Podcasts about FPV

„Když jsem poprvé v Chersonu slyšel bzučení FPV dronu, byl to nejnepříjemnější pocit, který jsem kdy zažil. Vzduch v Oděse jsem si zamiloval a cítil se zde bezpečně. Později jsem zjistil, že mám v této oblasti pohřbené praprarodiče. “ I to říká mladý nezávislý irský novinář Caolan Robertson, jehož reportáže z Ukrajiny viděly miliony lidí po celém světě.

„Když jsem poprvé v Chersonu slyšel bzučení FPV dronu, byl to nejnepříjemnější pocit, který jsem kdy zažil. Vzduch v Oděse jsem si zamiloval a cítil se zde bezpečně. Později jsem zjistil, že mám v této oblasti pohřbené praprarodiče. “ I to říká mladý nezávislý irský novinář Caolan Robertson, jehož reportáže z Ukrajiny viděly miliony lidí po celém světě.Všechny díly podcastu Bedny můžete pohodlně poslouchat v mobilní aplikaci mujRozhlas pro Android a iOS nebo na webu mujRozhlas.cz.

For tiden har hver dag en dronehistorie fra Ukraine. Vi hører om vildfarne droner i Baltikum og Rumænien. Vi hører om ukrainske droneangreb på Moskva og Skt. Petersborg og på russisk infrastruktur langt fra frontlinjen. Og frontlinjen er et mennesketomt sted, hvor man ikke stikker snuden frem uden at en drone ser den og tager affære.Det startede beskedent med hobbydroner, som opfindsomme ukrainere forsynede med en sprængladning, som de kunne dumpe ned i russiske tanks, men i dag er der tale om en industri, der er så avanceret og produktiv, at Ukraine kan eksportere droner til Saudi Arabien, som har brug for at forsvare sig mod Iranske droneangreb.Krigen i Ukraine har gjort droner til et af de vigtigste våben på slagmarken.Fra billige til avancerede droner har teknologien ændret måden, krig bliver udkæmpet på — hurtigt, billigt og konstant innovativt.Soldater kan i dag tilbringe måneder på frontlinjen uden at se fjenden direkte, men de vil næsten altid møde droner.Samtidig har krigen tvunget både civile og militære aktører til at tænke nyt. Nye teknologier bliver udviklet og taget i brug på få måneder, mens gamle militære systemer kæmper for at følge med.I dette afsnit ser vi nærmere på, hvordan Ukraine er blevet et laboratorium for moderne dronekrigsførelse — fra FPV-skoler og interceptor-droner til elektronisk krigsførelse, cyberforsvar og sloganet: Brug robotter, ikke menneskeliv.Medvirkende: Valeria, Victory DronesLink:Victory Droneshttps://dignitas.fund/victory-drones/

Zorg om Russisch Delta-systeem | Zelensky pest Poetin in een open brief | FPV-drones Hezbollah steeds groter probleem HET ZIJN DE BOEKESTIJN EN DE WIJK OVERSTAPWEKEN! Word lid van Boekestijn en De Wijk Plus voor reclamevrij luisteren, vele extra's en straks ook voor de zaterdaguitzending (sorry). Ga naar Boekestijnendewijk.nl, met de kortingscode NAVO luistert u voor maar €25 een heel jaar op uw favoriete podcast-app. Poetin overspeelt in Sint-Petersburg de staat van de Russische economie en het front, terwijl Oekraïense aanvallen tot diep in Rusland reiken en Kyiv met een scherpe open brief de druk opvoert. Arend Jan Boekestijn en Rob de Wijk duiden hoe Moskou zijn civiele economie kannibaliseert voor de oorlog en tegelijk droomt van groei, en waarom Zelenski’s uitnodiging tot onderhandelingen in een derde land meer middelvinger dan doorbraak is. Iran koppelt een staakt-het-vuren in Libanon aan de Straat van Hormuz en gijzelt zo de olie‑stroom én de Amerikaanse geloofwaardigheid. De VS, Israël en Libanon publiceren een gezamenlijke verklaring, maar Hezbollah en de Quds-brigade houden de sleutel, terwijl first person view-drones en lessons learned uit Oekraïne de machtsbalans in het Midden-Oosten veranderen. Xi Jinping reist na jaren weer naar Noord-Korea en trekt de economische teugels in China verder aan met veiligheidschecks op export en investeringen, precies terwijl Brussel hogere heffingen richting Peking voorbereidt. In Europa schuiven de Baltische en Balkan‑puzzlestukken, van Luxemburgs visumdebat tot Montenegrose EU‑ambities, richting een geostrategische uitbreiding die onvermijdelijk voelt maar intern spannender wordt. Over de Podcast Arend Jan Boekestijn en Rob de Wijk gaan onder leiding van Hugo Reitsma op zoek naar de nieuwe wereldorde. Wat betekenen oorlog, machtspolitiek en economische verschuivingen voor Europa en Nederland? In elke aflevering duiken zij in de geopolitieke actualiteit. In 2022 werd Boekestijn en De Wijk uitgeroepen tot winnaar in de categorie Nieuws & Politiek tijdens de Dutch Podcast Awards Reageren? Op X: @ajboekestijn en @robdewijk Bluesky: @hugoreitsma.bsky.social Mail: boekestijnendewijk@bnr.nl Over de makers: Arend Jan Boekestijn is een Nederlands historicus en voormalig politicus. Hij studeerde geschiedenis en politieke wetenschappen aan de Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. Boekestijn is voormalig Tweede Kamerlid (tot 2009). Sinds 1989 is hij verbonden aan de vakgroep geschiedenis van de Universiteit Utrecht en sinds 2016 lid van commissie Vrede en Veiligheid van AIV. Rob de Wijk studeerde eigentijdse geschiedenis en internationale betrekkingen, promoveerde op kernwapenstrategieën, werd hoogleraar in Leiden en richtte in 2007 het Den Haag Centrum voor Strategische Studies op. Hugo Reitsma studeerde rechten en politicologie. Hij werkte eerder als politiek verslaggever en vanuit verschillende conflictgebieden. Hij is auteur van het boek ‘Boekestijn en De Wijk voorspellen de toekomst’ (november 2023).See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Preview for Later Today: Jonathan Schanzer analyzes the IDF's offensive in Lebanon against Hezbollah's unjammable FPV drones. He argues that withdrawing without victory would be a mistake, as Lebanon's government remains ineffective against Iranian-backed aggression.IDAHO

Ryan and Emily discuss Iran bombs Kuwait after US hits oil tanker, Hezbollah hits IDF with FPV drones, Congress plot to imbed Israeli spyware in US military, elections in California. Oren Cass: https://americancompass.org/oren-cass/ Wala Blegay: https://walablegay.com/ Josh Paul: https://www.anewpolicy.org/ To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.com Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

1. СПРАВЕДЛИВАЯ РОССИЯ потребовала компенсировать пенсионерам расходы на покупку лекарств;2. Мантуров: российский ОПК способен выпускать для армии 15 тыс. FPV-дронов в день;3. Ростовская область: СПРАВЕДЛИВАЯ РОССИЯ наградила победителей конкурса "Читаем вместе";4. СВР узнала о планах Евросоюза выдавить РПЦ из Армении;5. Андрей Кузнецов: ЕГЭ превратился в обдираловку семей;6. В России резко вырос спрос на наличные;7. Тверская область: Алексей Чепа намерен предотвратить закрытие Оршинской участковой больницы.Новости

//The Wire//2300Z June 1, 2026// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: MASS WAVES OF MIGRANT CRIME REPORTED THROUGHOUT EUROPE. UNITED STATES CONDUCTS ADDITIONAL TARGETING OF IRAN, IRANIANS RESPOND BY TARGETING KUWAIT AGAIN. STABBING ATTACK REPORTED ON TRAIN IN ATLANTA. HENRY NOWAK MURDER BODY CAM FOOTAGE RELEASED.// -----BEGIN TEARLINE------International Events-Persian Gulf: Over the weekend, more mutual targeting efforts continued throughout the region. The targeting efforts began after an unidentified drone entered Iranian airspace, which was downed by the Iranians. Around the same time, the United States conducted an airstrike on the radio tower at the Iranian base on Sirik Island in the eastern Persian Gulf. An unidentified location in Gerak was also struck as well, which CENTCOM claims was serving as a drone launch site. After this wave of attacks, the Iranians launched two ballistics missiles toward the airbase that the attack was launched from, which they claim was Ali Al Salem Airbase in Kuwait. CENTCOM claimed that both missiles were intercepted. After the tit-for-tat targeting efforts were conducted on Saturday and Sunday, the United States and Iran continued their targeting efforts this morning. One merchant vessel (the MSC SARISKA V) was struck by an Iranian munition in the northern Persian Gulf, off the coast of Kuwait. Several hours after this first strike, the SARISKA reported being hit by a second munition, which caused a fire.Strait of Hormuz: Following the suspected mine detection off the coast of Oman that was reported on Friday, Omani Naval forces made visual contact with the mine, confirming it's coordinates at grid: 40RDQ3450820703. The mine appears to be a Maham-1 type device, a moored contact mine domestically produced within Iran.Lebanon: This afternoon President Trump stated on his social media accounts that he conducted a phone call with Prime Minister Netanyahu, which resulted in Israeli forces halting their advance to Beirut.Analyst Comment: It is extraordinarily unlikely that the advance has actually stopped, however the reference to Beirut itself is odd because the IDF is currently nowhere near the city and there was no indication that they were headed there anyway (the invasion has so far been confined to mostly the areas near the Israeli border, with the main line of advance crossing the Litani a few days ago). It would be no surprise whatsoever if the Israelis actually did want to occupy the entirety of Lebanon (as this has been stated by politicians many times). However, aspirations are harder to achieve on the battlefield and the IDF has been getting hit hard by FPV drones for weeks. Likewise, the large-scale bombing of Beirut has been the main retaliatory measure for these FPV drone attacks, and regardless of President Trump's phone call, the war continues as before. About 20 minutes after President Trump's post, Hezbollah launched rockets and Israeli forces bombed targets in Lebanon again, with neither side expressing interest in halting the fighting.France: Mass civil unrest broke out over the weekend, following the UEFA Champions League soccer match resulting in a win for France. Large scale riots were reported throughout Paris, which carried on into Sunday evening. Dozens of assaults were reported, including some reports of individuals being dragged from their vehicles by mobs of migrants and assaulted.Austria: Yesterday a woman was attacked by an unidentified assailant on a train in Vienna. Local witnesses state that a woman of foreign origin attacked a local Austrian woman in an unprovoked attack while on the subway. No arrests have been made so far regarding this attack.Germany: This morning a migrant mob attack was reported in the small town of Tuttlingen. The mob attack was reported in the vicinity of a bus stop in the town, and resulted in a mob attempting to beat a man to death in the street. The status of the victim remains unclear.Analyst Comment: Extreme levels of violence have become very common in small European towns, even quaint villages tucked away in the foothills of the Alps. Many of these towns are now serving as an above-ground railroad of sorts, funneling migrants en masse northward into Germany. Tuttlingen has become one of these such towns. The bus stations at many of these villages are now effectively no-go areas for many locals, as large volumes of migrants tend to congregate at the facilities as they are transported by NGOs throughout the continent.United Kingdom: This afternoon the bodycam footage of the murder of Henry Nowak was leaked. The footage is worse than what was described in court, and has already resulted in increased calls for police accountability regarding this case.Analyst Comment: While everyone is rightfully calling for police accountability in this case, it is important to remember that people who directly caused the murder are still free. Only the murderer and the chief accomplice (Digwa's mother) were convicted. Per the official press release from the Southampton Constabulary, two other people were arrested that night; Digwa's family members that even the police have admitted lied on the night of the attack, causing the delay that contributed to Nowak's murder. These two other family members have not been charged with any crime.-HomeFront-Georgia: Over the weekend another subway murder was reported in Atlanta. Local authorities state that one assailant stabbed a woman to death on a MARTA train in the vicinity of Oakland City station. The victim died at the scene, and locals claim it was an unprovoked random stabbing attack. The suspect has been identified as John Elijah Matthews, who was arrested at the scene shortly after the murder.Florida: A street takeover mob attack was reported in Clearwater Beach over the weekend. One individual shot another individual during a street confrontation on Coronado Drive, wounding one person.Analyst Comment: Other than the shooting, roving bands and mobs swarmed through Clearwater over the weekend, which is likely to get the attention of much more substantial crowd-control efforts due to this area being a very big vacation area at the height of tourism season.-----END TEARLINE-----Analyst Comments: In the Middle East, a pattern is beginning to emerge with regard to American targeting efforts in the region. CENTCOM is now conducting "self-defense" strikes on targets that are really stretching the definition of "self-defense", as per all prior CENTCOM targeting guidance. CENTCOM is claiming that since a radio tower was used at some point to support a drone strike, they can strike it in self-defense. The drones that are being launched by the Iranians throughout the region are very likely not being controlled from Sirik Island, but this outpost is probably being used by forward observers. This site was also probably used as a radio base to communicate with merchant shipping, and issue notices from the Iranians via radio.More broadly, these more recent targeting efforts also serve as an indicator for what the United States might be trying to do at a more strategic level. Within the past few days, the United States has twice launched offensive targeting efforts, while claiming to conduct a strike under "self-defense" criteria. This has now slipped into more of a "mowing the lawn" approach to targeting Iranian infrastructure, whereby every couple of days the US bombs something, then the Iranians counterattack, and the US clutches pearls and pretends like CENTCOM didn't start it in the first place. How long the Iranians will put up with this is purely up to them, but they also know that these smaller targeting efforts by the United States are probably intended to provoke a knee-jerk reaction and re-ignite the large-scale bombings of the war. Right now, the Iranians have a very powerful position, so they might not want to jeopardize kicking things off again based on a handful of strikes, but that option is always on the table. How things progress from here is anyone's guess, but every bomb that lands in Iran, and every missile that lands at an American base, is another step farther from the negotiating table.Analyst: S2A1 Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground Disclaimer: No LLMs were used in the writing of this report. //END REPORT//

Send us Fan MailPeaches, Trent, Aaron, and former F-16 Wild Weasel pilot Grant Bishop—better known as Grant “Slider” Bishop—sit down for one of the most important modern warfare conversations we've had yet.This episode dives deep into the future of drones, AI, ISR, runway intelligence, battlefield data fusion, and why the next war won't be won by a single platform—it'll be won by whoever processes information the fastest. Slider breaks down his background flying the General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon in the Wild Weasel mission, how drone warfare has completely changed modern combat, and why the military acquisition process is struggling to keep up with the speed of real-world innovation coming out of Ukraine and beyond.Then the boys go off on FPV drones, ISR overload, AI-assisted targeting, special operations integration, airport infrastructure intelligence, future battlefield sensors, and why the next generation of operators needs to think differently about warfare.Bottom line: the future fight belongs to the side that can see, process, and act faster than everyone else.⏱️ Timestamps:00:00 Tasty Gains & Why We Do Ad Reads First 03:00 ATACLETE Gear Actually Holds Up 05:00 Meet Grant “Slider” Bishop 07:00 From Australia to the F-16 Community 09:00 Flying the Wild Weasel Mission 12:00 How SEAD Actually Works 15:00 “Kids Throwing Rocks at Each Other” 18:00 Why Data Matters More Than Platforms 21:00 Silent Falcon & AI Runway Intelligence 24:00 Every Person Is a Sensor Now 27:00 Ukraine Changed Warfare Forever 30:00 FPV Drone Terror Is Real 33:00 Why Gamers Are Becoming Valuable Operators 36:00 The Air Force Is Struggling to Adapt 39:00 The Problem with Military Acquisition 42:00 Why Small Companies Innovate Faster 45:00 Drone Swarms, AI & Future Combat 48:00 The A-10, DUDE44 & Why Platforms Still Matter 51:00 Why Joint Integration Is Still Broken 54:00 Sensor Fusion & Battlefield Awareness 57:00 Drone-in-a-Box Concepts 01:00:00 Virtual Drone Pilots Anywhere in the World 01:03:00 The Future of Warfare Is Already Here 01:05:00 Final Thoughts

SCHEDULE JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW, 5-26-26.1919 WILSON DINES IN SAN FRANCISCO ON HIS TREATY CAMPAIGNING THAT LED TO ILL HEALTH.Liz Peek discusses the stabilizing energy markets despite ongoing Middle Eastern tensions, noting that global oil production remains resilient. She also explores Kevin Warsh's potential role as a reformer at the Federal Reserve. (1)Liz Peek analyzes Donald Trump's dominance in Republican primaries, highlighting his successful endorsements of loyalists over the party establishment. She notes the internal friction within the Senate GOP as Trump reshapes the party's future. (2)Jonathan Schanzer evaluates the rumored Iran memorandum of understanding, warning it may signal American vulnerability to regional adversaries. He notes that while Iran's defense base is weakened, its control over energy remains potent. (3)Jonathan Schanzer details Israel's expanding operations against Hezbollah in South Lebanon, focusing on the threat of unjammable FPV drones. He also updates the IDF's progress in Gaza against remaining Hamas leadership and territory. (4)Mary Kissel warns that prioritizing the Strait of Hormuz over dismantling Iran's nuclear program lacks necessary strategic leverage. She stresses the danger of a messianic regime partnering with major powers like China and Russia. (5)Mary Kissel discusses the potential collapse of the Castro regime due to severe economic mismanagement and food shortages. She highlights the need for a comprehensive plan to rebuild while deterring Russian and Chinese influence. (6)Alejandro Peña Esclusa and Ernesto Araújo discuss US military exercises over Caracas and the release of Alex Saabas signals of a shifting transition. They also cover Lula da Silva's health challenges and the friction within the Brazilianelection. (7)Alejandro Peña Esclusa and Ernesto Araújo cover intense protests in Bolivia triggered by a deepening economic crisis. The guests attribute the instability to Evo Morales, describing his efforts to provoke institutional chaos for his own political survival. (8)Gregory Copley discusses the tactical nature of Iran negotiations, noting continued US defensive strikes in the region. He identifies Turkey's nuclear ambitions and its ICBM program as an emerging factor for future regional stability. (9)Gregory Copley previews the 2027 Nigerian presidential election, noting President Tinubu's likely run despite his health concerns. He contrasts Nigeria's relative calm with the revolutionary anarchy currently gripping the neighboring states in the Sahel. (10)Gregory Copley examines the political instability in Britain, where Prime Minister Keir Starmer faces significant unpopularity within his own party. He discusses the potential for a nationalist breakup of the United Kingdom. (11)Gregory Copley praises King Charles III's leadership in maintaining national identity during political turmoil. He also discusses Prince William's preparation for the crown and critiques Keir Starmer's perceived radical leftist, anti-monarchical agenda. (12)Joseph Sternberg analyzes the widening economic gap between a prosperous United States and a stagnating Europe. He identifies the European welfare state and low productivity as significant drags compared to American economic growth. (13)Joseph Sternberg details the political melodrama in London, focusing on Keir Starmer's leadership crisis and Labour's poor performance. He highlights the rise of Nigel Farage's Reform Party and the persistent Brexit debate. (14)Thaddeus McCotter questions whether the US is conceding to Iran's nuclear program to prioritize energy prices. He also discusses Trump's successful primary strategy in shaping a loyalist Republican Party for the 2027 cycle. (15)Grant Newsham critiques the lack of clear war aims in the Iran conflict, noting that critical infrastructure remains largely untouched. He warns this perceived weakness sends a dangerous message to adversaries in Beijing and Moscow. (16)

Jonathan Schanzer details Israel's expanding operations against Hezbollah in South Lebanon, focusing on the threat of unjammable FPV drones. He also updates the IDF's progress in Gaza against remaining Hamas leadership and territory. (4)1919

//The Wire//2300Z May 27, 2026// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: GANG WAR CONTINUES IN GRENOBLE. WAR IN LEBANON EXPANDS AS DRONE ATTACKS INTENSIFY. CONFLICT MOUNTS IN CONGO AS EBOLA CRISIS WORSENS. PROBABLE CHINESE AGENTS DETAINED WHILE ATTEMPTING TO INFILTRATE SOUTHERN US BORDER.// -----BEGIN TEARLINE------International Events-Middle East: Israeli attacks in Lebanon have increased over the past few days, with more significant bombings taking place in Beirut. FPV drone attacks by Hezbollah have continued to devastate Israeli forces, as most of the IDF is not equipped or prepared to handle the threats that drones bring to modern warfare. As a result, the fighting has become much more intense, which in turn has increased the efforts to expand the Israeli bombing campaign.France: Last night a small arms attack was reported in Grenoble, as a war between rival gangs of migrants has broken out. One engagement was reported in the Mistral neighborhood overnight, with several people being gunned down on the street. One person was killed, and three others wounded during this attack, which locals sources claim was a targeted assassination. Three days ago, another assassination was reported, with a Cartel-style video being posted online before a body was found in a vehicle in the Échirolles community.-HomeFront-New Jersey: Protests at the Delaney Hall Detention Facility have continued, which have mostly transitioned into more of a long-term protest site once again. A few local politicians have made appearances over the past few days, but apart from occasional flare-ups and riots, the weekday attendance at this facility has remained fairly regular.Texas: Overnight a group of Chinese nationals were arrested after attempting to illegally cross the southern US border in the vicinity of Eagle Pass. US Border Patrol trackers located the group of individuals who had crossed the border illegally and were concealing themselves on a private ranch. Among this group were a total of 6x Chinese citizens, who federal authorities have classified as Special Interest Aliens (SIAs) for reasons that have not been disclosed. In the photos of the group provided by Customs and Border Patrol, one of the Chinese individuals has a military-style haircut, and another individual is wearing military-style combat boots. All are wearing civilian-style camouflage jackets and pants, all of the same type and construction.Analyst Comment: Most coyotes illegally smuggling people over the border have either required or furnished themselves camouflage "uniforms" for the illegals to don, in order to cross the border as covertly as possible. As a result, these individuals being detained while wearing camouflage is very normal these days. Illegal border crossings still take place along the vast wilderness areas which comprise most of the border, but it's become a lot harder to make the crossing and also much more expensive to do so. For Chinese immigrants, it's never been easier to get legal paperwork and enter the US at an official port of entry, so the fact that these individuals made the crossing illegally indicates that they were up to no good.-----END TEARLINE-----Analyst Comments: In the Congo, the situation regarding the current Ebola outbreak has become increasingly more serious over the past few days, as the current civil war is impacting efforts to control the disease. Separately, social tensions flared up overnight, after a domestic situation spiraled out of control at a treatment center. Last night, police fired warning shots at the perimeter of Rwampara Hospital, as a crowd of people attempted to breach the facility to recover the bodies of relatives who had died from Ebola. Upon being told that they can't have the remains of their family members due to fears of the disease spreading, the crowd promptly set a tent on fire at the compound and a state of pandemonium erupted. During the fray, a handful of Ebola-positive patients fled from the facility and are currently unaccounted for.Around the continent, nations bordering the Congo have begun to close the border checkpoints to those fleeing both the simmering civil war, and also the spread of Ebola. Uganda closed their borders this morning, and several other nations have implemented travel controls to restrict travel out of the hardest-hit areas.Analyst: S2A1 Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground Disclaimer: No LLMs were used in the writing of this report. //END REPORT//

Preview for Later Today: Jonathan Schanzer discusses the threat of unjammable FPV drones used by Hezbollah against the IDF. He explains that Israel must develop new countermeasures while focusing on dismantling the group's command and control infrastructure.1950 BEIRUT

En Ukraine, le champ de bataille est jonché des corps de soldats. Le nombre de militaires portés disparus, bien qu'inconnu, se chiffre par dizaines de milliers. Retrouver les dépouilles est un besoin essentiel pour les familles. Mais ce travail est rendu presque impossible par la prolifération des drones sur la ligne de front. C'est la mission de ces militaires ukrainiens, rencontrés par notre correspondant en Ukraine à l'aube, dans une ferme abandonnée du Donbass, à une vingtaine de kilomètres du front. De notre correspondant de retour de Sloviansk, Un à un, les sacs mortuaires sont déchargés du camion. Il faut s'y prendre à plusieurs pour hisser les corps sur une table sommaire, dressée dans une grange à l'abri des regards et des combats. Russes et Ukrainiens y sont traités avec les mêmes égards. Le travail avec les morts est un labeur silencieux. Les visages sont fermés. Ce matin, une dizaine de corps sont auscultés par Oleksiy Yukov, treillis militaire, casque sur le crâne : « Il s'agit du corps d'un soldat de la Fédération de Russie. C'est ce qu'indiquent son équipement et son matériel militaire. Malheureusement, aucun signe distinctif personnel ni document d'identité n'a été retrouvé. » Oleksiy Yukov et son équipe – une dizaine de militaires – parcourent le champ de bataille au péril de leur vie, pour en extraire les corps des soldats. Depuis quatre ans, plus de 3 000 dépouilles ont ainsi été exhumées du front ukrainien, « de nos propres mains », nous explique-t-il, certaines parfois portées à dos d'homme. Une mission devenue presque impossible aujourd'hui. « Si tu sors, tu ne reviendras pas » « L'arme la plus effrayante que j'ai vue dans cette guerre, ce sont les FPV, les drones », lâche Oleksiy Yukov. Ces engins kamikazes sont équipés d'une caméra qui permet à l'ennemi de traquer une cible à distance. Ils pullulent désormais à proximité de la ligne de front : « L'épuisement émotionnel arrive quand tu n'as pas la possibilité de récupérer les corps. Quand tu les vois, mais que tu ne peux rien faire. Tu ne peux tout simplement pas sortir de ta position pour aller les chercher et les évacuer. Il y a des drones, le terrain est à découvert, et tu comprends que si tu sors, tu ne reviendras pas. » De sa voix douce, à peine audible, Arthur, 29 ans, le regard dissimulé derrière ses lunettes de combat, nous détaille son travail : « Sur la ligne de contact, quand c'est possible, une voiture nous dépose. On travaille une heure, une heure et demie maximum. Très peu de temps. S'il y a des corps, on ne les met même pas dans des sacs : on les charge dans la voiture et on repart aussitôt, pour éviter les drones. » À lire aussiUkraine: la région de Kiev bombardée massivement par la Russie, un missile balistique Orechnik utilisé « Les échanges de corps ont commencé » Depuis le début de l'invasion du pays en 2022, Arthur assiste Oleksiy dans sa funeste mission. Lui aussi est habité par le devoir mais, l'émotion affleure chez le jeune homme, entre déférence pour les défunts et vertige de côtoyer toute cette mort : « Au début, quand on allait récupérer des Russes, tout le monde disait : ''À quoi bon ?'' Ensuite, les échanges de corps ont commencé. Un corps russe, c'est au moins un corps ukrainien rendu. Et puis, il y a cette question : que sommes-nous si des corps restent sur notre terre, mangés par les chiens, sans que nous ne fassions rien ​​​​​​​? » Avec l'arrivée des drones, ces missions de récupération ont diminué de 90%, nous confie Dmitro, le chauffeur du camion. La matinée avance. Le soleil est maintenant levé. Les corps sont numérotés, avant d'être envoyés à la morgue, dans l'ouest du pays. Oleksiy se demande si ce n'est pas l'une des dernières fois qu'il pourra encore venir chercher les morts sur le front du Donbass. À lire aussiAprès les frappes russes sur Kiev, Macron tente un rapprochement avec la Biélorussie de Loukachenko

