The Kremlin Was Afraid Of Putin's Elimination According To The Scenario Of The Iranian Ayatollah
- 8.06.2026, 13:05
Russian officials were gripped by panic.
After Israel eliminated Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran at the outset of the war with Iran by analyzing the movements of himself, his guards and associates through hacked traffic cameras, panic gripped the Kremlin. Russian security services have disabled the video cameras of a special surveillance system used to protect Vladimir Putin and his closest aides, the Financial Times wrote, citing two people with knowledge of the matter. One said the system was only turned back on after it was isolated from the internet and thoroughly tested for leaks.
Despite the precautions, one independent Ukrainian hacker told the FT that cameras in Moscow and even around the Kremlin "are still working and are regularly hacked." He declined to say whether Ukraine has the ability to analyze them with artificial intelligence, as the Israeli intelligence services have done in Tehran. The US and UK also possess similar tools, which have provided the Ukrainian military with precise information on targets, including intelligence with high-resolution images from drones.
The ability to observe an enemy's intelligence-gathering assets is not unique in itself, but AI has given a whole new tool - the ability to find "among thousands of hours of recordings and thousands of channels exactly the moment you are looking for," Matan Goldner, CEO of Tel Aviv-based startup Conntour, explained to the FT Matan Goldner, among the k "Simply put, we can communicate with computers for the first time in history, using language to discuss what they see," he said.
According to several people familiar with the computer models behind the technology, AI's visual capabilities expanded greatly around 2023, with another big leap about a year ago. Intelligence officials can analyze vast amounts of video footage using simple search queries such as "two men handing each other a bag"; "a person who has changed appearance or clothing several times in a day"; "a car that has recently been repainted or driven past the same place several times in a short period of time."
"We can look for behaviors rather than objects - this has opened up a whole world of new possibilities," said an official in a European country that uses the technology in its cities.
Similarly, an Israeli one Huge amounts of footage from hacked traffic cameras were collected and analyzed to pinpoint the exact location and time of the Ayatollah's meeting with his closest aides.