by Yaron Hazan
Hezbollah and Hamas thrive on shadowy financial networks-charities, trade deals, crypto wallets. But every transaction leaves a trace and AI can spot the patterns no human ever could.
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From the Middle East to Europe to Africa, the money trail is another front of the battle against terror. Terrorist organizations, such as Hezbollah and Hamas, bankrolled by Iran, move money invisibly through banks, trade networks, investments, cryptocurrencies, and even charities. Their financial pipelines are as dangerous as their physical weapons.
Two decades ago, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Egyptian cleric in exile in Qatar, showed how deep such systems could run. His ‘Union of Good’ coalition of charities raised millions for Hamas under the cover of legitimate operations. Across Europe, Africa, and the United States, charities became pipelines for terror.
Even after being banned by Israel and the United States, the networks simply rebranded, morphing into new entities with their infrastructure intact.
When charities came under scrutiny, funds were shifted to bank transfers and trade finance. When those channels tightened, drug trafficking became the next frontier, and eventually, cryptocurrencies picked up the slack. All these methods, layered on top of each other, created a global multidimensional ecosystem designed to sustain terrorism.Today, such flows are no longer invisible.
Unlike a suitcase of cash, every digital transfer leaves an electronic print. A wire transfer, a trade invoice, and a crypto wallet all create data points. Multiplied across billions of daily transactions, those points form patterns.
By the time a flag is raised, the money is long gone and has already been laundered through multiple jurisdictions, converted into weapons, salaries, and propaganda campaigns.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is changing that equation.
How AI identifies terror funds
Instead of chasing red flags, AI learns what “normal” looks like and flags what doesn't: a charity rounding donations in ways that make no sense; a shipment priced far below market value; a crypto wallet tied to Hezbollah. What no analyst can see across billions of transactions, AI can surface in real time.Recent crackdowns on Hezbollah-linked operations in Paraguay and on the Ivory Coast illustrate the stakes. Those networks relied on the very playbook that Qaradawi helped to write, disguising illicit flows as legitimate commerce. But the digital trail was there, waiting to be uncovered.
When AI is brought into the fight, the patterns emerge early enough to be able to act before money is consolidated, weapons are purchased, or attacks are planned.
The lesson is stark. The data is already in the system. Every transaction, trade invoice, and crypto transfer leaves a digital trace, which only needs to be read intelligently.
This is no longer just about compliance. Financial institutions equipped with AI-driven monitoring aren’t just ticking regulatory boxes; they’re on the front lines of global security. They can disrupt terror financing before it turns into bloodshed, freezing assets before weapons are bought and loaded.
Terrorist networks thrive on opacity, and yet their very complexity now betrays them. Whenever they invent a new concealment method, they also create a new pattern. AI thrives on those patterns, turning complexity into clarity and deception into data intelligence.
AI alone will not end terrorism, but it can help expose and dismantle the financial infrastructure that sustains it. The issue is no longer the ability to spot Hamas and Hezbollah’s money trails. The challenge now for governments and banks is the necessity of upgrading their systems before the next attack is financed.
The writer is VP of Regulatory Affairs at ThetaRay.
Yaron Hazan
Source: https://www.jpost.com/defense-and-tech/article-872582
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