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AI’s role in the Gaza war

Jennifer Lenow analyzes in depth the role of artificial intelligence in the Gaza situation in Jacobin, arguing that instead of imagining the exaggerated future dangers posed by artificial intelligence, it is better to see the crisis that is happening.

Over the past year, the greatest existential threat facing humanity seemed not to come from anthropogenic climate change but from another human-driven specter: artificial intelligence. The culprit for this new dystopia was ChatGPT-3, launched by OpenAI. In the weeks that followed, people around the world consumed billions of watts of energy, submitted prompts such as “Rewrite the Star Wars prequels,” and public discussion was inundated with a mix of technological prophecies, philosophical speculations, and amateur sci-fi plots. Major media outlets published commentaries such as “Can We Stop Out-of-Control AI?” and “What Have We Just Unleashed?”, Western governments scrambled to form oversight committees, and every techie spoke the technical jargon almost overnight.

While OpenAI’s release has sparked a great language model arms race among tech giants like Google, Amazon, and Meta, some high-profile tech figures, like Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak, have signed an open letter warning of the grim future of uncontrolled AI, urging all AI labs to halt experiments until regulators (and ethics) can catch up. In the New York Times and on the pixelated pages of Substack, public intellectuals have openly explored the ethical dilemmas posed by all-powerful AI.

While AI enthusiasts and fearmongers may both overstate the capabilities of large language models and the pace of research in the field, they have raised important ethical questions about the role of technology in society. Putting these questions in the future tense, discussing how we should respond to technology at a distant hypothetical point, ignores how our use of technology and our reliance on it may already be endangering human responsibility in the present.

The author argues that we should be particularly wary of the use of technology in cybersecurity and warfare, not only because of the obvious ethical risks, but also because OpenAI recently appointed a retired US Army general and former NSA adviser to its board of directors. The best way to prepare for a dangerous future brought on by machines is to see that this future is actually already here. It is happening in Gaza.

Operation Swords of Iron

In a series of groundbreaking investigations, Israeli publications +972 and Local Call reveal the extensive role that artificial intelligence plays in Israel's military operation in Gaza, which began on October 8, 2023 and is called Operation Swords of Iron by Israel. Relying on the testimony of six anonymous informants within the IDF (all of whom have direct experience with this technology), investigative journalist Yuval Abraham describes three algorithmic systems used by the IDF: "The Gospel," "Lavender," and "Where's Daddy?"

Based on Abraham's informants, Gospel generates lists of physical structures to be hit, and Lavender generates lists of people to be hit. Where's Daddy? is a secondary tracking system used to predict when Lavender-generated targets enter their homes for bombing.

Abraham’s informants, all of whom were reservists drafted after October 7, said these systems were used with little human supervision, with soldiers often simply stamping the model outputs (the IDF denies these claims). In two inquiries, Abraham suggested that these systems were partly responsible for the unprecedented scale of destruction in the current military offensive, especially in the first few weeks.

Indeed, the IDF proudly claimed to have dropped 4,000 tons of bombs on the Gaza Strip in the first five days of the operation. By their own admission, half of these bombs were dropped on so-called “power targets”, which are non-military civilian structures, such as public buildings or high-rise apartments, located in densely populated areas and which, if bombed, could cause significant damage to civilian infrastructure. In fact, they were chosen for this very reason.

This logic can be traced back to the Dahiya strategy, a military strategy advocated by IDF commander Gadi Eisenkot during Israel’s 2006 war with Hezbollah that legitimized the excessive destruction of civilians. Although the IDF did not officially use such “power targets” against Palestinians until 2014, the Gospel system allowed the Dahiya strategy to be implemented on a larger scale, generating targets at a faster rate, while maintaining a degree of credibility internationally and avoiding accusations of indiscriminate bombing.

IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari succinctly restated the Dahiyeh strategy on October 10, 2023: “We are focused on inflicting maximum damage.” This echoes Eisenkot’s original summary in 2008: “We will exert disproportionate force… and cause great damage.” Eisenkot served as a member of Israel’s War Cabinet, formed on October 11 of the previous year, until his resignation in June 2024, prompting Netanyahu to dissolve the cabinet.

The principle of proportionality, which aims to prevent the use of excessive force against civilians, is one of the fundamental principles of international humanitarian law. In practice, it is difficult to prove that these principles have been violated unless they are proudly publicized by the perpetrator.

It is unclear to what extent the IDF is still using the aforementioned AI technologies in the current phase of military operations. Nor is their usefulness at this stage, given the massive destruction Israel has already inflicted (most homes, hospitals, government buildings, nonprofit offices, and schools have been damaged or destroyed; electricity has been largely cut off; Palestinians are frequently migrating to escape Israeli attacks and seek shelter).

However, Israel could use the same system against Lebanon in the event of a larger conflict. Israel also has a long history of selling military technology to other countries.

In previous military operations, the selection of assassination targets involved a lengthy process of accusation, including cross-checking information. This process was manageable when the target pool included only high-ranking Hamas officials, but it became more cumbersome as the IDF expanded the range of potential targets to include all low-level Hamas personnel in order to achieve the goal of eliminating Hamas. Israel used artificial intelligence to automate and accelerate the process of generating targets.

Lavender is a model trained to identify all Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) members, regardless of rank, with the express goal of generating a kill list. The Lavender model described by Abraham’s informant is very similar to the one described by the commander of the IDF’s elite unit 8200 in his 2021 self-published e-book, “Human-Machine Teaming: How Creating Synergies Between Artificial Intelligence and Humans Will Revolutionize Our World.”

Given the highly sensitive nature of Unit 8200's work, the identity of the commander is usually kept secret during their tenure. However, the identity of the current commander, Yossi Koch, was revealed on January 14, 2023. Koch described a collaborative effort in which humans (including analysts, intelligence officers, and military commanders) worked with artificial intelligence to assess threats and select targets. It can be concluded that the IDF used artificial intelligence technology similar to the "Lavender" model to generate targets.

All of these “human-machine teams” need to combine traditional military target assessment and selection with algorithmically generated data sets to ensure that non-military targets are not mistakenly targeted. Although the IDF admits that it uses artificial intelligence technology to speed up the target selection process, the accuracy of target identification and its impact on civilians is difficult to verify.

According to previous Guardian reporting (by Bethan McKernan), one informant who used Lavender questioned whether humans had any role in the selection process at all: "I spend 20 seconds per target at this stage and do dozens a day. As a human, I have no added value other than my stamp of approval. It saves a lot of time."

Some informants described the IDF's pre-authorization of the number of civilian deaths allowed in certain target categories. Two informants said that in the early weeks of the war, they were allowed to kill 15 to 20 civilians in airstrikes against low-level combatants. Attacks on these targets typically used unguided munitions known as "dumb bombs" that destroyed entire houses and killed all occupants.

"You don't want to waste expensive bombs on unimportant people - it's very expensive for the country, and those bombs are scarce," said one intelligence official. Another official said the main issue they faced was "whether the 'collateral damage' to civilians would allow the attack to take place. Because we usually attack with fool bombs, which means literally dropping an entire house on its inhabitants. But even if the attack is stopped, you don't care - you immediately move on to the next target. Because of the system, the targets are never finished. You have 36,000 more waiting."

Conflict experts say if Israel used point-and-shoot bombs to destroy the homes of Palestinians associated with Hamas, and these individuals were identified with the help of artificial intelligence, it could help explain the war’s alarmingly high death toll. In the first month of the war alone, 1,340 families suffered multiple losses, including 312 who lost more than 10 members, according to UN data.

