Hacker News

New stories

Live mirror
30 storiesupdated just nowView source snapshot
  1. Microdnf: Minimal Python-Free Dnf(github.com/rpm-software-management)
    discuss
  2. Getting the most out of Opus 5.5 in Claude and Claude Code(claude.dev)
    discuss
  3. Show HN: DynamicNotch – An interactive, customizable notch utility for macOS(github.com/hitjack007)
    discuss
  4. Diesel prices could crush Republicans in the heartland(natesilver.net)
    discuss
  5. Meta's Muse Drags Down Stocks That Depend on 'Consumer Inertia'(bloomberg.com)
    discuss
  6. Ask HN: When is fine-tuning a small LLM worth it?
    discuss
  7. Are we going to use the same Desktop UX forever? [video](youtube.com)
    1comments
  8. Better prompt caching for GPT‑6(openai.com)
    discuss
  9. S&P Global Enters Agreement to Acquire OpenZeppelin(openzeppelin.com)
    discuss
  10. Z.ai says sorry for slurping up your code, open sources ZCode(theregister.com)
    discuss
  11. Bootstrapping Frontier AI Governance by Mutualizing Risk(lawfaremedia.org)
    discuss
  12. 'Same sense of urgency': UN chief compares AI risk to nuclear weapons(smh.com.au)
    1comments
  13. Agent's Memory Needs a Retention Policy(memanto.ai)
    discuss
  14. Hayek's Federalism and the Making of European Integration [pdf](cosmosandtaxis.org)
    1comments
  15. Are Meta's smart glasses training AI for robots?(proton.me)
    discuss
  16. Show HN: Shrewd – what I learned distilling LLM labels into local classifiers(github.com/sshah03)
    discuss
  17. Show HN: Riftri – copy-on-write Git worktrees for running agents in parallel(twitter.com/kinfisht)
    discuss
  18. The JavaScript Midlife Crisis(maroun-baydoun.com)
    2comments
  19. Ask HN: Ideas for getting more GitHub stars?
    1comments
  20. Open source tool for building hierarchical agent loops(github.com/plasma-ai)
    discuss
  21. How the Barcode Was Invented(worldofsystems.co)
    1comments
  22. I built a tool that reverse engineers competitors SEO(rankshawk.com)
    1comments
  23. Egress Testing – Server that records inbound TCP and UDP packets(portleak.link)
    1comments
  24. A16Z is challenging Silicon Valley's love for drop-outs by launching a school(techcrunch.com)
    2comments
  25. Reading specs beats reading code(technative.eu)
    1comments
  26. Native apps written in TypeScript and CSS(github.com/geastack)
    1comments
  27. Agent manager now with mouse support(agent-manager.dev)
    2comments
  28. Obscura: The first VPN that can't log your activity(obscura.com)
    14comments
  29. AI Leaders Are Standing on a Liability Landmine(wsj.com)
    2comments
  30. WebMCP Integration at Stripe(twitter.com/stevekaliski)
    discuss

Overreliance on AI contributed to missile strike on Iran school – Pentagon

197 pointsby 1h agobloomberg.com
98 comments
1h agoHN ↗

Given that everything emanating from this administration has a political agenda, does this mean that Thiel is on the outs?

1h agoHN ↗

The one that pulls the trigger bears the responsibility.

1h agoHN ↗

I would argue `s/pulls the trigger/gives the go ahead/` is intuitively more appropriate. The sailor on the boat that fired off the tomahawk (iirc) was likely not in a position to make an in-the-moment determination

57m agoHN ↗

The one that pulls the trigger is often not the one doing any targeting, especially on a strategic strike weapon like a tomahawk. They are receiving a target data package with preprogrammed instructions. Their role is far more... mechanical. They're not seeing the targets at all.

57m agoHN ↗

Completely disagree. When we’re talking about something like air, missile, or artillery strikes, the operator of the weapon system may literally never even see the target, on a screen or otherwise. They may simply be entering targeting information provided to them by an operations center. These decisions are social and group decisions, with distributed responsibility, which is why it’s so important to have institutions like the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence which historically has identified and helped implement the policies which prevent these kinds of disasters, but which unfortunately the current administration decided to shut down without a replacement.

