Nitin Pai: When US technology companies effectively contribute to war, they become targets

On 31 March, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) threatened that it would target 18, mostly American, technology companies in retaliation to US-Israeli attacks on Iran. It declared that “since the main element in designing and tracking terror targets are American [Information and Communications Technology] and [artificial intelligence or AI] companies... the main institutions effective in terrorist operations [against Iran] will be our legitimate targets.” Employees were warned to vacate their workplaces and residents living within a kilometre’s radius of their premises were told to evacuate to safety.On Iran’s target list were Cisco, HP, Intel, Oracle, Microsoft, Apple, Google, Meta, IBM, Dell, Palantir, Nvidia, JPMorgan, Tesla, GE and Boeing.

G42 and Spire Solutions, two UAE-based companies, were also named. Iranian strikes have already damaged Amazon Web Services data centres in Dubai and Siemens and AT&T facilities in Israel. There was a time when I would have found this inexcusable.

Now I am still appalled, but cannot in good conscience argue that the Iranians are wrong. Even international humanitarian law, which permits only military targets to be attacked, defines one “as an object that by its nature, location, purpose, or use makes an effective contribution to military action, and whose destruction offers a definite military advantage.”Palantir, for instance, has boasted that AI-powered targeting technology is playing an important role in the war. Some are defence contractors.

Others provide communications and IT infrastructure used by the US and Israel. Iran can make a prima facie case that these companies are indeed making an “effective contribution to military action” against them. Under