In response to the Guardian, the IDF said in a statement that its actions were carried out in accordance with the principle of proportionality under international law. The statement said that the point-and-shoot rounds were "standard weapons" used by IDF pilots with "a high level of precision." The statement also mentioned that Lavender is a database used to "cross-reference intelligence informants in order to generate an up-to-date layer of information about military personnel of terrorist organizations. This is not a confirmed list of military personnel to be targeted."

In earlier military operations conducted by the IDF, the process of identifying targets was often more labor-intensive. Multiple sources told the Guardian that a discussion would take place to determine whether a person was a legitimate target, and then a legal adviser would sign off. In the weeks and months following the October 7 Hamas attack, this pattern of manual approval for strikes on human targets accelerated dramatically, with commanders demanding a steady stream of targets.

On October 11, 2023 local time, an Israeli army self-propelled howitzer opened fire near the Gaza border.

"There was constant pressure, they were literally yelling at us: 'Give us more targets,'" said one intelligence official. "We were told: Now we have to destroy Hamas, whatever the cost. Whatever you can do, you bomb." To meet this demand, the IDF began to rely heavily on Lavender to generate a database of individuals judged to be PIJ or Hamas militants.

Specific details about the type of data used to train the Lavender algorithm or how the program reached its conclusions were not included in the +972 or Local Call accounts. However, the informant said that in the first weeks of the war, Unit 8200 tweaked Lavender's algorithm and adjusted its search parameters. After random sampling and cross-checking its predictions, Unit 8200 concluded that Lavender achieved a 90% accuracy rate, which led the IDF to approve its large-scale use as a target recommendation tool. Lavender created a database of tens of thousands of individuals, mostly low-ranking members of Hamas militants. This database was used in conjunction with another AI-based decision support system, Gospel, which recommended buildings and structures as targets rather than individuals.

Testimonies published by +972 and Local Call may explain why Western military forces, with such advanced capabilities, have inflicted such heavy casualties while waging such an extensive war. When it comes to targeting low-level Hamas and PIJ suspects, the preference is to strike while they are at home. “We don’t just want to kill [Hamas] fighters when they are in military buildings or engaging in military activities,” one informant said. “It’s easier to blow up a family’s house. The system is designed to find them in these situations.”

This strategy carries a higher risk of civilian casualties. One informant said: "It's not just that you can kill any Hamas soldier, which is clearly permitted and legal under international law. They tell you straight out: 'You are allowed to kill as many civilians as possible'... In reality, the proportionality standard does not exist." Experts on international humanitarian law are alarmed by the IDF's acceptance and pre-authorization of collateral damage rates of up to 20 civilians, especially against low-ranking fighters. They say the military must assess proportionality for each individual strike.

Whatever the legal or moral justifications for Israel's bombing strategy, some intelligence officials are questioning the methods set by commanders. "No one has thought about what to do after the war, or how to live in Gaza," said one informant.

This violent conflict has, to some extent, exposed the risks and challenges of artificial intelligence in modern military operations: when technology is used to execute unethical orders, it does not reduce the cruelty of war, but in some cases may amplify the scale of atrocities. Ultimately, ethical issues and humanitarian concerns must be important considerations when developing and applying artificial intelligence technology.

Olympic History and Controversy

The 2024 Paris Olympics is about to kick off. Behind the joyous atmosphere brought by this sporting event, there are also various concerns. Recently, the London Review of Books published an article titled "Five Ring Circus" by British sports writer and sociologist David Goldblatt. In this book review of Jules Boykoff's new book "What Are the Olympics For?" published in March this year and David Miller's "Igniting the Games: The Evolution of the Olympics and Bach's Legacy" to be published in 2022, Goldblatt sorted out the historical origins of the Olympics and the various controversies it has faced from ancient times to the present, and made a less optimistic outlook on the future of the Olympics.