Sometimes, the difference between a successful strike on a lawful combatant and disaster is one analyst pointing out that the building the enemy is hiding in is next to a square that’s used for a market on Tuesdays and wouldn’t you know it, it’s Tuesday. That’s not something the person “pulling the trigger,” can always be expected to know, which is why every ops center needs to be designed to elevate those voices, when the time comes

57m agoHN ↗

No. That's too easy on the higher ups, they never pull triggers.

1h agoHN ↗

Blowing up a school is proven route to diplomatic triumph and regime change!

1h agoHN ↗

While I think that it's important to do root cause analysis, we need to be very careful not to absolve blame from the people that decided to shift a significant weight of decision-making authority to an AI. An AI can be tried in a court. There has to be a responsible human for everyone one of its actions, especially when it's killing (-people-) children.

I cannot believe this has come to pass.

42m agoHN ↗

He's referring to this sentence:

An AI can be tried in a court.

An AI can't be tried in a court.

43m agoHN ↗

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/03/10/pentagon-iran-schoo...

The Pentagon chief last year slashed offices that didn’t contribute to his goal of “lethality,” including the group that assists in limiting risk to civilians, known as the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence. Around 200 employees who worked on the issue, including at that office, have been reduced by about 90 percent, according to two current and former officials and a person familiar with the effort. The team that handles civilian casualties at Central Command, which oversees the Middle East, has dropped from 10 to one.

Negligent homicide in pursuit of their DEI goals, basically.

35m agoHN ↗

Do you just chuck that on the end of any sentence, because this makes less sense than an LLM.

34m agoHN ↗

People were killed, i.e. homicide.

Negligence was involved.

DEI for drunk white men who look good on TV got us Hegseth.

22m agoHN ↗

The headline says "contributed to missile strike", not caused it.

1h agoHN ↗

Despite what AI told them, they knew it was a school full of kids. They still chose to kill them all with bomb. Only maniac would do such thing.

55m agoHN ↗

they knew it was a school full of kids.

I would like to know how you know this

1h agoHN ↗

DOGE strikes again. Edit actually looks like it was Hegseth himself, king Testosterone.

Staffing on civilian harm mitigation teams across the U.S. Department of Defense had also fallen by roughly 90% over recent years, shrinking to fewer than 20 people overall. Centcom’s group shrank from 10 people to one.

https://www.propublica.org/article/hegseth-civilian-harm-mit...

Edit: hilarious downvotes. Does DOGE get Elon Stan bots or something?

59m agoHN ↗

"stupid and energetic, the worst kind of general" - Indy Neidell

54m agoHN ↗

Paraphrasing the German General Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord

5m agoHN ↗

This is actually a much bigger close call than the hugging face incident. A hallucination almost triggered a possible precursor to WWIII.

1h agoHN ↗

nice, Karp really reeled in a nice big fish, and ofcourse he is going to blame OpenAI/Anthropic for giving the targets, this explains his CNBC rants about the frontiers, his tool was the trigger in a killchain of hallucination.

1h agoHN ↗

time to make Palantir the next Flock

France gave them the boot, you can too

1h agoHN ↗

Whole world is turning into an unlivable place and people who are doing it are not taking responsibility.

58m agoHN ↗

They never have. Their money insulates them from the consequences of their actions.

50m agoHN ↗

There’s a threshold where the money won’t insulate anymore.

10m agoHN ↗

They'll probably be dead by then. It's nihilistic. After us, the deluge...

1h agoHN ↗

Tragically this won't be the last time AI kills a lot of innocent people.

49m agoHN ↗

AI didn’t kill innocent people here, the Department of Defense and its decision-makers did.

49m agoHN ↗

This is not AI killing poeole, this is US government killing poeole.

59m agoHN ↗

so who is paying for this? "humans must always remain accountable for artificial intelligence (AI) decisions"

59m agoHN ↗

An Maven AI used Claude, which was denied here multiple times. Maybe call the next model after Fable Minab!

59m agoHN ↗

It found the U.S. “failed in its obligation to do everything feasible to verify” that the school was a military objective and that the failure “went beyond mere negligence.” The report said the United States “directed the strikes at the building of the school while being aware of a substantial risk of striking a civilian object and acting recklessly as regards the possibility that this would happen.”

Reading the details, "AI" doesn't really seem like the culprit -it's a scapegoat.