Les 16 et 17 mai 2026, Kiev a lancé sur la Russie l'une de ses attaques les plus massives. Plus de 600 drones sont tombés sur la capitale, Moscou, mais aussi sur des zones qui se trouvent à plus de 1 700 kilomètres de la frontière ukrainienne. Les frappes ukrainiennes en Russie sont de plus en plus nombreuses et efficaces et pourraient être une bascule. Situées à près de 2 000 kilomètres de l'Ukraine, les villes russes de Iekaterinbourg, Perm, Tcheboksary ont été touchées : des usines d'armement, des raffineries, des aérodromes attaqués dans cette région de l'Oural russe, qui se pensait jusque-là à l'abri de la guerre. Des frappes dronisées longue distance qui, pour les forces ukrainiennes, ont représenté quelques défis. Vincent Tourret, chercheur à l'Institut français des relations internationales (Ifri), explique : « Le premier défi, c'est tout simplement le nombre de drones en production pour atteindre ces distances-là. C'est augmenter la charge utile sur chaque drone. Réussir à avoir des appareils qui soient capables d'évoluer malgré les interférences électroniques russes. Et puis enfin, le problème est d'affaiblir suffisamment la défense anti-aérienne et antimissiles de Moscou pour passer de plus en plus. Les Ukrainiens, sur plus d'un an, on fait cet effort industriel, technologique et opérationnel, où petit à petit, ils ont grignoté les batteries et les radars situés en Ukraine, puis ensuite dans les régions limitrophes comme Belgorod ou la Crimée, et ont commencé à élargir les trous dans la raquette de la défense russe. » Amener la guerre dans le quotidien des Russes Ces frappes dans profondeur révèlent des failles béantes dans le dispositif de protection russe et provoque de fait des bouleversements stratégiques. Vincent Tourret poursuit : « Le niveau qui est le plus visible, celui stratégique, est d'amener la guerre dans la vie de tous les jours des Russes. C'est un des buts avoués de la stratégie ukrainienne. Mais là, ce qui est le plus intéressant et le plus important, c'est que jusqu'à maintenant, on avait une lutte ukrainienne avec les drones qui étaient dans l'infiniment petit, avec les FPV, les drones sur la ligne de front, et l'infiniment grand, donc les frappes sur les villes russes et les raffineries. Ce qui, maintenant, est en train de changer, c'est l'interdiction à portée moyenne – entre 50 et 100 kilomètres –, où les Ukrainiens ont désormais des drones efficaces pour aller frapper des centres de munitions, leur logistique, les zones de concentration, les bases, les garnisons. Et donc, il y a un vrai risque pour les Russes que les Ukrainiens arrivent à finalement asphyxier leurs efforts et à stabiliser le front, voire à reprendre l'initiative. » Un été 2026 possiblement décisif Si pour le moment, aucune inflexion n'a été observée côté russe, l'été est propice aux offensives et servira de test à la théorie de la victoire de chacun, souligne Vincent Tourret : « Les Russes sont restés sur l'idée selon laquelle ils peuvent user les forces ukrainiennes en les pressurisant jusqu'à ce qu'elles craquent. La théorie ukrainienne, inversement, c'est de se dire qu'ils peuvent mettre un coup d'arrêt suffisamment fort, détruire suffisamment des pointes d'offensives russes pour qu'il y ait une stagnation, voire une stabilisation du front. Et pour y parvenir, ils robotisent à outrance le front. Effectivement, cet été ces deux théories vont se répéter à forte puissance. » Après plus de quatre ans de guerre, l'été 2026 pourrait donc être décisif, avec pour bilan un possible épuisement des forces en présence. À lire aussiGuerre en Ukraine: plusieurs noms font surface dans l'hypothèse d'une médiation européenne

The Joint Readiness Training Center is pleased to present the one-hundredth-and-fifty-eighth episode to air on ‘The Crucible - The JRTC Experience.' Hosted by MAJ Will Montoya, the Multi-Domain Effects Cell Chief for 1-509th IN (OPFOR), known as Geronimo, on behalf of the Commander of Operations Group. Today's guests are subject matter experts on drone warfare within Geronimo: SGT Colin Rock, SGT Darius Shumpert, and SPC Collin Palm. SGT Rock is a Team Leader and drone operator for Able Company, 1-509th IN (OPFOR). SGT Shumpert and SPC Palm are first person viewer small unmanned aircraft systems operators for MDEC, 1-509th IN (OPFOR).   This episode dives into the evolving employment of small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS) from the perspective of Geronimo's Multi-Domain Effects Cell (MDEC), focusing heavily on practical TTPs, rapid battlefield adaptation, and lessons learned from observing modern conflicts like Ukraine. The discussion explores the full spectrum of drone employment—from ISR and route reconnaissance to one-way attack FPVs, heavy-lift “mothership” drones, and autonomous strike systems. A major theme throughout the episode is the incredible pace of innovation in drone warfare, where countermeasures and counter-countermeasures evolve in cycles measured in weeks rather than years. Leaders discuss how cheap, expendable systems are reshaping battlefield economics by destroying million-dollar platforms, compressing the kill chain, and creating persistent threats that traditional formations are not yet fully prepared to handle. The episode also reinforces that drones are not replacing soldiers, but instead dramatically increasing the lethality, reach, and survivability of small units when properly integrated.    The conversation also focuses heavily on the Army's current training and organizational gaps regarding sUAS employment. Topics include FPV pilot skill development, simulator training, procurement challenges, autonomous targeting systems, airspace integration, electromagnetic warfare threats, and the need for dedicated drone specialists at echelon. Geronimo operators stress that not every Soldier can effectively fly advanced FPV systems, arguing that drone operations should become a formalized specialty or additional skill identifier similar to sniper or joint fires qualifications. Additional insights include the importance of “mothership” resupply concepts, loitering munitions, fiber-optic drones resistant to jamming, and the requirement for units to develop realistic reactions to drone threats instead of treating them as novelty systems. Ultimately, the episode frames drone warfare as one of the most significant battlefield evolutions in generations, requiring the Army to rethink training, procurement, survivability, and tactical employment before facing these threats in real combat.    Part of S11 “Conversations with the Enemy” series.   For additional information and insights from this episode, please check-out our Instagram page @the_jrtc_crucible_podcast.   Be sure to follow us on social media to keep up with the latest warfighting TTPs learned through the crucible that is the Joint Readiness Training Center.   Follow us by going to: https://linktr.ee/jrtc and then selecting your preferred podcast format.   Again, we'd like to thank our guests for participating. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and review us wherever you listen or watch your podcasts — and be sure to stay tuned for more in the near future.   “The Crucible – The JRTC Experience” is a product of the Joint Readiness Training Center.

Von Klemens Patek. Was hat es mit den neuen Drohnenfähigkeiten der Ukraine auf sich? Was macht die Ukraine derzeit anders oder besser als in den letzten vier Jahren? Und wie wird Russland reagieren? Ein Podcast-Gespräch mit Militäranalyst Markus Reisner vom österreichischen Bundesheer.

Bill Roggio and David Daoud explore the profound impact of low-cost FPV "silent killer" drones on the battlefield. These weapons challenge traditional military mobility and require new countermeasures at the squad level. (8/16)1947 LEBANON

SCHEDULE OF THE JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW, 5-19-2026.DECEMBER 1931.Elizabeth Peek discusses the confirmation of Kevin Warsh as Federal Reserve Chairman during a time of economic strength and high energy prices. Warsh, an inflation hawk, is expected to maintain current interest rates. (1/16)Elizabeth Peek analyzes the Trump-Xi summit, noting China's economic "shambles" and demographic crisis. She argues that the U.S. remains the dominant global power in energy, AI, and overall economic strength. (2/16)Jack Burnham assesses the Beijing summit's stalemate on trade and technology. He details Taiwan's $25 billion appropriation for U.S. weapons, highlighting delivery delays within the U.S. defense industrial base for legacy systems. (3/16)Jack Burnham focuses on China's history of unfulfilled trade promises regarding agricultural and energy products. Despite U.S. export controls, Chinese firms continue to acquire advanced Nvidia chips through illicit smuggling routes. (4/16)Andrea Stricker examines the NPT review amidst Middle East conflict. She details friction between nuclear-armed states and those seeking peaceful enrichment, noting the lack of arms control dialogue between the U.S., Russia, and China. (5/16)Andrea Stricker reviews the role of military force, specifically by the U.S. and Israel, in enforcing the NPT against defiant states like Iran. The UN chair seeks a concise consensus document by avoiding contentious issues. (6/16)David Daoud and Bill Roggio discuss how Hezbollah's drone use has hampered IDF operations in South Lebanon. The conflict has entered a predictable phase, complicating efforts for a permanent, genuine peace. (7/16)Bill Roggio and David Daoud explore the profound impact of low-cost FPV "silent killer" drones on the battlefield. These weapons challenge traditional military mobility and require new countermeasures at the squad level. (8/16)Gregory Copley assesses the Trump-Xi summit, characterizing China as a declining power that showed extreme respect to Trump. He argues the visit was a strategic move aimed at fracturing the Sino-Russian alliance. (9/16)Gregory Copley describes the "double blockade" in the Strait of Hormuz and Iran's untenable demands. He argues the U.S. must decide whether to target Iranian infrastructure or leadership to resolve the regional security crisis. (10/16)Gregory Copley analyzes the unpopularity of Prime Minister Keir Starmer and internal challenges from rivals like Andy Burnham. The UK faces high taxes, labor unrest, and a socialist agenda that angers the public. (11/16)Gregory Copley discusses King Charles III's delivery of the government's legislative agenda. While the King serves as the guardian of the constitution, the government's socialist policies face significant public and parliamentary resistance. (12/16)Dr. Henry Miller criticizes the anti-vaccine stances of cabinet officials, calling it "statistical murder." He argues for maintaining mandates to ensure herd immunity and protect vulnerable populations against diseases like COVID. (13/16)Henry Miller describes a "tour de force" at MIT where AI is used to discover new molecules to fight antibiotic resistance. This technology identifies structures that kill pathogens like staphylococcus and gonorrhea. (14/16)Kevin Frazier explains the shift from "doomer" vs. "accelerationist" labels to more nuanced AI policy. He highlights the cybersecurity risks posed by advanced models like Mythos and the vulnerability of national infrastructure. (15/16)Kevin Frazier argues that any mandatory AI vetting must originate from Congress, as the President lacks the constitutional authority. He suggests deepening technical expertise and maintaining voluntary cooperation with AI labs. (16/16)Note: corrected "Kevin Fraser" → Kevin Frazier (matching prior thread usage).

