Critics may have been too quick to blame artificial intelligence for the US missile strike that killed more than 150 people at an elementary school in Iran. Former military officials and others familiar with the operation tell Semafor the catastrophe at Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary was caused not by a rogue algorithm, but by human mistakes up and down the targeting chain. Analysts allegedly failed to spot subtle but important changes in satellite images of an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps compound in Minab—and either overlooked or never entered into US databases the fact that a functioning school sat adjacent to the compound, separated from other buildings by a brightly painted wall.
Those clues weren't hidden: satellite photos showed added walls and a separate entrance, as well as playground markings from as early as 2017. The school had an online presence with "dozens of photos of the children and their activities," per Reuters. It also appeared in Iranian business listings. The United Nations says missiles hit while classes were underway and most of those killed were girls between the ages of 7 and 12.
Under US procedures, had the site been flagged as a school, it should have been removed from the long-maintained Central Command target list and rechecked in the 24 to 48 hours before the strike. Instead, it was treated as a static military site—exactly the kind of target where current AI tools are less involved. Semafor notes that AI has "notorious failings, from hallucinations to sycophancy," but it is good at taking in large amounts of information, and a "deeper look at satellite imagery or, simply, an internet search could have forestalled the disaster."
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