Lawfare Daily: AI Targeting Systems Are Coming—But Not as Fast as You Think
Steve Feldstein argues that the conventional wisdom about AI warfare has it backwards.
On this episode, Senior Editor Kate Klonick speaks with Steve Feldstein, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, about his recent Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists essay on AI targeting systems. Feldstein argues that the conventional wisdom about AI warfare has it backwards: the technology's battlefield debut in Iran, Ukraine, and Gaza is real and consequential, but AI targeting is not a model you download—it's a stack of surveillance infrastructure, data pipelines, battle management software, and strike capacity that takes decades and billions to build, which means it will spread far more slowly and unevenly than the common narrative suggests.
Among the things they discuss: what the Iran War's staggering Maven numbers do and don't prove, how Israel became the case study in what it actually takes to build an AI kill chain, why the same handful of American tech companies that govern online speech now supply the infrastructure of targeting—and who is accountable when they do, whether the UAE is next, and whether export controls, or norms, can realistically slow any of it down.
Additional resources:
- Steve Feldstein, “Bytes and Bullets: Global Rivalry, Private Tech, and the New Shape of Modern Warfare” (St. Martin's Press, September 2026)
- Steve Feldstein, "Anthropic-Pentagon Feud Over AI Technology Is a Bad Sign" (Foreign Policy, February 2026)
- Steve Feldstein, “The Rise of Digital Repression: How Technology is Reshaping Power, Politics, and Resistance” (Oxford University Press, 2021)
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