Balak, Hiroshima, and Artificial Intelligence in Warfare

Rabbi Daniel Z. Feldman

What does it take to turn an enemy who wishes your national destruction into a friend, or at least someone who wishes you no harm? This question, so daunting over this past period of terrible military conflict, is a central theme of this week’s Torah reading, in which Bila’am is sent to curse the Jewish people and yet ultimately blesses them, providing the phrase “Mah Tovu Ohalecha Yaakov” that we quote every day. It was a question on my mind as well a little over a year ago as I sat in a conference room in Japan, a country once locked in a terrible war against the United States, yet now a powerful ally of America.

The theme of the conference was “Artificial Intelligence Ethics for Peace”, which was addressed with appropriate urgency and impressive unity, with representatives of major religions from all over the world gathered.

The medium was quite literally the message: The conference was located in Hiroshima, the city destroyed 80 years ago next month, on Aug. 6th, 1945, by a devastating tool of then-cutting edge technology, the atomic bomb. In the decades since, Hiroshima has been rebuilt as a thriving monument to peace. The world must commit to restrain their use of technology, ensuring that nothing like that ever happens again, argued the presenters.

The conference was inspiring and spoke to the needs of the moment, and I was honored to be present. Yet, one is left to wonder if there are equally important messages that the location contained, also calling for expression.

A visit to the nearby Peace Memorial Museum, which effectively depicts the awful suffering the bombing caused, could leave one with the impression that this event was the effect of brutal, unjust aggression. A display attributed only two explanations to America’s decision, neither connected to any actions on the part of Japan: curbing the influence of the Soviet Union, and justifying the expense of the bomb’s production.

The implication that Hiroshima’s bombing was an unwarranted and unjustified attack by a superpower left me deeply unsettled. Ironically, this is the conclusion a computer could come to. A human perspective might be different: Perhaps the legacy of Hiroshima is actually the possibility of a just warrior to resoundingly defeat a brutal enemy, leaving renunciation of hostility the only option, and allowing a peaceful, flourishing society to rise in the aftermath.

The decision to drop the bomb was made by US War Secretary Henry Stimson, who worried, no less than the conference’s organizers, that “man’s technical capacity to do evil will outrun man’s human capacity to do good”. This concern was shared by US President Harry S Truman: “I fear that machines are ahead of morals by some centuries.”

Stimson’s thought process is conveyed in vivid detail in Evan Thomas’s book Road to Surrender, together with those of two other principals in this heart-wrenching, complex historical chapter, Gen. Carl “Tooey” Spatz, who supervised the planes that dropped the bombs, and Japanese Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo, who worked to convince his government to surrender, when the cultural reality meant that that word could not even be uttered.

Thomas guides his readers through the process, impact, and aftermath - short-term and long-term - and why, in his analysis, not only was the bomb on Hiroshima necessary, but the second one on Nagasaki was as well. Among other considerations, there was the belief that the Japanese were ready to commit national suicide for the Emperor, and, more rationally, that inflicting massive losses on the Allies could mean more favorable terms for them even in defeat.

None of this was inarguable: the very choice of Hiroshima and Nagasaki may have reflected a misanalysis of their military/civilian balance; while the sparing of Kyoto, earlier designated a target, was the result of Stimson’s advocacy (against Harry Truman and others) not to “cut out the cultural heart of Japan”. Spatz’s diaries show that he agonized over “the brutal means…to a just end”, and went from opposing using the bomb to recommending dropping a third one, on Tokyo. A year after the bombing, a full issue of The New Yorker shocked Americans with the gruesome details of the effects, and Stimson was moved to make his case to the country, despite his own ongoing struggle with aspects of it, including his self-doubt as to whether he had adequately tried to get Japan to surrender before.

Thomas dismisses this possibility, deciding conclusively that Japan would not have surrendered, and moreover that the bombing not only saved the lives of countless American soldiers, but also of hundreds of thousands of Japanese who would have died in the continuing conflict and blockade; as well of other Asians in China and the Southeast who were being killed at the rate of 250,000 a month by the Japanese occupation. It was only after Nagasaki and the Soviet declaration of war on Aug. 7th that Togo convinced a majority of the Japanese War Council. Thomas also rebuts the claim that challenging Russia was a significant factor in the decision. He further explains why “precision bombing” of military targets was not feasible, as well as the added persuasiveness of the second bomb – the Japanese had convinced themselves that no nation could have produced more than one.

Most to the point, Thomas concludes his account of the “decent, imperfect people who made the decision to use a frighteningly powerful new weapon” by writing that “Stimson, Spaatz, and Togo gave mightily of themselves to bring peace, and at last they succeeded.”

And yet, it should not be surprising that the perspective in Japan is absent of any of these justifications. At the International Military Tribunal trial in Tokyo following World War II, even an American defense advocate, Ben Bruce Blakeney, compared Hiroshima to Pearl Harbor, claiming to “speak for America... for democratic views of justice, of fair play... for the proposition that observing legal forms, while ignoring the essence of legal principles, is the supreme atrocity against the law.” Such thinking was dominant for Indian Justice Radhabinod Pal, who dissented from the majority and excused the Japanese military from any liability for war crimes.

