The US has provided Israel with intelligence capabilities never before seen prior to October 7, a senior official told The Washington Post on Friday.
A notable example of such capabilities was Israel’s recent hostage rescue operation, the official said.
According to the Post, citing current and former US and Israeli intelligence sources since the October 7 massacre, the US has increased intelligence gathering on Hamas.
As such, the US is reportedly sharing an extraordinary amount of drone footage, satellite imagery, communications intercepts, and data analysis using advanced software, some powered by artificial intelligence.
The unique intelligence capabilities provided by the US
The report cited Israeli officials who said Israel is grateful for the American aid, which in some cases provided unique capabilities that it lacked before Hamas’s attack.
However, according to the US daily, the Biden administration prohibited Israel from using any intelligence provided by the US to target "regular" Hamas terrorists in military operations and that the intelligence was only intended to locate hostages as well as the terrorist organization's senior leadership - including Yahya Sinwar, who planned the events of October 7, and Mohammad Deif, chief of Hamas’s military wing.
A senior official in the US security establishment told the Post, “If we managed to unilaterally get information that we could act on, and we thought we could actually get US people out alive, we could act, but there was genuinely very little information specifically about US hostages.”