The intelligence that it was no longer a military target never entered the target database, the team that was responsible for vetting the target list was gutted, and said team was never even consulted.

The White House wanted 1000 targets and pulled from their database without any due diligence. Whether it was an AI call or an SQL query - this was from pure human maliciousness and incompetence.

29m agoHN ↗

“No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement,” - Hegseth

...

Hegseth and the commander in charge of the Iran operation, Adm. Brad Cooper, were questioned about the strike before Congress. Hegseth said the U.S. does not target civilians and would investigate

So the administration does not intentionally target civilians, they have just stopped caring about who a civilian is.

12m agoHN ↗

Well Israel has defined "combatant" as "male between 14 and 55", and the Western world more or less shrugged and moved on without missing a bit. I'm not optimistic.

10m agoHN ↗

Not sure wtf “politically correct” in the context of rules of engagement even means.

What a fucking moron

5m agoHN ↗

Instead of worrying about woke things like "is this person actually a combatant actively fighting" they want the much simpler rule of "everyone we kill was actually a terrorist that deserves to die".

Basically they stopped caring those woke UN rules about war crimes.

22m agoHN ↗

Now, ask yourself if you want AI taking decisions around your life... it will pull numbers... someone will have a "goal" of 1000 "hits" and there you go, 2-3 months in jail working to check what went wrong...

But don't worry, the other P AI system will ensure that the first one doesn't do mistakes...

12m agoHN ↗

Seems like a scenario where two completely avoidable wrongs....killed 120 children. AI being one of the wrongs.

57m agoHN ↗

The Minab site, which was cataloged as an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps facility due to outdated data, was fed into Maven with other candidates and came out as a recommended day-one target. Target-list work that once took hours was condensed into minutes.

I feel like we're optimizing the wrong metric here.

7m agoHN ↗

Even ignoring the risk of civilian casualties (which to be clear should be weighed heavily) it’s just bad ROI. Like each missile probably costs more than the extra targeting work they should have done.

3m agoHN ↗

probably -> definitely

These missiles cost a couple million each.

55m agoHN ↗

I'm going to bet that absolutely nobody higher up will end up going to jail for this.

28m agoHN ↗

Jail? I'm going to bet that absolutely nobody higher up will face any consequences for this. The outcome will be "we will review our processes".

54m agoHN ↗

Is that really the case? Stories like this always have all sides muddying waters.

The terrorists are well known to use children and the rest of the public as hostage meatshields, and the US military is always looking for something/someone else to blame for the dirty work they have to do.

The broader public is so polarized by performative politics and botspam that they eat these stories up, but nothing I'm saying is secret. It's been this way since forever. Slow news today?

I'm not even defending AI at all and think these are crappy choices, but compared to humans gathering intelligence who can go rogue, what alternative does anyone really have?

52m agoHN ↗

It was a school. No one on either side is denying this.

42m agoHN ↗

Stories like this always have all sides muddying waters.

Which makes the administration's near complete silence on the strike rather suspicious, no?

34m agoHN ↗

The terrorists

What fucking terrorists? We're talking about a country bombing another country's school. A country with a population of 93 million. Are you trying to insinuate that all 93 million Iranians are terrorists?

Maybe you meant the American terrorists?

Stories like this always have all sides muddying waters.

All sides agree that the US bombed a school full of children, actually.

54m agoHN ↗

Officials said some users expected Maven to flag stale records or contradictions in the intelligence assembled for potential targets, though it is not clear why they thought the system would do that

This is what happens when people who don't understand AI and its limitations embrace it wholeheartedly, thinking it's going to behave like The ultimate analyst. Except it's not. Its got blind spots in more places than anyone knows. And not to mention the system itself has multiple areas of failure.

32m agoHN ↗

Chatbots in general can be quite opaque in how they operate, the biggest issue with agent products is communicating it's capabilities and limitations to users. If you have a bank app it's pretty clear whether or not it can send wire transfers, but a if that's a chatbot, users will have to think to ask it (and even then it could hallucinate)

28m agoHN ↗

No, this is what happens when software developers don't understand how users actually use their products.

This was a totally expected outcome, similar to how CV cameras arrest the wrong minorities in neighboring states 100s of miles away because it told the officer it was them; or how health insurance companies use ML algorithms to deny Americans care.