Book covers for Why the Olympics? and Ignite the Games: The Evolution of the Olympics and the Legacy of Bach

Goldblatt points out that the Olympic Games are a bizarre invention of Coubertin, combining his misreading of ancient games with a romanticized appropriation of the British public school's cult of amateur athletes. In 1892, Coubertin first called for the revival of the Olympic Games at a seminar at the Sorbonne University. In 1894, the International Olympic Committee was established and Athens was chosen as the first host city of the Olympic Games. Paris has hosted the Summer Olympics twice, in 1900 and 1924. 100 years later, the Olympic Games will return to Paris for the third time.

The article wrote that the first Olympic Games held in Paris in 1900 was a farce. Coubertin had intended to make it the sports part of the Universal Exposition, but Alfred Picard, the main organizer of the Exposition, believed that the Olympic Games held by Coubertin for hundreds of amateur male athletes were "low-level and unsuitable to represent the country", and the neo-Hellenism represented by the Olympic Movement was regarded as "absurd anachronism". The sports events of the Exposition included a series of sports popular in France in the late 19th century: racing, hot air balloons, fishing and racing pigeons, gymnastics and archery performances, golf and polo, school sports, women's and children's activities, and professional tennis, racquetball and bicycle competitions that were least in line with the Olympic spirit. Coubertin stipulated that the events that did not involve motor vehicles, professional athletes, children and animals were Olympic events. The puzzled media called it the Festival Games, the Olympic Games and the International Games, and the public did not pay much attention to it. No laurels or certificates were awarded in the competition. Coubertin admitted that it was a miracle that the Olympic Movement survived.

By the time Paris hosted the Games for the second time in 1924, Coubertin had managed, through tenacity, enthusiasm and “brand consciousness”, to turn the Games into a global institution that would soon replace the World’s Fair and Imperial Exhibition on which they were originally attached. By this time, the core of the invented Olympic ritual had been established: the opening of the Games by national teams, the awarding of gold, silver and bronze medals to athletes, the Olympic oath and the intersecting rings. The 1924 Paris Games added the motto “Citius, Altius, Fortius” and, for the first time, had the explicit backing of a national government – ​​the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs took charge of the preparations and contributed 10 million francs. From then on, the Olympics were political events with political purposes, no matter what the International Olympic Committee claimed. The 1924 Games involved more than 3,000 athletes, three times as many as in 1900, more than 1,000 special correspondents, and most of the games were filmed and broadcast around the world.

However, the IOC’s ideals of spectator sports and its belief in the moral superiority of amateurism were challenged by the rise of professional and commercial sports. Baseball in the United States, cycling in France and the Low Countries, soccer in Europe and Latin America, and boxing around the world offered a different model that catered to a more working-class audience, creating sports celebrities and popular narratives that made the Olympics seem staid and old-fashioned. This problem crystallized at the 1920 Antwerp Games. The 1924 Paris Games attempted to bridge class differences by staging sports exhibitions in the Popular Amusement Park and boxing matches in the Winter Velodrome. It was at this event that the first Olympic superstars emerged, such as Finnish long-distance runner Paavo Nurmi, who won five gold medals, and the Uruguayan football team, which played to sold-out crowds.

In this way, the Olympics rivaled professional sports in terms of spectacle and celebrity, but were challenged by the women’s movement and the workers’ movement. The French Women’s Sports Federation, founded by Alice Milliat, staged women’s Olympic Games (Monte Carlo in 1921, Paris in 1922, Monte Carlo again in 1923, and London in 1924) to challenge the IOC’s virtual exclusion of women athletes. In response, the IOC agreed to allow women’s athletics and other sports at the 1928 Amsterdam Games, but with restrictions. It was not until 1984 that women accounted for one-fifth of the Olympic participants. The workers’ movement, with 4 million members in North America and Europe, was created by social democratic parties and trade unions and offered an inclusive model of sports that favored participation over excellence and opposed the wave of nationalism that had emerged with the Olympic movement. In 1925, the organization held the first workers’ Summer Olympics in Frankfurt, which attracted 100,000 participants. In 1931, the event was held in Vienna, with tens of thousands of socialist youths pulling down the giant tower symbolizing capital at the opening ceremony. However, with the rise of fascism, the German-Austrian core of the movement disbanded.

