Dozens of Democrats on Thursday demanded the Pentagon disclose whether the US was responsible for the deadly strike on a girls' primary school in southern Iran and the extent to which artificial intelligence may have been used.
The group of 120 Democrats in the House of Representatives signed a letter to Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth, asking that the findings of an inquiry into the strike be made public.
According to unverified reports from Iranian authorities, the strike in Minab on February 28 killed at least 168 people, many of them schoolgirls. The school was adjacent to an Iranian military building.
US President Donald Trump has repeatedly said he has not seen anything to confirm American forces were responsible and suggested another country was to blame. Several reports have said investigators believe the US was behind the missile strike but no conclusive determination has been made.
The letter also asks what role, if any, AI had in “selecting targets, assessing intelligence and making legal determinations during Operation Epic Fury”.
In addition, it inquires about which, if any, Palantir AI tools, such as the company's Maven Smart System, were used in the US planning of attacks on Iran. Palantir has many lucrative Pentagon contracts and its chief executive Alex Karp has not been shy about his support for Mr Trump.
On Wednesday, 46 Democratic senators signed a similar letter to Mr Hegseth demanding a swift investigation into the strike.
“The results of this school attack are horrific,” it read. “The majority of those killed in the strikes were girls between the ages of seven and 12.”
John Fetterman was the only Democrat who refused to sign.
AI in military planning
In the months leading up to the Iran war, a global debate about the ethical use of AI and the potential ramifications of its battlefield use was already under way, with some warning about imperfections in the technology and how the use of AI could lead to a lack of repercussions or accountability in light of possible mistakes.
During a recent interview about the topic of AI regulation, MIT machine-learning and physics professor Max Tegmark shared his concerns about AI’s encroachment into military planning.
“Self-regulation doesn’t work,” said Mr Tegmark, who also serves as president of Future of Life Institute, a consortium pushing for more AI guardrails.
The US investigation into the school bombing is continuing. On Wednesday, Republican Senator John Kennedy apologised for the tragedy.
“I think it was a terrible, terrible mistake,” he told CNN.
Last week, when asked whether the US was to blame for the strike on the school, Mr Hegseth said the matter was under investigation and that the Pentagon does not deliberately target schools.
This comes against the backdrop of the Pentagon demanding looser restrictions on AI software it uses.
AI company Anthropic opposed allowing the Defence Department to lift guardrails, out of concern AI tools could be used for domestic spying or reckless war planning without humans in the loop.
The White House severed ties with Anthropic and classified it as a supply chain risk, prompting a lawsuit from the company.
