Podcasts about Soviet Union

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How can you, your family, and your local church endure future persecution? By making an intentional decision today to live not by lies. Regardless of the country you live in, this episode will help you and your loved ones prepare to stand when pressures mount.Rod Dreher joins Andy to share insights from his recent book, “Live Not By Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents.”  Listen in as Dreher shares insightful stories from Christians who endured persecution under the Soviet Union and the Communist Bloc.You will discover helpful tips from those who have gone before us, and those who recognize alarming signs in our cultures today. You will also hear how Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a dissident under the Soviets, encouraged the powerless to reject lies, especially mandated lies.If this information is helpful to you, please give us a 5-star rating and a positive review. Likewise, share this episode with friends and fellow believers who need help standing up under mounting pressures.To learn more about resources mentioned in this episode, see the following.Rod Dreher (Twitter): @roddreherLive Not By Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents, by Rod Dreher (Book): https://www.christianbook.com/not-by-lies-manual-christian-dissidents/rod-dreher/9780593087398/pd/087392?event=ESRCNThe American Conservative: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/Substack Page – Rod Dreher: https://roddreher.substack.com/Christian Emergency Alliance: https://www.christianemergency.com/Follow the Christian Emergency Alliance on Twitter: @ChristianEmerg1Follow the Christian Emergency Alliance on Facebook: @ChristianEmergencyThe Christian Emergency Podcast is a production of the Christian Emergency Alliance.Soli Deo Gloria

Politicians say they can “fix” the economy.But economists Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises pointed out how government “fixes" lead to bigger problems.Hayek and Mises predicted the fall of the Soviet Union. They warned that centrally planned economies fail.But today, socialism is popular again. New York and Seattle have elected socialist mayors.Many politicians still believe that government can manage the economy—an idea popularized by economist John Maynard Keynes.Keynes was revered. Politicians love his arguments.But Hayek and Mises warned that government intervention leads to inflation, instability, and boom-bust cycles.They were right.In this podcast, Ryan McMaken of the Mises Institute explains why we should read Hayek and Mises today.

Watch the full podcast! https://chinauncensored.tv/programs/podcast-337 When Russian President Vladimir Putin visited China, his hosts played a part of the Russian ballet "Swan Lake" for him, which would be perfectly OK except that it's become a Putin resistance song that has political connotations tied to the fall of the Soviet Union. Was China trying to send a message? Or was this just an error? Matt, Chris and Shelley get into that and more in this episode.

