FMEP Non-resident Fellow Peter Beinart interviews researcher and journalist Dr. Sophia Goodfriend on the pernicious flow of repressive surveillance technology between the U.S. and Israel, which is now being seen deployed by Israel in Gaza and by ICE in the U.S.. Goodfriend recently published,”ICE operations increasingly resemble Israeli occupation. That’s no coincidence” in +972 Magazine where she takes a deep dive into this issue.
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Recorded 2/24/2026
More from Sophia Goodfriend
- “AI-powered surveillance firms are gunning for a share of the Gaza spoils” (+972 Magazine, 11/28/2026)
- “With Gaza war and Trump’s return, Silicon Valley embraces a military renaissance” (+972 Magazine, 12/31/2024)
Sophia Goodfriend is the Harry Frank Guggenheim Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge’s Pembroke College and a non-resident fellow with the Middle East Initiative. She holds a PhD in Cultural Anthropology from Duke University and an MA in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago. Her research examines the impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on military conflict in the Middle East.
Dr. Goodfriend’s dissertation, Algorithmic Dispossession: Automating Warfare in Israel and Palestine, is an ethnographic account of how AI has upended what it means to wage and live with war. She is completing book two manuscripts rooted in ethnographic fieldwork across Israel and Palestine. Both provide human-centered accounts of how emerging technologies are transforming military conflict in the region.
Dr. Goodfriend is also a journalist and civil society consultant with years of experience reporting from the Middle East. Her writing on AI, warfare, and human rights has appeared in many popular press and academic outlets. Dr. Goodfriend’s research has been supported by the Fulbright-Hays Program and the National Science Foundation, among other institutions.