Júlia Nueno Guitart: "Deciding whether someone lives or dies based on statistical information is very dangerous"

BarcelonaWho determines what is true? In the era of fake news, manipulated algorithms, and post-truth, a group of architects, journalists, engineers, and lawyers work together, putting technology at the service of facts. They call it forensic architecture and they dedicate themselves to reconstructing disputed events, from demonstrations to military attacks around the world. Since 2023, they have focused on Gaza, and their reports are used as evidence in South Africa's accusation against Israel at the International Court of Justice. We speak with Júlia Nueno, a researcher at Forensic Architecture, based in London, and editor of Genocides. A Forensic Reading (Galaxia Gutenberg).

What can forensic architecture tell us about a territory?

— Forensic architecture is a research methodology that combines spatial analysis and techniques derived from architecture with software development to investigate state and corporate violence. How is it investigated? We reconstruct the disputed facts, through all the traces left in the space after this violence has taken place. If architecture has the function of designing a space according to the functions you want it to fulfill, here it is the reverse: we already have the function, what has happened, and what we do is reconstruct the space around where it happened. We work through models. We make a digital architectural model, and we place all the images we have in it, reproducing the perspective from which they were taken, situating them in time and space. This is how we build a chronology of events and develop a verification methodology.

Your analysis is included in South Africa's accusation against Israel at the ICJ. What evidence have you found that Israel is perpetrating genocide in Gaza?

— Since October 2023, we have documented incidents by the Israeli army in Gaza that are repeated in different areas and at different times, which has allowed us to confirm a will to destroy the living conditions of the population. What does this consist of? We see that there are organized patterns to dismantle the medical system. Hospitals are attacked in a similar way: first their surroundings, and then directly, they are invaded and taken out of service. We have seen this repeatedly: first in northern Gaza, later in Khan Yunis, and finally in Rafah. On the other hand, we have seen how spaces and people essential for the distribution of humanitarian aid have been systematically attacked. For example, in the first weeks, the essential distribution point was bakeries, which were attacked. When people moved towards the shelters, these became the target of attacks, and then the famous flour massacre. Every logistical chain set in motion to distribute humanitarian aid is attacked. Therefore, we cannot say that these are isolated incidents, nor even self-defense, which is what Israel would claim. The coordination of all these incidents demonstrates a will to destroy the living conditions in Gaza, and this is covered within the second article of the Geneva Convention on Genocide.

The destruction of agricultural land is 95% in the summer of 2025. What does this tell us?

— If we read the destruction of agricultural lands together with the destruction of the distribution of humanitarian aid, we see that the self-sufficiency capacity of the Palestinian population is broken. All of this is a struggle for sovereignty: whoever controls the distribution of food controls the territory.

And does it also point to a future destruction?

— Completely. We see it in the destruction of agricultural land, but also in the displacement of the population towards the most arid zones, such as the humanitarian zone of Al-Mawassi, where life is less sustainable. Israel exercises control over the Palestinian people through time: of the past, with the destruction of archaeological sites and historical monuments; of the present by razing the territory; and of the future, by destroying agricultural land and contaminating water resources.

In the book you explain how Israel uses AI technology to determine targets in Gaza. How does it work?

— In international humanitarian law there are two essential principles for defining what is accepted within a military strategy. One is that of distinction, it is necessary to distinguish between combatants and civilians in a conflict, and the other is proportionality, which states that for a military objective of great value, a series of collateral damages are accepted. Israel integrates these principles —in the service of a certain economy of violence— into artificial intelligence programs and accelerates the killing process. That is, it uses the principles of humanitarian law to maximize the number of deaths.

How do you find it?

— We have reconstructed the bombing campaign in Gaza in October 2023 from thousands of videos and social media images, cross-referenced with satellite imagery. This analysis collects a thousand incidents between October 7 and 29 and shows that the bombings are concentrated in areas with a greater civilian presence: residential areas at night, commercial areas during the day, and in southern Gaza, the place where the population was sent after the evacuation order.

The monitoring of tracking data is widespread. What do you mean when you talk about a "target society"?

— The society of objectives functions on different levels: we are all, for example, a marketing target. Depending on the statistical groups to which we belong, it is decided what advertising we receive. If you export this logic to an occupied territory, you decide about someone's death or life through their statistical information. This is very dangerous. The system that Israel uses assigns a "terrorism" score between 1 and 100 to any member of the population, according to the probability that they belong to an organization. Zero does not exist: the entire population is criminalizable.

Now that we see similar patterns in the bombings in Iran, would you say that Gaza has been the "testing ground" for this technology?

— A senior Israeli military official stated in October 2023 that, for the first time, the army's AI systems were generating new targets at a faster rate than they could be bombed. He said that if in the wars of 2014 and 2021 they only created 50 targets in a year, then they could produce 100 in a single day. AI has transformed the industrial mass extermination tactics of the past into individualized mass extermination tactics in the present. When the bombing of a person or place causes the death of dozens of others, individual selection becomes the justification for mass murder. We must stop accepting the terminology given by armies and BigTech about these lethal weapons: they are not precision systems, they are mass extermination systems whose operational principle is the selection of the individual.