Will all of this agonizing, soul searching, and moral analysis be done by AI in the future?

In the current moment, it is the State of Israel that is at the forefront of preserving the humanity in this process, caught between enemies with no regard whatsoever for human life, and critics with no appreciation for the realities of war. Rabbinic tradition teaches that the Biblical Jacob approached warfare with two equal fears: dying, and being forced to kill others. His descendants continue to strive for the balance of both considerations.

There are other ways of analyzing the decision to drop the bomb, as well, that pose different challenges to non-human analysis. Walter Russel Mead, in his Arc of a Covenenant, ties American thinking at that time to Jacksonian philosophy, by which Japanese behavior at Pearl Harbor and in the treatment of war prisoners was dishonorable,  and had to be countered with extreme force. “For Jacksonian America, the most logical and appropriate response to a terrorist attack is a massive response that breaks the will and the ability of the enemy to resume hostilities. While one should try to avoid civilian casualties if possible, the original aggressor bears all the guilt for all the deaths...”.

By this logic, Mead notes, Jacksonian America supports Israel’s positions, and yet Israel itself functions from a more objective morality. Accordingly, “Israel's actual policies are often more restrained than Jacksonians would like, and its military is far more concerned about legality than the average American Jacksonian would be in a similar situation, nevertheless Israel’s clear determination to defend its people and its military resonates deeply with Jacksonian ideas about how a country should defend itself.”  Thus, in his formulation, America’s war with Japan and Israel’s with Hamas have a common core, yet diverge - which position would the AI understand?

The challenges Israel faces in its struggle for survival are unique, and they confront them, in Bila’am’s words, as “a people that stands alone, not reckoned by the nations” (23:9). They do so as a function not of military strategy but of their spiritual identity. This is a point Balak failed to appreciate when he feared them as a martial threat, citing their power (“Ki atzum hu mimeni”…22:6), not recognizing their success as a result of their Divine mission (see Sam Derekh). He sees their experience in Egypt as a part of their irrelevant past (am yatza miMitzrayim, 22:5), rather than part of their ongoing consciousness and sensitivity, a reality Bilaam does recognize (am ha-yotzei miMitzrayim, 22:11; see Darash Moshe). 

Bila’am ultimately appreciates that the Jews are different, and is overcome with the desire to throw his lot in with them: “May I die the death of the upright, the yesharim, - Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob­ -  and may my fate be like theirs!” (23:10, per Avodah Zarah 25a, this coming week’s daf yomi). The Netziv, in his introduction to Genesis, explains his thought process. Bila’am had been sent on a mission to bring about the destruction of the Jewish people. And yet these people, descended from Abraham, who prayed for the people of Sodom, his moral opposites, were devoted to the welfare of all humanity; they could never be accused of genocide. Their system of values – described in the closing words of the haftarah -  must prevail.

The Jewish People have always recognized the human element in warfare: in waging it when necessary, ideally in preventing it, and in internalizing its lessons for the future. We are mandated to cry on Tishah B’Av, taught that such emotional connection is vital to the national spiritual growth required for redemption; kol ha-mitabel al Yerushalayim zocheh v’roeh b’nechemasah.

And yet, that emotional identification is always difficult, year after year. Historical knowledge, and the words of the kinot, however they are elucidated, only take us so far; eino domeh shmiyah l’reiyah, intellectual awareness cannot match experience. This year, the intensified suffering of the Jewish People in Israel is an ongoing expression of the Churban.

My thirteen-year old daughter, as the youngest present at the conference in Japan, was tasked with publicly reading the resolution, which quoted from the plaque on the cenotaph, the Hiroshima War Memorial: “We shall not repeat the evil.” What is the intended reference: the evil attack by America? Could it mean something more reflective of the whole picture? When the participants walked to the memorial, the original Japanese text was translated to us as “we will not repeat our mistakes.” A trusted friend told me the rendering should be, “we shall not repeat the evils of war.” At the other extreme of how it appeared to me, the phrase is recorded in Gary J. Bass’ Judgement at Tokyo as “we shall not repeat the error”, in which Justice Pal is described as reading it and fuming at the “dodge of American responsibility” reflected in the “non-judgmental inscription”.

Perhaps the ambiguity is tolerable, if the ends are accomplished. Even if the Peace Memorial Museum presents an incomplete picture, the suffering of the victims is undeniable and a crucial lesson for all on any side of military conflict. Another rabbinic tradition teaches that even necessary aggression should only be applied by those who appreciate the cost of the decision.

Ultimately, the question of America’s justification is beside the point, if we cannot guarantee that – and of course we cannot – the possessor of the next terrible weapon subscribes to the same standard, or if – perhaps worse – he mistakenly thinks that he does. If aggression can be prevented at the outset – if that can indeed be the legacy of Hiroshima – that is vastly preferable.

Like everyone at the conference, and like the prophet Isaiah, I too fervently pray for the day when weapons will be abolished and humans will no longer wage war. But until that is possible, we pray that at least the war that is waged will be just, and that it is waged by humans.