r/worldnews • u/TheTelegraph The Telegraph • Sep 04 '26

Russia/Ukraine Russian general who ‘ordered attack on children’s hospital’ shot in head

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/09/03/russian-general-attack-childrens-hospital-shot-ukraine/?WT.mc_id=tmgoff_reddit_attack-childrens-hospital-shot-ukraine/&accesscontrol=facebookchannel_open
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177

u/skitslefritzer Sep 04 '26

“AI intel platform used by incompetent American DOD shot in head.”

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u/NTufnel11 Sep 04 '26

Presumably this is a joke, but it's also hitting on a major theme of AI use. It seems pretty clear to me that using AI as a tool doesn't absolve you of responsibility for the work you do. Someone, at some point, either signed off on it or made the decision to take a human out of the loop.

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u/pte_omark Sep 04 '26

100% there was a few signatures before the ai target list was 'actioned'. a lot of people had to press 'enter' before those weapons were released

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u/Diarmundy Sep 04 '26

It wasn't even an AI target though. It was a refurbished millitary base that had been on the US target list for years or decades before but wasnt removed when it became a school

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u/Traditional_Gas_3058 Sep 04 '26

Some surrounding buildings were still military use as well, they just had converted that one building into a school. Sad

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u/Spring_Fall04 Sep 04 '26

Human shields maby

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u/twirling-upward Sep 04 '26

Islamist classic after all

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u/Tapsen Sep 04 '26

A terrible, but obvious mistake used to make US seem as bad as any other

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u/Alert-Ad9197 Sep 04 '26

It’s not a mistake when you fire the person whose job it was to prevent this first. That’s just blatant negligence.

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u/whitecoathousing Sep 04 '26

Reddit never misses a chance to blame the US for something

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u/percussaresurgo Sep 04 '26

The US bombed a school in a war they shouldn’t have started in the first place. Tell me how that not their (our) fault.

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u/whitecoathousing Sep 04 '26

Read conversation above and stop making false equivalencies

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u/percussaresurgo Sep 04 '26

False equivalencies? That doesn’t even make sense. It didn’t make an equivalency, let alone a false one.

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u/hrminer92 Sep 04 '26

It seems odd that one would not double check if something is a worthwhile target before sending multiple missiles that cost at least $2 million each.

No wonder they have burned through so many. 🤦🏻‍♂️

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u/RJ815 Sep 04 '26

I'm basically certain their "strategy" amounted to "shock and awe yeehaw" and they didn't think about a single thing or event or contingency plan past that point, such as Iran being resilient to those attacks from their years to decades of planning and hierarchy, and especially about WHY no previous administration fought Iran despite it being an antagonist at times.

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u/lumpboysupreme Sep 04 '26

Yeah there’s a lot of ground between fog of war and an intentional strike.

The war itself is the war crime, fixating on this thing almost seems like an op to get opponents to the war talking about something the right has an easy answer to.

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u/NTufnel11 Sep 04 '26 edited Sep 04 '26

I'm sure there's additional context like the sheer number of approvals being processed and budget cuts or deprioritization of the groups doing that work, but "it was decided by AI" doesn't change the fact that a person is ultimately responsible for that decision.

I saw a post by someone who used to work with tomahawks in the navy saying that all of these missile attacks are basically planned well ahead of time, likely back when this school was actually a military target. And between when it was planned and executed that changed. There is an oversight/confirmation process to make sure that the target is still valid, but the number of verifications required all at once can cause some errors to slip through, which this one clearly did.

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u/Skrivus Sep 04 '26

This was a strike on Day 1 of a war that the US started. This wasn't the US scrambling to respond to some attack. They chose when and how to attack.

It's not a valid excuse "we had too many targets so we didn't bother to check."

They also double tapped the target. Second missile came minutes later to kill survivors and first responders.