I had the honour of speaking with Tony Dobbie, a former RAF V- Force bomber pilot who joined the RAF in 1960. Tony shares amazing anecdotes from his training, including his experiences flying jets like the Meteor and the Vampire, and the transition to the mighty Victor bomber. He candidly discusses the realities of nuclear missions during the Cold War, revealing the tension and responsibility that came with such roles. One of the most gripping parts of our conversation revolves around the Cuban Missile Crisis. Tony was on QRA on Black Saturday when US forces went to DEFCON Two, one step shy of war and US and British forces prepared for imminent conflict with the Soviet Union . Tony also recounts a posting to the Bomber Command Operations Centre near High Wycombe in 1965 where a false alarm almost sent the V-Bomber force off to bomb the Soviet Union. Special thanks to Matthew Dobbie (Tony's son) for organising the interview and the Hack Green Secret Nuclear Bunker, who allowed the episode to be recorded in their BBC Studio. Episode extras http://www.coldwarconversations.com/episode458 Tony's book – Suki, Me & World War 3 Matthew's YouTube Channel Air Force Anecdotes  Help me preserve Cold War history via a simple monthly donation, You'll become part of our community, get ad-free episodes, and receive a sought-after CWC coaster as a thank-you, and you'll bask in the warm glow of knowing you are helping to preserve Cold War history. Just go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://coldwarconversations.com/donate/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ If a monthly contribution is not your cup of tea, we also welcome one-off tips via the same link. Find the ideal gift for the Cold War enthusiast in your life! Just go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://coldwarconversations.com/store/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ CONTINUE  THE COLD WAR CONVERSATION o BlueSky ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bsky.app/profile/coldwarpod.bsky.social⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ o Threads ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.threads.net/@coldwarconversations⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ o Twitter/X ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://twitter.com/ColdWarPod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ o Facebook ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/coldwarpod/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ o Instagram ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/coldwarconversations/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ o Youtube ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://youtube.com/@ColdWarConversations⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Get the full, ad-free episode here: https://www.10percenttrue.com/pricing-plans/list10PCT EP88 – Dave “Khan” Carr | F-15 Eagle, F-16 Viper, Weapons School & AggressorsDave “Khan” Carr joins 10 Percent True to discuss an extraordinary fighter career flying both the F-15 Eagle and F-16 Viper.From Cold War intercepts over Alaska and Iceland to the pressure cooker of the USAF Fighter Weapons School, Red Flag, and Aggressor duty, Khan offers a rare behind-the-scenes look at elite fighter aviation.This episode explores how the USAF prepared to fight the Soviet Union, how air combat tactics evolved through the Cold War and beyond, and what it really took to become a top-tier fighter pilot.Along the way, Khan shares stories of Arctic alert missions, Keflavik intercepts, Weapons School work-ups, massive Red Flag battles, Soviet threat replication, and how the Eagle and Viper compared in a fight.If you've ever wondered what really happens behind the scenes in elite fighter aviation, this is one you won't want to miss.Timestamps2:20 A Quick Word from Steve 4:04 Welcome, Khan 4:50 Khan Introduces Himself 6:40 First Tour at Elmendorf – Flying the Eagle in Alaska 8:38 Early Career Challenges & Encounters 12:12 Discussing Losses in the Early Days 14:08 Dealing with Loss 15:34 Eyeing the Next Career Step – and Making It Happen 17:17 Keflavik – CFTs & Diversions to Scotland 19:47 Steve Geeks Out on CFTs 21:14 The Mission at Keflavik – Bears, Tomcats & Lightnings (with Tankers) 23:04 Honing Air-to-Air Skills as the Eagle Matured 25:28 Dialling Up the AoA – “It Depends…” 26:55 Rudder Use, Evolving Tactics & When to Use It 28:32 Weapons School – Selection, Work-Ups & Challenges 32:40 A Memorable Weapons School Sortie – Vark Speed & Perfect Execution 35:58 Why No “Super Squadrons”? 37:24 The Benefits of Weapons School Graduation 40:30 Expertise Across All Facets of the Mission 41:52 Tyndall & the FTU 44:35 Does It Get Better Than This? 46:18 Eagle Culture – Did It Change? 49:52 Peak Performance or Room for Improvement? The Importance of Comms 54:12 Getting Granular – What It Takes to Make It in the Eagle Community 56:34 Regrets About Missing Desert Storm? 58:12 Joining the Aggressors 59:48 Being a “True” Aggressor 1:04:25 Gloves Off? 1:06:10 Simulating the Threat Accurately – Who Sees Who? 1:09:48 Maintaining Situational Awareness 1:10:55 Becoming a Threat System SME – The Process 1:13:05 Expectation vs Reality as More Information Became Available 1:15:50 “Natural” Bias? 1:17:54 Views on Threat Advantages & Capabilities 1:21:45 Eagle vs Viper Comparisons (Intro Teaser Topic) 1:25:02 The “Bad Bob” (VX-9 F-14D) Encounter 1:26:55 Toughest Opponent as an Aggressor? 1:30:19 When Things Don't Go to Plan – Scaring Yourself 1:34:10 Eating Shit as an Eagle Guy Flying Vipers? 1:34:54 Twilight of a Career – Guard Life, MSIP A Models, NVGs & Iraq 1:39:32 Young vs Old Eagle Driver 1:42:14 Keeping Up with Evolving Tactics & Change 1:49:30 Fini Flight 1:53:15 Do You Miss It? 1:53:54 Thanks, Khan – Till Next Time

Craig Unger argues that Donald Trump has been a Russian intelligence asset since 1987. He highlights how Trump's first trip to the Soviet Union was followed by advertisements in U.S. newspapers featuring KGB talking points. (13)OCTOBER 1930