Over the next half century, the IOC established and solidified its sport’s global dominance. The 1932 Los Angeles Games added commercialization and entertainment. The 1936 Berlin Games showed how the power of the nation-state could be mobilized to support the spectacle. The 1960s brought live color television, which changed the format and reach of the games. The 1984 Los Angeles Games pioneered the media and sponsorship models that lay the foundation for today’s Olympics. Barcelona in 1992 used the Games as the final link in a post-Franco urban renaissance, convincing the world that the Olympics could bring tourists, growth, and development. But the money from television and sponsorship was soon taken away from the host cities and kept by the IOC. The biggest change was when Samaranch, who served as IOC president from 1980 to 2001, quietly removed the amateurism rule from the Olympic Charter. To fill the ideological vacuum that resulted, Samaranch tried to align the IOC with the emerging international political concerns of the 1990s, incorporating human rights, gender equality, and the pursuit of environmental sustainability into the Olympic Charter. Under his successor, Jacques Rogge, more cities bid for the Games, television audiences and revenues grew, and the Games expanded—more athletes, more sports, more media. The number of women athletes at the Olympics also increased to nearly half.

But the new model has its problems. In 1998, the media revealed that Salt Lake City bribed several members of the International Olympic Committee to win the right to host the 2002 Winter Olympics. Subsequent investigations showed that such hidden rules and criminal behavior had existed for decades. On the other hand, academic research shows that the Olympics do not bring jobs, economic growth or productivity, and often reduce the level of tourism. Those venues that cannot be used or cannot be maintained will become a burden on the city. When German fencer, lawyer and sports official Thomas Bach was elected as the ninth president of the International Olympic Committee in 2013, his task was to work on solving the growing problems facing the organization. In Goldblatt's view, Miller's book "Ignite the Games" failed to objectively and impartially reveal the struggle of various forces in international sports during Bach's tenure and the gap between the IOC's claims and actual actions. Instead, it became a celebration of Bach's courage to try to overcome the crisis.

Goldblatt noted that Bach spent a lot of time on the Russian side during his time at the IOC, but failed to resolve the problem. So far, Bach has presided over two Summer Olympics and three Winter Olympics. The 2016 Rio Olympics were the first Olympics to be held in South America. As the country's biggest event in a decade (including the 2014 World Cup), they were supposed to demonstrate the economic vitality and international influence of Brazil under Lula and his successor Dilma Rousseff. However, before the opening of the Olympics, Lula was arrested and Rousseff was impeached. The "Car Wash" scandal exposed massive corruption and waste in public construction projects, especially the renovation of the Olympic Park and Maracanã Stadium. These projects displaced 70,000 people from their homes, most of whom received negligible compensation and ended up living in new social housing run by drug gangs on the edge of the city. Promises to Rio's poor, such as building new sewage systems in the poorest areas and cleaning up Guanabara Bay, the venue for the sailing competitions, were abandoned because of high costs. The 2020 Tokyo Olympics were changed by the COVID-19 pandemic. The postponed Tokyo Olympics, which will be held in 2021, will have almost no live audience. Unusually strong typhoons have forced sailing and rowing events to be rescheduled. Due to the hot summer in Tokyo, marathons and race walks have been moved to Sapporo, tennis matches have to be held at night, and outdoor swimmers are forced to compete in dangerously warm water. Fewer people are watching the games: the global television audience peaked at the 2012 London Olympics, while the global television audience for the Rio Olympics and Tokyo Olympics has declined.