Take the 2026 AI Engineering Survey and get >$2k in credits and AIE WF tickets!This was recorded before Railway suffered a major GCP outage on May 19, despite being a multi-AZ, multi-zone mesh ring, with HA fiber interconnects between their Metal GCP AWS, because workload discoverability was unintentionally still tied to GCP. All has been resolved with a post-mortem.Railway did not start as an AI infrastructure company.It was founded in 2020 years before agents became the default way people thought about deploying software. Jake Cooper, formerly at Bloomberg and Uber, started Railway with a simple obsession: the activation energy to ship something to production should be near zero. Push code, get a URL, iterate. No Docker files, no Kubernetes manifests, no Ansible scripts stacked on Ansible scripts.For years, this was a slow grind. Railway spent its first 18 months hand-acquiring its first 100 users with Jake personally greeting every Discord signup on a second monitor.Today, Railway has raised $124m and is growing very fast. A 35-person team supports 3 million users, adding roughly 100,000 signups a week. Their bare metal data centers have a 3-month payback period vs. renting in the cloud, with 70% margins funding aggressive cloud bursting when needed. The servers they own have actually appreciated in value as RAM prices have climbed basically meaning the value of their hardware now exceeds the capital they've raised.From rebuilding Railway's network overlay over a weekend to moving the vast majority of workloads onto its own bare metal data centers, Jake Cooper is trying to build a new cloud for an agent-native world. In this episode, Railway's founder and “conductor” joins swyx and Alessio to unpack why the next era of software infrastructure is not just “Heroku but newer,” what agents need that humans did not, and why the old deployment loop of Git, PRs, CI/CD, and static cloud resources may be heading for a rewrite.We go deep on Railway's infrastructure stack: own-metal data centers, three-month cloud payback periods, cloud bursting, data center debt, Railpack, Nixpacks, Temporal, feature flags, Central Station, content-addressable filesystems, agent-safe production forks, and why the CLI may become more important than the canvas in an agent world. Jake also shares the founder journey behind Railway, how the company survived losing $500K/month, why it now serves millions of users with only 35 people, and why he believes the pull request is dying.We discuss:* How Railway went from a slow six-year grind to adding 100,000 users a week* How Railway thinks about agents as the next dominant software species* Why agents need version control, observability, compute, storage, and orchestration at 1000x scale* The economics of Railway's own-metal data centers and three-month payback* How Railway uses cloud bursting while scaling its own infrastructure* Why data center debt can be a better tool than venture debt for infra startups* Central Station, Railway's internal system for clustering customer feedback and incidents* Why responsible disclosure and over-communication matter for platforms* Why feature flags, progressive rollouts, and shadow traffic are essential for agents* Temporal's strengths, pain points, and why workflows matter for agents* Railpack, Nixpacks, Nix, and lazy-loaded content-addressable filesystems* Why “cattle, not pets” may change if you can clone the pets* Why Railway is building a new cloud from scratch instead of copying hyperscalers* The solo founder path, focus, writing, and how Jake thinks about company buildingRailway:* Website: https://railway.com/* X: https://x.com/RailwayJake Cooper:* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thejakecooper/* X: https://x.com/JustJakeTimestamps00:00:00 Introduction: What Is Railway?00:02:07 Jake's Path to Railway00:06:13 Railway's Six-Year Growth Story00:08:52 Rebuilding the Business After the Free Tier00:11:17 Agents as the Next Software Platform00:13:29 Railway's Infrastructure Philosophy00:15:42 Bare Metal, Cloud Economics, and the Compute Crunch00:17:22 Cloud Bursting and Five-Cloud Networking00:20:20 Data Center Debt and Infra Financing00:23:31 Data Centers in Space00:25:24 What Agents Need From Infrastructure00:28:24 CLIs, Canvas, and Agent-Native UX00:35:15 Central Station, Incidents, and Responsible Disclosure00:40:30 Safe Rollouts, SRE Agents, and Production Forks00:45:00 AI SRE, Specs, Code, and Tests00:48:24 Self-Replicating Infrastructure and the New Serverless00:53:18 Heroku, Temporal, and Workflow Engines01:04:07 Railpack, Nixpacks, and Lazy-Loaded Filesystems01:06:01 Coding Agents, Token Spend, and Roadmap Acceleration01:10:56 The Pull Request Is Dying01:12:28 Feature Flags and the Agent-Era SDLC01:16:15 Cattle, Pets, and Cloning Machines01:19:29 Solo Founder Lessons01:24:12 Focus, GPUs, and Building a New Cloud01:28:20 Closing ThoughtsTranscriptAlessio [00:00:00]: Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Latent Space Podcast. This is Alessio, founder of Kernel Labs, and I'm joined by Swyx, editor of Latent Space.Swyx [00:00:10]: Hey, hey, hey. Today we're in the studio with Jake Cooper of Railway.Alessio [00:00:14]: Conductor of Railway.Swyx [00:00:15]: Conductor at Railway. Yeah.Alessio [00:00:16]: Choo-choo.Swyx [00:00:17]: Do you actually have that anywhere, like on your business card?Jake [00:00:20]: We call some of our volunteer moderators conductors. I don't have a business card. We're not that big yet. At some point I will. I got handed a nice business card from the Supermicro folks, and I was like, “Damn, this is pretty official.”Swyx [00:00:30]: Business cards are coming back.Jake [00:00:32]: They're cool. They're hip. The conductor thing is good. We're trying to figure out what we want to call each other internally. Some people think it's super cringe and say, “You don't need a name for people internally.” Some people want to call each other something. We still don't have a really good one.Jake [00:00:55]: We've got New Railcrews, Trainiacs. Nothing has stuck yet.Swyx [00:01:00]: I like Trainiac. Trainiac sounds good. Railwayians. For those who don't know, what is Railway? Let's give people a crisp definition up front.Jake [00:01:09]: Railway is the easiest way to ship anything. You go to the canvas, or you talk with Claude, and you say, “Deploy a Postgres instance, deploy my GitHub repository, run this code,” and you're off to the races.Swyx [00:01:22]: You've got a nice animation on the landing page.Jake [00:01:24]: Thank you. None of my work, by the way. They don't let me touch the design stuff anymore.Jake [00:01:25]: We want to make it trivially easy not just to deploy things, but to evolve applications over time. Most tooling right now stacks entropy on top of entropy: Docker, Kubernetes, Ansible scripts, and all these other things. If we can version all of your software and keep track of all the changes, then we can make it trivial to clone environments, fork into a parallel universe, get copies of production data, get copies of any services, make changes, validate them, and collapse them back in without reproducing everything across a staging environment.The Railway Origin Story: From Uber Systems to a New CloudSwyx [00:02:07]: I was looking at your background: Bloomberg, Uber. Nothing immediately stands out as, “This guy is going to found the next great platform as a service.” What prepared you for Railway?Jake [00:02:21]: It was curiosity to keep going deeper. I started out on front-end stuff, working on Wolfram Mathematica and porting it over. Then I briefly moved to Bloomberg, then toward Uber and distributed systems, taking the Jump Bikes systems and moving them to a distributed system built on top of Cadence, the pre-Temporal Temporal.Swyx [00:02:44]: Which, by the way, I'm happy to talk about, pros and cons.Jake [00:02:48]: Totally.Swyx [00:02:51]: But let's do the Railway story.Jake [00:02:52]: It has been a continual step of wanting an experience. Whether it's walking up to a bike, unlocking it, and having it work frictionlessly, or something else, the depth required to make that happen follows from the experience. A lot of the work I do, and a lot of the team does, is in service of that experience. We fundamentally don't care how deep we have to go. We will swim to the bottom of the swimming pool to get the experience.Jake [00:03:17]: I don't have a physics PhD. I did an EECS degree. It has always been about figuring out the next step: how do we get there? That's what led to starting Railway for that experience and then moving all the way to bare metal data centers. I was adding patches to the kernel this week to get the experience there because I can see how much better it can be.Swyx [00:03:49]: Other patches to the Linux kernel this week?Jake [00:03:51]: Yeah. Not upstream. Our fork.Swyx [00:03:52]: That's a flex. Railpack? No, this is different. This is the OS on top of Railpack?Jake [00:03:57]: No, this is an actual kernel patch. It's always literally: what do we have to do to get that experience? Then figure it out. Anything is figureoutable.Swyx [00:04:10]: Would you send the patch upstream, or does it not fit other use cases?Jake [00:04:13]: Maybe. We have to work out the experience internally. It has to do with the storage layer we're building for some of the agentic stuff. Maybe it'll be useful upstream, but it's deeply useful for us internally.Open Source, Forks, and Non-Deterministic VersioningSwyx [00:04:29]: You mentioned open source before. How do you think about starting from open source, and then coding agents letting you do a lot more from forks of it?Jake [00:04:38]: GitHub's original sin is that it's almost a series of broken pointers. You have this thing, then you clone it, and now you've lost the whole upstream. How do we make it trivial for people to modify really small pieces of it?Jake [00:04:51]: We think of Git in a discrete sense: I've either made a change and merged upstream, or I haven't. What would it look like if it were percentage-based, a little more non-deterministic, or a stream of changes that users traverse as a percentage rolled out in general and then rolled all the way up?Jake [00:05:13]: We have the open-source kickback program and let you deploy templates because we want to make it trivial for people to version these shards over time. It solves a large problem around authentication, authorization, and security. NPM has a way to define, “Don't take any new packages.” The ideal end state is that you roll out progressively to users with the minimum impact zone and continue rolling up. JPMorgan should probably be the last one on the patch line, for all our sakes, because our money and livelihoods are there.Jake [00:05:53]: It's okay if Johnny Vibe Coder gets a broken patch because there's so much entropy in the system that the rubber has to meet the road at some point. You have to test at varying levels.The Long Grind: First Users, Free Tier, and Making the Business WorkSwyx [00:06:13]: I wanted to pull up this glorious chart, which is your usage or number of daily signups?Jake [00:06:22]: Daily signups, I think.Swyx [00:06:24]: You started six years ago. It was a slow grind, and now you're on a rocket ship. You say, “Don't doubt your fight and don't quit.” Maybe pick out certain points that were key inflections for the company.Jake [00:06:40]: At the start, it's about getting your first 100 users, hell or high water. We had a website and a support link. The support link was the Discord channel. I had notifications on with two monitors: the monitor I was working on and the other monitor with Discord. If anybody came in, I was immediately like, “Hey, how's it going?” It was rare, so getting those first 100 users to come back was the start.Jake [00:07:14]: Then you build a consultancy factory because users want all these things. You have to go back to the board and ask, “What is the actual product offering I want to build on top of this?”Jake [00:07:28]: VCs want charts that always go up and to the right, but in reality you don't necessarily want charts that look like that. For us, there have been periods of expansion where we add features to test use cases, and periods of compaction where we ask, “If the experience we have is good, how do we make it significantly better?” Maybe we strip out features that don't fit our ICP anymore.Jake [00:07:57]: The boom from 2022 to 2023 came from the free tier. Everybody under the sun was using it.Swyx [00:08:09]: A lot of Reddit bots and Discord bots.Jake [00:08:12]: And crypto miners. When you build an open product on the internet where anybody can sign up, the internet is a horrible place with so many things. You go through periods of asking, “How do I reach as many people as possible?” Then, “How do I fit the exact use case for the people who really matter and are really excited about this specific thing?”Jake [00:08:39]: Then there was a two-year period of making the actual business work. During the free-tier era, we were losing about half a million dollars a month.Swyx [00:08:59]: On a $20 million bank account.Jake [00:09:02]: On a $20 million bank account with maybe $50,000 a month in revenue. That's a horrible business. I don't know how anybody invested. But you have to go through it and say, “We have an experience people love, but the business has to work.”Jake [00:09:17]: There are two schools of thought. You can run the horrible business all the way up with bad margins, or you can go back and make it work. We've always wanted a super lean team. We're 35 people right now. It's very small.Swyx [00:09:36]: Supporting three million already?Jake [00:09:38]: Yeah. We're adding 100,000 users a week right now, so it's growing fast. We don't want to add headcount for the sake of headcount or throw bodies at problems. We want to build systems. It's hard to build systems during expansion because you're adding things to the system because people are asking for them or things are breaking.Jake [00:10:00]: We had to cut off the free users for a little while, rebuild the business, and make sure it worked. We want to reach as many people as possible because software is important. It's become difficult to create things in the physical world, so it's important to make it easy for people to build in the virtual world and have access to creation. But there are legs to that journey.Jake [00:10:30]: You can see divots in the charts. If you follow between 2025 and 2026, it's either summer or winter. People go on holiday with family.Swyx [00:10:50]: It affects that much?Jake [00:10:51]: Yeah. It's kind of B2C and kind of B2B. People are shipping constantly, then they stop. Our activation curve now shows more people activating on weekdays because we have more business users, so it smooths out over time.Agents as the New Interface to DeploymentSwyx [00:11:17]: Was there a point where you started prioritizing AI development or agent development?Jake [00:11:24]: We've prioritized agentic as a top-of-funnel thing. Over the last six months, we've deeply prioritized agentic as a mechanism to build and deploy things because we believe the curve is so steep and that is how people will build and deploy software.Jake [00:11:42]: It almost fundamentally doesn't matter whether this is dot-com or not because we're all on the internet anyway. If agents are going to deploy a bunch of things and we hit an inference wall at some point, we'll fix those problems. The dominant species over the next 10 years is that we've moved from assembly to C to C++ to JavaScript to words. You're going to need to close that loop.Swyx [00:12:13]: When you say this is dot-com, did you mean buying the domain, or the general case?Jake [00:12:17]: I mean the dot-com era, when companies had a huge run-up because people understood the internet was important. Then they hit bottlenecks, fundamental laws of physics, math didn't work, and everybody came back down to earth. But it didn't matter because the internet became so impactful. If you operate on a long enough time horizon, you should build these things anyway because you can see where it's going.Jake [00:12:45]: That's where I think a lot of agent stuff is. You get to a point where you're running thousands of agents in parallel. What is the inference cost? What is the compute cost? How do you make that efficient? How do you coordinate all this? We have issues coordinating humans; we don't even have good tooling for that. Now we have to figure out how to get agents to coordinate, safely version changes, and know when to raise their hand for someone to intervene. Otherwise it becomes an interrupt factory.Railway's Infrastructure Thesis: Network, Compute, Storage, and MetalSwyx [00:13:19]: Let's go right into the technical side. What are the core infrastructure or architectural beliefs of Railway that allow you to do what you do?Jake [00:13:29]: The primitives matter a lot for us. We need network, compute, storage, and orchestration around it. You need control over a lot of those things. We've talked a lot about how we don't really use Kubernetes because we want higher-order control to place workloads in very specific places.Jake [00:13:48]: The reason is that you have to be very efficient with agents: memory reuse and all these other things, or you're going to massively blow up your cost structure. Being able to rack and stack your own servers and build your own metal unlocks performance and cost. Experiences where you're running 1,000 agents in parallel are not massively cost prohibitive.Jake [00:14:13]: Token use and compute use are blowing up. Over time, those things have to get a lot more efficient. You can get a lot of margin to make those experiences solid by building your own metal. That's all in service of offering a differentiated experience to as many people as humanly possible.Swyx [00:14:51]: You have a data center in Singapore.Jake [00:14:53]: Yeah. We have two in every other region now. In Singapore, we're adding a second one in Q3.Swyx [00:14:58]: What's it like? I've never built a data center. Do you go to Equinix and say, “I want some slots?”Jake [00:15:05]: Yeah. Equinix. You basically go and say, “I want power and I want a cage.” They say, “Great, here's what it's going to be.” You rent the cage for a period of time, fill it with racks and servers, and hook up internet to it. That's all the pieces.Swyx [00:15:36]: Then you handle everything else.Jake [00:15:37]: You handle everything else.Swyx [00:15:39]: What's the math versus clouds doing it for you?Jake [00:15:43]: If we rented in the cloud, our payback period when we go to metal is about three months.Swyx [00:15:50]: Which is crazy.Jake [00:15:51]: It's nuts. That's four years of depreciated hardware. You're going to see a lot of this compute crunch because hyperscalers are buying up a lot of stuff. We're working directly with OEMs, resellers, and people building these machines: Supermicro, Dell, and others.Jake [00:16:11]: Upstream, there's a bunch of supply pressure. When we raised our last round, between deploying capital for servers and now, the amount of money we've raised is less than the amount of money we have in the bank plus the value of the servers because the servers have appreciated as RAM has gone up. It's nuts how valuable hardware has become.Jake [00:16:50]: If you look at hyperscalers, they deployed around $80 billion of capital expenditures this year, and next year will be more. That's a massive infrastructure build-out. You look at that and think it's crazy that they're spending way more than the Manhattan Project. But if every person is going to run dozens or hundreds of agents in parallel, you have no conceptual idea how much compute is required to make that experience happen, even if you're deeply efficient and sharing resources. And that doesn't even count inference.Swyx [00:17:22]: How do you plan the build-out? The growth chart is so vertical. Are you usually at 100% utilization as soon as racks are live? How far ahead are you planning?Jake [00:17:33]: We still maintain cloud presence for bursting. We work with AWS, GCP, and a few other clouds. We can rent, and then the moment we get space or power, we compact those workloads off the cloud. We started on the clouds, then built a system to migrate to our own metal. There's nothing that says you can't continually do that again, and that's exactly what we do. We never want to be compute constrained.Jake [00:18:09]: At the start of the year, we actually became compute constrained because one upstream provider wasn't able to give us quota at the rate we needed, and the hardware was slower. I spent a weekend rebuilding our entire network overlay so we could straddle five clouds: Oracle, AWS, ourselves, GCP, and one other one. We can do more than that now.Jake [00:18:38]: We got into a spot where we were trying to pack instances tight because we couldn't get enough compute. That led to a few reliability issues, which are now past us. I made a tweet pointing out that it's becoming harder and harder to acquire compute at the rate these models need to acquire compute. We got bit by it.Swyx [00:19:15]: How do you think about pricing knowing you might not have your own metal available at all times? Are you pricing assuming you need extra margin if you end up going into the cloud?Jake [00:19:26]: Because we've built out our metal data centers, our margins on metal are around 70%. We can deeply subsidize the cloud business if we want to scale at a reasonable rate. We have a few levers: metal, which makes the margins; cloud burst; debt to buy servers; and venture capital. It's an interesting operational problem: how much cash do we have, how much should we raise, how quickly can we deploy it, and can we scale revenue as quickly as we scale compute?Jake [00:20:05]: If we continue making it trivially easy for people to build and deploy, then the faster we close that loop and the more operationally excellent we are with capital, the faster the business can scale. It's almost a straight linear deployment rate.Financing Infrastructure: Hardware Debt, VC, and Operational LeverageSwyx [00:20:20]: I think infra startups raising debt is a tool people don't utilize enough or know enough about. What can you tell us about that? Is it secured against your CPUs?Jake [00:20:32]: It's secured against our hardware.Swyx [00:20:37]: What rates do you get? Who are the lenders?Jake [00:20:39]: We pay prime plus a spread, and we can refinance any of the debt as rates go down. The terms are pretty good. The unfortunate thing is that Twitter has no nuance, so people say, “Venture debt bad.” But as with all things, there are specific tools and areas where you can be deliberate instead of using one tool as a hammer. Venture capital is not the hammer for everything. You have to explore and figure out what works.Swyx [00:21:12]: VC is usually the most expensive financing you can get.Jake [00:21:15]: Yeah. I also think people think about VC incorrectly from a capital-raising perspective. Most people think, “How do I raise as much money as possible from whoever is probably the best I can get at that time?” That's close to right, but what we've tried to do is figure out what unfair advantage we can buy with that equity.Jake [00:21:34]: It's the most expensive equity you're going to give away at that point in time, assuming the company keeps getting better. How do you use it to work with someone stellar who complements you? In the seed stage, I had never started a company. Ray Tonsing had good advice, and I could text him all the time. He was really fast. Awesome.Jake [00:22:01]: Then with John and Erica at Unusual, they said, “You roughly know what you're doing building a product. We'll mostly leave you alone and be available for advice.” Amazing. Then we got to Series A and the business was an operational tire fire because we didn't know how to scale a business. Work with Erica, and Jordan is over at Redpoint, so bonus.Jake [00:22:28]: Now we've raised from TQ and FPV as we're moving into enterprises. Every step of the way, we've asked: who can we partner with at this specific time to unlock the next section of the journey? I don't know enterprise sales. As an engineer, I can eyeball what features we might need, and we have wonderful people internally who can help. But you want boardroom dynamics where everyone is aligned and asking, “How do we win this?” instead of bickering about strategy.Data Centers in Space and the Physics of ComputeSwyx [00:23:31]: You had a tweet about data centers in space. Why no data centers in space?Jake [00:23:37]: It's not “no data centers in space.” My hot take is that I think it is solvable. I've just never seen anybody solve it.Swyx [00:23:49]: You said, “How are you going to dissipate that much heat in a vacuum?” You're making a physics claim.Jake [00:23:55]: I haven't seen anybody prove how you're going to dissipate that much heat in a vacuum. It doesn't mean it's not possible. It just means nobody has brought it up yet.Swyx [00:24:05]: Astrophage.Jake [00:24:06]: I don't know what that is.Swyx [00:24:07]: The Martian thing. Okay, you're very logical.Jake [00:24:09]: It could work. A lot of people are putting the cart before the horse. They say, “We're going to put data centers in space.” Okay, but how? “We have time to figure it out.” It's like in The Martian where they ask how they're going to intercept something and say, “We'll figure it out.”Swyx [00:24:36]: Making a bet on human invention is weird because you blind trust that it can be solved. But with physics, there are first-principles bounds you can put on it. Maybe not. Maybe you're asking to travel time or break a fundamental thermodynamic law.Jake [00:24:57]: I don't know how VCs do this either. How do you know what's not possible and a grift versus what's possible but sounds completely insane? “We're going to put data centers in space.” Coin flip as to which it is, and I guess you'll know in 10 years. That's one cycle.What Agents Need: Versioning, Observability, and 1,000x ScaleSwyx [00:25:23]: Moving back to agents. The branching, fast spin-up, and orchestration you do feels like pre-work that happened to be exactly what agents want. What do agents want differently than humans?Jake [00:25:37]: They want the ability to version things. It's not that different; it materializes slightly differently. Agents want a way to test changes incrementally. Engineers have feature flags. Is there a reason agents can't use feature flags? I don't think so.Jake [00:25:54]: They want version control. Can we use Git or not Git? That one is up in the air. I think something outside Git will emerge for how we version these things over time. They need observability. You need to query what happened, when it happened, which steps failed, traces, logs, metrics, and all the rest. They need network, compute, and storage. They need to write files, save files, iterate on files, and snapshot file systems.Jake [00:26:25]: A lot of what humans needed is in line with what agents need. Branching and forking are not different; we're just moving 1,000 times quicker. It can look like you need something massively different, but what you need is something massively better than what existed. You need orchestration massively better than Kubernetes. You need networking probably better than Envoy. It goes all the way down the stack.Jake [00:26:55]: If the workload profile doesn't change so much as it gets massively compressed because you need thousands of these things, what assumptions change? etcd is going to melt. You need to replace it with something. You can go all the way down the stack and say, “That part has to change, that part has to change, and that part has to change.”Jake [00:27:19]: The interesting thing about the super-exponential curve is that you have to build systems where you can rip out those parts at any time because a new bottleneck might emerge. You get good at parallel agents, and a different part of the system breaks. So it's similar to what humans needed, but at 1,000x scale.Jake [00:27:55]: How do you do code review in the age of agents?Swyx [00:28:00]: You throw more agents at it.Jake [00:28:01]: You don't. But then who reviews for CVEs and all these other things?Swyx [00:28:07]: More agents.Jake [00:28:08]: And that's how we hit the inference wall. You can continually throw agents at the problem, but I think there's a limit to the number of agents you can throw at a problem.CLI, Agent Handles, and Closing the LoopSwyx [00:28:24]: You already had a CLI before it was cool. How is the shape of what you're exposing changing, if at all?Jake [00:28:28]: CLIs have always been cool. The CLI changes because we think about how to give Claude, Codex, ChatGPT, or any model a handhold.Jake [00:28:50]: A CLI is a single command: deploy, get logs, and so on. Things that were prohibitively annoying to humans are not annoying to agents. They're nice. If I handed you a CLI with 40 arguments and 600 flags, you'd think, “I'm never going to use all of this.” But if you hand it to an agent, it says, “This is excellent. I have so many handles to work with.”Jake [00:29:24]: If you're going to expose things to agents that way, you want as many handles as possible where they can get information, query dynamic information, and close the loop quickly. Most problems right now are about how to close the loop as quickly as possible. Where does the agent get stuck, and how can you remove that?Jake [00:29:49]: Telemetry is important. If you can tell where the agent gets stuck from the CLI and say, “12% of people deviate from the happy path because of this, and now I add this argument and drive it down to 2%,” you massively increase the rate of loop closure.Jake [00:30:03]: That's how we think about not just the CLI, but every point in the dashboard. It's a user journey: I hear about Railway. I get something deployed. I get my first green build or aha moment. I see an endpoint, logs, whatever. Then I iterate. The iteration loop is indefinite. The user wants to deploy a new thing, a Postgres instance, change code, and keep iterating.Jake [00:30:36]: If you focus on the iteration loops and what's blocking them from closing quickly, one thing we say internally is: you never want to be waiting on compute anymore. You always want to be waiting on intelligence. If you're waiting on compute, there's a bottleneck that needs to be destroyed because eventually that bottleneck becomes so large that another workflow emerges to change it.Jake [00:31:04]: We've built a product where you push code, build it, and so on. But I fundamentally believe the push-pull loop is going away. We'll get to a point where you make a small change in production, that change is versioned across your infrastructure, you're working alongside copy-on-write versions of your database and infrastructure, and then you merge it in and it's instantaneously live. That's the holy grail of loops. The push-pull-rebuild thing is a point of friction that we're removing entirely.Canvas as Output: Dashboards, Context Anchors, and HyperstructuresSwyx [00:31:43]: It's incredibly fast. If anyone hasn't tried it, that fast feedback is great. My hot take is that Railway was famous for its canvas, which visualizes your infrastructure and lets you manipulate it visually. But that was for humans. For the next phase of growth, Railway CLI is more important than canvas.Jake [00:32:05]: The canvas is funny because it's a mechanism to show changes over time. You're right that previously we used it a lot as an input. Moving forward, its goal is more like an output. You would go to the canvas, make changes, see them, and watch your infrastructure evolve. Now agents have access to the CLI and can make those changes. So the canvas becomes an output: what information does the human need at this moment to make suitable decisions about control requests? Do I approve this or not?Jake [00:32:57]: It also has to be an anchor for your context, a port in the storm. Think of it like layers in a file system. You start with a project, then drill down into services, then into a function or code, because you want to represent the entire thing not just in your head, but in the canvas. Other people can share that representation, think on the same wavelength, and move quickly.Jake [00:33:33]: A lot of organizations get in trouble as they scale because all the context lives in someone's head. “How does this microservice work?” “I have no idea; go ask this person.” Then you have whole categories of products built around context discovery. A lot of that melts away if you have a solid hierarchy and can infinitely nest services, code, context, and everything else all the way down. That's what lets you build these structures over time.Jake [00:34:18]: It's also what lets us build what I've called hyperstructures: things that are way bigger. You look at the Golden Gate Bridge and ask, “How did we build that?” There's a meme that we lost the technology. To some extent, yes, because the coordination that built those things evolved and changed. We lost some of the art of building structure as we jammed everything into Slack.Swyx [00:34:52]: But you jam everything in Discord.Jake [00:34:53]: Same point. It doesn't matter. It's message passing and interrupts, message passing and interrupts.Swyx [00:35:00]: So you're arguing there should be something better and more structured than Slack?Jake [00:35:04]: Yeah. For sure. I think Slack is awful, and Discord is awful too.Central Station: Context Routing, Support, and Incident ClustersSwyx [00:35:09]: This is the equivalent of my mom test. What have you done that has your solution to this?Jake [00:35:15]: Internally, we've built a tool called Central Station that aggregates all the context from our users. Every piece of feedback, every customer support item, everything gets aggregated into clusters. If an incident is brewing, we can determine how many users are affected and break off a discussion based on that.Jake [00:35:40]: That is more helpful than long-running channels where you're trying to decide which channel to put something in. If you can dynamically aggregate information and dynamically route it to the right person based on context, it works better. We know internally that these four people are close to networking. If we see a networking thing, we can drill it down to those four people. If it's with this part, we can look at the commits. This is no longer a manual process internally.Jake [00:36:13]: If you go to station or help.railway.com, that's why we built it. We wanted to scale with a massive amount of leverage by aggregating feedback.Swyx [00:36:27]: This is built in-house?Jake [00:36:28]: Yep.Swyx [00:36:29]: I remember helping out on this one with Angelo in 2023. You scale a lot with a very small team.Jake [00:36:38]: Yeah. We're about 10 times bigger now.Swyx [00:36:40]: You have your full developer code here? Very cool.Jake [00:36:44]: If you go to railway.com/stats, we expose this as a pub-sub-able thing. It's all real-time metrics. There's a way to get it as JSON somewhere if you care.Jake [00:37:01]: We're big on trying to build everything in public and talk about what we're working on. We've had issues in the past, and we'll say, “Here's how we're fixing these things.” We've gotten compliments and flak for incident reports. We're always trying to make them better and talk with people.Incidents, Disclosure, and Progressive RolloutsSwyx [00:37:20]: You had a big one recently. I liked that it was scoped to 3,000. You presumably used Central Station. Talk through what happened and how you address it internally as a team.Jake [00:37:38]: Internally, this one really sucked. It had to do with an upstream provider that didn't do the behavior it said it documented, which is unfortunate given they wrote the RFC for how the behavior should work. We rolled those things out, and Central Station caught it initially when a couple users said caches weren't invalidating. We turned it off immediately.Jake [00:38:03]: When you roll out to a large user base of three million people, you get a lot of disparate behaviors. We tested in staging and had tests, but we hit an edge case. We've hardened those systems, and now we can make that better. But it was a tough one.Swyx [00:38:39]: I always wonder how private disclosure is supposed to work if people find an issue. Are they supposed to contact you first? When you run a platform, these things will happen. What channels should people pursue to quietly resolve it before it becomes a bigger incident?Jake [00:38:59]: There's responsible disclosure. We err on the side of over-disclosing and letting you know something is wrong versus having your provider gaslight you. We've erred on sharing those things more publicly, even if they impact a small subset of users. That's a decision we've made internally. We have four values. One is honor. The honorable thing is to notify people to the widest degree at which they may have been affected or there was an issue, and then confront it head-on: why did it happen, what can we do better?Swyx [00:39:45]: Not the whole user base. That's because of incremental rollouts and other things?Jake [00:39:50]: Yeah. Progressive rollouts.Swyx [00:39:54]: That should be the norm at all large platforms.Jake [00:39:58]: It should. A variety of companies do this. There's the quote that Meta runs 10,000 different versions of Meta. To our earlier point about agents, they need the same thing. They need shadow traffic and all these other things. We've built so much ceremony around production being sacred that we need to make it trivially easy to test different behaviors in a safe environment. Then you can make mistakes in a safe environment.Safe AI SRE: Customer Agents, Forked Environments, and Production ParityAlessio [00:40:30]: Do you see a world where these things get automatically caught, not necessarily by your agent, but by your customer's agent? The cache invalidation issue seems easy to check if you know to look for it.Jake [00:40:44]: It's hard because to determine it, we almost need to hook into your observability infrastructure. That's why we have the template loop on the platform: so you can roll things out progressively. You can roll out to Johnny Vibe Coder initially, or push a shard that someone consumes at their own leisure. Or you can roll it out over weeks: 0.1% of people, 1% of people, early adopters, then all the way up. That's the non-deterministic version control we talked about earlier.Jake [00:41:30]: I believe that's where most things should go, because most companies end up building staged rollout systems in-house. It's the same thing built again and again at every company. There's a massive opportunity to consolidate developer debt.Alessio [00:41:45]: You should have a free tier. Model providers give free tokens if you let them use the data. You could give free compute if someone is the number-one shard that goes out and lets you plug into their observability.Jake [00:41:55]: We do that. That's why we talked about the impact on 3,000 people. We start with lower-impact people. Larger companies on the platform are last to receive those rollouts so they have a version of the platform that's deeply stable.Alessio [00:42:16]: I have three services, so I'm sure I get the first rollout. You can nuke my thing at any time. There are all these SRE agent companies. Observability people also want agents that fix upstream problems. You have your own agent in the canvas now. How do you see that playing out?Jake [00:42:39]: It's the stacking entropy problem. If you don't have primitives to make iteration in production safe, it becomes difficult. If you're an observability provider saying, “Here's the fix to this error,” assume 80% are good and make sense. But in the last 20% long tail of complex issues, if you let somebody stamp it, you create an opportunity for an incident.Jake [00:43:08]: That's why forked environments are important. People have staging, but it always drifts from production. You need primitives, workflows, and experience built first-party on the platform so you can fork any service at any point in time.Jake [00:43:33]: I think of the canvas as a sheet of transparency paper. The agent is a little guy you push up into the canvas. It should say, “I need to copy that service and that service so I can test these two things.” It gets a read-only copy of production. Anything that's PII gets marked as a transform when we clone the database, create a copy-on-write version, or read from it. Then the agent makes changes and asks, “Does this actually work?” as close to production as possible.Jake [00:44:22]: That's how close you have to be, or you get massive drift. The system becomes unstable. You see this with massive systems built on Docker for local, Kubernetes for production, and a specific thing for something else. That complexity slows developers and becomes unstable at scale, making it hard to iterate. We want to compress that way down and say, “As close to prod as possible is where we want to be.”From AISRE Skeptic to Agent BelieverSwyx [00:45:00]: I was texting Erica for questions, and she says you were originally not a believer in AISRE. Have you come around on it?Jake [00:45:10]: I flipped, but I'm still not a believer in AISRE if you don't have the primitives to make it safe. If you unleash AISRE on production infrastructure without safe primitives for copying volumes and making sure things are fine, it's going to nuke your production database. It's not a matter of if, but when. I'm a big believer in making those loops safe.Jake [00:45:33]: I was a deep AI skeptic until 2023. In 2024, I thought, “Maybe I can roughly make this thing do it.” In 2025, I thought, “Now I can hold this.” Over winter break, everybody came back saying, “It's almost impossible to hold this.”Swyx [00:46:01]: Did you see this on the Claude docs? CloudBot? OpenCloud?Jake [00:46:06]: It's gotten to a point where it's harder to hold it wrong than to hold it right. There's a scene in Avengers where Vision picks up Thor's hammer and says it's terribly well-balanced. It self-balances and works well. I'm a deep believer at this point that this will be the dominant species: assembly, C, C++, JavaScript, words.Swyx [00:46:35]: It feels like a big jump.Jake [00:46:37]: It is. But it's not like you abandon CPU-based discrete logic and move straight to fuzzy logic. You need both. Your skills should call code or applications or some static structure. You can use skills to distill what the procedure should be or how the code should act.Jake [00:47:02]: I'm coming to a thesis: you need three points. You need a clear spec defining the system, the code, and the tests. When you say it out loud, if you've been in engineering long enough, you're like, “Of course. That's an RFC, tests, and code.” But they all matter. Having them together lets them reinforce each other: the spec and tests match, but the code doesn't, so reconcile it. Or the tests and code match but the spec doesn't, so reconcile that. That's the iteration loop.Jake [00:47:41]: That's why you're seeing people talk about software factories, docs, and reconciliation. Some of that is architectural astronomy if you don't implement it, but that loop is where most things will end up.Swyx [00:48:07]: For listeners, we've been talking about this on the pod for three years: the holy trinity of specs and tests. Itamar Friedman from Qodo is the reference if people want to look it up.Self-Modifying Infrastructure and the End of Push-Pull-RebuildSwyx [00:48:18]: One thing I want to mention on the OpenCloud idea is self-modification. I don't know how Railway would support it, but I have my OpenClaw, and I just tell it it has the Railway CLI and can do whatever. In theory, whatever capabilities or new infra it needs, it can call the Railway CLI, provision it, and add it to itself. The agent can modify its own infra.Jake [00:48:45]: It's nuts. I have a loop set up where you put the Railway CLI on top of something that runs on Railway. You're authenticated as whatever the current box is, and you can make any changes to it. Then you call Railway deploy, and it deploys itself.Jake [00:49:04]: It's like: “I need to spin up this instance of this environment. I already exist in this environment. Excellent, I have access to a Postgres instance now.” That's where we want to go with agentic, self-replicating infrastructure. That's your loop: iterate in production. You continue making changes. If it works, merge it upstream. If it doesn't, throw it away.Jake [00:49:37]: How do you make throwaway copies trivial to spin up and super cheap? The era of “I have an AWS instance with four vCPU and 16 gigs of RAM” is going to get destroyed. If you do that for agents, you need a thousand of those machines. It's prohibitively expensive compared with what we've spent a ton of time figuring out: the atomic unit of deploy, whether you call it isolates, sandboxes, or something else. Only pay for what you use, spin up instantaneously, and close the loop as quickly as possible.Jake [00:50:15]: If the system can self-replicate safely and say, “This is my environment, I'm making these changes,” it can come back with, “Does this look good? This is a new state of infrastructure given this prompt. I think I've solved it.” Then you go back and say, “Actually, it looks different.” It does the loop again. Then you say, “Cool. Apply.”Swyx [00:50:38]: That's retroactively obvious, which is the most useful kind. Any other comments on agent deployment on Railway?Jake [00:50:51]: It's getting better every day. I'm on X or Twitter. You can always yell at me about the parts not working as well as they should, because plenty of things should work way better.The New Serverless: Stateful, Long-Running, Pay-for-What-You-Use LinuxSwyx [00:51:04]: At this stage, when people want massively or embarrassingly parallel compute, they usually talk serverless. I feel like there's a new serverless compared to the previous five years of serverless. You're in that new bucket. Do you have comparisons or philosophical differences you want to call out?Jake [00:51:31]: It's somewhere in between. It's the ability to run stateful, long-running workflows or executions.Swyx [00:51:42]: Vercel has Fluid Compute, Cloudflare has some container thing, Google has App Runner and others.Jake [00:51:55]: That's where everything is roughly going, and it's why we've been working on this for six years. We believe users need access to a computer: a box that speaks Linux. They need to deploy what they want. Other systems change the surface area of what you can build. For us, users need a computer and need to deploy anything they truly want. That's why we've focused on the primitives: network, compute, storage. If we give you those and expose them so you can run things indefinitely, that's where we believe it's going.Jake [00:52:43]: Twitter has no nuance, so everyone says “servers” or “serverless.” It's always somewhere in the middle: I want to run it for a long time, but I don't want to provision the resource statically or pay for things I'm not using. That's been our thesis from day one: pay only for what you use, run it indefinitely, and it is full Linux.Swyx [00:53:12]: That's why I like the naming of Fluid. It's fluid. Flexible.Heroku, Focus, and Carrying the Torch Without Becoming the PastSwyx [00:53:18]: Another milestone is the Heroku official deprecation. You're one of the presumptive new Herokus. “New Heroku” has been a category for as long as I've been in developer tooling. It's finally happening. What was that like? Any behind-the-scenes of, “This is the moment”?Jake [00:53:42]: You have people where you're like, “You were running stuff on here? You, as this company?” It's crazy that names you would know are running on it and now coming to us saying, “We want to move a lot of this off.”Swyx [00:54:00]: Any behind-the-scenes on why Salesforce let Heroku stagnate?Jake [00:54:05]: I can only guess. It's hard when it's not your business. Salesforce's business is to build a great CRM. That's their focus. Then you acquire a compute business as an offshoot. A lot of early Meta people talk about focus. Boz has a write-up about how in the early days of Meta they had no money, so they were forced to focus. Then they turned on the money tree and had no reason not to split their focus.Jake [00:54:52]: But that dilutes your product. You get offshoots where you ask, “Is this the focus of the business?” If it's not core, it languishes. A lot of companies get in trouble when they split focus because they're fighting a multi-front war, not just externally but internally for alignment. Where are we going? What are we doing? What is our purpose?Jake [00:55:24]: If you're Salesforce-built and mission-driven, you want to work on Salesforce. Heroku is off to the side. It's not core to the business. Getting resources, budget, focus, and alignment internally becomes hard. It was a matter of time.Swyx [00:56:06]: Kudos for them to call it out instead of leaving it unknown.Jake [00:56:12]: Their release was a little odd. They called it out, but they didn't say they were shutting it down. Behind the scenes, I think they issued messages to people saying they should close accounts and that they were going to deprecate and remove things over time.Jake [00:56:30]: It's crazy because some of my first deployment experiences were on Heroku. You start with dragging things into an FTP server, then you try to get a deploy working, and then it's Heroku. It was the on-ramp for us. But the wheel turns. New things emerge. We're happy to carry the torch for a lot of that. But we don't want to be the new Heroku. We want to be the way people build and deploy software, and ultimately the way people monetize software over time.Swyx [00:57:19]: It's still a big crown to be the new Heroku. There are 50 companies that fought for that.Jake [00:57:23]: Everybody is holding some portion of it. We're happy to support people and companies. The platform works differently. The game loop is similar, but we've been dogmatic about where these things are going: primitives, agents, fan-out. Some things fit; some workflows need to change. We have an approximation of Heroku pipelines with the environment system. It's exciting. We've got a ton of people we can support, and it's growing a lot.Temporal, Workflow Engines, and State MachinesSwyx [00:58:12]: I have one more technical question about Temporal. I've sold my shares. You're a power user and one of our earliest customers. I met you through Temporal. You built on Temporal. You have complaints. This may be the most neutral and informed conversation anyone will hear about Temporal without someone working at the company.Jake [00:58:39]: That's fair. I've used Temporal for almost 10 years because of Cadence at Uber.Swyx [00:58:52]: Give people a sense of what Cadence was at Uber.Jake [00:58:57]: Cadence was the precursor to Temporal. It powers trip actions, rides, when you rent a Jump bike or scooter or car. You're running workflows for a period of time and saying, “This ride will run indefinitely until it finishes.” You attach information: you paused in this zone, so add this charge to the bill. When you end the trip, the workflow is done. That experience was powered by Cadence at the time.Swyx [00:59:34]: I used to say it's like programming the entire user journey top-down as one function.Jake [00:59:39]: It's a powerful idea and important. It's also important for the next phase of the agentic journey. You want an agent to do a specific task, be complete or incomplete on that task, and move on to the next thing. You need a way to manage workflows dynamically.Jake [00:59:59]: Temporal was always great in theory, and great when you got it working the way you wanted in production. But it required you to model the entire journey in your head. If you didn't, you could cause issues where replaying the state of the workflow causes non-determinism.Swyx [01:00:25]: Because it works on deterministic workflow history.Jake [01:00:28]: Exactly. I describe it as a jet engine. If you know how to operate it and run it, it's great. But you can't hand it to people trying to build complicated things if they don't have the whole state in their head.Jake [01:00:48]: We run our whole deployment pipeline on top of it. That's a reasonably complicated workflow: pre-commit hooks, signaling, queuing, and all the rest. We ran into the same thing at Uber. As you express a large workflow, it gets more complicated, with more states in the state machine that you have to map back to the workflow.Swyx [01:01:15]: It's a lot of ifs.Jake [01:01:16]: Exactly. At Uber, we built a system for doing the state machine and testing it. We've started to build some of those things here because it's grown heavily. It's not quite love-hate. When it works well, it works super well. But if someone who doesn't have full context puts something into the system that invalidates state or causes non-determinism, or spins off a ton of activities, you have to keep track of underlying SRE knobs like activity slots. Those should scale with memory, vCPU, and so on. It becomes a bear to scale.Swyx [01:02:10]: You need a capable sysadmin running things behind the scenes. If you moved off, what would you do?Jake [01:02:19]: We'd build our own workflow engine. We have a few internally that we've worked on.Swyx [01:02:27]: This is one of those classes of things you typically wouldn't vibe code, but I'm wondering if you can.Jake [01:02:33]: I still don't think you should vibe code it. You still want to run decent tests to make sure it works.Swyx [01:02:39]: Timo didn't invent that from scratch either. There are libraries you can run. On top of that, it's just a state machine that you have to map out. Ultimately, you define the instructions you want and run them through a state machine.Jake [01:03:00]: It's very doable. Workflow stuff is interesting. Restate is doing neat stuff here.Swyx [01:03:10]: You're tied into JavaScript. Are you a JavaScript maxi?Jake [01:03:13]: Internally, we have TypeScript, Rust, and Go. We don't add more languages. Actually, we have a little C because we write BPF code and hooks. But those are the languages.Swyx [01:03:28]: Is this for sidecars?Jake [01:03:32]: No. It's for the networking stack, volumes, and things like that. We use TypeScript a lot because it powers the dashboard, but we're moving a lot of workflow stuff off the dashboard stack and into the infrastructure stack.Railpack, Nixpacks, and Content-Addressable FilesystemsSwyx [01:04:00]: Cool. Any other technical infrastructure stuff? Railpacks?Jake [01:04:07]: We built an engine for determining dependencies based on source code. It's called Railpack. We built the first version, Nixpacks, on top of Nix, and then we moved.Swyx [01:04:17]: People have been trying to get me to adopt Nix and NixOS for four years. Is it ever going to be a thing?Jake [01:04:23]: I don't know. We're excited about it, but it has pain points. Think of it as a stack of versioned binaries at specific slices in time. If you want version X and version Y, you bloat the package space, which blows up image size and makes real-world workloads difficult.Swyx [01:04:53]: But you content-address it and cache it. In theory, there are optimizations.Jake [01:05:00]: In theory, yes. But with a large enough user base and disparate enough machines, you run into a problem Meta described in the XFAAS paper, their internal serverless system. It becomes difficult at scale unless you break out specific runtimes.Jake [01:05:24]: We didn't want to do that because we wanted to truly allow you to deploy anything. That was our initial thing with Nix. But we've moved toward interesting work around content-addressable file systems that can lazy-load anything from any point and page it into memory.Swyx [01:05:48]: Amazing.Jake [01:05:49]: The future is very bright. It's crazy, and it's going to be nuts.Coding Agent Spend, Roadmaps, and Token ROISwyx [01:05:54]: Founder journey stuff?Alessio [01:05:56]: Your cloud usage: you tweeted you're going to spend $300K this month?Jake [01:06:01]: I think we got to $200K.Alessio [01:06:02]: Coding agents?Jake [01:06:03]: Yeah.Swyx [01:06:04]: Across the company?Alessio [01:06:05]: You only have 35 people, so I'm sure they're not all spending $10K a month. What's the distribution?Jake [01:06:10]: I think I'm at about $25K. We have power users all the way down. We came back from winter break, and I basically said, “If you're writing code by hand, you're doing this wrong.” The tools are good enough now that you can move extremely quickly. There are issues and pain points, but you should be reviewing the code you are writing instead of writing it by hand.Jake [01:06:40]: Architectural patterns matter more now than ever, but you shouldn't spend your time generating code you would write. If you know how to write it, ask the agent to write it and reconcile it until it looks like you would have written it yourself.Jake [01:06:58]: People misconstrue my propensity to push people toward agents as connected to our growth and some reliability bumps. They're not necessarily related. The tools are good enough to move extremely quickly and build things way larger than you could before.Jake [01:07:19]: To the earlier point about cooling data centers in space: I don't know. But with software, you can ask, “How would I build block storage from scratch? How would I do these things?” I have ideas because I have history and have read papers. Let me work them out and build massive test benches with thousands of tests, because those are now free to author. If you're not using AI systems to speed-run your roadmap and reconcile your existing system onto the future, you're missing a large point of what's happening.Alessio [01:08:12]: What's the path to spending $3 million a month? Is it bound by ideas and things customers can absorb?Jake [01:08:19]: For most companies, it's bound by deployment at this point. That's why we've seen a massive boom in users and companies, from Fortune 50s down, asking how to get developers to move faster. You'll probably hit your CFO before any technical limits because they'll look at the eye-watering amount of money spent on tokens. Inference costs have to come down, but we're inference constrained now. There will be price discovery around what makes sense for an org to adopt.Jake [01:09:06]: I think you'll end up with the F1 driver concept. If someone is really adept at these things, it makes sense to put them in a $3 million car. If they're not, it probably doesn't make sense. You'll take a few people and say, “You can drive the F1 car. We need to go in this direction. Figure out if it works and prototype it.”Jake [01:09:33]: We've done some of that and vastly accelerated our roadmap. We thought we'd ship something in a few years; now we can probably ship it in a few months because we validated it and don't have to build it incrementally. We can skip steps and move toward our vision.Alessio [01:09:58]: A lot of people are realizing the roadmap doesn't always have a business impact, so they say tokens are too expensive. But if your roadmap were built to make more money by the time you built it, you'd have token pricing for it, the same way you do with sales. You'd spend a billion dollars on sales if you knew you would get $2 billion of revenue.Jake [01:10:19]: Exactly. A naive way to measure this is the percentage of tokens that end up in production. If you can measure impact because those tokens end up in production, that's awesome. But the burden of proof will rise. Internally, we have a growing number of pull requests that haven't merged. The question becomes: how do you get this into production? It's about how quickly you can build and deploy software, which is exciting because that's our whole thing.The SDLC Shift: Prompt Requests, Feature Flags, and Safe RolloutsSwyx [01:10:56]: The SDLC is changing. One thesis is that the pull request is dying. It's going to be the prompt request. Beyond that, code review is also kind of dying if you have all the other systems in place. What else is changing about the SDLC?Jake [01:11:19]: The AISRE and the tools to make it happen. AISRE is pie-in-the-sky aspirational. What does it take to get an AISRE? What tools do you need to build?Swyx [01:11:32]: You should expose your tooling to customers at some point. The Central Station command center.Jake [01:11:39]: We have it for template maintainers. Template maintainers can deploy and maintain templates, and they get feedback. We're going to expose those things incrementally.Swyx [01:11:51]: Clustering around incidents. Everyone has a version of that, but I don't think anyone has solved it.Jake [01:11:56]: I won't say we've solved it internally, but it's gotten so good that we can see incidents forming pretty quickly. At some point, those will be things either someone else builds or we build. We've always built things purpose-built for us. If it makes sense to make it useful for users, monetize it, or turn that loop into a profit center instead of a cost center, we want to do that.Jake [01:12:28]: Pull request is definitely dying.Swyx [01:12:29]: Do you do first-party feature flagging and incremental rollout stuff?Jake [01:12:34]: We have a feature-flagging engine we built internally and will eventually roll out.Swyx [01:12:38]: I don't see it as a user. How come you didn't give us what you have?Jake [01:12:43]: We have to beta test it. We care a lot about the quality of the things. There's plenty we've used internally that doesn't make it all the way through the journey because it fails. It works for one service but not multiple services. We'd have to build it for multiple services and know that if we released it, we'd rebuild it again and again. Some things are worth that, but many inform the roadmap.Jake [01:13:18]: We don't want to dilute the experience by saying, “This works, but only for this service,” unless it's a core initiative. Over the next few months, we'll roll out things that work for a single service, then multiple services, then multiple services across the environment. You have to be deliberate. Otherwise you create broken disparate experiences and support load because people ask how to use the feature.Jake [01:13:52]: It's the earlier expansion and compaction pattern. You expand the company to get features, then compact and smooth them out so the experience is stellar. You told me in the hallway, “It's gotten so much better.” Internally we're saying, “This part really sucks. We need to make it significantly better.”Swyx [01:14:11]: I can attest to that over the last three years watching you build Railway. For listeners, feature flagging is a huge part of Uber culture. So much so that they have too many feature flags and another thing to remove feature flags. Facebook has Gatekeeper. Agents are going to need this. It's fundamental to incremental rollouts. OpenAI acquired Statsig. GPT-5 is routing and flagging through different models.Jake [01:14:56]: It's super important. If the software development lifecycle is going to change because we're doing things 1,000 times faster and 1,000 times more concurrently, what becomes important at scale?Jake [01:15:16]: Before I started Railway, I built a feature-flagging product and tried to sell it. It was an easier version of LaunchDarkly. I ran into a problem: anyone small enough to adopt your technology doesn't care about feature flags, and anyone large enough to need feature flags needs so much scale that you have to build out all the infrastructure. I scrapped it.Jake [01:15:42]: But what is old is new again. Companies are trying to move quickly, but you can't YOLO a vibe-coded thing straight into production. You need to say, “Here's my blast radius, my impact, and I want to shadow it for these users.” Feature flags. You're going to need the tools larger companies built to maintain their structures. Everything gets compressed by 1,000x so everybody can build those structures quickly.Jake [01:16:07]: That's exactly where we are: compressing the software development lifecycle, then expanding it and adding more new things.Cattle, Pets, and Clonable InfrastructureSwyx [01:16:15]: Another term that comes to mind for newer developers is “cattle, not pets.” People treat production like a pet. It has a name. You baby it and keep it alive. With cattle, you can mass farm, roll out, portion parts out, and kill them.Jake [01:16:37]: I think that might change. You can move toward having pets as long as you have a cloning machine for your pets.Swyx [01:16:52]: Yeah.Jake [01:16:52]: If you can snapshot every single thing at every frame, it doesn't matter if something gets obliterated because you have a snapshot of it. The things we've built right now are designed to block changes from the hermetically sealed DevOps line. You have to write a Dockerfile because you nee