SCHEDULE THE JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW, 5-27-26.APRIL 1900 OTTAWA.Cliff May discusses the deepening crisis in Cuba, where extreme food and electricity shortages have led officials to describe it as a failing state. However, the regime has reportedly received hundreds of attack drones from Russia and Iran, posing a new offensive threat to U.S. interests in the Caribbean. (1)Cliff May examines the empty pageantry of the Trump-Xi summit in Beijing, where the high-profile ceremony produced no major deals regarding trade or artificial intelligence. Xi Jinping made no concessions on human rights issues, such as the persecution of Christians or the Uyghurs. (2)Jon Hartley discusses the confirmation of Kevin Warsh as the new Federal Reserve Chairman, bringing a hawkish reputation focused on reducing the Fed's expanded balance sheet. Warsh advocates for a return to principles linking money growth directly to inflation control. (3)Jon Hartley proposes a new agreement modeled after the 1951 Accord that would separate the missions of the Federal Reserve and the Treasury. Under this plan, the Fed would focus strictly on short-term rates and price stability rather than long-term debt management. (4)Captain James Fanell analyzes the Balikatan military exercise, which featured 17,000 troops and, for the first time, combat forces from Japan participating in counter-invasion training. The drills demonstrated the capacity of allied nations to successfully target and strike enemy vessels at sea. (5)General Blaine Holt discusses Russian hypersonic threats and the shift to asymmetric drone warfare, noting Russia's threats of using weapons of mass destruction against Kyiv to warn European leaders against further intervention. Meanwhile, low-cost drone technology is proving to be an asymmetric force that renders expensive, multi-million dollar military systems obsolete. (6)Charles Burton examines Canada's controversial economic pivot toward China, where Prime Minister Mark Carney is pursuing a strategic partnership that includes non-public security agreements and the reduction of tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles. Critics warn these moves compromise Canadian sovereignty and allow for significant Chineseinfiltration. (7)Charles Burton and Gordon Chang analyze China's strategic gain from prolonged conflict in the Middle East, with Beijing appearing content to allow the conflict in the Strait of Hormuz to drag out as a way to deplete U.S. military resources. This instability supports China's narrative that the United States is a declining power. (8)Michael Bernstam discusses the impact of Ukrainian drone strikes on the Russian oil market, noting that strikes on refineries and ports have forced Russia to export more crude oil at discounted prices instead of high-value refined products. Simultaneously, U.S. oil production has hit record levels, significantly influencing global market prices. (9)Michael Bernstam examines the failure of Russia's Power of Siberia 2 pipeline deal, as Vladimir Putin left Beijingwithout securing the agreement while China shows no immediate need for the gas. Furthermore, China demanded to pay domestic Russian prices, which would yield no profit for Moscow. (10)Bob Zimmerman discusses the success of SpaceX's Starship 12 test, which demonstrated major design improvements, while NASA has effectively ended Boeing's role in manned missions to the ISS. NASA awarded all manned flights through 2030 to SpaceX, leaving Boeing out of the picture. (11)Bob Zimmerman reports that the Webb telescope has detected weather variations, including morning clouds, on a distant exoplanet. Additionally, images from Mars show parallel ridges that suggest a history of climate cycles and the presence of significant near-surface ice. (12)Craig Unger argues that Donald Trump has been a Russian intelligence asset since 1987. He highlights how Trump's first trip to the Soviet Union was followed by advertisements in U.S. newspapers featuring KGB talking points. (13)Craig Unger discusses U.S. unreliability and the future of the NATO alliance, noting that under Trump, the United States is seen as an unreliable partner by allies like Finland, who fear he will not honor Article 5. This lack of reliability forces European nations to consider whether they can emerge as a self-sufficient military power. (14)Judy Dempsey examines how the ongoing conflict between the U.S. and Iran distracts from Russian aggression in Ukraine and causes economic sluggishness in Germany. European allies feel jaundiced by the lack of consultation from the U.S. regarding Middle East diplomacy. (15)Judy Dempsey discusses how the AfD has become Germany's leading political party by capitalizing on public anger over housing shortages and the government's handling of the wars in Iran and Ukraine. The party represents a growing threat to the established political order in Europe. (16)

