From Iran to Pakistan and Ukraine: MAID and the dangerous democracy of war

Indian Express

4 hours ago

The images streaming from conflict zones in 2025 tell a chilling story of warfare's rapid evolution. Israeli fighter jets targeting Iranian nuclear facilities while swarms of drones darken the skies over Tel Aviv. Indian precision strikes eliminating Pakistani terrorist camps without a single civilian casualty. Ukrainian drones penetrating deep into Russian territory, launched from operators sitting safely hundreds of miles away. Welcome to the MAID era — Missiles, Artificial Intelligence and Drones — where warfare has become more precise and dangerous than ever before.
This technological trinity represents the most significant shift in military doctrine since the advent of nuclear weapons. Yet, unlike the Cold War's nuclear standoff, which created a terrifying but stable balance of mutually assured destruction, the MAID revolution is democratising violence in ways that should alarm anyone concerned about global stability.
Low cost, high-impact warfare
Consider the stark mathematics: A modern F-35 fighter jet costs over $100 million and requires a highly trained pilot whose loss represents years of investment. A military drone capable of devastating precision strikes costs less than $50,000 and can be operated by someone with minimal training from thousands of miles away. This cost differential isn't just changing military procurement — it's fundamentally altering the strategic calculations that have historically prevented conflicts.
The India-Pakistan drone warfare in May illustrates this transformation perfectly. Both nuclear-armed neighbours could demonstrate military resolve, achieve visible battlefield effects, and satisfy domestic political pressures without risking expensive aircraft or elite pilots. The conflict remained contained not because of strategic wisdom, but possibly because drone warfare allowed both sides to save face while minimising escalation risks. This is warfare as political theatre, enabled by technology that makes military action cheaper and seemingly less consequential.
Computer-scale speed, human consequences
More troubling is the role of AI in accelerating conflict beyond human decision-making timelines. When machine learning algorithms can identify, track and engage targets with minimal human oversight, we edge closer to a world where wars might be fought at computer speeds with human-scale consequences. Ukraine's pioneering work in drone swarm technologies — coordinating hundreds of autonomous units simultaneously — offers a glimpse of conflicts that could spiral beyond human control within minutes rather than hours or days.
The current Israel-Iran exchange, now in its first week with mounting casualties, demonstrates how quickly MAID-enabled conflicts can escalate despite initial attempts at limitation. What began as targeted strikes on military infrastructure has expanded to include civilian energy facilities and media centres when warfare becomes this precise and distant, the psychological barriers that historically constrained military action begin to erode.
MAID ethics and guardrails
Perhaps, most concerning is how the MAID revolution has outpaced our legal and ethical frameworks for warfare. International humanitarian law was crafted for conflicts involving uniformed soldiers using identifiable weapons platforms. How do we assign responsibility when an AI algorithm makes targeting decisions? What constitutes proportionality when swarms of autonomous drones can overwhelm any defence system? Who is accountable when a remote operator launches a precision strike from another continent?
Recent US military exercises involving counter-drone operations revealed the complexity of legal authorities even for homeland defence scenarios. If we struggle to determine rules of engagement for defending our own territory against drone incursions, how can we expect coherent international frameworks for offensive operations?
The MAID ecosystem's most destabilising effect may be its democratisation of military capabilities. Small nations and non-state actors can now pose credible threats to major powers using relatively inexpensive technology. This levels the playing field in ways that traditional military doctrine never anticipated, potentially emboldening actors who previously would have been deterred by overwhelming conventional superiority.
Iran's threats to target the US military base at Diego Garcia with long-range ballistic missiles and drones exemplify this shift. A regional power can now credibly threaten American strategic assets thousands of miles away using technology that was unimaginable just a decade ago. This reach, combined with the reduced political costs of MAID warfare, fundamentally alters deterrence calculations.
The conflicts of 2025 have demonstrated that mastery of MAID technologies increasingly determines military effectiveness. Ukraine's transition from individual drone operations to sophisticated swarm coordination shows how quickly military innovation advances under pressure. India's planned $470 million investment in UAV capabilities — triple pre-conflict levels — signals how rapidly nations are adapting to this new reality.
Yet, this technological arms race proceeds without corresponding developments in international governance, legal frameworks, or strategic stability mechanisms. We're stumbling toward a future where conflicts may unfold at machine speed with consequences that remain devastatingly human.
The international community faces an urgent choice. We can either develop new frameworks for managing MAID-enabled conflicts before they spiral beyond control, or we can continue reacting to each escalation as it occurs. The former requires unprecedented international cooperation and legal innovation. The latter virtually guarantees that the precision and distance of modern warfare will make conflicts more frequent, not less devastating. And there are no guard rails because the UN has almost ceased to function with its members almost disregarding it.
The MAID revolution isn't coming — it's here. The question isn't whether this technology will reshape global power dynamics, but whether we'll develop the wisdom to control tools that make warfare simultaneously more precise and more perilous than ever before.
The writer, a defence and cyber security analyst, is former country head of General Dynamics