The future of war has been evolving before our eyes in Ukraine, yet the west still plans to fight the last war. In this special episode, guest host Noah Smith (@noahpinion) and Brandon Anderson sit down with Yaroslav Azhnyuk (@YaroslavAzhnyuk), a serial tech founder who went from building PetCube to founding The Fourth Law, one of the world's most advanced AI-guided drone companies. Over two hours we cover the technology, tactics, and geopolitics of drone warfare, and why the modern battlefield has already left the West behind:* Yaroslav's personal history and the Ukraine war [00:01:04 – 00:14:01]* The modern drone tech stack: why FPV drones are the new god of war, the future of the rifleman, fiber optic vs. AI, five levels of autonomy, and the eight dimensions of the autonomous battlefield [00:14:01 – 01:05:13]* The geopolitics and economics of drones: China's manufacturing advantage, the drone race, Western defense readiness, countermeasures, and why the gap is widening [01:05:13 – 01:58:57]For those looking for Noah Smith's commentary, it really gets going around the 00:51:31 mark.Yaroslav Azhnyuk / The Fourth Law:* X: https://x.com/YaroslavAzhnyuk* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yaroslavazhnyuk/* The Fourth Law: https://thefourthlaw.aiNoah Smith:* Substack: Noah Smith * X: https://x.com/noahpinionTimestamps00:00:00 Cold Open: China's 4 Billion Drones and the Cameras-to-Explosives Pipeline00:01:04 Introduction: Brandon, Noah Smith, and Yaroslav Azhnyuk00:05:41 From Tech Entrepreneur to Defense: PetCube, Brave One, and the D3 Fund00:10:42 The Ethics of Building Weapons: Dual-Use Technology and the Wolf at the Door00:14:01 The Tech Stack: Cameras, Autonomy Modules, Interceptors, and a Semiconductor Fab00:18:47 Fiber Optic vs. AI: The Radio Horizon Problem and $32/km Cable00:25:32 FPV Drones: The New God of War — 70–80% of Frontline Casualties00:28:28 The Five Levels of Drone Autonomy: From Terminal Guidance to Full Autonomy00:41:37 The Eight Dimensions of the Autonomous Battlefield00:45:32 AI Safety and the Morality of Autonomous Weapons00:51:31 The End of the Rifleman? Noah's 2013 Prediction vs. Battlefield Reality01:05:13 China's Manufacturing Advantage and Western Vulnerabilities01:24:21 Policy Advice for Western Defense: Defense Valley and the Widening Gap01:32:54 The Drone Race: Who's Ahead, Category by Category01:41:57 Countermeasures: Shotguns, Jammers, Lasers, and Fishnets01:58:19 The Wedding and Final Takeaway: Be Prepared for WarTranscriptCold Open: China, FPV Drones, and the New Warning SignYaroslav [00:00:00]: Think about this. Last year, Ukraine produced 4 million FPV drones. Ukraine is not the most industrious nation in the world. China can produce 4 billion of these FPV drones.Noah [00:00:10]: Would you say that right now China is now the supreme conventional military power on Earth, given its ability to manufacture and deploy drones in the quantity and quality that you just described?Yaroslav [00:00:20]: I don't think we have all the information to claim that but we cannot count it out, and that alone should be a big warning sign. As I say, at some point in my life I went from making cameras that fling treats to pets to cameras that fling explosives to the occupiers. So that's the short story. And when you think about what your nation, what your patriots are going through, you realize that's the only morally right thing to do is to fight back, and it is immoral not to fight back, and then the choice becomes very clear.Introduction: Yaroslav Azhnyuk, Petcube, and the Last Flight into KyivBrandon [00:01:04]: Welcome to Latent Space. I'm Brandon. I normally do science podcasts, but today we're going to do something a little bit different. I'm joined by Noah Smith of Noahpinion on Substack and Twitter. And he has lots of interesting things to say about drones. And as a guest, we have Yaroslav Azhnyuk, founder of The Fourth Law and several other, drone-related startups. To get started, it is February 23rd, 2022. You are running a pet startup. You're connecting pets with their owners. Let's go in just a little bit of background. How did you get started in tech, and what were you working on before the Ukrainian war started?Yaroslav [00:01:50]: Good to be here. Thank you. On February 23rd, late in the evening, 11:00 PM Kyiv time, my wife and I landed in Kyiv. Actually, then she was a fiance. We came from Lviv, where we were looking at a church, where our wedding should have taken place. And we got into this cab ride from the airport to our home, and the driver was like, “You crazy. Like, everyone's leaving Kyiv. Why do you come?” We're like, “What? Nothing's going to happen. Dude, chill.” And then obviously, eight minutes later, or eight hours later, the bombs fell in the city. It was quite surreal. We probably landed on the last flight that landed in Kyiv, or one of those last flights. My background, I'm a tech guy. Studied applied mathematics in Kyiv Polytechnics, born and raised in Kyiv. My parents are old PhDs from academia, and grandparents too. Like, everything, from linguistics to nuclear physics. And I'm an entrepreneur, so I've built a bunch of companies. Petcube is the one you were referencing. So I lived in San Francisco 2014 to 2020, building Petcube, which is one of the leading, pet device companies in the world, selling lots of pet cameras. And then, yeah, as I say, at some point in my life I went from making cameras that fling treats to pets to cameras that fling explosives to the occupiers. So that's the short story.February 24th: Leaving Kyiv as the Invasion BeginsNoah [00:03:28]: February 24th, I guess a few hours after you, go to check out your wedding chapel, what do you do?Yaroslav [00:03:37]: We had a plan for this situation. So my parents and family live in Kyiv, and we're like, “Okay, this has actually started. The worst has, come true.” And so we basically packed our belongings and got in the car and spent 17 hours driving west. And that was pretty sure most people in our audience watched at least one apocalyptic movie in their life, so that was exactly like that. Like, felt exactly like that. Missiles are falling. Like, there was smoke in Kyiv. Like, my dad and I went, like, to central part of the cities. It's probably, likeYaroslav [00:04:20]: 800 meters from presidential office, to pick some stuff up at his workplace. Because he's, like, the head of an academic institution, so he had to get some of the things with him. And super surreal. Like, the streets are empty. Like, the gas stations are out of gas. Like, we found some gas station. We didn't have, like, spare canisters with us, so we're like, We figured out, like, the car was diesel, so like, we figured out, if it's diesel, you can actually store it in plastic, canisters, and we bought some window wash for the cars. We poured it out of the canisters, and we poured the diesel into that. Yeah, so it was like that. And then, like, helping friends get out, like my friend and his dog. Like, we found Like, my brother was also, like, riding in a separate car. We found a place for my friend who didn't have a car. It was like, yeah, it was like, totally surreal. And we didn't know of course, and you didn't know this will last for so long. You didn't know whether Ukraine will be able to defend Kyiv. And it was like, yeah, very little information and very little insight into future.From Pet Cameras to Defense Tech: Building for Ukraine and the Free WorldNoah [00:05:42]: What are your thoughts with regards to how do you, defend, Ukraine? So you eventually start building drones Like, what is the process to get from there from where you were building, devices that connect owners with pets to building drones, and what other things did you do to help the war effort in the process?Yaroslav [00:06:07]: It's definitely non-trivial, right? Like, I didn't go, to I didn't get any, like, military education when I was a student. Like, normally, in Ukraine, you would, you would go to like, this military school even if you're getting higher education in any other, sphere. I decided to skip that which is like, an unusual way to go. And I never thought that I will be somehow engaged in a war effort. Like, what is war? Of course, wars are over. It's the end of history. So one thing you got to understand about, like, many Ukrainians and like, I guess, it's also true about most of the people I met here in the US, that your who you are in terms of your nationality is a big part of your identity. So when that gets under attack, it's something deeper than just the country you live in gets under attack, right? And I Day one, I figured I'm going to I'm going to fight back with everything I can, right? But I didn't think on day one that I'm actually going to do, weapons. And a bunch of things. We were reaching out to a number of American, congresspeople and senators, and basically advocating for support of Ukraine, for voting for lend lease, which has happened in May 2022, but didn't actually work as expected. We helped start, Brave One, which is now a very important defense innovation cluster, sort of like a DIU here in the US. We helped start, a fund called D3. It's like, it was started or co-started by Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google. So a bunch of these odd things, but then eventually I was like, “Okay,”by 2023 it was obvious this thing, A is going to last a lot more time, and B, that the whole world is shifting and that there's going to be a new arms race, that the warfare is redefined by drones as platforms. And for the first time in history, you have a platform that is software defined, that can increase your battlefield capabilities, in a in a step change just overnight. So it's like if you were able to push a software update and get all of your Roman legionnaires a new helmet? That has never been possible before. It's the first time in the history of war this is possible. So all of that and many other things like, supply chain fragilization, and the impact that AI is going to have on all of this all these things have become evident to me in 2023, and it's like, “Okay, I should do what I do best, or what I know how to do best, start a tech company, and sort of leverage the global techno capitalist machine, to provide, defensibility to Ukraine and the free world.” So that's literally the mission of the company, increase defensibility of Ukraine and the free world. And then there was some sort of soul-searching and like, asking yourself. It's like, “Okay, am I Actually, I know nothing about weapons. Am I actually, like, ready to make, things that other people use to kill other bad people?”Yaroslav [00:09:36]: When you think about what your nation, what your Compatriots are going through And think about all the terror of places like Bucha, the occupied cities in the east and south, the abducted children, the raped women, all the economic damage that's being done, and the intention to destroy a whole nation, to genocide the people of Ukraine, you realize that's the only morally right thing to do is to fight back, and it is immoral not to fight back. And then the choice becomes very clear. And look, we're just passing the ammunition. We're not doing the actual job. The actual fighters and defenders and heroes are people in the armed forces. We're just support.The Moral Question: Weapons, Responsibility, and Fighting BackNoah [00:10:33]: I have so many questions. Actually, I know you seem to have a question. Do you want to ask anything?Yaroslav [00:10:38]: No, I'm just listening. Go ahead.Noah [00:10:40]: I do want to talk about, some of let's say, the moral issues, like you just said. You endYaroslav [00:10:50]: I think there are no issues there.Yaroslav [00:10:52]: What would an example of a moral question be in this case?Noah [00:10:55]: No, I mean Okay. As you just said, you are creating the tools, but others are using them.Noah [00:11:05]: I was maybe thinking of having this conversation later, but one of the questions is like, is it actually you are going to be building them for your homeland, which you are building it for your homeland, which is I think, very a strong morally defensible position, but this technology is not going to stay with you, right?Noah [00:11:26]: This you will probably be selling these to other people Yeah. So the future is really where the moral issues may come into playYaroslav [00:11:38]: The this question becomes, easier and more complete if we ask this not about a particular technology or particular weapon, if we think that this question actually applies to any kind of technology Right? So -Knife or fire. You can use knife to do surgery and save people's lives, or you can use it as a weapon to take people's lives.Noah [00:12:06]: Cut tomatoes, too.Yaroslav [00:12:08]: Cut tomatoes too.Noah [00:12:09]: Yes, knife.Yaroslav [00:12:09]: That's helpful.Noah [00:12:10]: In Japan, sword and knife, they, call the same word.Yaroslav [00:12:14]: It's like, it's with any technology. Large language models, right? Look at how powerful they are and yet they're available to anyone in North Korea or in Russia.Yaroslav [00:12:29]: That's one side of the argument. The other side is As a maker, what is your responsibility for how the tools you're creating, will be used? There's definitely some responsibility, right? Then How should the decision process look like? Should you, like, try to calculate all the possible scenarios before starting to work on something? Or do you create something that is needed now to save people's lives, and then think about, addressing the unwanted edge cases later? In ideal world where there's like, or okay, it's not ideal world. In a mythical world where there is some one governing party and it gets to decide everything, and there is no other country, that can, decide on their own, you could say, “Well, we need to calculate for all the consequences, and only then, maybe build this building, by replacing this park because, maybe we need this park in the city,”right? So that kind of situation. But when you're in a situation where you're in a forest, in front of a wolf, you first going to deal with the wolf that wants to eat you, and then you're going to go consult Greenpeace. So that's kind of situation that Ukraine is in.The Fourth Law, Odd Systems, and Ukraine's Drone StackNoah [00:13:59]: Enough. Because this is a tech podcast, I did want to spend some time talking about, sort of the tech in that you've developed and what you've been working on. So can you explain, I guess, first of all, like, the problem that you were trying to solve from a technical standpoint? And I think, and then maybe, like, go into some of the solutions and some of the design process that led you from designing, little laser-guided, guiding lasers with a with an iPhone versus Having drones.Yaroslav [00:14:34]: Like, it so happened, that my partners and I, we sort of So I started one company called The Fourth Law, and its goal was and is to Make, massively scalable on-drone autonomy. And then In parallel with that together with my, Petcube co-founders, partners, and friends, we started another company called Odd Systems Which, was focused on making thermal cameras. Cameras, thermal cameras are seeing thermal radiation and are used to see at night. And we're now sort of those companies are getting closer and closer together and we're probably going to merge them. And this group of companies is currently the leading, team in on-drone AI and thermal imaging on the Ukrainian battlefield, and Likely one of the leading, if not the leading in the world. So We have these, like, three sort of business units, which are cameras, drone autonomy, and drones. So the cameras and drone autonomy sell daytime and nighttime cameras and different types of drone autonomous modules to other drone manufacturers, over 200 drone manufacturers in Ukraine. And then the UAV, business unit sells the drones themselves to the armed forces of Ukraine, Ukrainian government. And there are different types of drones. Those are sort of front strike, as we call them, so those are sort of FPV strike drones and the bombers, and then interceptors. And there are different kinds of interceptors. We do Shahed interceptors and we do ISR interceptors. We don't do the deep strike-FPV Drones, Interceptors, and Battery-Powered WarfareNoah [00:16:32]: What's an ISR interceptor?Yaroslav [00:16:33]: ISR is stands for intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and those are basically drones which are which, Russians are using to watch over positions and then communicate where, the targets are coming.Noah [00:16:48]: It's a reconnaissance.Yaroslav [00:16:48]: That's, the ISR is sort of a classical term for a for a reconnaissance drone.Noah [00:16:53]: Are all of these battery-powered drones that you just described? ‘Cause I know that the sort of deep strike drones still have, like Some sort ofYaroslav [00:17:01]: Internal combustion engine?Noah [00:17:02]: Internal combustion engine. Are all the things you're talking about battery-powered?Yaroslav [00:17:06]: What we're working on is all battery-powered, right? We don't do the deep strikes, right? And then in terms of autonomy-Noah [00:17:12]: You can catch a Shahed with a battery-powered thing. It's not Fast to catch.Yaroslav [00:17:17]: No, absolutely. Look, Shahed interceptor, like ours, it's called Zero, it goes up to 326 kilometers per hour.Noah [00:17:26]: For reference, how fast is a Shahed?Yaroslav [00:17:28]: Eight, like, in internal phase it could be 280, but in cruise phase it's, like, 220-ish.Yaroslav [00:17:36]: Yeah. And sorry, I'm not like you can convert that into miles if you're interested.Noah [00:17:41]: No, that's fine.Noah [00:17:41]: Multiply by two thirds or point six or something.Yaroslav [00:17:44]: That's easy. Yeah, I was saying that for autonomy modules, right, we, -We make systems, autonomous systems for frontline, for interceptors and some for deep strikes as well, and then different levels of autonomy. So from terminal guidance, which is like lasts 500 meters, give or take, to autonomous bombing, to autonomous target detection, to autonomous navigation and all of that across day and night, different terrains, different time of the year, different platforms like quadcopters and fixed wing, and maybe some other platforms. So it's quite a wide variety of products. We also have like our own simulation. We have our own training school for the war fighters. And we're about to start construction of two, semiconductor plants to make, sensors for thermal cameras. So that's super exciting for me as a computer science guy is Doing semiconductors. Super cool.Noah [00:18:49]: Like in terms of kind of core drone technologies, you basically are one is an FPV replacement without fiber optics, and the other isYaroslav [00:18:59]: YouNoah [00:18:59]: Signal tracking with interceptorsYaroslav [00:19:00]: With or without fiber optics. Fiber optics Is just like, sort of a communication module.Yaroslav [00:19:05]: You can, you can use classical analog, video link and radio link. Those would be two separate radios. You can do digital, or you can do fiber optic, and then fiber optic Has its own advantages but also adds weight and decreases, the distance and decreases, how fast you can, sort of turn and With a drone. Yeah.Noah [00:19:33]: Do you need AI for fiber optic drones?Yaroslav [00:19:36]: Like you can use AI for fiber optic drones. AI replaces a human, right? Fiber optic is making your communication link more resilient. So those are slightly different goals. Like if you want, you can have, AI controlling hundreds of fiber optic drones instead of having 100 operators for each.Fiber Optics, Radio Horizons, and Terminal GuidanceNoah [00:20:03]: I guess I thought that the key reason that people moved to fiber optic drones was for like electronic, countermeasures. Or I guess to counter those.Yaroslav [00:20:13]: I think that's a correct assessment from sort of a public awareness standpoint. In practice it's somewhat more difficult Because besides electronic countermeasures, you have these issues of a radio horizon For FPV drones, which means that asYaroslav [00:20:36]: I believe Earth is round Some people disagree. But basically if you fly a drone and you have a land station over here and a drone flying over hereYaroslav [00:20:49]: If your drone is flying high, you have good direct radio visibility. If your drone goes low, and usually, Russian infantry and vehicles, they're on the ground and you want to hit them, you need to go low. Lower you go, maybe you'll get behind a hill or behind a forest, and if you're far enough, you'll just get behind the curvature of the earth. You get into what's called a radio shadow. And then That is a real bummer because for the last, be it 60 or 20 meters, you won't be able to see anything and it will be very difficult to hit the target. So to counter that what-- And then the distances that these FPV drones, act on they're, they can be quite large. So for example, here in the US there was this drone dominance program competition, and in drone dominance the furthest distance was about 10 kilometers.Noah [00:21:44]: What was drone dominance? What was that competition?Yaroslav [00:21:47]: Drone, the drone dominance is a is a program started, by the US government, to accelerate the development of drone technology here in the US.Noah [00:21:57]: Got it. And the longest range thing they were using was 10 kilometers.Yaroslav [00:22:00]: Was 10 kilometers, right. In Ukraine, like if your drone doesn't fly at least 20, 25, it just, no one's interested in it, and the usual hits are happening. It was like, okay, many hits are happening between 30 and 40 kilometers, and that's what expected from a regular 10-inch, FPV drone. So at that distance, even at altitudes of like 60 to 100 meters, you might start losing, the link. So some of the earlier AI technology that was fielded in FPV drone was this terminal guidance technology. That was the first product that we ever, launched that helped you as an operator, once you see the target from two, three, 500 meters, you lock onto the target and then, it just, drives the drone towards the target no matter what, even after you lost the visual connection. So optic fiber solves that. However, if you want to go like 20 kilometers with optic fiber, that will add an extra three kilos, of useful weight to your drone. SoNoah [00:23:12]: ‘Cause the cable that you have to unspool as you go weighs.Noah [00:23:15]: It is heavy.Yaroslav [00:23:15]: At first, like the spool is about 800 grams, so a bit less than a kilo, and then, and then think about 10, 10 kilometer optic fiber is another kilo, something like that. That takes away from your useful mass and then now you have like, you need a 15-inch drone and it can only carry maybe one or two kilos of explosives if you want to go, 20 kilometers. If you want to go to 30 or 40, like 30 is probably max. 40 is like very problem problematic on optic fiber. And then the problem with optic fiber is it's actually getting super expensive. So and why? Because of all the data centers for AI. That's literally the same optic fiber-Noah [00:24:01]: We're running out of centersYaroslav [00:24:02]: That's being used there.Yaroslav [00:24:02]: Like when Ukrainians and Russians come to Chinese factories to buy the optic fiber, they're like, “We're out. We sold it out to the Americans.”? That's the craziest thing. So optic fiber went up in price from like, $4 per, kilometer to like, $32 per kilometer in a few months in the beginning of this year. And I'veBrandon [00:24:26]: Claude Code is stopping the Russian drone effort here.Yaroslav [00:24:30]: Ukrainian as well. Yeah.Brandon [00:24:31]: Ukrainian. But I read somewhere that the Russians had grown more dependent on fiber optic drones relative to the Ukrainians, and that's one reason why the Ukrainians have sort of regained the initiative in drones recently.Brandon [00:24:42]: How accurate's that?Yaroslav [00:24:43]: The Russians were the first ones to scale that. I think by as of now, Ukraine has caught up. I think, like, as of maybe three months ago, Ukraine is mostly caught up on fiber optic. Yeah.Brandon [00:24:57]: What percent of damage would you say is in terms of FPV drone damage would you say is now fiber optic versus, like autonomous?FPVs as the New God of War: Tanks, Artillery, and Cost per KillYaroslav [00:25:07]: For our, for our audience, I actually, I cannot answer that question. Like, it's like I know the answer, but I would not disclose that. But for our audience, I think another interesting fact is out of all the casualties on the front line Between 70 and 80% are done by FPV drones.Brandon [00:25:30]: FPV drones are the new weapon of universal weapon of warfare.Yaroslav [00:25:34]: It'sBrandon [00:25:35]: Land warfare, anywayYaroslav [00:25:35]: They used to say that artillery is a god of war because artillery used to cause, like 80% of casualties, and now On that ranking-Brandon [00:25:46]: FPVYaroslav [00:25:47]: FPV drones rule.Brandon [00:25:48]: FPV drones are the god of war.Yaroslav [00:25:51]: Sort of. Dethroned artillery. But it's not to say that artillery is not useful, is not needed. Like, all of these systems are needed. Maybe except cavalry, although Russians still use it. I know, have you seen the videos of Russians using mules and horses?Brandon [00:26:09]: What is the usefulness-Yaroslav [00:26:10]: It'Brandon [00:26:10]: Of a tank in the in the modern-Yaroslav [00:26:11]: That's where we need Greenpeace to say a word, but they're silent. Yeah.Brandon [00:26:15]: What's the use of a tank on the modern battlefield?Yaroslav [00:26:21]: It's diminishing.Brandon [00:26:22]: Diminishing.Yaroslav [00:26:22]: However, I think there might be technologies which will, revive the tank. Look, tank still provides you armor, and armor is important. Like, you still need to armor and firepower, right? Like, you can be an armor personal carrier that provides you, armor. The challenge that currently exists is armor is not very well protected against incoming drones. However, there are ways to do to protect it. We were previously talking about this before the podcast. The CEO of Rheinmetall, recently sort of ridiculed, Ukrainian drone industry, saying that like, there is nothing interesting there, no real innovation, no to stand Compared to like, Rheinmetall or Boeing, and it's all made by housewives. There was like, obviously a ton of memes about this people ridiculing the CEO of Rheinmetall. And one of the best quotes, I heard on this topic is from my friend, Alexey Babenko, who's, the head of and founder of VIARI Drone, which is one of the largest manufacturers of FPV drones. They're our partner. They're using our autonomy. So he said that the drones we manufacture in one day will be more than enough to destroy all the tanks Rheinmetall manufactures in a year.Yaroslav [00:27:52]: Then, yeah, cost-wise, of course, a drone is like, $500 and a Rheinmetall tank is what, probably 5 million-ish or maybe more.Brandon [00:28:00]: Don't mess with those housewives.Yaroslav [00:28:03]: Drone wives.Brandon [00:28:04]: Drone wives.Yaroslav [00:28:06]: That's it.Noah [00:28:06]: There's a classic saying that everyone always fights the last war.Noah [00:28:12]: Yet do How did So from your standpoint, how did we get to the point where tanks became irrelevant in at least for now In a matter of just a few years?Yaroslav [00:28:24]: Look, I think it's the same way, how do we get to the point that calculators become irrelevant?Yaroslav [00:28:31]: Now we have iPhones. Like, why would you need a calculator? Technology progresses and its influence grows non-linearly. It's all exponential. So I can tell you that full autonomy, when you put it on a drone Look, so if you, if you think about a tank and a like, it's not a direct comparison, but even, like, a drone and a artillery shell or like, sort of cost per kill, an artillery shell for 155 caliber, which is a standard NATO caliber Currently market price is about $4,000 per piece. So compare that to say, $400 per drone. That's 10 times more expensive. Account for the amortization of the artillery gun and for how vulnerable it is and what is the sort of tactical, capabilities it gives you as compared to a drone. You'll figure out that an FPV drone is maybe three orders of magnitude, more versatile, more useful, more capable than artillery and many of than a classic artillery. Many of Because there are different types of artillery. Not just, like, one 155. You have mortars, you have all that. But give or take, roughly three orders of magnitude maybe. Again, it doesn't have that firepower. It's not one-to-one comparison still.Yaroslav [00:29:53]: Now, take that FPV drone. When you put full autonomy on that FPV drone, which can be not very expensive, like systems that we're, producing are like, in hundreds of dollars of pure bombFull Autonomy: From Human Pilots to Smartphone-Directed Drone MissionsNoah [00:30:06]: Just interrupt. You said full autonomy Just a second ago you were saying that the autonomy here is guidance, right? It's not decision-making.Yaroslav [00:30:14]: No, I was I was saying that's the f-First and sort of easiest pieces of autonomy that was fielded by us. But if you, if you add full autonomy to a droneBrandon [00:30:24]: He, I think he's asking what does it can you, for the listeners, can you explain What the term full autonomy means?Yaroslav [00:30:29]: Basically, I think a good way to think about an FPV drone is like an iPhone of warfare. It's, like, very inexpensive, very mass producible, very versatile. You don't need a bunch of other things when you have a iPhone in your pocket. You don't have, need an MP3 player, you don't need a calculator, don't need other things. All right? So FPV drone is an iPhone. Or like, okay, Apple please don't sue me, is a smartphone. And then, when you add autonomy to it sort of becomes like Uber or ride sharing. Okay? So what it means is instead of actually being a trained pilot who has this complex remote controller device which requires a couple months of training to actually pilot the drone, and then having to pilot it for 30 minutes, flying towards the target, et cetera, et cetera, now you basically, you have your smartphone, you have a drone, you pick your smartphone, you say, “We are here. The bad guys are here. Go and get them.” And the drone goes up, flies in a given direction, localizes itself on the map, finds the dedicated area where they, the bad guys are supposed to be sees the bad guys, bombs them, return, like, watches, so does a damage assessment, returns back, sits down, and then you can pick it up and watch the video if you didn't have the radio link, right?Noah [00:31:59]: That's a bomber drone.Yaroslav [00:32:00]: That's full autonomy for a bomber drone, right?Noah [00:32:03]: You're saying that no human decision is made in this entire process?Brandon [00:32:06]: That's not, that's not what he's saying.Yaroslav [00:32:07]: A human decision was made at the beginning of the process-Noah [00:32:09]: I get it. I get itYaroslav [00:32:09]: The same way as you would fire an artillery.Yaroslav [00:32:12]: When you fire an artillery, you don't stop at like, 500 meters away from a target and ask it whether, you want to strike or not. That's exactly, a human decision is always made at some point. So when you do that's full autonomy, and such full autonomy is happening as we speak. And such full autonomy increases the capabilities of an FPV drone, which is already, like, three orders more powerful than an artillery shell. Full autonomy increases its capabilities by four orders of magnitude because now you can have 100 times as many people who can use it, because you don't need to train those people, and this is important. You can have 10 times, mission success rate, and you can have 10 times utility per drone because now instead of being one-way kamikaze, it's, it can be a bomber.Brandon [00:33:05]: Now wait, let's, you said 10 times mission success rate, which means that fully autonomous bomber drones succeed in their missions 10 times more often than human piloted bomber drones do. That's an important thing to know.Noah [00:33:17]: Maybe, to push back onBrandon [00:33:19]: They're super, they're superhuman. They're, they' 10X superhuman.Yaroslav [00:33:22]: They're not vulnerable to electronic warfare. They don't care about the radio horizon. They don't lose track during navigation. They are not susceptible to human error when, an artillery shell or other drone blows up besides you and you're like, “Hell no,”like, “I'm getting out of here.” Right? That doesn't happen to an autonomous drone. Like, all of those things. Like, we have, like, one of the brigades that's using our drones with just first level autonomy They literally said that their success rates-Brandon [00:33:53]: What's first level autonomy?Yaroslav [00:33:54]: First level autonomy is just the terminal guidance.Yaroslav [00:33:57]: By the way, we have video of that. We can watch that.Brandon [00:33:59]: Terminal guidance means a human gets it nearby and then the AI takes over.Yaroslav [00:34:03]: The human flies it all the way, like 30 kilometers towards the target, and obviously the target was probably given to that human by someone who's flying some ISR drone, some reconnaissance drone, right? So all the way to the target, and once you see the target from a distance of 500 meters, you do target lock, and from there drone flies autonomous. So just that feature alone, it has increased the guy's, his call sign is Grom, so it has increased his, mission success rate, like precision of mission, yeah, mission success rate from 20% to 71%, and it also increased his kill zone from three kilometers to 10 kilometers, which means there's certain area around the front line which is designated kill zone. Whenever enemy goes into that area, it's almost guaranteed to be to be destroyed by a drone. And then obviously the drones are not launched from like, the zero line. They're usually launched from like, minus 10 kilometer-Mission Success, Failure Modes, and the Five Levels of AutonomyBrandon [00:35:03]: What is a zero line?Yaroslav [00:35:05]: Zero line is sort of an imaginary line of control, of two conflicting forces.Brandon [00:35:14]: It's important to explain these things to a lot of the listeners who areYaroslav [00:35:17]: Thank you for askingBrandon [00:35:18]: Familiar with warfare.Noah [00:35:20]: Myself.Noah [00:35:20]: I'm one of those listeners.Brandon [00:35:20]: You said that level one autonomy, in other words just terminal guidance, just, like, human gets it to the finish line and then it goes over the finish line, increases mission success from 20 something percent to 71%, or something like that.Yaroslav [00:35:33]: Increases the kill zoneBrandon [00:35:34]: Increases the kill zoneYaroslav [00:35:34]: Three kilometers to 10 kilometers.Brandon [00:35:36]: Got it.Yaroslav [00:35:36]: On both parameters-Brandon [00:35:37]: What is full autonomy, dude? AndNoah [00:35:38]: Actually on real quick, can we define mission success and like, maybe in a way, what are the failure modes of missions?Brandon [00:35:44]: I have a guess what mission success is.Noah [00:35:46]: But I couldBrandon [00:35:47]: Get ‘em.Yaroslav [00:35:49]: No, but that's a very good question, in fact, because, even if you fly into the target, well, first the target can be damaged or destroyed. Those are two different modes. Then there can be different targets. A sole infantryman is one kind of target. A dugout where supposed there are some, enemies there is another kind of target, and a some mechanical equipment is another type of target. Radio emitting equipment, which, like, often, like, the targets that the military want to get more than anything else is the some enemy radio tower or something like that or some small radio dish that really makes life difficult in that area, in that combat area. So those are different targets, right? It can be destroyed, can be damaged.Then sometimes, the drone hits but doesn't explode. Like, that happens. And then, there are other failure modes. You didn't even reach the target because you were A jammed by electronic warfare; B, you lost the control over drone because of the radio horizon; C, you were jammed by a different type of electronic warfare that happens way before You hit the target area. It's, impacting your, video receiver. So like jamming on video or jamming on control are two different types of jamming. Then something malfunctioned on a drone, just a mechanical malfunction, maybe like a motor broke or like, whatever. So all of those are different failure modes. Yeah, or maybe you got lost, you're navigate navigating to your, to your target. That happens, too.Noah [00:37:41]: The Level one autonomy, basically you manage to point in a direction.Noah [00:37:49]: You go there, and then the last mile The drone taking over.Yaroslav [00:37:52]: We define this like, I define that but it sort of got picked up by the industry. We define five levels of autonomy. So level one is terminal guidance. It's what we just discussed. Level two is bombing. Level three is autonomous target detection and engagement decision. Level four is autonomous navigation. And level five is autonomous takeoff and landing.Noah [00:38:15]: Those are good things to knowYaroslav [00:38:16]: Those are five levels of autonomy. Now, if youNoah [00:38:19]: I have a question for you.Yaroslav [00:38:19]: Sorry. Like, let me finish withNoah [00:38:21]: SorryYaroslav [00:38:21]: Theoretical part.Noah [00:38:23]: What is Tesla running at right now?Yaroslav [00:38:25]: Tesla?Noah [00:38:25]: No, sorry.Yaroslav [00:38:26]: That's very good point. Like, it's exactly, it was inspired by the levels of self-driving autonomy.Noah [00:38:32]: Waymo's level five, right?Noah [00:38:35]: You just tell it where you want to go, it picks you up, and then you go there.Yaroslav [00:38:36]: I think, like, if you, if you look at the classic definitions of self-driving cars, Waymo is still, like, level four because it still requires even remote, but still, like, human control. It's like if Waymo gets in trouble, there is an operator who takes over and resolves this. So that would still be a level four. It doesn't map directly, but it's also five levels.Brandon [00:38:58]: Can I, can I interject a question here? In terms of an FPV drone that's like a suicide drone that'll just blow itself up killing something, how do what it hit? Like, does it, just transmit back, or do you sort of like, lose track of it and hope it hit? Like, what happens to that?Yaroslav [00:39:16]: That's a great question. SoBrandon [00:39:18]: You need another droneYaroslav [00:39:19]: Like, the current battlefield in Ukraine is saturated with different types of drones. So obviously you have all the FPV drones and last year alone, Ukraine manufactured about 4 million of these, and then Russia's maybe, like, 20% less than that. And for this year, the publicly voiced target was 7 million on Ukrainian side. So it's, like, serious numbers. We're getting in serious numbers here. And then besides those, there are different, reconnaissance drones, ISR as we call them, and there are sort of tactical level ISR where we, both Ukrainians and Russians usually use, Mavic, drone by DJI. And then there are a bunch of locally produced drones, which are sort of fixed wing drones that can stay in the air for much longer than Mavic, maybe, like, half an hour. And then, there are drones that can stay for many hours or even up to a day. And those drones have, are more expensive, have more expensive cameras, et cetera, et cetera. We hunt those drones that Russians launch. The Russians hunt our drones, and so on. But ideally, when you, are a group of soldiers operating an FPV, you'll have someone in your, company, or someone in your platoon who has an ISR asset that will do target designation for you. They'll say, “Oh, like, there's a Russian vehicle over there. Go and get him.”and you go there, you get it, and they're like, “Okay, confirmed.”Battlefield Surveillance and the Eight Dimensions of AutonomyBrandon [00:40:57]: Those guys are watching. They have their own drones in the sky.Yaroslav [00:40:59]: Target destroyed. They have, like, a carousel of drones because One Mavic cannot stay more than 30 minutes. ItBrandon [00:41:06]: They're constantly surveilling the battlefield.Yaroslav [00:41:07]: Almost every spot on the battlefield.Yaroslav [00:41:11]: It's not always the case. Sometimes you will not have a surveillance asset, so then you would launch another FPV just to confirm that there was a hit. Then if you see there was a hit and you're not sure if it completely destroyed, you maybe hit again for good measure.Brandon [00:41:26]: You double tap.Yaroslav [00:41:28]: That's how it works. But I was about to give you another sort of piece of taxonomy. So you have five levels of autonomy, right? Then you have sort of eight dimensions of autonomous battlefield. So what is eight dimensions? It's crucial to understand how autonomy evolves in a modern, battlefield environment. So dimension number one is level of autonomy. What are the capabilities that your asset has? Dimension number two is the platform you're operating on. So it can be a quadcopter, a fixed wing drone, different types of maybe, like, a long range drone or short range drone, but it can also be a missile. You can have autonomy even on an artillery shell or a ground vehicle or a sea vehicle. So all of those are different platforms. Level three would be domain. So it's ground to ground or ground to air as an intersection, or ground to sea or sea to air. They're all, like, all the nuances with different domains. Then level four, would be higher levels of autonomy, such as swarming, drone carriers, drone nests, et cetera.Brandon [00:42:39]: Now when you're saying level, you're talking about dimensions, not about-Yaroslav [00:42:42]: Sorry. YeahBrandon [00:42:43]: Autonomy levels. So dimension four.Yaroslav [00:42:43]: The dimension. Yeah, I used to say I was supposed to say dimension. I say dimension because each of them works with another, right? So you might have, like third level autonomy, fixed wing drone operating in land to air, and stuff like that right? And then operating in a swarm or operating from a nest. Right? Then you have, sort of dimension number five is environment. So is it day or night? Is it summer or winter? Is it, humid, cold, dry? What kind of target is it? Is your target hiding in a forest, or is it, behind a hill or within buildings? So all of that is environment. Then you have, dimension number six is command and control. How are you dealing with or like, tens of thousands of those assets around the battlefield? How are you coordinating that on the higher levels of command? How are you collecting data? All that.Yaroslav [00:43:44]: Dimension number seven would be infrastructure, so things like simulation, data collection tools, security, deployment mechanisms, et cetera. So all those systems have to be developed separately and integrate with all the others. And finally, dimension number eight is sort of distribution. Have you deployed 100 of these systems or 100,000 of these systems? Because those are two very different ballgames. So that now gives you a more broad overview of how autonomy propagates across the battle space.Targeting, Human Responsibility, and Rules of EngagementNoah [00:44:23]: As someone who has done machine learning and had gone out of distribution and had things, go horribly wrong, you were talking several of these, kind of axes of thinking about drone warfare seem like they could be very susceptible to some sort of distribution shift if you start making things autonomous.Yaroslav [00:44:41]: Like what?Noah [00:44:41]: I mean Well, first ofYaroslav [00:44:43]: If the I'm very interested Sort of sort of kinds of scenarios that you're thinking about.Noah [00:44:48]: Like the most obvious one is you, if I assume these are computer vision guided systems for at least the last mile, how do you ensure that oh, well, like you now have some fog roll in or something, and you, the drones just attack the wrong thing? Or maybe, it probably will not turn around and fly back and attack you, but youYaroslav [00:45:10]: Same, the same, the same question, how do you ensure that your mortar fire hits the right thing? Well, it's like mortar fire, give or take half a kilometer could be plus or minus. So maybe you fire one, and then you fire another. So drones are actually, much better in being precise in those scenarios. And I think, to your point, I think five to 10 years from now it will be immoral to use weapons without AI.Yaroslav [00:45:44]: ‘Cause weapons without AI will be more likely to cause, collateral damage or unwanted damage. Same way, it will be immoral to drive your own car manually on a public road because it's more likely to cause, unwanted damage.Noah [00:46:02]: Wow, I never considered that mightBrandon [00:46:04]: Really? That's definitely coming.Yaroslav [00:46:07]: Anyway.Brandon [00:46:07]: No, but that' I don't know, it's an obvious, an obvious thought. I agree with you.Brandon [00:46:12]: I, No, they, obviously they're not going to let you drive once most of the cars on the road are autonomous.Noah [00:46:17]: No, that one, don't I believe.Yaroslav [00:46:19]: No, I think you were you were talking about drones, right?Brandon [00:46:21]: The drones, right. Cool.Yaroslav [00:46:22]: The weapons, right?Brandon [00:46:23]: Friendly fire and collateral damage and stuff like that is all minimized with AI.Brandon [00:46:27]: Here's my question. Take all let's go to level six autonomy. Let's take all of the target selection. Let's take all the battlefield data, integrate it into one big AI, and have that big AI basically be in command of the battlefield And agentically do target selection.Yaroslav [00:46:44]: Be the general, right?Brandon [00:46:44]: It's a general. It's, you've cut humans out of the loop except maybe as dexterous robots, repairing drones and fastening things to drones or maybe something like that because you don't have those robots yet. How soon are we there? AI general.Yaroslav [00:46:58]: The most important thing to ask ourselves is who will be faster to that us or our adversaries?Brandon [00:47:07]: I assume us, but how fast will we be to that? I hope us.Yaroslav [00:47:11]: I hope so too.Brandon [00:47:12]: How fast can we Like when are we looking at that in terms of like horizons years?Yaroslav [00:47:18]: Like technically, it could be done now. The question is of course, there's, some engineering work to be done. The bigger challenge is deployment. Right? So okay, technically Like operation in Iran, right? They, the publicly, it was claimed that I think Palantir system was used for target designation, et cetera, et cetera. So it is not exactly as you say, the AI makes all the decisions, but basically AI goes through all the data you have, gives you these 1,027 different targets and says, “You-- To confirm, please press Okay.” And you look at the targets and you're like, “Yeah, sounds right. Press Okay.”so that's, I think that's where we are now already, or we were a couple weeks ago as we're recording this on April 10th. Another question is how massively deployable it is. Is it, like, every decision being made like that or is it, like, just some of the decisions made like that? And then different levels of command and control. There you have, like, the platoon, the company level, the battalion, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But the tricky thing here when we get into that territory, the tricky thing is If your enemy is getting advantage of being Thousand times faster than yourself by deploying such systems What do you do?Yaroslav [00:49:10]: You got to-Brandon [00:49:12]: The if the enemy is a thousand times faster than you at deploying those systems?Yaroslav [00:49:16]: Like, if enemy starts deploying level six autonomy, as you call And you have not started doingBrandon [00:49:22]: You're in troubleYaroslav [00:49:23]: Yes, exactly. So you have to catch up. So my point is that it is very important to think about the safety of these systems, but that thinking should not slow you down in developing them because they are critical for your existential, survival, right? And like, one person who doesn't think, doesn't get to think about the ethics of the war is a dead person. That person surely doesn't get to think about that.Brandon [00:49:52]: What would be the safety risk of such a system?Yaroslav [00:49:55]: Of course-Brandon [00:49:56]: Friendly fire?Yaroslav [00:49:56]: Just wrong decisions, right?Brandon [00:49:59]: I see.Yaroslav [00:49:59]: Maybe, these decisions-AI Command Decisions, Dead Zones, and Complex BattlefieldsBrandon [00:50:06]: Skynet AI decides it's going to useYaroslav [00:50:08]: No, these-Brandon [00:50:08]: Drone army to kill usYaroslav [00:50:09]: Decisions will not only be made about drones. They are likely to made about what the humans should do on your side as well. Then obviously some environments are more like Ukrainian-Russian war, where you haveBrandon [00:50:26]: It will have to choose to risk lives. It will have to choose to sacrifice human lives-Yaroslav [00:50:28]: Of courseBrandon [00:50:29]: On your side.Yaroslav [00:50:29]: Of course. And then some environments are just, like, dead, like, dead zones and there are no civilians there, or virtually no civilians close to the front line because, like, super dangerous. Everyone has evacuated from there. But there are other environments which are more like, okay, there's a counterterrorist operation. There's, like, a group of terrorists or a group of civilians. Or like, it's like the recent operations in Iran, I imagine that the US and Israeli forces do not want to harm civilians. They only targeted the military targets there, right? So in those situations, it's a different level of responsibility for that decision-making as well. And then there is just such a big variety of those military missions, and I'm not even, like, well-informed or well-educated in military science to tell you about all those scenarios. We would need to put some general besides me, and maybe a Ukraine general and American general would have told you very different stories about these things.Brandon [00:51:34]: Got it. Can I ask a few more questions? All right. So in 2013, I wrote one of my first, paid articles ever was about how the era of drones will change human society. I was just sitting around bored thinking about things.Yaroslav [00:51:54]: You were way ahead of your time.Brandon [00:51:55]: I said, I said, “The following will happen.”Yaroslav [00:51:57]: It's, this article is real. I've read it.Yaroslav [00:51:58]: It's actually-Brandon [00:51:59]: I said small autonomous, suicide drones, will cleanse the battlefield of human infantry. Human infantry will not be able to stand against swarms of AI-powered, suicide drones. That was I didn't even know about, like, AlexNet at the time, I think.Yaroslav [00:52:19]: You're just an avid sci-fi reader.Brandon [00:52:23]: I'm an avid sci-fi reader, but also, like, it's not Like, there will be a way to do that. It's a it's a nonlinear multidimensional search problem, and you get enough compute, you'll find some search algorithm that will get you there. And soBrandon [00:52:38]: I, yeah, I think that one sentence describes the bitter lesson right there.Brandon [00:52:41]: It's just like it's a multidimensional search space. You search it somehow. I don't know. Figure out some get a grad student-Yaroslav [00:52:47]: Sooner or laterBrandon [00:52:47]: To make a search algorithm.Brandon [00:52:48]: It's not that hard. Anyway, so but then, but I guess the point is The point is that human infantry on the battlefield will be will be gone at the end. I wrote that in 2013. Many people on social media laughed at me for that called me hysterical, said things like, “Electronic warfare will knock all the drones out of the sky.”like, “You need humans to hold ground.”that's something you still hear from a lot of people on social media today. I feel that this article that I've written has never been directionally wrong. It has gotten more and more right steadily over time, and that we're very reading the battlefield reports from Ukraine, where, human infantry are basically guy, like a few guys hiding in dugouts for months, and I'm not sure what they're doing.Yaroslav [00:53:35]: That's on Ukraine's side. On the Russian side, that's just like a zerg rush.Brandon [00:53:38]: The zerg rush, and then they just die. Then, but they have some guys in dugouts too, right? Like hiding in dugouts for months.Yaroslav [00:53:45]: They have. Yeah.Brandon [00:53:45]: Like, but that like, what are those guys doing in the dugouts? Are providing, like, frontline, like, reconnaissance? Like, what are they doing?Yaroslav [00:53:54]: If there is a guy in a dugout with some bullets and automatic weapon, the other guy cannot come and take the that dugout. That'Brandon [00:54:07]: I seeYaroslav [00:54:08]: They are they're establishing control over territory.Brandon [00:54:10]: I see. So that is so there still is a use for human infantry on the battlefield as of today.Yaroslav [00:54:15]: LikeBrandon [00:54:15]: How long will that last?Yaroslav [00:54:17]: I think it will last for a while. This is funny. There's this whole Layer of the modern culture, a modern Ukraine culture built around the war-related stuff. So there is this -Punk rock band, that is called SZC, I guess in English that would be. Which stands short for like a deserter or something like that. So anyhow, this band has a song titled “2030.” It's basically about the year 2030, and the war still goes on as like the whatever, third world war or whatever. And they basically, they, sang about the AI and like cyborgs and everything, but the simple infantry is still needed, and we're still, like, getting cold in those dugouts, and we're still doing our job. That's sort of the theme of the song. And it seems like that's actually what's going to happen. There areGround Robots, Simulation, and the Limits of World ModelsBrandon [00:55:30]: Ground robots will not replace humans in the dugouts soon.Yaroslav [00:55:34]: I'm very much interested in following the whole humanoid robot theme andBrandon [00:55:39]: What about like a dog robot?Noah [00:55:41]: Or just mobile controlled platforms or something.Brandon [00:55:44]: Spider robot, yeah.Brandon [00:55:45]: Everything evolves into a crab.Brandon [00:55:46]: You build a crab robot.Yaroslav [00:55:47]: A humanoid-Noah [00:55:48]: The carcinization of warfare.Yaroslav [00:55:51]: There is a lot of utility in humanoid robots because the world is designed around humanoids. So I would not, like, 100% disqualify the possibility that sometimes 10 years in the future, humanoid robots, will be actually fighting. So that's an actual Terminator kind of scenario.Brandon [00:56:14]: Yeah, in the first Terminator movie, you look at what they've got on the battlefield, they've got flying bomber drones and humanoid robots.Yaroslav [00:56:20]: Look, the cost of large language models of running them is getting so low, you can have basically an inexpensive computer running, what was a state-of-the-art model a year and a half ago, running it locally on a device with an open source model, which also means that the Chinese can have it, the Russians can have it, the North Koreans can have it, et cetera. So that is already possible. And with when we're looking at the acceleration of the neural nets, I would've, if not the acceleration of the large language models, I would've said that I don't think that humanoid robots will be able to be useful in the battlefield earlier than in 10 years. But if you account for the exponential, it might be five years or so. The problem with all of the autonomous systems, and it's like starts with self-driving cars and even with all the AI, like modern day AI agents, to make them really, useful, you have to solve such a long tail of edge cases, that it's really difficult to make them useful. Like we were promised, self-driving cars, what, like 2007, Sebastian Thrun and Google, and even before that all the challenges, everything. And Elon of course told us it's going to be one year from 2014, and now we still don't have self-driving Teslas everywhere. We have Waymos in SF and some other places, but they're still, like, not perfect. So I think, I expect something similar from self-flying drones and fully autonomous drones, and we saw that firsthand as with each level of autonomy that we're adding, there is a very wide distance between a prototype and something that is ready to be scaled to millions of units and something that has been scaled to millions of units. But the race with like AI coding tools is just insane. So things might accelerate very fast, faster than we can imagine.Noah [00:58:46]: I think your point is that with due to this long tail behavior Level one autonomy as you've defined it, is actually very natural. Like you basically are just solving an image recognition and tracking system.Yaroslav [00:59:02]: It's actually interesting that you say it that way, and I thought about this the very same way, and we have this joke that there are like 200 companies in Ukraine which are trying to solve last mile, targeting or terminal guidance. It seems like we're like the only company that actually solved that because even that problem-Noah [00:59:22]: I'm not saying it's, I'm not saying it's trivial, but it's at least something that you imagine given our current state.Yaroslav [00:59:26]: Like us and Eric Schmidt, like Eric Schmidt's companies are pretty good.Yaroslav [00:59:29]: Like, I actually have lots of respect to what they're doing, and they're, they have been practically influential and helpful on the battlefield, and they have good engineering.Noah [00:59:38]: I wasn't, I wasn't saying it's trivial. I'm just saying this is a something naturally adaptive based upon things that we know work, well. But some of the other domains that where you do have to make decisions and you have a long tail become much harder, and you worry about edge cases more.Yaroslav [00:59:57]: Like the more, the more complex behavior you're trying to simulate, the more edge cases there are right? The more ways to do it wrong there are. And then there are different approaches. It's like if you think about, if you read academic papers about robotics, right? You sort of the robot is represented as something that has the sort of sensor input, and then you have three, levels of sort of logics or decision-making, which are perception, planning, and control, and then you have actuators as output.So pre-neural nets, you would do perception output and control all with classic logics, right? Then, with AlexNet and computer vision, you could do perception with neural nets and the rest with logic. You cannot currently do each of those separately with neural nets, each of those separately with logics, or you can just have one huge neural net that just takes lots of sensory data. It's not just pixels. Could be sound, could be accelerometer, could be everything, as input, and just outputs the controls. And some of the self-driving car companies are doing that or like, experimenting between different ways of doing that. So you can also, like, think about that and the way you implement those features, also influences how much degrees of freedom the system would have, right? Like control, you can do it classical algorithmic control with common filters and PAD filter, PAD controllers, et cetera, or you can do a neural net, that was trained in a gym with a reinforcement learning, et cetera. And those would be two different behaviors of a system.Noah [01:01:53]: I-- Maybe my point was just much more high level. It'Yaroslav [01:01:56]: Or you can If you go even like, if you go high level, you can, you can like train to like have whatever, like Feifei Li and folks who are doing like physical, sortBrandon [01:02:08]: World modelsYaroslav [01:02:08]: World models, right, physical intelligence, they're trying to make these big models and sort of understand the world and then supposedly you have such model and you can tell a drone, “Okay, like, go over that hill and like, find the bad guys and then get them,”or “Make me a video, make me a photo of the guy smiling and get back to me.” Right? That's one way. Another way you have like these subsystems, like one is navigation, another is finding the person, another is like getting to them to take a photo. And those are again, very different behaviors. And then it's not that one is necessarily better than the other, and we might have more technological ability to do one or another. But all of those systems will exist. And then again, you should always keep in mind that it's only the not only the good guys that are developing these systems, the bad guys are developing these systems as well.China's Drone Supply Chain and the West's Manufacturing GapNoah [01:03:00]: I guess where I'm going with this back to Noah's original thought with the end of the end of the soldier. And so in order to replace-Brandon [01:03:10]: Or at least the end of the rifleman.Noah [01:03:11]: Or the end of the rifleman, yeah.Yaroslav [01:03:13]: I'm not seeing that very close, and it was like I'm, as much as I'm a lover of sci-fi and all of that and a technologist, the more I try to beYaroslav [01:03:27]: Like the I try to have certain humility about these things, and like the military, domain and there was just so much human history and blood and tears, dedicated to sort of understanding this art of war and perfecting it and so on. There is so much knowledge in there that I don't feel like I even started to comprehend, a lot of that. But one thing that I really understood is that even though drones are now making eighty percent of the casualties, you go to the actual officers, you talk to the actual, like, brigade commanders, corps commanders, and they explain to you, how all of it fits together, how when you're thinking about an operation that involves a couple thousand people to get this piece of land, out of the enemy's hands, deoccu deoccupy it, how it is so complex, it involves, dozens of different types of drones and then land operations and reconnaissance operations, psychological operations and then aviations and tanks and logistics and all kinds of these different assets. So modern warfare is really very complex, and the fact that the drones are the latest, coolest thing, and then the AI is latest, coolest thing, doesn't mean that now it's that and only that right? So yeah. Whoever's looking into that I think should realize that it's not just what the press talks about, that the reality is much more difficult, much more complex.Brandon [01:05:17]: Let's talk about China and China's manufacturing capabilities. So suppose that someone, like suppose the United States went to war with China. AndYaroslav [01:05:26]: I hope not.Brandon [01:05:27]: I hope not as well. And then but suppose that drones were very essential to that war of all the types of drones that we're talking about here, and that suppose that China said, “All right, well, you need X and Y and Z, to make those drones to fight us, and we control the production of X and Y and Z, so we're just going to cut you right off, and now you have no drones.”Brandon [01:05:47]: I know that a number of countries, including Ukraine and Taiwan, have been making moves to China-proof their drone productions that China couldn't do that. Examples of things they might be able to cut off might include rare earths, fiber optic cable that you were talking about before, various other things that where even if they don't control one hundred percent of the production, they control enough of the production that would be extremely expensive to produce it without relying on Chinese sources. Or the market's fragmented enough, et cetera. What do you see as China's key bottlenecks, and how easy are those to overcome in terms of China-proofing drone production in case of a war against China?Yaroslav [01:06:30]: Let me start with a saying that -Although China does not sell directly to Ukraine and it does sell directly to Russia, a lot of Ukrainian supply chains, they start in China, right?Yaroslav [01:06:49]: We're not in a conflict with China, and we would not want to be in a conflict with China. And we'd hope that China stays a neutral power between Ukraine and Russia and the US as well. That said, the scenario that you're describing, everything is much worse.Yaroslav [01:07:11]: Think about this. Last year, Ukraine produced four million FPV drones. Ukraine is not the most industrious nation in the world.Yaroslav [01:07:19]: China can produce four billion of these FPV drones.Yaroslav [01:07:23]: China can make them not drones with propellers, but fixed-wing drones, which go not forty kilometers far, but maybe two to three hundred kilometers inland.