Before the Soviet Union, before Stalin, before communism swallowed half the world — there was one man who almost stopped all of it, and history buried him on purpose. Douglas Brunt brings him back to life, and what he uncovered will change the way you see the entire 20th century. Douglas Brunt is the New York Times bestselling author of The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel and The Lost Empire of Emanuel Nobel, and host of the top-rated SiriusXM author podcast Dedicated with Doug Brunt. This book truly reads like fiction. Make sure to get a copy of The Lost Empire of Emanuel Nobel: Romanovs, Revolutionaries, and the Forgotten Titan Who Fueled the World Anthony Scaramucci is the founder and managing partner of SkyBridge, a global alternative investment firm, and founder and chairman of SALT, a global thought leadership forum and venture studio. Pre-order my next book, All the Wrong Moves: How Three Catastrophic Decisions Led to the Rise of Trump, out on the 17th of September in the UK and the 22nd of September in the US: ⁠https://www.scaramucci.net/allthewrongmoves Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

From his home in Israels Plads, Soviet Union-born, Copenhagen-based Danish American businessman and startup investor ILYA KATSNELSON recalls arriving in the US as a refugee at the age of ten, his formative years in Wisconsin, and moving to Denmark, later surviving a German maximum security jail when the Russian state issued a retaliatory Interpol red notice against him. Equally, he talks about his commitment to bringing the US and Denmark closer together through education, art, and culture.----------For today's episode, Ilya Katsnelson chose Carl Bloch's Fra et romersk osteria, or In a Roman Osteria, from 1866 from the collection of the National Gallery of Denmark.https://open.smk.dk/en/artwork/image/KMS4087  ----------Photographer: Davy Denke----------This conversation with Christian D. Bruun occurred on April 6, 2026.----------We invite you to subscribe to Danish Originals for weekly episodes. You can also find us at:website: https://danishoriginals.com/                                email: info@danishoriginals.com

In the 1930s, five young men at Cambridge University became members of the Communist Party. This is not too surprising, in retrospect; many others were doing so as well. But these five men were recruited by the intelligence services of the Soviet Union, and for seventeen years they betrayed the secrets of Britain and the United States.They are now often referred to as the Cambridge Five. They were Kim Philby, Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt, and John Cairncross. While their story has been told and retold and retold in Britain, always as a parable of class and the establishment, my guest Antonia Senior observes that very few have looked at the story of the Cambridge Five from the other side of the relationship. “What did Stalin want from them?,” she asks. “How did they fit into Stalin's vision, and how did they further his cause?”Antonia Senior is a novelist, reviewer for The Times, and co-host of the podcast History Book Buffs alongside friend of this podcast Roger Moorhouse. Her latest book, Stalin's Apostles: The Cambridge Five and the Making of the Soviet Empire, was recently named a finalist for the 2026 Orwell Prize. In this conversation we discuss Cambridge in the 1930s, revolutionary violence, Soviet intelligence recruitment, Stalin's imperial ambitions, Poland, espionage, ideology, and the enduring temptation to excuse tyranny in the name of an ever-distant utopia.

The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty was intended to limit the development and deployment of missile defence systems during the Cold War to avoid further offensive build-up or create incentives for a first ...

Send us Fan MailToday, we finish the two-part story about Leon Trotsky, beginning in 1917 and ending with his assassination by Ramon Mercader in 1940.Support the show

As taken from: 'Port imperialism, Sudan, Israel and the gulf states - Mohamad Hassan' ( • Port imperialism, Sudan, Israel and the gulf states - Mohamad Hassan' gulf states - Mohamad Hassan' ) Revisionism entails the distortion, perversion, deviation from Marxism. Since Krushchevite revisionism took the Soviet Union by the throat in the 1950s, the anti-imperialist movement has been derailed by the weakening and eventual undemocratic dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. As a result, the global anti-imperialist movement has become lost, confused, divided, and seemingly unable to understand what imperialism is, what produces it, and how to combat it. What the anti-imperialist movement desperately needs today is the restoration of Marxism-Leninism as the explanatory truth of what imperialism is so that we may tackle it. ______________________________________________ Subscribe! Donate! Join us in building a bright future for humanity! http://www.thecommunists.org http://www.lalkar.org http://www.redyouth.org Telegram: https://t.me/thecommunists Twitter: / cpgbml Soundcloud: / proletarianradio Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/theCommunists Odysee: https://odysee.com/@proletariantv:2 Facebook: / cpgbml Online Shop: https://shop.thecommunists.org/ Education Program: Each one teach one! http://www.londonworker.org/education... Join the struggle! https://www.thecommunists.org/join/ Donate: https://www.thecommunists.org/donate/

