The Debate

Warfare is always evolving, sometimes slowly: Napoleon’s armies travelled little differently from those of Julius Caesar. At other times, change comes faster than commanders can process, as the futile carnage of the First World War showed. The pace of change on the battlefield today? Fast – very fast.
Introducing the first war brought to you by artificial intelligence. In the first ten days of a campaign that may well have been prepared in a hurry, the US and Israel pinpointed and targeted as many Iranian sites in the first four days as the anti-ISIS coalition did in the first six months of its campaign in Iraq and Syria.
How good are AI-informed kill orders? Are computers already making the call?
The New York Times reports that it was probably humans who mistakenly decided to hit a girls’ school, killing 175. Even if outdated intelligence may be to blame, we’ll ask our panel what role AI might have played.
And what responsibility do tech companies bear when their tools lead to war crimes and mass surveillance? In the battle between Anthropic and the US government over the proper use of its software, who gets the final say: the company, or the government? Especially when the power of this technology is something we do not yet fully grasp.
 
Produced by François Picard, Rebecca Gnignati, Daniel Whittington, Ilayda Habip.

One war can fuel another. After the United States and Israel launched an operation that began, on day one, with the assassination of Iran’s supreme leader, Donald Trump expressed surprise at Tehran’s decision to draw in Gulf oil producers and disrupt global supplies.
From the ensuing energy crisis there are plenty of losers – and one big winner: Russia. Washington is now suggesting it may ease sanctions on Russian oil. The Kremlin’s war effort in Ukraine had been feeling the pinch, but now – even at a discount – it is finding buyers, just as the Trump administration again pushes for concessions from Kyiv.
We’ll ask how Volodymyr Zelensky’s offer of drone technology to Gulf states measures up against Vladimir Putin’s offer to keep crude flowing; how cash-strapped Europeans will react; and, more broadly, at what point a war of the US and Israel’s choosing spreads so far and wide that it becomes a world war. With alliances such as NATO no longer a given, how should the world deal with the danger?
 
Produced by François Picard, Rebecca Gnignati, Daniel Whittington, Ilayda Habip.

Why this war of Donald Trump’s choosing? As death and destruction widen in Iran and across the region, and as oil and gas markets take fright, the US president’s reasons for launching what his administration calls Operation Epic Fury continue to shift, as do the stated scale and duration.
What remains consistent is the White House’s messaging, cranked out over social media by Gen-Z handlers who have taken Silicon Valley’s “move fast and break things” mantra and turned it into memes – some even borrowing actual video-game footage. Is it working? Do the fireballs that kill real human beings in the Middle East inspire admiration and awe among voters in the United States?
The fog of war is inherently performative: show that you are mighty and demonise the enemy. It is also meant to serve as a “rally ’round the flag” moment for leaders. Well, almost always. Is this war different? And how is it going for US and Israeli leaders who stand shoulder to shoulder while talking at cross purposes about its length and objectives?

Second week of a war seen more than ever as a massive gamble by the US and Israel: strikes on oil installations in Tehran prompting retaliation across the Gulf. Also blown away are claims that disruptions to global energy security would be only a passing blip.
As the price of crude shoots past 100 dollars a barrel, Tehran signals it’s staying the course, with Mojtaba Khamenei – the hardline son of the assassinated Supreme Leader – chosen to take the reins of an under-siege Islamic Republic that still has the means to make its neighbours pay a price for Trump and Netanyahu’s war.
Take Lebanon, where rocket attacks by Iran proxy Hezbollah have drawn a deluge of fire, a ground incursion by Israel, and the displacement of nearly 700,000 people. We’ll talk about the Lebanese president who wants direct talks with Israel and weigh ten days of destruction of lives and livelihoods.
As for the price at the pump, Europe will arguably feel the effects more sharply than a US that is farther away and largely energy self-sufficient. Good luck glossing that over when France hosts the next G7 summit in June.

Who's paying for this war? First and foremost, the people of the Middle East, who are directly in harm's way. But who pays the financial cost if Iran continues to target the lifeline for the region's oil and gas? Maritime employers out of London are officially designating the Strait of Hormuz, the Gulf of Oman and the Persian and Arabian Gulf a "warlike operations area". We ask what that means and how much pain is to come.
The United States is far less reliant on the region's crude than the last time Iran mined the narrow waterway that ships one-fifth of the planet's supply. But how about Asia and Europe, which is bracing for another Ukraine war-style jolt in natural gas prices?
As France and the UK dispatch warships, how do NATO allies defend their interests without getting sucked into a war they didn't choose? How to handle a US president that's been pressuring them – with some success – to relax the switch to renewables and "drill, baby, drill"?
More broadly, how vulnerable are Gulf states, whose petrodollars fuel massive investments in artificial intelligence and whose skyscrapers in the sand depend on that other precious lifeline: water? How safe are the Arabian Peninsula's desalination plants, for instance, in these dangerous times?
Produced by François Picard, Rebecca Gnignati, Daniel Whittington, Ilayda Habip, Christophe Bauer.