AI

• That is the hallmark of a dictatorship, not a democracy.” As well as restrictions on media access to Gaza, particular broadcasters face other restrictions.
• At the start of April Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu had proclaimed he would “act immediately to stop” Qatar-based broadcaster Al Jazeera’s operations inside Israel.
• Israel’s parliament passed a bill allowing it to close Al Jazeera’s office in Israel, block its website and ban local channels from using its coverage.
• The CPJ said on April 20 that at least 97 journalists and media workers were among the more than 34,000 people killed since the war began.

Access to Gaza

• However, journalists’ organisations and the correspondents themselves have been lobbying for access to Gaza for months now.
• The BBC’s international editor Jeremy Bowen, also speaking in Perugia, confirmed that it had been a really difficult story to cover, principally, “because the main meat of it – which is what’s happening in Gaza, we can’t get close to”.
• This has given journalists access to the West Bank and enabled coverage of settler violence against the local Palestinian population, but not to Gaza.
• CNN’s Clarissa Ward was the first foreign journalist who made it into Gaza without the army, and she did this by accompanying an aid convoy supported by the United Arab Emirates in December 2023.

Israeli media coverage

• Within Israel, the media are mostly publishing the IDF version of events unchallenged.
• According to Israeli journalist and activist Anat Saragusti: “Hebrew-speaking Israelis watching television news are not exposed at all to what’s going on in Gaza.
• In the same article, cultural commentator and academic David Gurevitz claimed the numbers of Palestinians killed remains an abstract concept for many Israelis: “The Israeli audience isn’t capable of accommodating two kinds of pain together, seeing and identifying with the human victim of the other side as such, and the media follow suit.” This argument was backed up this month by Israeli journalist Yossi Klein who wrote: “The most taboo number in Israel is 34,000.

Professor Colleen Murrell receives funding from Ireland's regulator Coimisiún na Meán to research and write the annual Reuters Digital News Report Ireland.

• The rise of commercially viable generative artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to transform a vast range of sectors.
• Generative AI will fundamentally reshape war gaming — analytical games that simulate aspects of warfare at tactical, operational or strategic levels — by allowing senior military and political leaders to pursue better tactical solutions to unexpected crises, solve more complex logistical and operational challenges and deepen their strategic thinking.

The art of war gaming

• From its inception, war gaming has been intended to offer realistic training to commanders that could otherwise only be gained through real-world experience.
• War gaming also offers a way to test operational plans, allowing leaders to gain experience planning large-scale operations and work through complex logistical challenges.
• Lastly, war games provide the foundation for a common strategic culture within a country’s military and national security institutions.

Generative AI

• As with other strategy games like chess, Risk and Go, generative AI will be capable of challenging commanders’ handling of battlefield tactics.
• Advances in AI could allow military leaders to gain additional competencies in handling sophisticated military AI and receive tactical advice from a broader range of perspectives.
• Lastly, generative AI will allow war games to incorporate more strategy, providing invaluable insights and experience to both military and political leaders.

Preparing for uncertainty

• AI’s capacity to introduce new developments into game play, including through its faulty assumptions, will force commanders to prepare for uncertainty and the “fog of war,” an increasingly necessary skill in the complex environment of contemporary combat.
• Read more:
  Robots can outwit us on the virtual battlefield, so let's not put them in charge of the real thing

Military science revolution

• The rise of generative AI and its contribution to war gaming will likely prompt yet another revolution in the field of military science.
• These games will improve the realism of training exercises and prepare leaders for the future of conflict, solve complex logistical challenges and spark new innovations in overarching military strategy.

John Long Burnham does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Authors: Yirong Sun and Jingxian Zeng Edited by Josh Lee Kok Thong (FPF) and Sakshi Shivhare (FPF) The following is a guest post to the FPF blog by Yirong Sun, research fellow at the New York University School of Law Guarini Institute for Global Legal Studies at NYU School of Law: Global Law & Tech [?]

• The U.S. government moved closer to banning the video social media app TikTok after the House of Representatives attached the measure to an emergency spending bill on Apr.
• The move could improve the bill’s chances in the Senate, and President Joe Biden has indicated that he will sign the bill if it reaches his desk.
• The bill would force ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok, to either sell its American holdings to a U.S. company or face a ban in the country.
• For one, ByteDance can be required to assist the Chinese Communist Party in gathering intelligence, according to the Chinese National Intelligence Law.
• The fact that China, a country that Americans criticize for its authoritarian practices, bans social media platforms is hardly a reason for the U.S. to do the same.
• Here’s why I think the recent move against TikTok misses the larger point: Americans’ sources of information have declined in quality and the problem goes beyond any one social media platform.

The deeper problem

• But the proposed solution of switching to American ownership of the app ignores an even more fundamental threat.
• The deeper problem is not that the Chinese government can easily manipulate content on the app.
• It is, rather, that people think it is OK to get their news from social media in the first place.
• In other words, the real national security vulnerability is that people have acquiesced to informing themselves through social media.

Media and technology literacy

• Research suggests that it will only be alleviated by inculcating media and technology literacy habits from an early age.
• My colleagues and I have just launched a pilot program to boost digital media literacy with the Boston Mayor’s Youth Council.
• Some of these measures to boost media and technology literacy might not be popular among tech users and tech companies.

The Applied Ethics Center at UMass Boston receives funding from the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. Nir Eisikovits serves as the data ethics advisor to Hour25AI, a startup dedicated to reducing digital distractions.