Last January, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth dismissed most of the Pentagon employees responsible for mitigating and responding to civilian harm (CHMR) and replaced their roles with an artificial intelligence system.
This was reported by The New Republic, citing The Intercept. According to the report, at the beginning of last year, the staff at the Pentagon’s Center of Expertise for Civilian Protection was reduced from 40 to just nine employees. Since then, no new hires have been made, effectively depriving the center of its ability to fully protect the civilian population during US military operations. The remaining employees also indicated that they were prohibited from investigating individual incidents, including the bombing of a primary school in Minabi, which resulted in the deaths of 120 children on the first day of the war in Iran.
Large-Scale Reductions in Civilian Protection Programs
According to The Intercept, the reductions impacted CHMR programs across the US Department of Defense. AFRICOM, CENTCOM, and SOUTHCOM also scaled back units focused on preventing civilian casualties. At CENTCOM, only one person remains in this area, and the cuts at SOUTHCOM reportedly complicated the assessment of damage to the civilian population during the operation to detain Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in January.
Former head of the Civilian Harm Assessment Department at the Protection Center Wes Bryant told The Intercept: “The Hegseth administration has effectively kept the program only to claim that it is fulfilling the requirements of the law. In reality, the Center had almost no influence on operations, control over them, or even a proper understanding of what was happening. The remaining employees are trying to do their job, but most of their work remains without practical application and does not become part of the department’s daily work.”
Instead of relying on most of the employees, Pete Hegseth has turned to the artificial intelligence system Maven Smart System, developed by the company Palantir. A representative of the US Department of Defense stated that this system provides “a better level of protection” for the civilian population in areas where American military personnel conduct combat operations.
Senator Elizabeth Warren and nine other Democratic senators sent a letter to Hegseth earlier this month. In the letter, they stated that “the Department of Defense’s inability to implement the CHMR Action Plan has serious consequences for the civilian population in conflict zones and increases risks for American servicemen.” According to the senators, the reduction of these programs could lead to misidentification of targets, ineffective use of ammunition, an increase in civilian casualties, weakened allied relations, loss of trust, increased local resistance, expanded opportunities for opponents’ propaganda, prolonged conflicts, and failed strikes.
After the reduction of CHMR programs, thousands of Iranians died in the war, but the article does not assert a direct causal relationship between these events.
Source: The New Republic