It's going to happen in other sectors of life and it will continue killing innocent civilians.

51m agoHN ↗

The pentagon says it was Palantir software’s fault, Palantir says it was the fault of bad data input to their software. Where’s the accountability by both organizations? How did we get to a world where military decisions leading to innocent deaths are responded to as if it was just another miscommunication implementing a B2B SaaS platform.

36m agoHN ↗

Small children often develop coping mechanisms for their lack of agency. It may be part of these people’s worldview since early childhood that anyone who opposes them should magically die.

30m agoHN ↗

The new world is complex and AI technology has outpaced the regulation cycle, so it's inevitable that we come to a place where you don't have accountability and can never have it because 0) the courts can't handle the case, they don't have the frameworks for it, so it takes longer time 1) you can overload the courts with slop, 2) by the time there is a decision the world has moved on and technology has moved on

Really good time to do various crime.

5m agoHN ↗

I disagree with this framing. Nothing in accountability has really changed other than our willingness to enforce it.

Replace "AI" with any other tool or software in your scenario, and the outcome is the same. The same people and organizations are accountable, it's just that we currently live in a world without accountability in the highest places where it's most needed, and that's unrelated to AI.

25m agoHN ↗

To me it's extremely obvious that this is the desired outcome - no accountability for anyone with this setup.

51m agoHN ↗

In a just world, Pete Hegseth and the entire board of Palantir would be in prison for this.

46m agoHN ↗

That is absolutely irrelevant. USA will never take responsibility. Nobody will be prosecuted. No compensations will be paid.

46m agoHN ↗

I don't want to see the Pentagon try to pass the blame here, but I am all for giving half the blame to Palantir.

40m agoHN ↗

You're absolutely right, those were innocent children. I apologize for the error. Would you like to know more about war crimes?

38m agoHN ↗

Wait... I thought they said they didn't kill children and that was Iranian propaganda.

That didn't happen.

And if it did, it wasn't that bad.

And if it was, it was AI's fault, not mine.

4m agoHN ↗

I'll add a check that all individuals within are genuinely adults to avoid this.

40m agoHN ↗

TIL about this attack.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Minab_school_attack

This looks as much, if not more, like terrorism to me than other incidents the media endlessly portrays.

The US has done so much evil around the world. Enough is enough.

And yeah, Alex Karp is a complete idiot. I cannot imagine how vile one has to be to make a profit off this.

37m agoHN ↗

first, closer to 250 people were murdered by the $4 Million tomahawk

second, imagine if Iran even accidentally took out an elementary school in the US filled with 250 people

third, there was a human group that was supposed to review targets regardless of whomever picked them, the group was purposely disbanded, that's negligent homicide at best but more clearly a war crime on purpose

fourth, let's say it was 250 soldiers somehow among a civilian setting, IT CHANGED NOTHING, this war will change nothing, they cannot destroy pickaxe mountain, they will abandon the war in 2029 like the US abandoned Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam and Korea, WAR CHANGES NOTHING, you cannot "War to Peace"

37m agoHN ↗

Never so happy to see such an obvious scapegoat get thrown under the bus. I don't buy it for a second, but no tears will be shed if the stock market does.

36m agoHN ↗

They are also openly and proudly using this system along with Starlink to assist Ukraine, who a couple months ago killed a bunch of teens in a college in East Ukraine under very similar circumstances that a simple Google or Yandex maps search would have red-flagged plus on the ground real human intel. Unless the point was actually to kill kids.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Starobilsk_strike

27m agoHN ↗

I think your source is undermining your claim. That Wikipedia article strongly suggests that the whole event was fabricated by Russia.

17m agoHN ↗

Okay, that one is fake because Russia bad. Iran one is real because Orange man bad. Same ISR and targeting systems. Mental gymnastics is a hell of thing.

26m agoHN ↗

Says the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry, which then immediately refused to allow the UN access to verify the claim.

16m agoHN ↗

Thank you for reminding me about these posts, time has proved my statements true. Especially after the Iran war exposed these outdated systems via direct hits on US bases, which can't be narrative'd away like in Ukraine.

7m agoHN ↗

time has proved my statements true

The S-400 is fairing well? F-35s apparently walked all over Iran's air defense network without much challenge.

