The Failure to Predict the Hamas Attack: Insights from Artificial Intelligence

The failure to anticipate Hamas’s brutal attack on October 7 is multilayered and will be investigated for years to come. However, the preliminary consensus has blamed the konceptcia, the Hebrew word for paradigm, that guided the intelligence and security forces. With the advent of AI and its complex search algorithms, the resultant paradigm was shaped by an input imbalance that depicted Hamas transitioning from its jihadist past to a rational governance player. The politicization of the academic and lay Middle East discourse legitimized resistance to Israel, feeding the bias. Equally, the virtual absence of understanding of the military wing of Hamas and its role in Iran’s Axis of Resistance deepened the imbalance.