בפרק זה של הפודקאסט "על המשמעות" עו"ד תמיר דורטל מארח את המומחה הצבאי דוד גנדלמן לשיחה על מהפכת הרחפנים בשדה הקרב המודרני, מלחמת רוסיה-אוקראינה וההשלכות הקריטיות על מדינת ישראל.מאז פרוץ המלחמה במזרח אירופה בפברואר 2022, אנו עדים לשינוי פרדיגמה היסטורי בדרכי הלחימה. רחפני נפץ ורחפנים מתאבדים (FPV), שהחלו את דרכם כמוצרי צריכה אזרחיים ופשוטים, הפכו לנשק קטלני, זול וזמין שמשנה לחלוטין את כללי המשחק. בשיחה זו, גנדלמן מנתח כיצד השימוש במיליוני רחפנים בכל שנה יצר בחזית הרוסית-אוקראינית "שטחי השמדה" (Kill Zones) המשתקים כוחות גדולים ומונעים תמרון קרקעי.לאורך הפרק, אנו צוללים לעומק האיום המתהווה מצפון – כיצד חיזבאללה מאמץ את הטקטיקות החדשות, ומהן המשמעויות הדרמטיות של הפעלת רחפנים באמצעות סיב אופטי, אמצעי שהופך אותם לחסינים לחלוטין מפני לוחמה אלקטרונית. גנדלמן מסביר מדוע אין בנמצא "פתרון קסם" הרמטי או מערכת טכנולוגית אחת שתושיע אותנו, ולמה דווקא אמצעים פשוטים כמו רובי ציד, רשתות מגן, ו"שדאות של פעם" הם כרגע הפתרונות המעשיים ביותר בשטח. בנוסף, אנו בוחנים את עיכובי צה"ל בהפקת הלקחים ומדוע האשליה של "צבא קטן וחכם" מתנפצת אל מול הצורך בחיילי חי"ר.מה יקרה כאשר האיום האווירי יופעל על ידי בינה מלאכותית ללא מפעיל אנושי? האם טרוריסט בודד מסוגל לשתק מטרה אסטרטגית ממרחק של קילומטרים ללא יכולת יירוט? ואיך נכון לעדכן את תפיסת ההרתעה מול אויב שמשתמש בנשק כל כך זול? האזינו לפרק כדי להבין לעומק כיצד צבאות מסתגלים למציאות שבה השמיים פקוחים תמיד, ומה אנו חייבים לעשות מחר בבוקר כדי להגן על העורף ועל החיילים בחזית.00:00:00 מהפכת הרחפנים במלחמה בין אוקראינה לרוסיה00:03:49 כיצד פועלת טכנולוגיית הרחפנים עם הסיב האופטי00:06:40 הפתרונות הפשוטים: רשתות דייג ורובי ציד00:10:00 עיכובי צה"ל בהפקת לקחים והטמעת אמצעי הגנה00:12:17 חשיבות השדאות וחייל הקצה מול האיום האווירי00:15:02 אתגר היעדר העומק האסטרטגי בישראל מול חיזבאללה00:18:38 ההבדל בין רחפנים טקטיים לטילים וכתב"מים אסטרטגיים00:23:40 השוואת הכוחות והמשאבים בין רוסיה לחיזבאללה00:27:02 אבטחת אישים ויעדים רגישים בעידן הרחפנים המתאבדים00:30:22 העתיד: שילוב בינה מלאכותית וכלים אוטונומיים לחלוטין00:32:51 המאבק ההיסטורי המחזורי בין אמצעי התקפה להגנה00:43:51 חדירת הרובוטים וכלי הרכב הקרקעיים הבלתי מאוישים00:48:45 סכנת ההסתמכות המוחלטת על טכנולוגיה וצבא חכם00:53:01 פגמיה של תפיסת ההרתעה וחשיבות השמדת היכולת הפיזית (פרימיום)#פודקאסט #על_המשמעותSupport the showרוצים ללמוד עוד על השקעות בזהב? הצטרפו לערוצים של iGold

