Algorithmic empire: analyzing digital colonization and AI militarism in Palestine

This article advances Battlefield-Validation Diffusion (BVD), a theoretical model explaining how combat-tested AI-enabled military systems translate battlefield performance into accelerated global diffusion within a broader imperial-colonial order. It argues that battlefield-generated data and performance narratives operate as evidentiary capital that lowers buyer uncertainty and converts operational use into exportable technologies and doctrines through state – firm pipelines, veteran mobility, and training and technology-transfer arrangements. The study situates this argument in the Gaza case, examined as an extreme instance in which surveillance, targeting, and algorithmic experimentation generate dense validation data amid severe humanitarian consequences. Methodologically, the article employs qualitative thematic synthesis triangulated with a small comparative case set.