One of the earliest headlines in the U.S.-led war in Iran involved the bombing of a girls'

primary school to Minab. Between 175 and 180 people were killed in the attack. Most of them,

young girls. Meanwhile, adjacent to the school was a military compound of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

Was AI to blame.

Hello and welcome to USA Today's The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor.

Today is Monday, March 30, 26.

The U.S.-led war in Iran is the first global conflict where AI is playing a major role, both on the literal battlefield, and on social media, where the battle for hearts and minds is playing out.

Are we entering a dangerous new evolution of warfare with AI.

We're going to dig into all of it with two experts today,

joining me to discuss the nascent use of AI on the battlefields of Operation Epic Fury is Alok Mita,

director of the Watwani AI Center for CSIS, the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Thanks so much for joining me on the Excerb Dialogue.

Thanks for having me. I'm happy to be here.

Start us out, if you would, with a 30,000-foot view of how AI is being deployed in the U.S.-led

war in Iran. What makes this conflict so different with regards to AI?

I think over time we've seen an evolution in the use of AI on autonomy in the battlefields.

So if you look at what is happening in Ukraine and Russia, we've seen lots of pioneering uses of AI in that war.

And now in Iran, we're seeing more of an evolution. You think about it in terms of

what the U.S. is capable of the best examples we have. We've seen some previews from Palantir of

how the Maven smart system might work. And so we're seeing that they've incorporated new

generative AI technology into that system. And so the operations we're seeing that they've incorporated new generative AI technology into that system.

And so the operations we're seeing in Iran by the U.S. military are incorporating generative AI

...