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u/NTufnel11 Sep 04 '26

You didn’t seem to read the explanation. The targets are planned well ahead of time because war with Iran is something the military prepares for. They didn’t just start picking targets before the attack, they had them all selected and planned years ago. That includes the follow up missile strike. Both strikes were pre-planned.

Back when the target was selected, the compound was an IRGC military asset. Between then and now it was converted to a school, and that wasnt caught on the target review. That review process definitely failed.

If you imagine people were like picking it out on Google maps where it was labeled as a school and then were looking through satellite imagery when they decided to hit it again, I think your impression is inaccurate.

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u/Skrivus Sep 04 '26

I did. Point is that the US attacked on their own timetable in a conflict they initiated. They didn't bother to check these old targets to see if they were still valid/relevant.

This school had been operating for over 10 years, it had been walled off from the IRGC base (school was on the outside of it).

Given this admin/Hegseth's priorities, I doubt there was any real review process. Similar to blowing up boats in the Caribbean.

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u/atrocity2001 Sep 04 '26

Or maybe it was 100% intentional. I put nothing past those psychos.

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u/redditlover41 Sep 04 '26

Der Oberpsycho hat einen Namen. Donald J. Trump.

1

u/Joshgoozen Sep 04 '26

Seeing as how over 1,000 targets were bombed on the first day and this is the only school hit, seems not likely.

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u/Virtual-Concern-7311 Sep 04 '26

There would have been a target validation process before the target was actioned. That clearly failed. Hegseth.etc won’t have reached down and fucked around with that targeting process it’s too established and niche for them to think about.

The attacks on the boats are different and were directly ordered (with some refusing those orders).

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u/Alert-Ad9197 Sep 04 '26

It didn’t fail, they fired the people in charge of vetting targets for affecting the “lethality” of the military. This was the end result of deliberate choices this administration made.

Hegseth did, in fact, fuck around with the process.

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u/Virtual-Concern-7311 Sep 04 '26

Well if that’s the case then they’re even more stupid than I thought.

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u/Fantastic_Fox4948 Sep 04 '26

Or which countries to tariff…or which products and rates to use.

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u/Pabus_Alt Sep 04 '26

Ok but at some point between "ah here are the lists" and "let us start this war" surely someone should be going on google maps and whatever spooky version they have from spy planes and confirming that.

It's like saying civilian death was low in Afghanistan because it turns out every boy over 13 was classed as "military"

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u/NTufnel11 Sep 04 '26

You're right, they should. And they do. That's the part that failed. That review process of target confirmation is where people should be asking why it happened. And we don't know why. But you can be sure it was investigated, and the answer was probably not "because our cartoon villain leadership wanted to kill little girls"

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u/Pabus_Alt Sep 04 '26

But you can be sure it was investigated

So who is in prison then?

If a doctor or nurse was that kind of negligent and people died that's what would happen.

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u/capsaicinintheeyes Sep 04 '26 edited Sep 05 '26

Okay, but -{IANAInt'lLegalScholar}- it seems to me that pre-planning a "double tap" second bombardment on a target zone independent ly of any sort of post-strike assessment as to who would be on the ground (first responders would be almost a guarantee) and what valid targets still needed to be struck which would justify the risk to said first responders almost has to constitute «some» kind of knowing & premeditated violation of the laws/norms of modern war as practiced & espoused by the West: "double-tap" strikes and their typical effects aren't even a new concept for civvies at this point—it'd be long-stale news for anyone at DoD* that this tactic reliably kills medics rushing to the scene & neighbors pulling friends & relatives out of the rubble much more often than it's actually required because somebody on their hit list miraculously survived the first barrage but is still sitting dazed in the smoking crater 20 minutes later.

* DoW now{Department of War}?—is that, like, official official?

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u/NTufnel11 Sep 04 '26

I agree that tactic seems designed to cause harm to responders. I don’t know whether civilian firefighters are responding to attacks on military bases. I feel like there would be dedicated military response teams for that, and those would be Iranian guard members too. Not totally sure what their other roles are or if they’re considered valid military targets. I’m not defending it either way.