Hezbollah's missiles may be depleted, but cheap FPV drones are changing the battlefield — slipping past defenses, targeting Israeli troops, and exposing a dangerous new vulnerability.Bill and David Daoud unpack Hezbollah's drone evolution, the psychological warfare behind the footage, and why Israel may be drifting back toward the failed security zone dynamics of the past.

The IDF just made a surprise dash across the Litany river catching Hezbollah completely off guard. This operation was strategically very important, not just in silencing the new, very deadly Hezbollah attacks on Israel by fiber optic FPV drones, but also for the coming negotiations in Washington. The repercussions of this are much broader than you might think.    Also, Hamas has been smuggling massive amounts of military equipment over the border into Gaza, from Egypt. It's looking like they are not nearly as defeated or subdued as the public have been made to believe. Ben Hilton breaks it down for you.  Join us for a Heartland Experience trip: https://israelguys.link/israel-trip-86exhtnj4  Sign up for The Israel Guys Show Notes: https://theisraelguys.com/subscribe/ Follow The Israel Guys on X: https://x.com/theisraelguys Join our Telegram channel: https://t.me/theisraelguys Source Links: Hamas rearming in Gaza https://www.jns.org/analysis/from-air-and-sea-hamas-is-rebuilding Israel's lack of interest in Ukrainian drone-defense experience https://www.timesofisrael.com/ukraines-envoy-laments-israels-lack-of-interest-in-kyiv-drone-expertise/ Lebanon situation - diplomacy - ceasefire - death toll etc. https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-895807 IDF Operation beyond Litani - videos and photos https://jewishbreakingnews.com/idf-wipes-out-100-hezbollah-targets-in-blitz-across-litani-region/ More on the IDF Operation beyond Litani https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israel/defense/artc-idf-crosses-litani-river-and-reaches-one-of-deepest-points-in-southern-lebanon https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-says-it-carried-out-weeklong-raid-on-hezbollah-sites-beyond-lebanons-litani-river/ https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/426947 Hezbollah returning to guerrilla warfare https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-895749 Hezbollah and their political goals in Lebanon https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-895968 #Israelnews #Hezbollah #Iranwar #Trump #Bibi  #Ceasefire #Trump #Hamas   

El sábado se celebró en Moscú el desfile del 9 de mayo, fecha que conmemora la victoria soviética sobre Alemania en la segunda guerra mundial. Putin ha dedicado un cuarto de siglo a convertir esta efeméride en una liturgia civil casi religiosa, pero este año la ocasión no estuvo a la altura. No hubo tanques ni vehículos acorazados, desfilaron menos cadetes, se cortó el internet móvil en Moscú y San Petersburgo, y se desplegaron sistemas antiaéreos traídos de provincias remotas. Zelenski, entretanto, firmaba con intención de burla un decreto comprometiéndose a no atacar la Plaza Roja, una humillación como no se había visto. El punto de inflexión llegó en enero, cuando la mal llamada operación militar especial superó en duración a la Gran Guerra Patria, que es como en Rusia se conoce a la guerra mundial. Cuatro años después de iniciada la guerra, los nietos de aquellos héroes no logran tomar pequeñas localidades del Donbás mientras los abuelos se paseaban ya por Berlín. Putin ha quedado atrapado en su propia propaganda. Los drones ucranianos han conseguido lo que las sanciones occidentales no han logrado en cuatro años, dañar gravemente la industria petrolera rusa. El 70% de la población rusa vive dentro del alcance de estos drones. Los ucranianos han aprendido a atacar con gran precisión las columnas de destilación de las refinerías, lo que puede dejarlas inutilizadas durante meses. La capacidad exportadora de crudo de los rusos ha caído un 40%, y el déficit presupuestario del primer trimestre ya ha superado el objetivo anual. En el frente, la ofensiva de primavera no arranca. En abril, por primera vez desde agosto del año pasado, Rusia ha perdido territorio neto. Las bajas se mantienen en torno a unos 35.000 hombres al mes, lo que supera su capacidad de reclutamiento. La proporción de muertos por heridos se ha disparado por culpa de los drones FPV conectados por fibra óptica y movidos por inteligencia artificial. Estos drones son los responsables del 80% de las bajas actuales. Ucrania también ha superado a Rusia en ataques de medio y largo alcance. Han conseguido acertar en objetivos situados a 2.000 kilómetros de la frontera. Putin está extremando su ya natural paranoia por la seguridad. Es prácticamente imposible acceder a él. Se han prohibido los teléfonos móviles en su entorno y se vigila de cerca a todo su personal de servicio. La operación israelí que liquidó a Jamenei en febrero y la estadounidense contra Maduro en enero le recuerdan los riesgos del oficio de dictador en estos tiempos. Los reveses diplomáticos también influyen. La derrota de Orbán frente a Péter Magyar ha eliminado al topo del Kremlin en Bruselas y, de paso, ha desbloqueado 100.000 millones de ayuda para Ucrania. Trump está distraído con Irán y no tiene ya la misma capacidad de presión sobre Zelenski, que se financia mayoritariamente desde Europa. Eso sí, en Ucrania las cosas tampoco van bien. Padece una crónica escasez de reclutas, la corrupción no ha desaparecido y los avances en el frente son mínimos. Rusia podría preparar una ofensiva estival que cambiase las cosas. Pero, como dice el refrán, en Rusia todo va muy lento hasta que de pronto se acelera. La Plaza Roja sin tanques un 9 de mayo constituye de por sí una derrota más elocuente que cualquier comunicado militar. En La ContraRéplica: 0:00 Introducción 3:49 Rusia y el cansancio de la guerra 31:01 Fin de época 39:43 El caso Barbacid 49:03 La oportunidad de Guyana · Canal de Telegram: https://t.me/lacontracronica · “Contra el pesimismo”… https://amzn.to/4m1RX2R · “Hispanos. Breve historia de los pueblos de habla hispana”… https://amzn.to/428js1G · “La ContraHistoria del comunismo”… https://amzn.to/39QP2KE · “La ContraHistoria de España. Auge, caída y vuelta a empezar de un país en 28 episodios”… https://amzn.to/3kXcZ6i · “Contra la Revolución Francesa”… https://amzn.to/4aF0LpZ · “Lutero, Calvino y Trento, la Reforma que no fue”… https://amzn.to/3shKOlK Apoya La Contra en: · Patreon... https://www.patreon.com/diazvillanueva · iVoox... https://www.ivoox.com/podcast-contracronica_sq_f1267769_1.html · Paypal... https://www.paypal.me/diazvillanueva Sígueme en: · Web... https://diazvillanueva.com · Twitter... https://twitter.com/diazvillanueva · Facebook... https://www.facebook.com/fernandodiazvillanueva1/ · Instagram... https://www.instagram.com/diazvillanueva · Linkedin… https://www.linkedin.com/in/fernando-d%C3%ADaz-villanueva-7303865/ · Flickr... https://www.flickr.com/photos/147276463@N05/?/ · Pinterest... https://www.pinterest.com/fernandodiazvillanueva Encuentra mis libros en: · Amazon... https://www.amazon.es/Fernando-Diaz-Villanueva/e/B00J2ASBXM #FernandoDiazVillanueva #rusia #ucrania Escucha el episodio completo en la app de iVoox, o descubre todo el catálogo de iVoox Originals

Agradece a este podcast tantas horas de entretenimiento y disfruta de episodios exclusivos como éste. ¡Apóyale en iVoox! Acceso anticipado para Fans - ** VIDEO EN NUESTRO CANAL DE YOUTUBE **** https://youtube.com/live/eHpEE2PCtuc +++++ Hazte con nuestras camisetas en https://www.bhmshop.app +++++ En este episodio de Bellumartis, analizamos la metamorfosis definitiva del combate moderno. Tomando como punto de partida el reciente análisis de Miguel Winkels, voluntario de https://www.1team1fight.org , exploramos cómo la "revolución de los drones" ha dejado de ser una innovación periférica para convertirse en el eje central de la supervivencia en el frente. ¿Qué trataremos hoy? La estética del "Gaming": Cómo la visión en primera persona (FPV) ha transformado el acto de combatir en una interfaz digital, planteando dilemas éticos y psicológicos sin precedentes para el combatiente occidental. Asimetría Radical: Cómo dispositivos de bajo coste están logrando neutralizar activos de millones de euros, desafiando la doctrina de "calidad sobre cantidad" de la OTAN. Lecciones de 2026: El impacto real de la saturación de drones en la logística y el movimiento de tropas en los conflictos actuales. La guerra ha cambiado las reglas. Ya no basta con el valor; ahora se requiere la supremacía del silicio y el espectro electromagnético. No te pierdas este análisis honesto y directo sobre el futuro que ya está aquí. #Drones #GuerraDeDrones #FPVWar #RevoluciónMilitar#Bellumartis #MiguelWinkels #Geopolítica #EstrategiaMilitar GuerraElectrónica Escucha este episodio completo y accede a todo el contenido exclusivo de BELLUMARTIS PODCAST. Descubre antes que nadie los nuevos episodios, y participa en la comunidad exclusiva de oyentes en https://go.ivoox.com/sq/618669

Los altos al fuego, escasos silencios en la guerra, permiten a veces recuperar los cuerpos que quedan abandonados en el campo de batalla. Es una tarea esencial para las familias, cuando decenas de miles de combatientes siguen desaparecidos, pero también una misión cada vez más difícil, casi imposible, por la proliferación de drones en el frente ucraniano. Reportaje con militares ucranianos que se encargan de esta misión, encontrados al amanecer en una granja abandonada del Donbás, a unos 20 kilómetros del frente. Una a una, las bolsas mortuorias son descargadas del camión. Hacen falta varios hombres para levantar los cuerpos y colocarlos sobre una mesa improvisada, instalada en una granja, lejos de las miradas y de los combates. Rusos y ucranianos son tratados aquí con el mismo respeto. El trabajo con los muertos es una labor silenciosa. Nadie habla mucho. Esta mañana, una decena de cuerpos son examinados por Oleksiy Yukov, vestido con uniforme militar y con el casco puesto. “Se trata del cuerpo de un soldado de la Federación Rusa. Eso es lo que indican su uniforme y su equipo militar. Lamentablemente, no se encontró ningún signo personal de identificación, ni tampoco documentos”, comenta. “Agotamiento emocional” Oleksiy Yukov y su equipo, una decena de militares, recorren el campo de batalla arriesgando la vida para sacar de allí los cuerpos de los soldados. En cuatro años, más de 3.000 cadáveres han sido recuperados del frente ucraniano, “con nuestras propias manos”, nos explica. Pero hoy esa misión se ha vuelto casi imposible. “El arma más aterradora que he visto en esta guerra son los FPV, los drones”, dice. Estos drones kamikaze llevan una cámara que permite al enemigo seguir y atacar un objetivo a distancia. Hoy proliferan cerca de la línea del frente. “El agotamiento emocional llega cuando no tienes la posibilidad de recuperar los cuerpos. Cuando los ves, pero no puedes hacer nada. Simplemente no puedes salir de tu posición para ir a buscarlos y evacuarlos. Hay drones, el terreno está abierto, y entiendes que, si sales, no vas a volver”, prosigue el hombre. Los drones dejan poco tiempo Con una voz suave, apenas audible, Arthur, de 29 años, con la mirada oculta detrás de sus gafas de combate, nos detalla su trabajo: “En la línea de contacto, cuando es posible, un vehículo nos deja allí. Trabajamos una hora, una hora y media como máximo. Es muy poco tiempo. Si hay cuerpos, ni siquiera los metemos en bolsas: los cargamos directamente en el vehículo y nos vamos enseguida, para evitar los drones”. Con la llegada de los drones, estas misiones han disminuido en un 90%, nos cuenta Dmitro, el conductor del camión. La mañana avanza. El sol ya ha salido. A cada cuerpo se le asigna un número antes de ser enviado a una morgue, en el oeste del país. Los ucranianos serán devueltos a sus familias; los rusos serán intercambiados por cuerpos de soldados ucranianos. Oleksiy se pregunta si esta no será una de las últimas veces que todavía pueda ir a buscar a los muertos en el frente del Donbás.

