November 25, 2025: Most people are not aware that the current war in Gaza is fought with the Israelis using automation, sensors and software together in a system which identifies what the enemy is about to do, and what Israeli airstrikes or ground combat actions will best defeat Hamas with minimal civilian casualties.

Another example occurred in 2024 when personnel from Unit 8200 trained an Artificial Intelligence/AI model to understand spoken Arabic. The model used the many telephone conversations and text messages obtained while electronically monitoring the Palestinian territories. Unit 8200 has been around since 1952 and specialize in signals intelligence, cyberwarfare, decryption, intelligence, clandestine operations, surveillance and keeping up with the latest technology to do their job. Unit 8200 is responsible for developing and monitoring the use of Israeli Algorithmic Counterinsurgency. These tools have been used by the Israelis in just about every counterinsurgency operation Israel has undertaken in the last seventy years.

For example Unit 8200 began building a model to create a sophisticated chatbot tool that could answer questions about monitored people by using massive quantities of data collected. Unit 8200 accelerated system development after the Hamas attack out of Gaza in October 2023.

Unit 8200 built a Large Language Model/LLM, a deep learning system based on all the Arab language material they had collected. Unit 8200’s AI models knew what everyone in the West Bank was doing. This was done with large-scale retention of intercepted Palestinian telecommunications. That meant using AI to analyze communications, recognize patterns and make predictions.

In 2022 ChatGPT became available and Unit 8200 experts modified ChatGPT to use massive amounts of information to expertly handle complex requests. After the Hamas 2023 attacks Israel called up several hundred thousand reservists. These included personnel who knew how to create LLMs. These experts began building an LLM that understands written Arabic found in media broadcasts, literature and media. This was a problem because most of the collected data was spoken Arabic.

Unit 8200 collected all the spoken Arabic text they had and created a database of about a hundred billion words from groups that were hostile to Israel. Israelis also trained the model to understand specific terms used by anti-Israel groups. This massive collection of training data included large volumes of communications between Palestinians, which was just what the model needed to succeed.

Earlier machine learning models used by Unit 8200 made wide-scale surveillance of Palestinians effective as a form of control, particularly in the West Bank where they said it has contributed to a greater number of arrests. The model enabled Israeli intelligence specialists to automatically analyze intercepted phone conversations and identify Palestinians planning to attack soldiers or Israelis living in illegal settlements. When Israeli soldiers entered West Bank communities, the AI system detected people using words indicating hostile activity like throwing rocks or using firearms against soldiers.

When used to select targets for airstrikes, the AI sometimes makes mistakes when pilots are sent to attack innocent civilians instead of militants. The Israelis admit that mistakes are made but, in a war for survival, occasional mistakes are acceptable. Israel is fighting groups that want to destroy Israel and drive all surviving Jews from the region.

The Americans have also built similar systems, but for different purposes. Over a decade ago the U.S. Department of Defense finally realized, at the most senior levels, that the nature of and progress in this war was being poorly presented to the national leadership and the public. Actually, from the very beginning there was a reluctance to reveal the masses of data collected and how it was analyzed. Partly this was to prevent the enemy from realizing how much information on terrorist operations it possessed. But another reason was the fact that such a large mass of data could be interpreted many different ways, some of them unfavorable to the United States. Thus there was no body count or any other type of measure released by the Department of Defense. Internally, there were various metrics measurements presented to senior military and political leadership. The big problem was the use of aggregation combining a lot of data together that should not have been combined. That was a problem that slowly became ob

It's now recognized that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere, like Yemen, Somalia, North Africa, and so on were all somewhat different and that context for each of them was crucial if you were going to analyze them. For example, al Qaeda is more of an idea than a centralized organization. Thus the al Qaeda found in each country, or part of a country, usually has different means and motivations. The war in Iraq was actually several separate wars going on at the same time and occasionally interacting with other wars nearby. Same thing in Afghanistan and places like Somalia. Measuring progress is more accurate if you show the unique trends in all the different wars. Some of them ended early, some escalated, and some are still in progress, while others evolve into new kinds of conflicts. In other words, the military should use contextual assessment in reporting what is going on with guerilla conflict or irregular warfare in general.

What the Department of Defense did here was fix a problem it created. This happened during the Vietnam War, which the U.S. military establishment didn't really want any part of. The Pentagon in the 1960s was fixated on the conventional military threat the Soviet Union presented in Europe and elsewhere. But a new generation of technocrats had taken over in the Department of Defense and many of their new ideas were handed over to bureaucrats who didn't understand what they were doing. Generals who pointed out problems in these new methods tended to retire ahead of schedule.

Before long, it became conventional wisdom that the U.S. was incapable of handling irregular warfare. This was odd, as the United States had an enviable track record when it comes to defeating guerillas and irregular forces in general. Even Vietnam, which conventional wisdom counts as a defeat, wasn't. The conventional wisdom, as is often the case, is wrong. By the time the last U.S. combat units pulled out of South Vietnam in 1972, the local guerilla movement, the Viet Cong, was destroyed. North Vietnam came south three years later with a conventional invasion, sending tank and infantry divisions charging across the border and conquering their neighbor the old fashioned way.

When the United States first got involved with Vietnam in the late 1950s, there was good reason to believe American assistance would lead to the defeat of the communist guerilla movement in South Vietnam. That was because the communists had not been doing so well with their guerilla wars. In the previous two decades there had been twelve communist insurgencies, and 75 percent of them had been defeated. These included the Greek Civil War 1944-1949, Spanish Republican Insurgency 1944-1952, Iranian Communist Uprising 1945-1946, Philippine Huk War 1946-1954, Madagascan Nationalist Revolt 1947-1949, Korean Partisan War 1948-1953, Sarawak/Sabah Confrontation 1960-1966, Malayan Emergency 1948-1960, and the Kenyan Mau-Mau Rebellion 1952-1955. The communists won in the Cuban Revolution 1956-1958, the First Indochina War 1945-1954, and the Chinese Civil War 1945-1949. The communists went on to lose the guerilla phase of the Second Indochina War 1959-1970. Guerillas make great copy for journalists. You know, the little

The main problem with COIN/Counterinsurgency Warfare is that the American armed forces take it for granted. U.S. troops have been defeating guerilla movements for centuries. Through most of American history, COIN has been the most frequent form of warfare American troops were involved with. But COIN has always been viewed as a minor, secondary military role. It never got any respect. The generals preferred to prepare for a major war with a proper army, not playing cops and robbers with a bunch of poorly organized losers.

Even the U.S. Marine Corps, after half a century of COIN operations, were glad to put that behind them in the late 1930s. All that remained of that experience was a classic book, The Small Wars Manual, written by some marine officers on the eve of World War II. That book, which is still in print, contained timeless wisdom and techniques on how to deal with COIN operations and small wars in general. Every COIN book simply repeats the basic wisdom laid down in The Small Wars Manual.

The basic truth is that COIN tactics and techniques have not changed for thousands of years. What has also not changed is the professional soldiers' disdain for COIN operations. This sort of thing has never been considered real soldiering. But the U.S. Army and Marines have finally come to accept that COIN is a major job, something that U.S. troops have always been good at and something that you have to pay attention to.

So when you see more news stories about new COIN manuals or American ignorance of irregular warfare, keep in mind the history of that kind of warfare and how long, and successfully, Americans have been dealing with it.