Sophia Goodfriend
Surveillance, Artificial Intelligence, and Digital RightsI 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.
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 practical 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.
A Street View of Occupation:
Getting Around Hebron on Google Maps
Visual Anthropology Review, Fall 2021Read
Algorithmic State Violence: Automated Surveillance and Palestinian Dispossession in Hebron's Old City
Int. Journal of Middle East Studies Summer 2023Read
Forthcoming Spring 2022
Drone Warfare's Redemptive Refrains
Drone Aesthetics: War, Culture, EcologyLondon: Open Humanities Press
Kill Lists
London Review of BooksRead
the human decisions behind Israel’s automated war
972 MagazineRead
In Tel Aviv
London Review of Books BlogRead
Blunt force
The BafflerRead
Israel’s TikTok Extremists
Jewish CurrentsRead
How AI is intensifying Israel’s bombardments of Gaza
972 MagazineRead
Israel’s Far Right Could Escalate Drone Warfare Against Palestinians
Foreign PolicyRead
Point. Click. Occupy.
The BafflerRead
How the Occupation Fuels Tel Aviv’s Booming AI Sector
Foreign PolicyRead
Cyberespionage with Benefits
Boston ReviewRead
When Palestinian Political Speech Is “Incitement”
Jewish CurrentsRead
Image restoration
972 MagazineRead
High Tech Surveillance was Never going to bring peace
Foreign PolicyRead
gaza war offers ultimate Marketing opportunity for arms firms
972 MagazineRead
Viral Atrocities
SapiensRead
New Tech, Old War
London Review of Books BlogRead
Paranoid Posting
The BafflerRead
The gamified occupation
Jewish CurrentsRead
The banality of surveillance
The Boston ReviewRead
The start-up spy state
+972 MagazineRead
‘We violated people’s privacy for a living’: How Israel’s cyber army went corporate
+972 MagazineRead
Naked Gun
Jewish CurrentsRead
Featured
Israel’s Techno-Solutionism
Politics Theory OtherListen
Why Are Israeli Defense Forces Soldiers Posting Thirst Traps on TikTok?
Rolling StoneRead
A Political Road Not Taken in America
The New York TimesRead
Online Webinar, June 2023
Artificial Intelligence and human rights
Arab Center Washington DCLondon, UK, April 2023
The Banality of Surveillance
Times of Surveillance WorkshopDenver, CO (moved online), November 2022
carceral convenience
Middle Eastern Studies Association Annual MeetingOnline Webinar, March 2022
Under surveillance
MozillaFestOnline Webinar, December 2021
Whose watching: Surveillance in Jerusalem and the west Bank
Ir Amim-City of NationsOnline Webinar, November 2021
Welcome to the panopticon
The Institute for Middle East PeaceWashington D.C. (moved online), October 2020
Google Ayosh
Middle Eastern Studies Association Annual MeetingPrague, CZ (moved online), August 2020
Big Data’s Shadow Archive
Society for Social Studies of Science Annual MeetingSheffield, 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 MeetingBerlin, Germany August 2019