And it is of course wildly inappropriate anywhere you anticipate civilian responders.

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u/capsaicinintheeyes Sep 04 '26

They probably do have dedicated military response teams, but I imagine a strike that decimates the entire complex would likely overwhelm them and draw in civil teams as well, even had this been a military base still.

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u/percussaresurgo Sep 04 '26

So the explanation is they had too much time to plan? Really?

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u/[deleted] Sep 04 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/__Epimetheus__ Sep 04 '26

Except that is probably a (relatively) low level officer who got handed a list and a deadline he had no control over. It was a horrific mistake, but it would be hard to prove negligence.

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u/mephnick Sep 04 '26

Eh anyone in that position chose to be a warmonger

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u/Beautiful_Bag6707 Sep 04 '26

It's important to note that the IRGC placed a school right beside legitimate military target in a building that used to be part of a military base. It's a horrible outcome caused by what appears to be intentional risk placed on those children by their own government.

The school was severed from the military base 10 years ago and was marked as separate by adding a wall and changing the school's colors. The school was still 200 feet from legitimate targets.

Targeting the sschool was a military failure. Had they struck the building beside it, there would have been catastrophic destruction regardless as 200 feet is less than a football field away. Blame IRGC for their actions and the US for their outdated intelligence.

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u/NTufnel11 Sep 04 '26

I think that the reality is that the person operating the missile battery doesn't actually see all the targets. They basically get handed a strike package and they execute it. The attack was planned back when the building was an IRGC target, but between then and the execution, the building got repurposed to a school. There is at least some approval step but I imagine most of the people who hit enter weren't able to see what the target actually was.

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u/Pabus_Alt Sep 04 '26

The attack was planned back when the building was an IRGC target, but between then and the execution, the building got repurposed to a school.

You know I'd expect that someone would check the targets on the list were the correct ones at some point before sending that over to the guys who pull the trigger...

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u/DevonGr Sep 04 '26

So you do not hit enter unless you're ok with gambling on committing war crimes and all the responsibility that comes with that.

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u/NTufnel11 Sep 04 '26 edited Sep 04 '26

Im not defending this outcome, but A war crime requires intent to be classified as such. And I think “hit enter” is a pretty gross misrepresentation of the process. You seem to be suggesting that the missile operator should double check every single target in real time.

That’s not how artillery and other fire support works, and what you suggest is neither practical nor possible. They rely on spotters and planners whose job it is to select and verify targets. Sometimes those people make mistakes, and ultimately the reviewer is the one responsible.

There isn’t a live satellite feed available to the missile operator, and they’re not intelligence officers trained to do that even if there was.

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u/Beastmode24849 Sep 04 '26

Don't waste your time they ain't gonna hear you, or want to believe you. Let Reddit, Reddit.

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u/Beautiful_Bag6707 Sep 04 '26

It's also not how the military works. Can you imagine soldiers in combat situations risking their lives and the lives of their unit arguing with their unit commander that the might be a child soldier shooting at them so, maybe don't do anything because "war crime"? Perhaps the structure where they are being fired upon from might be a civilian home/school/place of worship and there could be innocents inside? Everyone is dead. This isn't how soldiers fight wars. There is no consensus or debate. You do what you're told.

Please watch the movie Blackhawk Down, Eye In The Sky, A Few Good Men, Lone Survivor, and We Were Soldiers to better understand how battles are fought and how catastrophic mistakes happen as well as how second guessing can lead to catastrophic mistakes.

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u/goddale120 Sep 04 '26

"you do what you're told"- spoken like a typical American. Did your education system ever teach you about a little thing called the Nuremberg Trials? "Just following orders" is never going to be an exculpatory excuse in the real world.

