David Petraeus took the stage at the NDTV World Summit on Tuesday to claim that a human, not an autonomous system, pulled the trigger in the Minab school bombing that killed at least 156 civilians. He said the decision was aided by artificial‑intelligence targeting but ultimately rested with a human commander.
The statement follows a Bloomberg investigation that revealed U.S. forces had used an AI "kill chain" to identify and strike the school, a former IRGC naval base now converted into a primary school. Bloomberg said the system, called Maven, fed the misclassified target into a rapid‑fire decision loop that could be executed within minutes.
Maven, built by Palantir Technologies, aggregates more than 150 data points—from satellite imagery to intercepted communications—to generate targeting recommendations. In the Minab case, the AI flagged the school as a legitimate target because it was listed as an IRGC installation, a classification that had never been updated.
Petraeus warned that while AI can streamline the targeting process, it cannot replace the final human judgment. He urged that any machine used to decide lethal force operate under tight human‑programmed criteria, and said he would push Congress to enforce stricter oversight of AI‑driven kill chains in future U.S. operations.