Especially after the Iran war exposed these outdated systems via direct hits on US bases…

Interception rates have been extremely high. The problem, of course, is the ammo shortage. Which has been widely documented, and presents an issue for the S-400s too.

35m agoHN ↗

Personally I'm more interested in the justification for the second and third strikes.

There needs to be some protection for first responders and others helping the injured.

29m agoHN ↗

Israel likes to argue that Hamas embeds fighters with first responders, which even if so, they're still responding to injured. But Israel considers this not even collateral damage but justified.

Mind you Israel is currently funding a lobbyist organization in the UK to flag Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) as a terrorist group (because many years ago a couple of people who had affiliations with other anti-Israel groups were found to be also affiliated with MSF).

21m agoHN ↗

Yeah, I've heard about it, but presumable Americans soldiers still care about IHL at least to some degree, even though they've historically not bothered with the Geneva convention and have tortured people.

33m agoHN ↗

It's easy to blame the military and the higher-ups, after all they made this choice. But more relevant to HN, this couldn't have happened without technology professionals working for Palantir.

A Palantir spokesperson told Bloomberg the company “is not responsible for the underlying data nor identifying intelligence deficiencies” and that there is no evidence its software was at fault.

If you work for Palantir, you are writing software that kills people. Software that, in this case, killed 123 children. What salary is worth that?

I encourage others who work in the public sector, whether directly or through a contractor, to read and internalize Don't Get Distracted by Caleb Hearth [0]. I think about it nearly every day.

[0] https://calebhearth.com/dont-get-distracted

23m agoHN ↗

It's easy to blame the military and the higher-ups

My brother in Cthulu, they're the ones making the life or death decision that killed people, who else should be to blame?

But more relevant to HN, this couldn't have happened without technology professionals working for Palantir.

If you wanna go the historical tech-tree scapegoat route then none of this would have happened if DARPA wouldn't have invented the internet, or if Thomas Edison wouldn't have invented the lightbulb, or if the fish haven't ventured onto land and evolve into us land mammal apes who invented sharpened sticks as murder objects.

17m agoHN ↗

I know, right? I'm not even sure if this is the biggest installation on Earth. If it's possible for us, it's possible for any number of private military contractors. I bet there's an installation in every advanced county on Earth. Anyway, shaddup, the focusing crystal's not calibrating right, and tomorrow I have present the targeting parameters to Dr. Evil.

17m agoHN ↗

If I write healthcare software, and a doctor orders the wrong drug that kills the patient, am I responsible?

16m agoHN ↗

The govt is investing in the military whether you like it or not, there is a set amount of GDP going into the sector regardless of your moral choice.

Would you rather not have someone make good software that does not misidentify schools at sites? Or should we outsource this to worse engineers who don't care about morals and don't find this metric meaningful?

9m agoHN ↗

Let's not forget the shareholders who invested in this company knowing what they do. That includes some of my colleagues. I told them that whoever created and named this company is clearly a psycho.

32m agoHN ↗

It was intentional and it's part of the zionist culture.

18m agoHN ↗

ultimately someone or a group of people need to be held criminally accountable for this crime. it is on the magnitude of the my lai massacre and there should be justice for the victims

15m agoHN ↗

Depressing, why should my tax dollars fund this incompetence and insanity.

Iran would do well, to just somehow just enter a NATO like alliance with Russia or India if they can to protect themselves from the evil galacatic empire that is now USA.

6m agoHN ↗

Things that jumped out at me.

If true, there was no verification of the targets selected by AI, meaning AI is the final arbiter of the deadly use of force. Another Rubicon passed.

Trump pretends like it didn’t happen: “We might never know what really happened there” is a frustrating lack of responsibility.

Still missing, as it always is from all of these kinds of articles, is: How common is this error rate compared to pure human evaluation and decision-making? I’m not saying I support AI-assisted killing, but why is nobody comparing it to human failure rates? If the article is true, then there were 1,000 targets hit in the first 24 hours. If the majority of the legwork and selection was done by AI, how many schools, or equivalents, would one expect to be wrongly hit if all the targeting work were done by humans only?

5m agoHN ↗

Meanwhile, the Houthi's are trying to build missile technology with AI. We're only seeing the beginning of the consequences of an over-reliance on AI for military purposes.