Ho-fung Hung on the Political Economy of China. Shownotes Ho-fung Hung Prof. Ho-fung Hung at the Johns Hopkins University: https://soc.jhu.edu/directory/ho-fung-hung/ The Conference ‘China and Us: Perspectives on Peace, Human Rights and Socio-Ecological Transformation': https://www.attac.de/china-konferenz/startseite Ho-fung, H. (2015). The China Boom. Why China Will Not Rule the World. Columbia University Press.     https://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-china-boom/9780231540223/ on Citic Press:  https://www.group.citic/en/Diversified_Portfolio/New_Consumption/Citic_Publish/ on the 1989 protests in China:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests_and_massacre on the fiscal reform in China in 1994:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax-Sharing_Reform_of_China_in_1994 on Carl Schmitt: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Schmitt https://www.bpb.de/shop/zeitschriften/apuz/archiv/537943/ortung-und-ordnung-carl-schmitt-im-nationalsozialismus/ on Benito Mussolini:  https://www.dhm.de/lemo/biografie/benito-mussolini https://nationalgeographic.de/geschichte-und-kultur/2023/09/benito-mussolini-aufstieg-und-fall-eines-faschistischen-diktators/ the Constitution of the People's Republic of China:  https://english.www.gov.cn/archive/lawsregulations/201911/20/content_WS5ed8856ec6d0b3f0e9499913.html on Foucault's ‘Regime of Truth':  Lorenzini, D. (2015). What is a ‘Regime of Truth'?. Le foucaldien 1(1).  https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317961938_What_is_a_Regime_of_Truth the mentioned article by Ho-fung Hung in the Jacobin:  Ho-fung, H. (2023). Mussolini in Beijing. Jacobin.  https://jacobin.com/2023/02/mussolini-in-beijing on China's falling CO2 emissions:  https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chinas-co2-emissions-have-now-been-flat-or-falling-for-21-months/ on renewable energy in China:  https://www.carbonbrief.org/china-briefing-5-february-2026-clean-energys-share-of-economy-record-renewables-thawing-relations-with-uk/ Ho-fung, H. (2026). The China Question. Eight Centuries of Fantasy and Fear. Cambridge University Press.  https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/china-question/C15B207366F98DC034ED279435A8CCCA on the case of Solyndra: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solyndra on the economic policy of Mao Zedong and China's relationship to the Soviet Union, Felix Wemheuer's youtube channel ‘Studying Maoist China' is recommended:  https://www.youtube.com/@felixwemheuerstudyingmaois1051 on Chile during the Cold War:  Lockhart, J. (2016). Reimagining Chile's Cold War Experience: From the Conflict's Origins to Salvador Allende's Inauguration. University of Arizona.  https://repository.arizona.edu/handle/10150/620841 on Salvador Allende:  www.britannica.com/biography/Salvador-Allende on the Paris Commune: Badiou, A. (2021). The Paris Commune: Marx, Mao, Tomorrow. Monthly Review 73(1).  https://monthlyreview.org/articles/the-paris-commune-marx-mao-tomorrow/ Weber, I. M. (2021). How China Escaped Shock Therapy. The Market Reform Debate. Routledge. https://www.routledge.com/How-China-Escaped-Shock-Therapy-The-Market-Reform-Debate/Weber/p/book/9781032008493 the mentioned publication on i.a. guerilla policymaking:  Heilmann, S. & Perry, E. J. (2011). Mao's Invisible Hand. The Political Foundations of Adaptive Governance in China. Harvard University Press.  https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674060630 the quote ‘it's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism' is commonly attributed to Frederic Jameson:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fredric_Jameson on Wolfgang Streeck:  https://www.mpifg.de/457994/Streeck on the 2026 Hungarian parliamentary election:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Hungarian_parliamentary_election Relevant Episodes of Future Histories  S04E02 | Merle Groneweg zu Staatskapitalismus, Ökologie und Klimapolitik in China https://www.futurehistories.today/episoden-blog/s04/e02-merle-groneweg-zu-staatskapitalismus-oekologie-und-klimapolitik-in-china/ S03E60 | Felix Wemheuer zu unserer Zukunft mit China https://www.futurehistories.today/episoden-blog/s03/e60-felix-wemheuer-zu-unserer-zukunft-mit-china/ S02E09 | Isabella M. Weber zu Chinas drittem Weg  https://www.futurehistories.today/episoden-blog/s02/e09-isabella-m-weber-zu-chinas-drittem-weg/ Future Histories Contact & Support If you like Future Histories, please consider supporting us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/join/FutureHistories Contact: office@futurehistories.today Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/futurehpodcast/ Mastodon: https://mstdn.social/@FutureHistories English webpage: https://futurehistories-international.com   Episode Keywords #Ho-fungHung, #JanGroos, #Interview, #JohnHopkinsUniversity, #FutureHistories, #China, #PoliticalEconomy, #Capitalism, #MarketSocialism, #Socialism, #Mao, #Governmentality, #Democracy, #Imagination, #Society, #Communism, #ClimateChange