A more pressing problem for Bach is that fewer and fewer cities are interested in hosting the Olympics. In 2008, there were 10 candidate cities, which were later reduced to 5 final candidates, and after 2020, there are 5 candidate cities and 3 final candidates. More and more cities withdrew from the bidding process. Oslo, Krakow, Lviv and Stockholm gave up their bids for the Winter Olympics after the vote; Hamburg, Boston and Rome gave up their ambitions to host the Summer Olympics. Only two cities, Paris and Los Angeles, competed for the 2024 Summer Olympics, and no city seemed interested in the 2028 Olympics. Bach, aware of the danger, gave the 2024 hosting rights to Paris, and then persuaded Los Angeles to take the 2028 hosting rights, a decision that was not even voted on by the International Olympic Committee. In 2021, through a similar strategy, the only reasonable candidate city, Brisbane, won the right to host the 2032 Games.

On July 19, 2024 local time, the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympic Games in France is about to be held, and the Olympic atmosphere is in Trocadero Square.

It took a long time for potential bidders to realize that the Olympic model didn’t work, but residents of potential host cities have been pushing back for decades. Denver’s plans to host the Winter Olympics in 1976 were scuttled when a coalition of low-tax Republicans and environmentalists launched and won a local referendum. In the 1980s and 1990s, bids from Amsterdam, Berlin and Toronto were scuttled by protests from housing activists, squatters and anarchists. In recent years, Indigenous groups have questioned the design of the logo for the 2000 Sydney Olympics and protested the construction of a highway on unclaimed Indigenous land for the 2010 Vancouver Winter Games. Anti-Olympic campaigns have been launched in Rio, Paris and Los Angeles. Boykoff has been a participant in anti-Olympic campaigns, which he profiles in Why Have the Olympics?

In 2014, Bach published his transformative manifesto, Agenda 2020, which proposed ways to simplify the Olympic bid process, reduce infrastructure costs and avoid “white elephant projects”. It promised to prioritize bids that would create a positive urban legacy and be climate-friendly, and envisioned a new Olympism that protected clean athletes, respected human rights and inspired young people to participate in sport. Sochi, Rio and Pyeongchang, all awarded before Bach began his presidency, have failed to live up to these expectations. The Tokyo Games were hit by the variable of a pandemic. So, as in 1924, the responsibility for testing the feasibility of the new Olympic model once again falls on the shoulders of Paris 2024.

Goldblatt argues that it is the IOC’s responsibility, not the host countries, to stage a clean Olympics. The Olympics cannot be free of doping because of the drug arms race that is pervasive in global sport. In addition, the world’s sports federations have turned a blind eye to the practices of psychologically and sexually abusive coaches and failed to protect the athletes they were responsible for. But the IOC has done little to respond to these problems. The more pressing issues facing Bach and the organizers of the Paris 2024 Olympics have to do with cost. Accounting for inflation, the Paris 2024 Olympics are the cheapest Olympics in more than a quarter century and the first since Los Angeles 1984 with almost no new infrastructure (only the Aquatics Center, the Olympic Village and the International Media Center were built), but the construction budget is still $4.5 billion, and the actual cost of hosting the events is similar. This cost is paid through the sale of a large number of expensive tickets and product licenses, local sponsors and the IOC itself. In recent years, the IOC has been keeping global media broadcasting rights and sponsorship revenues for itself. In the face of growing criticism, the IOC has provided $1.2 billion this time. Initial polls showed about 60 percent of French people in favor of holding the Olympics, but in Paris that number has fallen to around half as the Games approach and the inconveniences they would cause.

Every Olympics since Sydney in 2000 has promised to be the “greenest Games ever,” but the results have been dismal. London and Rio have pledged to reduce carbon emissions, but they still produce as much as Haiti or Madagascar does in a year. In Paris this summer, the Seine was supposed to be clean enough for water events for the first time in more than a century, but recent tests showed high levels of E. coli. All Olympic venues are connected to the grid, meaning the diesel generators that big events usually rely on can be eliminated. The environmental toll has included the destruction of coral reefs after a lookout tower had to be rebuilt on the coast of Tahiti to host the surfing events, and the sacrifice of acres of parkland to build an international media center. Organizers have avoided claiming that the events will be carbon neutral. The consumption during the Games and the transportation of more than 10,000 athletes, more than 30,000 coaches and officials, and even more journalists and media workers (not to mention spectators) will generate more than 1.5 million tons of carbon dioxide, equivalent to half the carbon emissions of the 2012 London Olympics or the 2016 Rio Olympics, which is close to the feasible limit of emission reductions. The increasingly frequent and intense heat waves in France are also worrying.