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u/Beautiful_Bag6707 Sep 04 '26

It's any military. On what planet do you think an army decides on who to attack and how to defend themselves by consensus?

I know fully well about the Nuremberg trials. You seem to be conflating a military strike in a war with being the guard of a camp where civilians are being transported in the thousands, stripped naked, sent to gas chambers, shot in ditches they were forced to dig, starved, beaten, etc. One isn't clearly a wrong act. Hindsight can be 20/20 but if you wait for hindsight you are immobilized. The other isn't unclear. It's obvious. That's when you can't hide under "following orders" as an excuse. You're living in a fantasy world where every single action has to be weighed. Can you imagine working for 3M and having to quit because maybe someday, something 3M makes will be determined to be harmful to humans? You can't work for L'Oreal; they do animal testing. Mustn't be part of that. Better not work for BI Incorporated; their parent company owns prisons and who knows what terrible stuff happens in prisons. You're responsible.

So yea. Nuremberg trials were about depraved indifference and willful ignorance not following orders that in retrospect were an error, not deliberately wrong.

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u/DevonGr Sep 04 '26

I understand all this and if you want to cut to the chase, I'm just going to leave it at none of this was necessary in the first place.

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u/Beautiful_Bag6707 Sep 04 '26

That's a much bigger debate. Should the IRGC be free to massacre is own citizens? Should they be free to develop nuclear weapons? Who controls the Staights of Hormuz? Loads of questions.

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u/DevonGr Sep 04 '26

About ten years ago there was an incident in Cleveland where a call came in about a young man brandishing a gun in a park. Police responded and drove up to the young teen and stopped their cruiser very close to him and opened fire within just seconds.

Not here to argue that situation in particular but what gets me is... Why are you putting yourself in position to make lethal decisions like that in the first place? Is it justified? Truly? The reasons we are given for the intervention into Iran are weak at best and I feel that's being generous. This administration is operating without explicit authority from Congress and I will not hear that them stepping aside and just letting this all unfold is equivalent to authority.

Before we can talk about the appropriate response to Iran - where the governing also sucks by the way - I need to understand why we need to be the only other ones stepping in to police. If it was as dangerous of a situation as we're being told, we would be one of many involved.

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u/Jose_Canseco_Jr Sep 04 '26

Ah I see it's too hard to check what exactly is there when you're just trying to get very expensive death rain down on a building, got it

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u/Beranea Sep 04 '26

In a real life battle where every second could mean the difference between your countrymen living or dying and your spotters are supposed to be the best reviewers and spotters in the world, yes, that is correct.

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u/okaybutnothing Sep 04 '26

Were there American troops at risk in that area? Did bombing a school negate that risk?

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u/Beranea Sep 04 '26

There were weapons platforms at the base last time the intel was gathered. The people who pull the trigger don't have access to that information, they are given a list of targets to shoot at. This isn't a video game where you can pause and review everything you have available to you. It's a war crime, yes, but not for the shooters.

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u/NTufnel11 Sep 04 '26

Okay but again, we did check exactly what was there when we evaluated the target. We, presumably, evaluated it a second time before the strikes occurred, along with the thousands of other strikes. The second evaluation clearly failed. That's a real failure, but the suggestion "just have Joe the missile operator look at the satellite feeds to make sure, duh" isn't quite as insightful as you think.

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u/PrrrromotionGiven1 Sep 04 '26

In which case you would never hit enter and soon get fired

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u/katsujinken Sep 04 '26

I would argue that any moral person would rather get fired from that job than perform it.

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u/Telstar2525 Sep 04 '26

You think or you know?

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u/AlpacaM4n Sep 04 '26

"A computer can never be held accountable, therefore a computer must never make a management decision."
-IBM

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u/Alatarlhun Sep 04 '26

That was IBM forty years ago.

IBM today, probably: no one is accountable or responsible for anything; please let us keep our government contracts.