2026-05-24 | UPDATES #206 | The shame of the USSR, an ecological and political disaster that precipitated its end. How a Soviet lie at reactor four killed tens of thousands — and then killed the USSR. There was a sentence spoken by a Ukrainian liquidator at the Chornobyl memorial ceremony that resonated. The man who said it is one of the dwindling number of survivors of the 600,000-strong liquidator force the Soviet Union mobilised between 1986 and 1990 to clean up after the worst civilian nuclear disaster in human history. He worked at the plant. He saw friends die. He retired early from disability. He returned this week, at his own expense, to honour the dead. And speaking to Al Jazeera at the foot of the liquidators' monument inside the exclusion zone, he said this:"In many ways, the independence of Ukraine was born on April 26, 1986, in Chornobyl. Without their heroism, an independent Ukraine might not even exist today."----------SUPPORT THE CHANNEL:https://www.buymeacoffee.com/siliconcurtainhttps://www.patreon.com/siliconcurtainhttps://www.gofundme.com/f/scaling-up-campaign-to-fight-authoritarian-disinformation----------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.----------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 — "Chornobyl's surviving 'liquidators' return 40 years after nuclear disaster" (26 April 2026)The Conversation — "Forty years after the Chernobyl disaster, its legacy still resonates" — David Marples and Cynthia Weber (April 2026) The Moscow Times (Opinion) — "40 Years Later, Chernobyl Remains a Lesson in the Unthinkable" — Charles Digges, Bellona (26 April 2026) Washington Post — "40 years after Chernobyl, war brings new rounds of disaster and displacement" (26 April 2026)Washington Post — "Despite Russia's war, one Ukrainian city still gathers for midnight Chernobyl vigil" (26 April 2026) Euronews — "On 40th Chernobyl disaster anniversary, Zelenskyy accuses Russia of committing 'nuclear terrorism'" (26 April 2026) PBS NewsHour — "Strikes kill at least 16 as Chernobyl anniversary highlights nuclear risks of Russia-Ukraine war" (26 April 2026)CBC News / Reuters — "Ukraine marks 40th Chornobyl anniversary amid fears war with Russia could repeat disaster" (26 April 2026) South Carolina ETV / History In A Nutshell — "The Chernobyl Disaster 40th Anniversary Special" (23 April 2026)George W. Bush Presidential Center — "The cost of lies: Chornobyl at 40" (24 April 2026)National Security Archive / George Washington University — "Top Secret Chernobyl: The Nuclear Disaster through the Eyes of the Soviet Politburo, KGB, and U.S. Intelligence" (2019)NATO Association of Canada — "Hiding Truth at All Costs: Revisiting the Chernobyl Disaster" Keele University analysis — "Chernobyl and USSR" — Glasnost contradiction; May Day parades despite radiation; Gorbachev "malicious lies" May 14; "highly immoral campaign"; Swedish discovery; risk society concept----------