Berlin in 1936, Tokyo in 1964, Moscow in 1980, Los Angeles in 1984 and Atlanta in 1996 all used extraordinary measures to keep homeless people, drug addicts and petty criminals away during the Games. According to the latest count, there are about 4,000 homeless people in Paris, but they are only the most visible part of a larger group of homeless people. Tens of thousands of people have occupied old industrial buildings as shelter or camped in marginalized public places. About 150,000 people live in other forms of temporary housing. Since the beginning of 2023, the police have been evicting residents of these places. Students were asked to move out of dormitories reserved for the international press corps, and the compensation was only two free tickets and 100 euros.

Previously, the Paris City Hall tried to curb Airbnb. In order to become an Olympic partner, Airbnb paid $500 million and listed 100,000 rental houses in Paris during the Olympics. This will undoubtedly accelerate the transformation of Paris, where housing resources are already extremely scarce, from long-term private rentals to short-term leisure rentals. After the Olympics, the Olympic Village will provide about 3,000 houses, half of which will be sold and half will be rented out at reasonable prices or used as social housing. The Olympic Village has a very poor record in providing affordable housing and economic revitalization. The towers in Mexico City were allocated to civil servants; the apartments in Barcelona's new seaside Olympic Village became a hot spot for gentrification and real estate speculation; Athens allocated them to those in need through lottery, but the quality of public services dropped sharply after the new residents moved in, and it has now become one of the poorest and most backward areas in Athens...

Paris suburbs have been the scene of riots, including the 2022 Champions League final between Liverpool and Real Madrid at the Stade de France. France will deploy 30,000 gendarmes, 15,000 armed forces and secret services, and 22,000 private security personnel during the Olympics. The military will deploy drone surveillance, AWACS aircraft and helicopter snipers. It will cost €320 million and provide security forces and police with an upgraded, intrusive digital surveillance infrastructure. Residents in secure zones around Olympic venues will need to obtain and present a QR code. Saint-Denis has a new urban surveillance center connected to 400 cameras. Data and privacy laws have been rewritten so that the images generated can be used as fodder for AI-enhanced surveillance. The law is scheduled to be repealed after the games, but the outcome remains to be seen.

Goldblatt also writes that the Paris Olympics hopes to invite Malian-French singer Aya Nakamura to perform at the opening ceremony. She is the world's best-selling French singer, and President Macron has publicly expressed his hope that she will perform. But in a poll, 73% of the French public believe that her work does not represent French music, and 63% are opposed to her performing at the opening ceremony. Rumors that Nakamura might sing Edith Piaf's La Vie en Rose have angered the far right. Ennahda leader Eric Zemmour claimed that he only heard "foreign languages" in Nakamura's songs, and an extremist group called "Les Natifs" hung a banner on the banks of the Seine that read: "No way, Aya! This is Paris, not a Bamako market."

No matter how grand the opening ceremony of the Olympics, its status as the greatest event has been ceded to the World Cup. In the final chapter of Why the Olympics?, Boykov asks whether the Olympics should be held in a permanent location, but the ever-changing requirements of the Olympics mean that no infrastructure can last forever. He also asks whether the process of selecting host cities can be democratized by insisting that candidate cities hold a referendum on the issue. He also thinks that both the intellectual property rights and the bureaucracy of the Olympics can be put in the hands of athletes and their unions, but the International Olympic Committee is obviously not going to reform itself and disappear. And in Goldblatt's view, if we choose to treat the Olympic movement with the moral skepticism it deserves, the Olympics may come to an end in a few decades.