Washington should demand a change of course and a genuine effort to find a ceasefire — or be willing to use our leverage and withhold major weapons and ammunition deliveries.
There remains an uncomfortably high chance the war escalates and blows up into a regional conflagration that could draw the U.S. into a direct role — strongly antithetical to our interests. American, and even Israeli, interests are best served by limiting the damage done thus far by Hamas’s terror attack last October and Israel’s counterproductive response by seeking an immediate ceasefire to allow the possibility of a long-term solution to be formed.
There will be no quick solution and no painless, cost-free ways to end this war; it took decades to get to this point and it will take decades to solve it. But things are at least manageable today. Failure to show firm U.S. leadership to bring the fighting to an end and start the long, laborious diplomatic process could result in America inadvertently getting sucked into a regional war.
Subscribe now to our weekly round-up and don't miss a beat with your favorite RS contributors and reporters, as well as staff analysis, opinion, and news promoting a positive, non-partisan vision of U.S. foreign policy.