kill chain

plural kill chains

1. governmentThe process of making an attack, from identifying the target to dispatching forces and destroying it.

   [To Palantir CTO S. Sankar] And so Palantir treats the military as both a kill chain problem and a corporate supply chain problem? You’re working on both effectively?

   2025 October 30, Ross Douthat, “What Palantir Sees”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 30 Oct 2025

   1 more example

   Anthropic’s AI model, Claude, was reportedly used by the US military in the barrage of strikes as the technology “shortens the kill chain” – meaning the process of target identification through to legal approval and strike launch.

   2026 March 3, Robert Booth, Dan Milmo, “Iran war heralds era of AI-powered bombing quicker than ‘speed of thought’”, in The Guardian, →ISSN