---
type: source
title: "AI and the Commission and Facilitation of International Crimes: On Accountability Gaps and the Minab School Strike"
author: "Marko Milanovic (EJIL: Talk!, Professor of Public International Law, University of Reading)"
url: https://www.ejiltalk.org/ai-and-the-commission-and-facilitation-of-international-crimes-on-accountability-gaps-and-the-minab-school-strike/
date: 2026-03-01
domain: grand-strategy
secondary_domains: [ai-alignment]
format: article
status: unprocessed
priority: high
tags: [minab-school-strike, international-humanitarian-law, accountability-gaps, ihl, individual-criminal-responsibility, ai-targeting]
---

## Content

Academic legal analysis by Marko Milanovic (EJIL senior editor) examining AI accountability under international humanitarian law in the context of the Minab school strike.

Key argument: AI involvement in targeting decisions does not change the fundamental IHL accountability analysis. Whether or not Claude/Maven generated the target list, the same individual criminal responsibility standards apply. The problem is that those standards may be insufficient for AI-enabled operations.

Milanovic's assessment: "It is very possible that the mistake of the US officers was caused by their (over)reliance on an AI decision support system. It is very possible that Claude/Maven generated a target list, and that whatever data it produced never flagged the fact that, years ago, the school building was separated from the IRGC compound and converted into a school."

BUT: "Nothing changes from the perspective of any international criminal prosecution regardless of whether AI was used here or not."

The accountability gap identified:
- Individual criminal responsibility under IHL requires: knowledge of civilian status, or willful blindness to obvious signs
- AI systems enable scenarios where individual operators DON'T know, DON'T have the time to verify, and the knowledge is distributed across the system in ways no individual can be held responsible for
- The responsible individual (DIA database maintainer, commander, analyst) is either unknown, protected by chain-of-command immunity, or operating within an officially sanctioned system

## Agent Notes

**Why this matters:** Milanovic is the leading IHL scholar on AI accountability. His conclusion — "nothing changes for prosecution regardless of AI use" — is both technically correct AND a devastating indictment of IHL's adequacy for AI-enabled warfare. The law is complete; it just doesn't reach the accountability gap that AI creates.

**What surprised me:** That the most sophisticated IHL legal analysis CONFIRMS the accountability vacuum rather than resolving it. There's no legal gap (the law applies); there's a structural gap (the law can't reach distributed AI-enabled responsibility). This is a fundamentally different diagnosis from "law hasn't kept up."

**What I expected but didn't find:** Milanovic calling for new IHL provisions specific to AI. He doesn't — he implies existing law is sufficient, which means the problem is enforcement, not law. This strengthens the "governance laundering" framing: the law says what's required; institutions choose not to enforce it.

**KB connections:** Directly connects to the governance laundering pattern (Level 7 accountability vacuum). Also connects to the "Layer 0 governance architecture error" flagged for Theseus — the misalignment between AI-enabled decision architecture and human-centered accountability law.

**Extraction hints:** Two claim candidates: (1) "Existing IHL provides complete legal accountability standards for AI-assisted targeting errors, but cannot reach the distributed responsibility structures that AI-enabled operations create — producing an accountability gap that is structural, not legal." (2) "AI targeting accountability gaps are primarily enforcement failures (institutions choose not to prosecute) rather than legal gaps (IHL is unclear) — suggesting the governance problem is political will, not law design."

**Context:** Marko Milanovic is Professor of Public International Law at University of Reading and one of EJIL's senior editors. Published in response to the February 28 Minab school strike within the first week.

## Curator Notes (structured handoff for extractor)

PRIMARY CONNECTION: governance laundering / accountability vacuum — specifically at the IHL enforcement level

WHY ARCHIVED: The most authoritative IHL analysis of the Minab accountability question; Milanovic's "nothing changes for prosecution" conclusion confirms the structural accountability vacuum without requiring new law

EXTRACTION HINT: Focus on the distinction between legal gap and structural gap — this is more precise than "IHL hasn't kept up" and produces a stronger, more falsifiable claim