7/16: David Daoud argues the ceasefire restricts Israel while allowing Hezbollah to rearm. Hezbollah is exploiting cheap FPV drones to harass Israeli forces, utilizing a low-tech method that lacks an effective counter.

8/16: David Daoud explains the IDF was caught off guard by Hezbollah's innovative use of fiber-optic and FPV drones. Despite these threats, the Israeli public largely favors continuing military operations to secure borders.1905 MAP

SCHEDULE JBS, 5-4-26PARTHIA, PERSIA, IRAN1/16: Bill Roggio discusses Project Freedom, a mission to escort ships through the Strait of Hormuz. The IRGCclaimed to hit a US warship, but the Navy reported no ships were struck.2/16: Bill Roggio explains that al-Qaeda is expanding across Mali and Somalia, exploiting weak governments to build a caliphate. Both al-Qaeda and ISIS are partitioning territories and increasingly threatening regional capitals.3/16: Rick Fisher and Gordon Chang discuss the Artemis mission and China's competitive drive to establish a permanent moon base. Both nations are also developing combat satellites and weapon systems for use in lunar orbit.4/16: Alan Tonelson and Gordon Chang examine how the Iran war drives inflation and damages Asian manufacturing. China continues to flood markets with subsidized exports while using lawfare and harassment against smaller nations like Panama.5/16: Malcolm Hoenlein and Thaddeus McCotter report on escalating violence in the Gulf, including the sinking of IRGC boats. They also discuss Mahmoud Abbas's attempt to install his son, Yasser Abbas, as his political successor.6/16: Malcolm Hoenlein and Thaddeus McCotter warn that Iran is running out of oil storage, potentially forcing a production halt. Hoenlein characterizes the recent Gaza flotilla as a failed PR stunt carrying no aid.7/16: David Daoud argues the ceasefire restricts Israel while allowing Hezbollah to rearm. Hezbollah is exploiting cheap FPV drones to harass Israeli forces, utilizing a low-tech method that lacks an effective counter.8/16: David Daoud explains the IDF was caught off guard by Hezbollah's innovative use of fiber-optic and FPV drones. Despite these threats, the Israeli public largely favors continuing military operations to secure borders.9/16: Bridget Toomey and Bill Roggio discuss Ali Al-Zadei, a businessman elevated to Iraqi Prime Minister with Iranian support. While endorsed by Trump, his background in illicit finance raises concerns about ongoing militia influence.10/16: Gordon Chang analyzes how China supports Iran while negotiating trade with the US. This conflict creates economic instability, including rising inflation and slower growth across major Asian trading economies.11/16: Ernesto Araújo and Alejandro Peña Esclusa report that Delcy Rodríguez is avoiding elections in Venezuela. Araújo discusses Lula's weakening power in Brazil and judicial shifts that could lead to Jair Bolsonaro's release.12/16: Ernesto Araújo and Alejandro Peña Esclusa highlight Cuba's collapse as Russian and Venezuelan oil supplies vanish. Araújo details Panama's resistance to Chinese influence over its canal ports and subsequent retaliatory trade pressure from Beijing.13/16: Ahmad Sharawi details Iranian strikes on UAE oil facilities aimed at disrupting Project Freedom. Meanwhile, Bashar al-Assad seeks Gulf investment while reportedly coordinating quietly with Israel against Hezbollah.14/16: Joe Truzman reports on London stabbing attacks claimed by Ashab al-Yamin, an Iranian front organization recruiting criminals. The UK has raised its terrorism threat level to severe due to these developments.15/16: Miad Maliki and Bill Roggio describe political chaos in Tehran and the regime's inability to make decisions under extreme pressure. Experts warn of a global energy tipping point involving severe fuel shortages within thirty days.16/16: John Hardie and Bill Roggio report on Vladimir Putin's isolation in bunkers due to intensified assassination fears. Simultaneously, President Zelenskyy is establishing international drone production partnerships with Finland and other NATO allies.

Preview for Later Today: Guest David Daoud. Daoud analyzes how Hezbollah utilizes inexpensive FPV and fiber optic drones to bypass Israel's advanced technological defenses. He notes the IDF currently lacks effective responses to these low-cost, under-the-radar warfare tactics. 1/3

Listen to this episode about the resilience and passion of Goddess Randi, a versatile FPV pilot from the USA, currently on her brand new journey in Australia. In this episode, we retrace her story from DIY gear in 2026 to major racing accomplishments.Perfect for anyone facing challenges, this discussion inspires you to keep flying, no matter what!

“When we only had reconnaissance drones, we learned fast. We began attaching warheads to the drones. Grenades, then homemade munitions that we produced ourselves. We would locate the enemy with the drone and drop them on him. Then FPV drones entered our lives. An FPV drone is a one-way, disposable drone. That was when the way of war began to change” In a rare interview, Sarah Rainsford speaks to Robert Brovdi, commander of Ukraine's drone forces, about the rapid evolution of drone warfare and how it is reshaping Russia's war in Ukraine. Drones are now being used to strike oil facilities and military targets deep inside Russian territory but initially were used just to spot Russian forces. Commander Brovdi was among the first to see their true potential and, as technology advanced, drones began to change everything on the battlefield. The Interview brings you conversations with people shaping our world, from all over the world. The best interviews from the BBC, including episodes with Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelensky, and Antonio Guterres, Secretary General of the UN. You can listen on the BBC World Service on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 0800 GMT. Or you can listen to The Interview as a podcast, out three times a week on BBC Sounds or wherever you get your podcasts. Presenter: Sarah Rainsford Producers: Osman Iqbal Editor: Farhana Haider Get in touch with us on email TheInterview@bbc.co.uk and use the hashtag #TheInterviewBBC on social media.(Image: Robert Brovdi Credit: Oleksii Samsonov/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images)

From the Strait of Hormuz to Lebanon, the Iran war has seen the West's foes adopt asymmetric warfare with growing efficacy. Fresh off the boat from the Omani side of the Strait, Adrian Blomfield joins Venetia Rainey and Roland Oliphant. He explains how being out on the busy, misty and historic waterway helped him to understand why it is almost impossible for the US to counter Iran's so-called “mosquito” fleet of fast boats.Meanwhile, Jerusalem correspondent Henry Bodkin discusses the growing threat posed by Hezbollah as it adopts Ukrainian drone tactics to fight Israeli troops in southern Lebanon. He talks through a particularly worrying video showing the terror group flying a fibre-optic first-person view (FPV) drone at a medivac helicopter. Plus, Venetia and Roland run through the latest updates from today, including Donald Trump's new threat to Iran and bad signs from the Iranian economy. Highlights: Adrian Blomfield on his trip to the Strait of HormuzHenry Bodkin on the growing threat posed by Hezbollah as it adopts Ukrainian drone tacticsCONTRIBUTORS:Venetia Rainey, co-host @venetiaraineyRoland Oliphant, co-host and chief foreign affairs analyst @RolandOliphantAdrian Blomfield, senior foreign correspondent @adrianblomfieldHenry Bodkin, Jerusalem correspondent @HenryBodkinCONTENT REFERENCED:Hezbollah attacks Israeli military helicopter with fibre optic droneshttps://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/04/28/hezbollah-attack-israeli-idf-helicopter-fibre-optic-drones/Adrian Blomfield: Here in the Strait, Iran's mosquito fleet renders Trump blockade futilehttps://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/04/28/strait-of-hormuz-irans-mosquito-fleet-winning-blockade/Akhtar Makoii: Iran's cost of living is out of control as Trump's blockade takes holdhttps://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/04/29/irans-cost-of-living-trump-blockade/Producer: Peter ShevlinExecutive Producers: Venetia Rainey & Louisa Wells► Sign up to our most popular newsletter, From the Editor. Look forward to receiving free-thinking comment and the day's biggest stories, every morning. telegraph.co.uk/fromtheeditor► EMAIL US: Contact the team on battlelines@telegraph.co.uk ► GET THE LATEST HEADLINES: Find all our latest Iran coverage here: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/iran-war/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

VAE weg uit OPEC | Aziatische landen zoeken energie bij Rusland | Oekraïense drones raken Russische olie Iran presenteert een driefasenplan voor een staakt-het-vuren, maar koppelt dat aan tolheffing in de Straat van Hormuz en het opheffen van de blokkade, waardoor Trump het voorstel direct afwijst. De economie in Iran stort intussen in: staal- en tapijtsector liggen grotendeels stil, de internetblokkade kost miljarden en de Nationale Veiligheidsraad bereidt zich voor op mogelijke opstanden. Trump raakt door zijn Iran-politiek in een uitputtingsslag verzeild, met hogere olieprijzen, dalende approval ratings en beperkte ruimte om verder te escaleren. In de regio schuiven de Verenigde Arabische Emiraten weg van OPEC en zoeken ze nieuwe bondgenoten, mogelijk in de Europese Unie, terwijl Hezbollah met geavanceerde FPV-drones Israëlische doelen aanvalt. Tegelijk groeit in Azië de energieafhankelijkheid van Rusland, wat de geopolitieke kloof tussen Oost en West verdiept. Oekraïne opent een nieuw front met massale drone-inzet, schiet tienduizenden vijandelijke drones neer en treft Russische olie-installaties en schepen tot diep in het achterland. Kyiv bouwt een wapenindustrie met honderden bedrijven op, produceert miljoenen drones per jaar en profileert zich als toekomstige leverancier voor Europese defensies. Terwijl Rusland zelfmoordachtige infiltratiemissies uitvoert in de Donbas en zijn overwinningsparade moet inkrimpen uit angst voor drones, zoeken landen als Finland en Estland de nauwe band met Oekraïne juist als garantie voor hun eigen veiligheid. [Samenvatting geschreven door AI en gecontroleerd door mens] Over de Podcast Arend Jan Boekestijn en Rob de Wijk gaan onder leiding van Hugo Reitsma op zoek naar de nieuwe wereldorde. Wat betekenen oorlog, machtspolitiek en economische verschuivingen voor Europa en Nederland? In elke aflevering duiken zij in de geopolitieke actualiteit. In 2022 werd Boekestijn en De Wijk uitgeroepen tot winnaar in de categorie Nieuws & Politiek tijdens de Dutch Podcast Awards Reageren? Op X: @ajboekestijn en @robdewijk Bluesky: @hugoreitsma.bsky.social Mail: boekestijnendewijk@bnr.nl Over de makers: Arend Jan Boekestijn is een Nederlands historicus en voormalig politicus. Hij studeerde geschiedenis en politieke wetenschappen aan de Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. Boekestijn is voormalig Tweede Kamerlid (tot 2009). Sinds 1989 is hij verbonden aan de vakgroep geschiedenis van de Universiteit Utrecht en sinds 2016 lid van commissie Vrede en Veiligheid van AIV. Rob de Wijk studeerde eigentijdse geschiedenis en internationale betrekkingen, promoveerde op kernwapenstrategieën, werd hoogleraar in Leiden en richtte in 2007 het Den Haag Centrum voor Strategische Studies op. Hugo Reitsma studeerde rechten en politicologie. Hij werkte eerder als politiek verslaggever en vanuit verschillende conflictgebieden. Hij is auteur van het boek ‘Boekestijn en De Wijk voorspellen de toekomst’ (november 2023).See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

//The Wire//2300Z April 28, 2026// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: WAR IN LEBANON CONTINUES DESPITE CEASEFIRE. PIRACY ACTIVITY COMPLICATES MERCHANT TRAFFIC IN THE GULF OF ADEN, THREAT LEVEL ELEVATED. SOMALI DAYCARES RAIDED IN MINNEAPOLIS.// -----BEGIN TEARLINE-----  -International Events-Lebanon: The war continues as before, with Hezbollah conducting FPV drone strikes on Israeli armor, which are continuing their clearance operations in southern Lebanon.Analyst Comment: The ceasefire between these two belligerents being such a sticking point with the Iranian talks has not really resulted in a cessation of the war. At best, the Israelis have slowed down the bombing within downtown Beirut, but otherwise this war continues on.Red Sea/HOA: As the tenuous situation continues in the Persian Gulf, the Somalis have begun to increase hijacking attempts targeting commercial vessels in the vicinity of the Gulf of Aden. Last week, Somali pirates boarded and hijacked an unidentified tanker vessel, directing the vessel to Somalia's territorial waters. Overnight, another hijacking was reported as the M/V SWARD was hijacked in a similar manner, with the vessel being taken to the pirate strongholds along the eastern coast of the country. After these two hijacking incidents, another piracy attempt was reported today, to the east, farther off the coast. Separately, a local Somali fishing boat was hijacked by Somali pirates last week, and an attempted boarding was reported in the same area.Analyst Comment: Piracy activity in the Gulf of Aden has been a mainstay for decades. However, now that many shipping routes are skewed due to the Gulf War, piracy activity has increased over the past few weeks. Two successful hijackings and several other attempted hijacking operations taking place within just a few days is noteworthy, especially for the companies attempting to adjust to the radical changes to maritime shipping brought on by the war. As a result the UKMTO has elevated the threat to SUBSTANTIAL for the Somali Basin and the Somali Coast.-HomeFront-Minnesota: This morning the FBI conducted raids at several Somali daycare facilities in Minneapolis, many of which were at the center of previous fraud scandals. The Quality Learing Center was among the list of sites where evidence was collected, and around a dozen facilities in total were the target of the raids. The city of Minneapolis was not a part of the raid, and went out of their way to distance themselves from the federal investigations into these facilities.-----END TEARLINE-----Analyst Comments: Not many details have emerged regarding the Washington Hilton assassination attempt, beyond what was immediately published the day of the shooting. The shooter's home in Torrance, California was raided on Sunday, but no disclosures have been made regarding whether or not anything was found. One of the major intelligence gaps (at least in the public sphere) is whether or not the suspect was communicating with anyone else before the attack. Some indications are present that he was talking to family members (who knew he possessed violent intent), but it is not known if the suspect was coordinating or communicating with anyone online, specifically to plan the attack. Most of the high-profile targeting efforts observed over the past few years (not just the Trump assassination attempts, but the Kirk assassination and the sniper attacks on ICE facilities) have involved the shooters having an extensive online presence, which in most cases indicated some level of communication with others. In this case, Allen survived the attack, so his testimony is at least available, and more time will be needed to determine if anyone else was involved in the planning phases of the attack.Analyst: S2A1 Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground

For review:1. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Monday that a reported offer from Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz under strict conditions is not acceptable to the United States or other countries.Secretary of State Rubio: “What they mean by opening the straits is, yes, the straits are open, as long as you coordinate with Iran, get our permission, or we'll blow you up, and you pay us.”2. The IDF said it launched a wave of airstrikes Monday against Hezbollah infrastructure in the Beqaa Valley and several areas of southern Lebanon as a fragile ceasefire appeared to be rapidly unraveling just days after it was extended.The strikes came following repeated recent attacks by the Hezbollah on IDF troops and Israel during the truce, including a deadly FPV drone attack in Lebanon the previous day that killed an IDF soldier and wounded six.3. Battered but still breathing, Hamas is set to hold a long-delayed internal election to choose a new chief and political bureau in the coming weeks.Hamas generally holds leadership elections every four years, but the latest vote, initially scheduled for 2025, was delayed by the war sparked by the terror group's October 7, 2023, massacre. 4. Israel sent the United Arab Emirates an Iron Dome air defense system with troops to operate it early in the war with Iran, two Israeli officials and one U.S. official tell Axios.5. A 14 percent increase in European defense spending contributed significantly to global military expenditure increasing for the 11th consecutive year, reaching $2.89 trillion in 2025, according to a new report from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) think tank.6. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on Monday met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg, with the Russian president telling the Iranian diplomat that he hoped for peace soon.7. Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov held talks in Kyrgyzstan on Monday with Iran's Deputy Defense Minister Reza Talaei-Nik, state-run TASS news agency reports.8. Under Project Sea 3000, Australia and Japan inked a deal to buy three upgraded Mogami-class frigates for the Royal Australian Navy (RAN). The contract was signed by the two countries' defense ministers aboard JS Kumano in Melbourne earlier this month.

//The Wire//2300Z April 24, 2026// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: BUILDUP OF AMERICAN FORCES IN MIDDLE EAST REACHES RECORD LEVELS. KUWAITI BORDER CHECKPOINTS HIT BY FPV DRONES. ARREST MADE REGARDING MOLOTOV ATTACK IN LOUISIANA.// -----BEGIN TEARLINE-----  -International Events-Middle East: Overnight Kuwaiti forces reported two FPV drone strikes on border crossing checkpoints with Iraq. No casualties were reported as a result of the attack.Analyst Comment: The statement provided by the Kuwaiti Army did not specifically disclose which border crossings were targeted, however there are only two crossing points in total: one main crossing on the northern border, and a smaller outpost on the western border. The interesting detail in the notice is the disclosure that these attacks were conducted by fiber-optically-guided FPV drones, and both of these sites were too far away from each other for these attacks to have been conducted by the same team.-HomeFront-Louisiana: This morning one individual was arrested following the firebombing of a Tesla Service Center two weeks ago. John Michael Hinkhouse was arrested for throwing a Molotov device at the entrance to the facility, which resulted in fire damaging the front of the building. Hinkhouse was located after security cameras tracked him back to his residence after the attack.Washington D.C. - Two incidents involving city busses have taken place over the past 24 hours. Yesterday, a bus caught fire in the 9th Street Tunnel, resulting in the tunnel being shut down for many hours. The cause of the fire remains unknown. This morning, two city busses collided with each other head-on in the Pentagon's south parking lot, resulting in a total of 23x people being injured.Analyst Comment: Currently there are no indications that either incident was nefarious in any way, however it's worth paying attention to during periods of heightened terrorism risk, just in case other incidents pop up later.-----END TEARLINE-----Analyst Comments: Concerning strategic movement in the Middle East, American cargo flights continue unabated, along with the forward deployment of even more fighter aircraft. Last night another squadron of F/A-18's arrived at Al Dhafra Airbase in the UAE, and the USS GEORGE H.W. BUSH (CVN 77) arrived in the Indian Ocean following her long journey around Africa. Another Expeditionary Sea Base (ESB), the USS MIGUEL KIETH (ESB 5) is also projected to be approaching the operational area, after having transited the Strait of Malacca and should be arriving on station soon (though it is not clear as to if she is expected to take part in this operation).This brings a total of 3x aircraft carriers, 2x Expeditionary Sea Bases, and 1x amphibious assault ship (a total of 6 "flat tops") for whatever operations are planned. Of note, CENTCOM has provided press materials that imply that the BUSH is not replacing the LINCOLN or the damaged FORD but will serve independently as a third strike group throughout the region. This buildup has become even more substantial than the 4+ months of lead-up to this war breaking out, with even more naval assets being transferred from the Pacific to supplement the forces already in theater. As a reminder, at least one Brigade Combat Team (BCT) from the 82nd Airborne is still in the region. Considering all of these developments, the grand question remains: Does the US plan to reignite the war? This remains an unknown, and it's impossible to know what secret decisions have been made at the upper echelons of government. What is certain, is that a large-scale rearmament and resupply operation has been ongoing since the ceasefire went into effect, and enough resources are on station to conduct large scale operations if that is the chosen course of action. Not only is the war not over, but there are now vastly more resources i

2026-04-18 | UPDATES #176 | Easter lies, fratricide on the front line, and 667 reasons Ukraine's air defences are the best in the world. On Easter Saturday, Vladimir Putin declared a thirty-two-hour ceasefire. A humanitarian gesture, the Kremlin called it. The truce would begin at 4pm Moscow time and last through Orthodox Easter Sunday. There is a pattern to Moscow's announcements – major defeats are always labelled as humanitarian gestures.By 7am the next morning, Russia had violated its own ceasefire two thousand, two hundred and ninety-nine times. Twenty-eight assault operations. Four hundred and seventy-nine shelling fires on Ukrainian positions. Seven hundred and forty-seven kamikaze drone strikes. One thousand and forty-five FPV drone attacks. Near Chasiv Yar in Donetsk, Russian forces used first-person-view drones to attack unarmed Russian soldiers who were being evacuated from the front line during the supposed truce. They killed three of their own men. Then, four days later — on April 16th — Russia launched its most devastating aerial attack of 2026. Nearly seven hundred drones. Dozens of ballistic and cruise missiles. Sixteen dead, including a twelve-year-old boy in Kyiv. Over a hundred wounded. A drone slammed directly into an eighteen-storey residential building. Easter peace. Russian style. We're talking about a pattern of deception that stretches back more than a decade — and a Ukrainian air defence network that just shot down ninety-five percent of everything Russia threw at it.----------SUPPORT THE CHANNEL:https://www.buymeacoffee.com/siliconcurtainhttps://www.patreon.com/siliconcurtainhttps://www.gofundme.com/f/scaling-up-campaign-to-fight-authoritarian-disinformation----------A REQUEST FOR HELP!I'm heading back to Kyiv next month, to film, do research and conduct interviews. The logistics and need for equipment and clothing are a little higher than for my previous trips. It will be cold, and may be dark also. If you can, please assist to ensure I can make this trip a success. My commitment to the audience of the channel, will be to bring back compelling interviews conducted in Ukraine, and to use the experience to improve the quality of the channel, it's insights and impact. Let Ukraine and democracy prevail! https://buymeacoffee.com/siliconcurtain/extrashttps://www.patreon.com/siliconcurtainhttps://www.gofundme.com/f/scaling-up-campaign-to-fight-authoritarian-disinformationNONE OF THIS CAN HAPPEN WITHOUT YOU!So what's next? We're going to Kyiv in April 2026 to film on the ground, and will record interviews with some huge guests. We'll be creating opportunities for new interviews, and to connect you with the reality of a European city under escalating winter attack, from an imperialist, genocidal power. PLEASE HELP ME ME TO GROW SILICON CURTAINWe are planning our events for 2026, and to do more and have a greater impact. After achieving more than 12 events in 2025, we will aim to double that! 24 events and interviews on the ground in Ukraine, to push back against weaponized information, toxic propaganda and corrosive disinformation. Please help us make it happen!----------SOURCES: Al Jazeera — "Russia and Ukraine agree to 32-hour Orthodox Easter ceasefire" (April 10, 2026)Al Jazeera — "Ukraine and Russia accuse each other of breaching Easter ceasefire" (April 12, 2026)Euronews — "Ukraine and Russia accuse each other of breaching 36-hour Orthodox Easter ceasefire" (April 12, 2026) Euronews — "Ukraine and Russia exchange prisoners ahead of Orthodox Easter ceasefire" (April 11, 2026) PBS News — "Orthodox Easter ceasefire falters as Ukraine says Russia continues drone strikes" (April 12, 2026) PBS News — "Russia and Ukraine accuse each other of Easter ceasefire violations" (April 12, 2026) ----------

