{"id":509002,"date":"2026-03-02T07:16:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-02T07:16:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/509002\/"},"modified":"2026-03-02T07:16:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-02T07:16:07","slug":"ai-cyberattacks-and-cheap-drones-helped-u-s-israel-carry-out-iran-assassinations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/509002\/","title":{"rendered":"AI, cyberattacks, and cheap drones helped U.S., Israel carry out Iran assassinations"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Smoke plumes rise following missile strikes in Tehran, Iran, on Sunday.ATTA KENARE\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

The U.S.-Israeli military attack that killed Iranian<\/a> Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and members of his high command involved widescale deployment of several cutting-edge technologies, including artificial intelligence<\/a> and the first use by U.S. military forces of a weapon inspired by Iranian technology.<\/p>\n

The U.S. Central Command said Saturday that it had \u201cemployed low-cost one-way attack drones for the first time in combat.\u201d The LUCAS drones, built by Phoenix-based Spektreworks Inc., cost US$35,000 each and were modelled after Iran\u2019s Shahed-136s, which have been used in the Ukraine war<\/a> and hit several Gulf state sites in response to the attacks on Tehran.<\/p>\n

\u201cHistory was made yesterday, yet many overlooked the significant headline,\u201d Lorin Selby, a retired second rear admiral with the U.S. Navy and national security expert, said in a LinkedIn post Sunday about the LUCAS drones. \u201cThe era of the $35,000 weapon has begun.\u201d<\/p>\n

The drones complemented other technologies that have increasingly shaped recent military actions, including the capture by U.S. forces of deposed Venezuelan leader Nicol\u00e1s Maduro in January.<\/p>\n

A list of Iranian attacks on countries in the region<\/a><\/p>\n

The New York Times reported that the CIA, working with Israeli counterparts, had tracked Ayatollah Khamenei\u2019s movements for months and learned a meeting of top Iranian officials would take place early Saturday at a compound in Tehran. While it is not clear what other technologies were used, both the U.S. and Israel have many modern electronic warfare tools at their disposal. <\/p>\n

The Ayatollah \u201cwas unable to avoid our Intelligence and Highly Sophisticated Tracking systems and, working closely with Israel, there was not a thing he, or the other leaders that have been killed along with him, could do,\u201d U.S. President Donald Trump said in a Truth Social post on Saturday. <\/p>\n

Prior to the attack on Venezuela, the U.S. Space Force and the Cyber Command were involved in suppressing defence forces in that country, General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at the time. The U.S. Navy also used its electronic attack platform, known as EA-18G Growlers, to jam enemy radar and communications systems, The Wall Street Journal reported. Some observers believed the U.S. Cyber Command also disrupted Venezuela\u2019s electrical grid. <\/p>\n

That followed the reported use of cyberweapons by the U.S. military last June to disrupt Iran\u2019s air missile defence system during strikes on three nuclear sites.<\/p>\n

Analysis: Which regime? What change? Iran\u2019s complexity means there are no magic bullets<\/a><\/p>\n

Reuters reported Sunday a wave of cyberattacks took place alongside the U.S.-Israeli attacks. News websites were hacked and a religious calendar app called BadeSaba displayed messages telling users, \u201cIt\u2019s time for a reckoning\u201d and urged armed forces to give up weapons and join the people. There was also a near-total internet blackout in Iran Saturday.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would expect that in connection to a kinetic assault that various hacking technologies would have been deployed to disrupt and deter communication within Iran,\u201d said Matt Holland, who used to write code for cybersecurity missions when he worked for the Communications Security Establishment, Canada\u2019s cyberspy agency, and is now an Ottawa-based cybersecurity entrepreneur. <\/p>\n

The U.S. military is a customer of Palantir Technologies Inc., a Denver-based data and analytics giant whose flagship products allow the use of virtual digital twins of physical locations to inform real-time decision making. Palantir\u2019s AI-based software is also used by U.S. military intelligence to analyze drone and sensor data to pinpoint targets. <\/p>\n

