Last week I read two apparently completely unrelated articles: one about rapid advancements in cognitive-warfare – the other about the launch of a new chocolate company. And it is the way in which these radically-different ventures actually dovetail that intrigues me.
The first article was actually an advertising feature paid for by British Aerospace (BAE) Systems, addressing the question of How tomorrow’s technologies are changing the battlespace. It outlined clearly and with some detail how the so-called defence sector is focused on thinking ‘the unthinkable’ regarding future wars, and how ‘those tasked with keeping their nations secure against aggression by state and non-state actors must anticipate the influence of a broad range of technologies emerging now’.
In other words, artificial intelligence (AI) has changed the game and we must be ahead of the curve in this age of cognitive warfare.
To be ahead requires strategies designed around developments such as quantum advantage, overlapping robotics & automation systems – for example, highly accurate sensors – as well as predictive logistics that can forecast supply requirements. For those of us not versed in AI (I certainly am not, and I want to learn much more), these codified terms can be alien (pardon the pun), or overwhelming in what they suggest about where our world is heading. And that is kind of the point. As Mike Speirs of AI company Faculty AI put it, ‘These days there is simply too much information available for human analysts.’
Now, let’s turn one hundred & eighty degrees, towards the new chocolate venture. Palestinu is a new brand created by UK-based Palestinian engineer and entrepreneur Ibrahim Tabaza. He’s originally from Gaza, where his family still lives. Each of the four variations of chocolate sold by Palestinu is dedicated to a sister in his family: they are Tasneem, Somaia, Sama, and Asmaa. His sister Sama is studying intelligent systems engineering, Somaia is a physics student. But Tasneen was killed in Gaza last year during the war. Ibrahim called it ‘a defining moment’ for his family.
Ibrahim recently launched this brand to support his immediate and extended Gaza family. As you might know, conditions inside Gaza remain dire as the government of Israel continues to block humanitarian supplies from entering the Strip. Meanwhile eighty to a hundred thousand Gazans who escaped, or were evacuated to, Cairo, live without any official status including the right to work in Egypt in order to support themselves.
The Palestinu chocolate logo is the Palestinian firebird, symbol of resilience and belonging. The chocolate – which I haven’t yet tasted – is said to be excellent.
So what is the link between these ventures, and especially what they seek to achieve? As the BAE sponsored feature noted, there is too much information for individual human analysts to process. I’ve worked as a conflict analyst and advisor, I know this well. And the avalanche of data, and systems through which to analyse it, is only intensifying, driven by high-speed advances in both AI and AGI (artificial general intelligence). As the New Scientist, where this BAE advertising feature was originally published, observed, ‘data gathering is [now] as important as firepower.’
Data gathering also includes recording and analysing how weapons systems kill people, and other devastating impacts of wars. In this way analysis can serve the purpose of making individuals, companies and states accountable for what they do, and don’t do. A powerful example of this is the independent global online conflict monitor ACLED, that provides real-time data analysis of violent conflicts and protests across the world.
The slick advertising feature BAE placed in New Scientist talked up the urgency of algorithms accelerating the speed of decision-making in new battlespaces. It highlighted increasing collaborations between human and machine intelligence for both weapons firing and social media disinformation campaigns – and working out the intent of potential adversaries or belligerents.
There was however no reference to keeping civilians safe from such intelligent deadly weapons, to using technologies to better protect or to save lives, or the need to also focus AI innovations on doing so. This advertising pitch completely swerved any reference to civilians in battlespace. And when civilians are discounted, crudely, they often die, or are maimed for life.
Ibrahim Tabaza’s initiative was birthed during a hybrid war fought between the government of Israel and Hamas, with catastrophic consequences for the people of Gaza, consequences that continue today. Israel enjoyed a massive AI advantage throughout this war, but the number of civilians killed was by some estimates eighty percent of all killings inside Gaza. AI did not equate with less loss of human life. To the contrary, it seems to have aided the Israeli government in targeting journalists and medical staff inside Gaza with chilling precision.
In these last two years more humanitarian staff have been killed in Gaza by Israeli forces than during twenty years of the US-led war on Afghanistan.
My point is that these new battles for AI warfare supremacy risk dehumanising us in many ways: by undermining human-rights and context-based research and analysis in favour of lightening-speed decisions on battlespace advantage, whilst ramping up reliance on increasingly autonomous weapons systems when we do not have the laws, or means, to hold those building or operating these remote systems responsible. If you are interested, the BAE Human Rights Statement (2025) is here. The influential campaign group Stop Killer Robots explains the risks of autonomous weapons’ systems here.
We are already in a new age of AI and especially AGI, with risks most of us have never considered. We need to be afraid if civilian protections are not the central calculus of this race to gain innovation supremacy. Because a small army of AI engineers are in the process of designing the future of war at a distance, and the world does not feel any safer as a result, at all.
photo credit: Jason Mavrommatis on Unsplash