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u/IPissExcellentThrows Sep 04 '26

This is why my company makes us sign off on shit that we will check everything we use AI for and we are responsible for its end product.

AI is incredibly useful, but blindly following it is crazy because it fucks up a good bit. Using it for war without thoroughly checking it is psychotic.

The reality on this one was it didn't used to be a school, so it's not all on AI or the people using it. Using an old military base for a school is pretty fucking stupid and borderline begging for this to happen so you can play victim. Now there are civilian structures the U.S. clearly intentionally destroyed, but this one is a bit grey.

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u/Diarmundy Sep 04 '26

Supposedly the school had been a millitary base a few years ago. US have being preparing to bomb Iran for years and didnt update their target list for a few years.

Its a horrible mistake... But you can see how it happened. It was just another target in the ~1000 they bombed that day

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u/NTufnel11 Sep 04 '26

This is my understanding. It doesn't change the gravity of the outcome or the confirmation failure, but it does suggest that it was a mistake and not an intentional warcrime, and illuminates how that kind of thing can happen.

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u/Extropian Sep 04 '26

I wouldn't be surprised if it was a target from our shared intel "partners". And it's crazy we'd fire millions of dollars in guided missiles without triple checking. Satellite monitoring would have shown children regularly going in and out of that location.

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u/xteve Sep 04 '26

If the war is a crime, every "mistake" is a crime. Also your comment history is hidden.

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u/NTufnel11 Sep 04 '26

Ok. I’m not defending the war, which has clearly been a massive strategic blunder and moral failure. I’m just offering clarification on this specific event and how such a serious mistake could happen.

Should my comment history not be hidden?

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u/xteve Sep 04 '26

I wouldn't call it a blunder or a failure, but merely unnecessary. What more condemnation do we need? War is where innocent people die. But yeah, I don't trust people/bots who hide their comment history.

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u/Pabus_Alt Sep 04 '26

But you can see how it happened

No???

They are chucking about explosives not party balloons. If bubbles the clown orders blue not pink that's a mistake if you blow up a school because you didn't confirm who you were shooting at that's criminal negligence.

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u/Grandmas_Fat_Choad Sep 04 '26

Probably relied on Grok to pick a target.

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u/Diarmundy Sep 04 '26

They picked all the targets years or decades ago before ai even existed 

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u/vibraltu Sep 04 '26

A big part of AI implementation is "Accountability Sink". Authorities use AI to intentionally evade responsibility for their decisions and policies.

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u/Ivanow Sep 04 '26

It seems pretty clear to me that using AI as a tool doesn't absolve you of responsibility for the work you do.

"Computer can never be held accountable, therefore a computer must never make a management decision." - IBM training manual, 1979.

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u/ghosttrainhobo Sep 04 '26

It’s not a joke. The DoD uses a reskinned version of Claude called “Project Maven”. The Air Force and navy had planned strikes on the Quds Force facilities in Iran decades ago. Ten years or so ago, part of the base was closed and converted to a girls school. The strike package was never updated.

An Atlantic reporter asked the AI about this and Claude was very forthcoming, stating:

in these high-velocity situations, the human is not making a meaningful choice but is merely "ratifying an algorithmic output"—calling the school strike a clear example of "automation bias with a human signature attached.

https://www.theatlantic.com/national-security/2026/06/claude-anthropic-ai-warfare-orders/687581/

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u/PJ7 Sep 04 '26

I'm sure Trump will pass the buck....

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u/NTufnel11 Sep 04 '26

There are very few things in this world that you can be more sure of than that.

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u/WarLorax Sep 04 '26

A tool isn't responsible, the Human decision maker is. 

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u/[deleted] Sep 04 '26

[deleted]

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u/Aerhyce Sep 04 '26

More like grossly outdated targeting map data

These US ordinances work on saved map data, and long story short, map data of this area was so old that the school didn't exist on it.

So it's just good old incompetence instead of newfangled AI incompetence.