The U.S. military has also been a big user of large language model (LLM) artificial intelligence technology. The Wall Street Journal and Axios reported that Anthropic PBC\u2019s LLM platform Claude was used during Saturday\u2019s action. That was despite the fact that Mr. Trump a day earlier directed all federal agencies to stop using Anthropic, accusing the San Francisco company in a Truth Social post of forcing the government \u201cto obey their terms of service instead of our Constitution.\u201d <\/p>\n

Trump directs U.S. agencies to phase out Anthropic\u2019s AI as Pentagon calls startup a supply risk<\/a><\/p>\n

(Anthropic was the first LLM company to have its models used across the Defence Department\u2019s classified network. Later Friday, rival OpenAI said it had reached a deal with the Pentagon to deploy \u201cadvanced AI systems in classified environments.\u201d) <\/p>\n

The Israel Defense Forces, meanwhile, have deployed an AI-based system called Habsora to generate attack targets using intelligence data since 2021. Israel has also conducted attacks on Hezbollah\u2019s communications system, including a sophisticated campaign that saw it remotely detonate pagers used by members of the Iranian-backed terrorist organization in September, 2024. <\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s flourishing tech scene has also produced startups specializing in cybersecurity and other advanced technologies.<\/p>\n

Mr. Holland said he expected the U.S. and Israel \u201cwould have mapped out all the computer\/infrastructure assets that they would want to disrupt ahead of time, so it would be a rapidly executed plan once they decided\u201d to attack, including everything \u201cfrom hacking tools to signal jammers to passive listening of signals generated by key areas within Iran.\u201d <\/p>\n

U.S. strikes on Iran mark Trump\u2019s further shift toward interventionist foreign policy<\/a><\/p>\n

Ken Nickerson, a technology adviser and fellow with the Creative Destruction Lab in Toronto, said: \u201cYou definitely want to disable command and control from issuing radio commands to missile systems to launch\u201d and deploy drones or other \u201cloitering munitions in the sky\u201d to attack sites \u201cas soon as they turn on their radio frequencies.\u201d<\/p>\n

The development of the LUCAS weapons came after U.S. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth implored the military last year to establish dominance in drones.<\/p>\n

Eliot Pence, chief executive of Canadian defence technology startup Dominion Dynamics, said the LUCAS drones offered a low-cost way for the U.S. military to take out anti-aircraft radar systems and complement big-ticket hardware such as fighter jets and missiles. <\/p>\n

Combining cheap and expensive military hardware \u201cis not something the U.S. has ever done. It\u2019s the new way of warfare,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

With a report from Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Smoke plumes rise following missile strikes in Tehran, Iran, on Sunday.ATTA KENARE\/AFP\/Getty Images…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":509003,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,901,276,277,888,902,879,877,903,49,48,876,895,896,891,878,875,46,549,295,894,887,914,880,881,893,889,890,884,904,885,909,910,912,907,911,905,908,882,898,899,714,897,906,865,61,900,892,886,883,913],"class_list":["post-509002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-alberta","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-arts-news","tag-bc","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-video","tag-british-columbia","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canada-news","tag-canada-sports","tag-canada-sports-news","tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","tag-canadian-breaking-news","tag-canadian-news","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-environment","tag-federal-government","tag-foreign-news","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","tag-government","tag-life-news","tag-lifestyle","tag-local-news","tag-manitoba","tag-national-news","tag-new-brunswick","tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","tag-northwest-territories","tag-nova-scotia","tag-nunavut","tag-ontario","tag-pei","tag-photos","tag-political-news","tag-political-opinion","tag-politics","tag-politics-news","tag-quebec","tag-sports-news","tag-technology","tag-travel","tag-trudeau","tag-us-news","tag-world-news","tag-yukon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=509002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509002\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/509003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=509002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=509002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=509002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}