Welcome back to the nightmare, comrades. In this feature-length episode, we take a brutal, unsparing look under the hood of the Russian Federation's terminal bureaucratic matrix. The dashboard warning lights have all blown out, the engine block is melting, and the elites are just hoping to finish their cold sandwich before the whole rusted-out car explodes.We dissect the catastrophic macroeconomic death spiral, the 4.6 trillion ruble deficit, and the macabre new “meat market” recruitment strategy that literally pays referral bounties for sending the elderly and terminally ill into the mud. We analyze the asymmetrical flip in the skies: Ukraine's 7-million drone pipeline and the autonomous “Martians,” matched only by the Russian Ministry of Defense's brilliant counter-strategy of putting a former toilet salesman in charge of their drone troops.Plus, we explore the terrifying biological caste system (KZhI vs. DZhI) inside the Russian army, the 80-billion-ruble Telegram blockade blinding the domestic population, and why Igor Strelkov is sitting in a penal colony comparing today to the eve of the 1917 revolution. The pokazukha is failing. The math is absolute.Support the Front: Fund the thunder. Support the Perun Battalion's unjammable fiber-optic FPV drones via the Easter Trucks 2026 campaign at Cars for Ukraine: car4ukraine.com/campaigns/easter-pysanky-trucks-2026-eastern-borderKeep The Eastern Border Running: Support the podcast and keep the lights on 22km from the empire: patreon.com/theeasternborder Grab some official swag on our Fourth Wall page: https://theeasternborder-shop.fourthwall.com/You can also visit our main page for a one-time donation in various forms, including crypto. https://theeasternborder.lv/Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/theeasternborder. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Greetings, comrades! In Episode 2.20, we examine the sheer, terminal absurdity of the Russian Federation's bureaucratic collapse.The geopolitical gravity has inverted: Armenian PM Nikol Pashinyan is now openly mocking Vladimir Putin inside the Kremlin about having functional elections and free internet. In response, the paranoid Russian state is dropping a digital Iron Curtain, exterminating regional ISPs, and forcing its population into a digital gulag before the next wave of covert mobilization hits. We dissect the "Archimedes 2026" military expo (where cadets duct-taped AK-74s to a remote-controlled river-trash collector), uncover the newly privatized corporate draft in Ryazan, and watch the Z-patriots suffer a complete psychological meltdown as the Ministry of Defense proudly announces the "complete liberation of the LNR" for the third time since 2022. The empire is out of breath, out of cash, and out of threats.Fund the Thunder:Help the Perun Unmanned Systems Battalion turn Russian armor into scrap metal with unjammable fiber-optic FPV drones. Donate to the Easter Trucks 2026 campaign here:car4ukraine.com/campaigns/easter-pysanky-trucks-2026-eastern-borderBecome our patron:https://www.patreon.com/theeasternborderMerch store + another option for memberships:https://theeasternborder-shop.fourthwall.com/Follow what's going on here in the very border of Eastern Europe on our BlueSky:@theeasternborder.lvDownload all episodes for free on our website; pictures accompanying certain episodes can be found there as well!http://theeasternborder.lv/YouTube version, as this time we have video content: (will be up eta 2 hours)https://youtu.be/KGdyRs7lVAESupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/theeasternborder. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Silicon Bites Ep311 | 2026-04-02 | Who is the real paper tiger? Ukraine schools NATO on drones while Trump torches the alliance. Several stories around NATO's future have converged this week – but here are two of the most important. Ukraine fired its NATO trainers. A mystified alliance is running out of time to learn why, suggests Hans Petter Midttun in an article published by Euromaidan Press. Ukraine's General Staff has decided to scale back overseas training for its troops and—despite the constant threat of Russian missile and drone strikes — move it to Ukraine. According to Militarnyi, General Staff's Deputy Chief for Doctrine and Training Yevhen Mezhevikin cited logistical concerns and a lack of relevant combat experience among Western instructors. "They are disconnected from our realities, from the current combat operations," he said.----------SUPPORT THE CHANNEL:https://www.buymeacoffee.com/siliconcurtainhttps://www.patreon.com/siliconcurtainhttps://www.gofundme.com/f/scaling-up-campaign-to-fight-authoritarian-disinformation----------SOURCES:Euromaidan Press — "Ukraine fired its NATO trainers. The alliance is running out of time to learn why." (March 31, 2026) — Primary analysis by Hans Petter Midttun; Russia's 80,000-strong Unmanned Systems Forces; 8,900 FPV drones per day; 2030 projection of 210,000Euromaidan Press — "'We are f—': 10 Ukrainians with drones wipe out two NATO battalions in war game" (February 13, 2026) — Delta system; 2.2-second detection; Hedgehog 2025 exercise detailsWall Street Journal — "NATO exercise reveals alliance can't survive Ukraine-style drone warfare" — Jillian Kay Melchior (February 12, 2026) — Primary source reporting; firsthand accounts from Hedgehog exercise participantsUnited24 Media — "NATO Drills Reveal Drone Warfare Could Eliminate Two Battalions in a Day" (February 13, 2026) — Delta system; Petraeus LinkedIn comments; Estonian Defence League coordinationUnited24 Media — "How 10 Ukrainian Drone Operators Crushed a NATO Offensive in Estonia" (February 15, 2026) — 412th Nemesis Brigade and 427th Rarog Brigade details; Vector reconnaissance systemDefence News — "Role reversal: Ukraine moves training home and exports the lessons abroad" (March 27, 2026) — Germany as first NATO member to invite Ukrainian trainers; Lt. Gen. Freuding quote; DELTA in REPMUS 2025; down from 18 to 3 EU training nations; Vandier quote on Russia adapting19FortyFive — "A NATO Wargame in Estonia Let Ukrainian Drone Experts Play the Bad Guy and the Results Were Brutal" (February 17, 2026) — Petraeus on lessons only being learned through systemic reform; combined arms contextDroneXL — "NATO's Hedgehog exercise exposed a brutal truth" (February 13, 2026) — Cross-reference on exercise details; US troops absent from Hedgehog 2025----------SILICON CURTAIN LIVE EVENTS - FUNDRAISER CAMPAIGN Events in 2025 - Advocacy for a Ukrainian victory with Silicon Curtainhttps://buymeacoffee.com/siliconcurtain/extrasOur events of the first half of the year in Lviv, Kyiv and Odesa were a huge success. Now we need to maintain this momentum, and change the tide towards a Ukrainian victory. The Silicon Curtain Roadshow is an ambitious campaign to run a minimum of 12 events in 2025, and potentially many more. Any support you can provide for the fundraising campaign would be gratefully appreciated. https://buymeacoffee.com/siliconcurtain/extrasWe need to scale up our support for Ukraine, and these events are designed to have a major impact. Your support in making it happen is greatly appreciated. All events will be recorded professionally and published for free on the Silicon Curtain channel. Where possible, we will also live-stream events.https://buymeacoffee.com/siliconcurtain/extras----------

//The Wire//2300Z March 31, 2026// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: STARLINK SATELLITE EXPERIENCES "ANOMALY" IN ORBIT. FPV DRONE ATTACKS REPORTED AT RUSSIAN BASE IN MALI. WAR IN MIDDLE EAST INTENSIFIES WITH INCREASE OF AMERICAN BOMBING AND IRANIAN DRONE ATTACKS.// -----BEGIN TEARLINE-----  -International Events-Middle East: Several escalations occurred overnight, with substantial strikes being reported throughout the region. Satellite imagery indicates that the strikes within Iran have increased in scope, though most of the targeting efforts remain concentrated in the western part of the country. Last night American forces struck an ammo dump in Isfahan, which resulted in significant secondary explosions at the site. This strike supplements many other strikes throughout the area, which have destroyed most of the military infrastructure throughout Isfahan.In the Persian Gulf itself, Iranian targeting of merchant vessels continued overnight, as two ships reported being targeted. The M/T AL SALMI was struck by an Iranian drone, sustaining damage from the subsequent fire that broke out on board after the strike. Another unidentified vessel reported a close-call, with an unidentified munition landing in the water close to the vessel.Pacific: Yesterday the Marshall Islands declared a state of emergency for at least the next 90 days, due to fuel shortages caused by the reduction of petroleum production in the Middle East and with travel through the Strait of Hormuz being restricted. President Heine signed the declaration yesterday, and various committees have been formed to determine what steps to take as the war continues.Mali: This morning a local insurgent group posted a video claiming credit for a drone attack on a military outpost in the remote town of Anefis. The Azawad Liberation Front (FLA) is a small insurgent group that has been waging war in the region for a while, with combat operations intensifying over the past few weeks.Analyst Comment: While a couple of FPV drone strikes are mostly insignificant on the battlefield, this does indicate that even in the most far-flung regions of the earth, drone warfare is becoming a concern that even large nationstates continue to struggle with. For instance, the site struck by FLA yesterday was also allegedly being used by Russian advisors, and this is the second instance in about a week of FLA militants using munitions attached to FPV drones to carry out attacks.-HomeFront-USA: Starlink announced a malfunction with one of their satellites, with the satellite experiencing some level of breakup in orbit. Satellite imagery from a craft with a higher orbit captured the satellite in orbit, which indicates it's still mostly intact even though hundreds of particles have been detected separating from this platform. The cause of the malfunction has not yet been disclosed, with this incident only being described as an "anomaly".-----END TEARLINE-----Analyst Comments: Indications and warnings are growing that the intensification of the war in Iran might be what is colloquially known in the targeting world as Shaping Fires, in other words blowing up a lot of stuff in preparation for a future objective. Since the start of the war, the United States has been working through a High Payoff Target List (HPTL), which is basically a list of targets arranged by which ones should be struck first. In an air war, the targets at the top of the list are usually missile defense sites, radar arrays, or any other targets which might be more important to take out first. As time goes on, eventually lower-priority targets can be struck.However, in going through this process, the world eventually finds out what targets were on that list. And right now, a month after the war began, the targets that are being struck are probably an indicator of what is being planned for. As an example, the US complet

https://send.monobank.ua/jar/7j9m29VtvJ Mini Cooper за донат в 100 грн, аби ми зібрали 10 млн грн на дрони. Збираємо на FPV, оптоволокно та дрони перехоплювачі для Хартії, ДШВ та малого ППО.Василь Пехньо, військовий оглядач, ведучий Radio NV про критику українських виробників гендиректором Rheinmetall, перешкоди для експорту нашого озброєння, удари по Ленінградській області та те, як це стало можливим, а також про знищення пускової установки Цирконів у Криму. Ведуча – Інна Марецька

//The Wire//2300Z March 27, 2026// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: GULF WAR CONTINUES AS SHIPPING COMPANIES MAKE DEALS WITH IRAN. WAR IN LEBANON REMAINS INTENSE AS IDF NEARS LITANI ON THE EASTERN FRONT. AIRSTRIKES REPORTED AT TWO IRANIAN URANIUM PRODUCTION FACILITIES.// -----BEGIN TEARLINE-----  -International Events-Middle East: Offensive actions and targeting efforts by all sides were temporarily degraded last night as a major storm system descended on the region. A supercell storm system similar to a cyclone descended on the UAE last night, with severe flooding and high winds being reported throughout Dubai.After the weather cleared, major Iranian targeting efforts were reported throughout the region. Port facilitates were struck in Kuwait, and a large fire was observed at the parking apron used by American aircraft at Prince Sultan Airbase in Saudi Arabia, with the smoke plume being visible on Sentinel satellite imagery from this morning.Iran: This morning American/Israeli forces struck multiple nuclear production facilities. The Arak Heavy Water Facility (which was struck years ago) was struck again this morning, and the Yellowcake Refinery in Ardakan was also struck.Analyst Comment: The risk of radiological release at either facility is low, as Arak was not functional and Ardakan was not host to enriched Uranium itself. However, monitoring will continue as radioactive dust is likely to contaminate the local area to some degree, and time will tell how these threats develop as the strikes continue.Lebanon: Israeli forces continue their advance north toward the Litani River, as FPV drone attacks by Hezbollah become more significant. Two drone attacks on Israeli armored columns were reported last night, along the eastern axis of advance. Israeli forces along the eastern front have made the most progress toward the river, with IDF units being observed in the town of Taybeh this morning.Analyst Comment: Hezbollah's media group claims that a total of 21 Merkava tanks have been destroyed so far this campaign, however as always these numbers are usually overinflated. Concerning tank casualties, it's incredibly difficult to tell from a video clip if a vehicle was actually penetrated or not, and most of the clips provided by Hezbollah conveniently cut away before the tank's Trophy countermeasure system is activated. This means that counting destroyed/disabled tanks is mostly a wash. However, from the clips and reports on the ground, this is not an easy fight for the Israelis either. Anti-Tank Guided Missile attacks are a mainstay of Hezbollah, and these attacks have been effective in making the Israeli advance more costly than expected.-HomeFront-Iowa: Last night a major egg farm burned down in Corwith. The Hawkeye Pride egg production facility caught fire shortly after 6:00pm yesterday evening, which resulted in significant damage to the egg farm. Hawkeye Pride is one of the largest cage-free egg producers in the United States, and the extent of the damage to the henhouses has not yet been determined.California: Yesterday evening a blackout was reported in Orange County, mostly affecting the areas of Carlsbad and Encinitas, as well as areas south of Escondido. The cause of the electrical outage has not yet been reported, but services were mostly restored for many customers by sunrise.Florida: Following up on the recent IED threat to MacDill Air Force Base, two individuals have been identified as the culprits of the attack. Ann Mary Zheng and her brother Alen Zheng (both Chinese nationals) have been indicted on charges of emplacing the IED at the visitor's center on March 10th before it was discovered by authorities on March 16th. Mary Zheng was arrested on Wednesday after returning to the United States, while her brother remains in China.-----END TEARLINE-----Analyst Comments: Many nationstates have made th

//The Wire//1900Z March 25, 2026// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: WAR ESCALATES AGAIN IN THE MIDDLE EAST AS ISRAEL AND IRAN BEGIN MORE ROUTINE TARGETING OF EACH OTHERS NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS. MULTIPLE FPV DRONE ATTACKS REPORTED IN BAGHDAD. US ARMY RAISES ENLISTMENT AGE TO 42 FOR NEW RECRUITS.// -----BEGIN TEARLINE-----  -International Events-Middle East: Multiple escalations of the conflict took place overnight. Following Israeli/American bombing yesterday, Iranian forces retaliated by striking multiple US bases/positions in Kuwait. In Israel, strikes were also reported at the Orot Rabin Power Plant in Hadera, however the munition appears to have missed the generation facilities by a narrow margin. Another Iranian strike targeted fuel tanks at Kuwait International Airport overnight, and similar strikes were reported in Tel Aviv which resulted in unknown damage.Iraq: Multiple significant events occurred overnight as the PMF begins more deliberate offensive operations. Yesterday morning, the United States conducted airstrikes at the personal residences of PMF leadership in Al Habbaniya. This strike killed Saad Al Baiji (an operations chief), and subsequently resulted in an intensification of targeting efforts on American positions throughout Baghdad. As a result of this targeting of PMF leadership, Iraqi Prime ​Minister ‌Mohammed ⁠Shia Al Sudani has authorized PMF militia groups to retaliate against American forces.Analyst Comment: This is a major escalation that could effectively open up another front in the war. The Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) are a semi-autonomous, highly-organized militia group that serves as one of Iran's major proxy groups outside their own borders. Technically, they are linked to the Iraqi government, but in practice they mostly just do what they want while being supplied by the Iranians. The official Iraqi government stating that they will let them off leash (while not entirely surprising) is in effect a return to GWOT era, but this time the Iraqi government is openly endorsing their attacks on Americans. So in effect, battle lines are being drawn and the Iraqis are now taking the side of Iran. Depending on how kinetic PMF operations become, American forces may face more contested airspace over not just Iran, but Iraq as well.Otherwise, this week has witnessed an escalation of the war as FPV drone attacks have become more commonly carried out at Camp Victory by insurgents targeting American forces. In a video released yesterday evening, one HH-60M helicopter was targeted, along with a Sentinel radar array.Analyst Comment: The success of these attacks is not known, but the Iraqi militias conducting these attacks have significantly improved their targeting efforts with lessons learned from Ukraine, or probably more accurately...Russia. One of the FPV drones recorded the other drone attacking the radar site, before flying off to find another target. However, while searching for other targets of opportunity, the idiots accidentally targeted a MEDEVAC helicopter, which is evidenced by the video being edited to blur out the giant Red Cross painted on the side of the aircraft. After reviewing the tape, the militia group probably realized that makes them look bad, so they blurred the footage themselves.Kuwait: Civil Defense authorities have begun producing informational videos for the general public, regarding what to do in the event of a nuclear incident at a power plant in a neighboring country, such as if Israeli/American forces were to target the active reactor building at Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant.Analyst Comment: All eyes are on Bushehr. The Israelis dropped munitions in the parking lot a few days ago, probably as a warning, but in retaliation the Iranians hit the residential buildings housing scientists at Dimona yesterday, and this morning they hit an unknown target immediately adjacent to the Hadera plant.

Ken Harbaugh is a former U.S. Navy pilot and mission commander who served from 1996 to 2005 as an EP-3 signals-intelligence aviator, flying missions focused on adversaries including Russia, North Korea, and China. After leaving the Navy, he earned a JD (Juris Doctor) from Yale Law School, taught at The Citadel and as a guest fellow at Yale, co-founded The Mission Continues and Got Your 6, later held senior leadership roles at Team Rubicon, and has since become a media and podcast figure through Burn the Boats, Warriors in Their Own Words, and The Ken Harbaugh Show. He is a senior correspondent for MeidasTouch.----------SEE DRONE HUNTERS OF KHERSON:https://thekenharbaughshow.substack.com/LINKS:https://www.youtube.com/@UCon-4xKJzqoD1JOitZgT5cQ https://x.com/Team_Harbaughhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Harbaughhttps://www.theatlantic.com/author/ken-harbaugh/https://www.facebook.com/TeamHarbaugh/https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenneth-harbaugh-201a7b8/----------ACTIVE CAMPAIGN:We are raising funds for 5 of 15 Vampire DronesSilicon Curtain for Kupiansk Vampires. Dzyga's Paw, together with Jonathan Fink, is joining forces to raise $40,000 to provide the Khartiia Brigade with Vampire Drones.https://dzygaspaw.com/silicon-curtain-for-kupiansk-vampiresThese heavy bombers are designed to destroy manpower and equipment, as well as for remote mining. The Vampire UAV, manufactured by Skyfall, has proven itself to be one of the most effective weapons in the Kupiansk direction. Skyfall is one of Ukraine's largest defense tech companies, producing Vampire bomber drones, various modifications of Shrike FPV drones, P1-SUN, Shahed drone interceptors, communication systems, and components.----------SUPPORT THE CHANNEL:https://www.buymeacoffee.com/siliconcurtainhttps://www.patreon.com/siliconcurtainhttps://www.gofundme.com/f/scaling-up-campaign-to-fight-authoritarian-disinformation----------PLATFORMS:Substack: https://substack.com/@siliconcurtainTwitter: https://twitter.com/CurtainSiliconLinkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/finkjonathan/Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/4thRZj6NO7y93zG11JMtqm----------DESCRIPTION:Ken Harbaugh on Ukraine's Drone Hunters, Western Blind Spots, and the Coming Age of Asymmetric WarFormer US Navy EP-3 signals intelligence aviator Ken Harbaugh discusses his reporting on Ukraine's “drone hunters” in Kherson, who shoot down hard-to-detect fiber-optic FPV drones used by Russia in a civilian terror campaign and described as a “human safari,” alongside other indiscriminate tactics like butterfly mines. He argues the US and allies are failing to learn battlefield lessons from Ukraine about scalable drone defense, cost asymmetry, and homeland vulnerability to container-launched drone attacks and cyber disruption, while criticizing leadership deficits, entrenched defense procurement incentives, and what he describes as a White House unwilling to hear hard truths about scenarios like Strait of Hormuz closure. The conversation contrasts Russia's brutality with Ukrainian innovation, including gamified targeting incentives, and warns that the West may only adapt after a major attack. ----------CHAPTERS:00:58 Drone Hunters of Kherson04:03 Human Safari Terror06:31 Hormuz Unpreparedness08:49 Europe Leadership Gap11:50 Lessons From Ukraine14:34 Homeland Drone Threat19:15 Hybrid War and Cyber22:30 Coal and Uranium Wildcard28:00 Allies Push Back32:35 Ukraine Innovation Edge37:30 Military Industrial Drag39:45 Wake Up Call Closing----------THE 'FAITH UNDER SIEGE' TEAM ARE KIND SUPPORTERS OF SILICON CURTAIN: WEBSITE: https://www.faithundersiege.com/TRAILER: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftGtdC-aO3kFILM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-E4gJWdsyAACHANNEL: https://www.youtube.com/@UCx-2kTPvk4Z505gS2ZEch-A REVIEW: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt35428172/----------

Олег Катков, головний редактор Defense Express, на Radio NV про регулярні атаки по Росії, перше знищення ударного вертольота FPV-дроном, а також про унікальну можливість України на Близькому Сході. Ведучий – Павло Новіков

//The Wire//2300Z March 17, 2026// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: ATTACKS CONTINUE IN BAGHDAD AS FPV DRONES BEGIN MORE FREQUENT USE IN IRAQ. IED DISCOVERED AT MACDILL AIR FORCE BASE IN FLORIDA. COUNTERTERRORISM CENTER DIRECTOR RESIGNS IN PROTEST OF WAR.// -----BEGIN TEARLINE-----  -International Events-Persian Gulf: Over the past few days, conflict within Baghdad has become more significant, as Iranian-backed militia groups concentrate attacks on the Green Zone. Last night the Al-Rashid Hotel was hit by an Iranian drone, and another FPV drone incident was reported as the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) continue conducting reconnaissance of the American Embassy compound, which usually results in drone attacks later on that night. These attacks have continued to be a daily occurrence, with sensitive sites at the Embassy compound being struck over the past few days.-HomeFront-Florida: Yesterday one of the Entry Control Points (ECPs) at MacDill Air Force Base was shut down due to a suspicious package being discovered at the Visitor's Center. After some time, EOD personnel cleared the device, and operations returned to normal.Analyst Comment: Officially, no comment has been made on this incident beyond the brief lockdown. As suspicious package incidents are extremely common nowadays, usually nothing comes of it. However in this case, a photo of the suspicious package circulated on social media, which indicates that this was a legitimate IED and not just a lost bag. Whether or not it was actually a viable device is anyone's guess, but the photo of the alleged device indicates that the fuze was lit, only sputtering out on it's own. So clearly somebody tried to blow something up, regardless of the failure to detonate. As a result, this is another important reminder of the threats that remain constant throughout American society, as the war in the Middle East inflames tensions at home.Washington D.C. - This morning the Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Joe Kent, resigned from his position in protest of the continuing war in Iran, stating that he "cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby."-----END TEARLINE-----Analyst Comments: While all resignations in protest will sharply divide sentiment for and against, many arguments are being undertaken as people speak without thinking first. The fiery resignation letter is now functionally a Rorschach Test...people who make policy decisions will see what they want to see in it, and divide themselves accordingly. Disparaging comments attacking one's character that come out only after a public opinion is expressed are not the best indicator for what is really going on behind the scenes, but nevertheless that's exactly what ends up happening among those who are making decisions regarding the war. What is undeniable is that such a high-profile resignation right now is extremely important, and might be an indicator of future events.Regardless of the politics in play, (and taking personal feelings out of the situation entirely), when one of the main players in the US Intelligence Community resigns right now, at this present time, this is probably an indicator of far more serious developments coming down the pipeline. Senior resignations of this nature in any nation are quite rare, and hard-hitting resignation letters are rarer still. Nobody resigns because they think the war will be over anytime soon, and Kent (being the second-highest-ranking individual in the Intelligence Community) would have had the access to know information pertaining to future events that have not been made public. Due to this context, this could be an early indicator of what decisions have quietly been made behind closed doors, which have not yet come

//The Wire//2300Z March 16, 2026// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: IRANIAN STRIKES AND AMERICAN BOMBINGS REMAIN CONSTANT AS GULF STATES MORE OPENLY CENSOR DAMAGE REPORTS.// -----BEGIN TEARLINE-----  -International Events-Persian Gulf: Over the weekend Iranian strikes on Dubai have continued, with the fuel point at the airport being hit early this morning. The Fujairah Oil Industry Zone in the UAE was also hit, and burned throughout the day. American positions in Baghdad have also been under constant attack over the past few days, to include the first documented operational use of an FPV drone for an attack, which was conducted at Camp Victory a few days ago by pro-Iran militias in and around the capital region. Ali Al Salem Airbase in Kuwait was hit again overnight, with the Italians reporting one of their hangars (and the MQ-9 housed within) being destroyed.-HomeFront-California: Last night a shooting was reported at a Spring Break event in Santa Monica. Two people were wounded during the shooting, both of which suffered non-life-threatening wounds. The suspect was identified as Jaysawn Williams, who was arrested after being wounded in the attack.Analyst Comment: Despite initial media reports implying terrorism, right now this shooting looks like a gang shooting, rather than a more deliberate attack. However the investigation continues, and more details are expected as victim testimony becomes more public.-----END TEARLINE-----Analyst Comments: The war in the Middle East has shifted into the phase where numbers alone do not accurately convey the situation. Perhaps this was never the case, however at this point, describing the number of bombs dropped and drones launched is not exactly representative of how the war is going.For example, if the reports by various nations in the Middle East are accurate (which at this point is not a guarantee) the total number of drone and missile attacks by Iran has decreased. According to the UAE (which has been caught manipulating their data), only 6 drones attacks were reported last night...but the effectiveness of these strikes has sharply increased. That "6 drone" figure might be misleading or it may be ignoring the Iranian strikes that were successful. Either way, at least two drone strikes were incredibly effective last night, with one direct hit being reported on the fuel point at the Dubai airport, and another at the Fujairah Oil complex. At the northern end of the Persian Gulf, at least the Kuwaitis are being honest about their failed interceptions, with their latest report admitting that of the four drones launched at their nation last night, they only intercepted one.Considering this development, two polar opposite analytical positions can easily be arrived at, depending on how one reads the raw data. It's possible that the Iranians are decreasing the numbers of drones launched because they are running out or American targeting has been effective. Or, one can surmise that the Iranians are now able to conserve their resources, because they now have their targets dialed in and their Command and Control (C2) systems have now recovered from the decapitation strikes that started the war.Either theory will be largely opinion based, as the intelligence gaps regarding the war are very significant at this point. In war, nothing is certain, and right now all sides are attempting to over-estimate their gains, and downplay their losses. As unfortunate as it may be to observe, in a war where the grand strategy of all belligerents is based on hubris, the scale often tips in favor of the defender, or at least the fight for the attacker becomes much harder than it otherwise would have been. This would be wise to consider as the war enters it's third week, and neither American bases in the region nor the merchant vessels in the Strait appear to be granted any reprieve anytime soon.Analyst: