“Where's Daddy?”: attachment and the language of AI-assisted weapons targeting

The Lancet Psychiatry
Correspondence Online firstNovember 06, 2026
“Where's Daddy?”: attachment and the language of AI-assisted weapons targeting
Ömer Asana Send email to omerasan@atk.gov.tr

“Where's Daddy?” is a question children across cultures ask in search of a parent, safety, and reassurance. In Gaza, where at least 21 700 children have been reported to have been killed by June 30, 2026,1 this phrase is the reported English name of an Israeli military tracking system. Its Hebrew name—Eifo Abba? (אבא הפיא?)—uses abba, the ordinary, intimate word for father. The system was identified within a report on the broader architecture of artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted weapons targeting.2

An investigation by +972 Magazine and Local Call in April, 2024, based on interviews with six Israeli intelligence officers, reported that “Where's Daddy?” signalled when selected individuals entered their family homes, after which those homes could be marked for attack.2 [One source stated that human personnel often served only as a “rubber stamp” for the machine’s decisions, adding that, normally, they would personally devote only about “20 seconds” to each target before authorizing a bombing]

The Israel Defense Forces reject the claim and state that analysts independently verify targets.2 

In September, 2024, Human Rights Watch confirmed that the Israeli military was using a tool that tracks mobile phone locations but could not confirm specific technical details.3

This targeting system echoes one of the most basic aspects of child–parent interaction. Under threat, attachment is a regulatory system. Children seek proximity to caregivers, whose availability helps organise fear and safety; attachment security is associated with post-traumatic stress responses in children and adolescents.4 For a frightened child, a father's return home can therefore mean that safety has come closer. The reported AI-targeting system was designed to detect that same return.

The child is present in two ways. First, in the word: a person can be marked as a target on their own, but cannot be “daddy” without a child. Second, in the home: the sources describe strikes on family houses at night, when whole families were present.2

“Where's Daddy?” does not erase the relationship; it names it, which is more complex than dehumanisation. The troubling possibility is not that the family disappeared from view, but that it remained visible and lethal action remained possible.

Gaza has produced another term: “wounded child, no surviving family”, coined by medical staff at Al-Shifa hospital for injured children arriving without surviving relatives.5

The two labels, “wounded child, no surviving family” and “Where's Daddy?”, serve opposite functions: one makes catastrophic family loss visible for care; the other reportedly made a parent's return home visible for attack.

Psychiatry has long studied how war traumatises children: it should now also examine the language and systems that make relational knowledge actionable, and state plainly that the bonds through which children seek safety should never become operational information for targeting.

Competing Interests
I declare no competing interests.
Editorial note: The Lancet Group takes a neutral position with respect to territorial claims.
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