Victor Davis Hanson, Mark Levin. Iran Will Violate Any Nuclear Deal — Here's Why, Voter fraud FOUND in Georgia AND Arizona, Why America Keeps Proving the Experts Wrong   Victor Davis Hanson: Why America Keeps Proving the Experts Wrong Mark Levin Show- Iran Will Violate Any Nuclear Deal — Here's Why Voter fraud FOUND in Georgia AND Arizona   Iran Will Violate Any Nuclear Deal — Here's Why On Tuesday's Mark Levin Show, when we suddenly hit the brakes and called off the planned military operation against the Iranian regime, it was clear that something was going on. We gave the regime 2-3 days to come to some arrangement that presumably includes no nukes. What does no nukes mean? The regime is a borderless religious extremist cult that has repeatedly cheated on agreements and seeks conquest, not coexistence. The core concern is the lack of credible nuclear enforcement because the regime will violate any deal and that future U.S. leaders may lack the political will to respond. Also, the truth about war powers. No president, of either party, has accepted the constitutionality of the 1973 War Powers Act. The Supreme Court has never ruled on the Act's constitutionality and likely never will. The only power Congress has to prevent a military operation is the power of the purse. A president has broad power to take military action. Later, in breaking news Ed Gallrein defeats Rep Thomas Massie in the Kentucky House primary, after Massie tried to win votes by blaming Jews and the Israeli lobby. Mark Levin Podcast  May 19 2026     Victor Davis Hanson: Why America Keeps Proving the Experts Wrong We've heard this story before. From Nazi Germany to the Soviet Union to Japan and the European Union, Americans have repeatedly been told another world power was about to overtake the U.S. America is still leading the world in energy, agriculture, military strength, higher education, and innovation, and today's fears about a rising China are part of a much older pattern of American decline narratives, argues Victor Davis Hanson on today's edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In a Few Words.” Watch this video at- https://youtu.be/YTjWu0yYfTY?si=RirZMBdaru8wGioj The Daily Signal  and Victor Davis Hanson   306,253 views May 19, 2026 Victor Davis Hanson: In a Few Words

Forty years ago, the world's worst nuclear accident took place at Chernobyl, in what was then the Soviet Union. When news of the disaster began to emerge beyond the Iron Curtain, one of those paying close attention was Adi Roche in Ireland. At the time, Adi was working as a peace educator, teaching about nuclear weapons and Cold War tensions. She went on to found Chernobyl Children International, which became one of the most significant and sustained humanitarian responses to the disaster. Over the years, she brought aid and medical support to Ukraine, Belarus and other affected regions, established a paediatric cardiac programme for children born with heart defects, and helped arrange for children from Belarus to be adopted in Ireland. Colm Flynn meets Adi Roche to hear about the work that has shaped her life, and the Christian faith that she says has sustained her through it. This episode of The Documentary, comes to you from Heart and Soul, exploring personal approaches to spirituality from around the world.

Pakistan did not just become America's ally after 1947 – it slowly became a state whose military and strategic establishment learned that survival depended on staying useful to Washington. In this episode of In Our Defence, host Dev Goswami and national security expert Sandeep Unnithan trace how Pakistan evolved into a geopolitical rentier state: trading geography, military cooperation and strategic access for money, weapons, political backing, and regime stability. We break down: -Why the United States backed Pakistan after independence -How Pakistan's military became deeply tied to Washington -Why Pakistani generals realised pleasing the US was often the key to surviving domestically -The Cold War origins of the US-Pakistan partnership -How this relationship pushed India closer to the Soviet Union -What the Imran Khan cipher controversy actually revealed -Whether the US played a role in Khan's removal -The rise of Asim Munir and Pakistan's military establishment -Why Pakistan may still prioritise US ties even at the cost of China Tune in! Produced by Taniya Dutta Sound mixed by Aman Pal

