Israel leads use of military AI: a threat to global peace

The Global Peace Index (GPI) has identified the use of military Artificial Intelligence (AI) by Israel in Gaza and Iran, and by Russia in Ukraine, as a key new threat to the world.

The annual report produced by the Institute for Economics and Peace analyses trends in violent conflict and the economic cost of war.

This year, Israel ranks as 159 of 163 countries on a measure of the country’s peacefulness. Only Ukraine, Congo, Sudan and Russia rank more poorly. Israel recorded a 2.6 per cent improvement on the previous year, largely due to the Gaza ceasefire that ran from January to March 2025, although these figures do not take into account the Iran war that started in late February 2026.

The report focused on the growth of AI in military actions as a major new threat. It found Ukraine was the most consequential testing ground for autonomous and AI-enabled systems, with as many as five million military drones produced in 2025.

The GPI identified Israel’s use of AI in Gaza as moving the technology to “the cognitive core of military targeting”.

An Israeli system called Habsora uses automatic tools to produce targets, generating 100 new targets a day, against a previous baseline of around 50 a year.