Iran Is Ending the Dream of Remote-Controlled War

By Marc Gustafson and Justin Kosslyn

Mr. Gustafson, a former intelligence officer, and Mr. Kosslyn, a former director of product management at Google, work at Eurasia Group.

In Washington, planning for a war with Iran always started with the same stubborn reality: It would be hard to fight and even harder to win. The country is vast and mountainous. Much of its military infrastructure is buried in caves and bunkers. Any serious plan to neutralize Iran’s nuclear ambitions or topple the regime quickly arrived at the same conclusion — that success required ground forces and would result in American casualties.

Then came machine learning and artificial intelligence, and with them, the seductive idea that America might........

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