The Globe and Mail reports in its Monday edition that the U.S.-Israeli military attack that killed Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and members of his high command involved wide-scale deployment of several cutting-edge technologies, including artificial intelligence and the first use by U.S. military forces of a weapon inspired by Iranian technology. The Globe's Sean Silcoff writes that U.S. Central Command said Saturday that it had "employed low-cost one-way attack drones for the first time in combat." The LUCAS drones, built by Phoenix-based Spektreworks, cost $35,000 (U.S.) each and were modelled after Iran's Shahed-136s, which have been used in the Ukraine war and hit several Gulf state sites in response to the attacks on Tehran. Lorin Selby, a retired second rear admiral with the U.S. Navy and national security expert, said in a LinkedIn post Sunday, "The era of the $35,000 weapon has begun." The U.S. military is a customer of Palantir Technologies, a whose flagship products allow the use of virtual digital twins of physical locations to inform real-time decision making. Palantir's AI-based software is also used by U.S. military intelligence to analyze drone and sensor data to pinpoint targets.
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