The major challenge in fighting terrorists is distinguishing them from the general population. Killing innocent people is against international law and harms the country doing it. While killing terrorists is acceptable and even desirable to many people.

If a targeting system is more intelligent, it should be better at reducing the loss of innocent life while still delivering the same kill rate of actual terrorists.

Israel’s system, based on reporting, does the opposite.

So we can see that their use of an AI system to do this targeting reflects an insight not into the operational benefits of AI, but the cultural benefits.

By spending tons of money and time and calling it “artificial intelligence,” the targeting team has developed a far more flexible pretext for violence. “This incredibly advanced AI system said he’s a target” is now enough to go drop a bomb… even if the incredible AI system is simply set to have its filters wide open.

This is what YS means by “A team consisting of machines and investigators can blast the bottleneck wide open.” The humans build the machines to be extremely credulous, and then tell everyone else that the machine ID’d each target as a legitimate target.