Sophia Goodfriend

Surveillance, Artificial Intelligence, and Digital Rights
About

I am a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Middle East Initiative. My academic work examines the impact of big data and machine learning on military conflict in the Middle East.


Alongside my academic work, I work as an independent researcher with civil society organizations in the region and as a freelance journalist. My writing on warfare, automation, and digital rights has appeared in Foreign Policy, The Baffler, +972 Magazine, The Boston Review, among other outlets. I have a PhD in Cultural Anthropology from Duke University. I recieved a Masters in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago and a BA in American Studies (summa cum laude) from Tufts University. My research has been supported by the Fulbright-Hays Program and the National Science Foundation, among other institutions. My inbox is open for commissions. 


Current Research

My research and writing examines how artificial intelligence is upending what it means to wage and live with war. I leverage multi-sited and investigative ethnographic methods to foreground the human lives at stake in increasingly automated military conflicts.

I defended my dissertation, Algorithmic Dispossession: Automating Warfare in Israel and Palestine, in the summer of 2024. Based on four years of ethnographic research with Israeli veterans, Palestinian advocates, and ordinary civilians living at the cross-hairs of regional conflict, my study provides an ethnographic portrait of automated warfare’s profoundly human costs. 

My research has theoretical and pratical implications. Ethnographically, I ask what unchecked developments in AI mean for the human condition. Practically, my research investigates the risks posed by new technologies while outlining how automated  systems can be implemented without eroding fundamental human rights. 


Academic Articles










A Street View of Occupation:
Getting Around Hebron on Google Maps 

Visual Anthropology Review, Fall 2021
Read


Algorithmic State Violence: Automated Surveillance and Palestinian Dispossession in Hebron's Old City

Int. Journal of Middle East Studies Summer 2023
Read


Forthcoming Spring 2022

Drone Warfare's Redemptive Refrains

Drone Aesthetics: War, Culture, Ecology
London: Open Humanities Press
Popular Press (select list)



Kill Lists

London Review of Books
Read



the human decisions behind Israel’s automated war

972 Magazine
Read



In Tel Aviv

London Review of Books Blog
Read



Blunt force

The Baffler
Read



Israel’s TikTok Extremists

Jewish Currents
Read



How AI is intensifying Israel’s bombardments of Gaza

972 Magazine
Read



Israel’s Far Right Could Escalate Drone Warfare Against Palestinians

Foreign Policy
Read



Point. Click. Occupy. 

The Baffler
Read




How the Occupation Fuels Tel Aviv’s Booming AI Sector

Foreign Policy
Read



Cyberespionage with Benefits

Boston Review
Read



When Palestinian Political Speech Is “Incitement”

Jewish Currents
Read





Image restoration

972 Magazine
Read



High Tech Surveillance was Never going to bring peace

Foreign Policy
Read



gaza war offers ultimate Marketing opportunity for arms firms

972 Magazine
Read



Viral Atrocities

Sapiens
Read



New Tech, Old War

London Review of Books Blog
Read



Paranoid Posting

The Baffler
Read



The gamified occupation

Jewish Currents
Read



The banality of surveillance

The Boston Review
Read




The start-up spy state

+972 Magazine
Read




‘We violated people’s privacy for a living’: How Israel’s cyber army went corporate

+972 Magazine
Read



Naked Gun

Jewish Currents
Read










Featured




Israel’s Techno-Solutionism

Politics Theory Other
Listen

Why Are Israeli Defense Forces Soldiers Posting Thirst Traps on TikTok?

Rolling Stone
Read

A Political Road Not Taken in America

The New York Times
Read







PRecision Warfare does not exist

This is Hell Radio
Listen

Al Jazeera Listening Post

Documenting Surveillance in Hebron
Watch


Unregulated Israeli spyware is a global threat, experts warn

The Middle East Eye
Read
Presentations

Online Webinar, June 2023

Artificial Intelligence and human rights

Arab Center Washington DC


London, UK, April 2023

The Banality of Surveillance

Times of Surveillance Workshop


Denver, CO (moved online), November 2022

carceral convenience

Middle Eastern Studies Association Annual Meeting


Online Webinar, March 2022

Under surveillance

MozillaFest


Online Webinar, December 2021

Whose watching:  Surveillance in Jerusalem and the west Bank

Ir Amim-City of Nations


Online Webinar, November 2021

Welcome to the panopticon

The Institute for Middle East Peace


Washington D.C. (moved online), October 2020

Google Ayosh 

Middle Eastern Studies Association Annual Meeting


Prague, CZ (moved online), August 2020

Big Data’s Shadow Archive

Society for Social Studies of Science Annual Meeting


Sheffield, UK, February 2021

BioPower’s Promise 

The Aesthetics of Drone Warfare,
An International Research Conference at the University of Sheffield


New Orleans, USA November 2019

A Street View of Hebron

Middle Eastern Studies Association Annual Meeting


Berlin, Germany August 2019

Everyday Affects of Surveillance 

3rd <Interrupted=cyfem and queer> a convergence curated by the Creamcake Collective


Chicago, IL, May 2017

Affective Interruptions on Birthright Israel

Master’s Program in Social Sciences Graduate Student Research Conference


Milwaukee, WI, May 2017

Anxious Itineraries

The Big No-A Center for 21st Century Conference
at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee


Medford, MA October 2015

Jewish American Identity/Politics

Tufts University American Studies Shapiro Award Reception


Medford, MA, August 2014

Sylvia Wynter and Cultural Criticism 

Tufts University Summer Scholars Symposium