You don't always need words to speak up.Silence SpeaksIn a time when words were dangerous, Grigory found a way to speak up using silence. Mimes. Robots. Mermaids. You'll only hear a story like this on Snap Judgment.Thank you Grigory for sharing your story! Check out Grigory's work on his Youtube...watch Man and the Sea, The Acrobats, Jungle, and Black Square, recorded by Grigory before he left the Soviet Union.Produced by John Fecile, original score by Renzo Gorrio.Marcel on the TrainDuring WWII, a young Marcel Marceau helped rescue children from the Nazis. How he did so became the basis of his art.Thanks Marshall for speaking with us! You can find more info about Marshall Paillet's work here. Produced by John Fecile, original score by Renzo Gorrio.The Kiss - LIVE at Story FestIn high school, Nimisha Ladva was used to keeping her head down and her test scores up. But she surprises everyone by getting a lead in the school play -- well, that role it comes with a chance to do something she'd never done before: kiss a boy. A huge thank you to Nimisha Ladva. She's a playwright and college essay coach. You can find her at theessayadvantage.com and on instagram @nimishaladva Nimisha Ladva performed this story live at Story Fest. If you haven't heard of Story Fest, it's a national show that finds amazing local writers, journalists, and performing artists to perform their work LIVE on stage. Read about the work they do, see what cities they are coming to, and get tickets at storyfest.org. Season 17 - Episode 24 Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

3 hours and 13 MinutesPG-13Thomas777 is a revisionist historian and a fiction writer.This is the complete audio to the series exploring the research of Viktor Suvorov (Vladimir Rezun) and Joachim Hoffmann.Thomas' SubstackRadio Free Chicago - T777 and J BurdenThomas777 MerchandiseThomas' Book "Steelstorm Pt. 1"Thomas' Book "Steelstorm Pt. 2"Thomas on TwitterThomas' CashApp - $7homas777Pete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Support Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's SubstackPete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on TwitterBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.

In 1953, an Indian diplomat nicknamed the 'sombre porcupine' was given a rare opportunity when he was invited to the Kremlin to meet Joseph Stalin, one of the most controversial figures of the 20th century. Krishna Menon was a key figure in India's fight for independence from British rule, and was close to Jawaharlal Nehru, who'd become independent India's first Prime Minister. Reena Stanton-Sharma listens to archive recordings of Menon recalling his impressions of the Soviet Union's leader in a 1967 BBC interview. Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by and curious about the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there. For nine minutes every day, we take you back in time and all over the world, to examine wars, coups, scientific discoveries, cultural moments and much more. Recent episodes explore everything from how the Excel spreadsheet was developed, the creation of cartoon rabbit Miffy and how the sound barrier was broken.We look at the lives of some of the most famous leaders, artists, scientists and personalities in history, including: the moment Reagan and Gorbachev met in Geneva, Haitian singer Emerante de Pradines' life and Omar Sharif's legendary movie entrance in Lawrence of Arabia.You can learn all about fascinating and surprising stories, like the invention of a stent which has saved lives around the world; the birth of the G7; and the meeting of Maldives' ministers underwater. We cover everything from World War Two and Cold War stories to Black History Month and our journeys into space.(Photo: Krishna Menon. Credit: M Stroud/Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Faith Under FireIn the early hours of another sleepless night in Kyiv, air raid sirens echoed through the city as missiles and drones struck residential neighborhoods. One apartment building collapsed into a mountain of concrete and smoke. Rescue workers clawed through the rubble searching for survivors. For many Ukrainians, this has become a grim rhythm of life. Yet even amid war, the gospel continues to shine.Recently, Caleb interviewed Ukrainian pastor, professor, and volunteer chaplain Andrii Murzin in Kyiv to discuss how the war has affected the church, the preaching of the gospel, and the spiritual challenges facing Christians in Ukraine today.A Ministry Shaped by WarAndrii Murzin serves at Kyiv Theological Seminary as the director of the Master's program in biblical counseling. His ministry focuses on discipleship, counseling, and helping Christians understand how to minister effectively within Eastern Orthodox culture. But since Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022, his ministry has expanded beyond classrooms and lecture halls. Andrii also serves as a volunteer chaplain to soldiers affected by the war.Andrii on the far left When the war became much closer and much more intense and much more obvious that it is our war not somebody else's war. I realized that as a Christian I have to be active. I cannot ignore that it's the area of one of the biggest needs. For Andrii, chaplain ministry is not political theater. It is obedience to Christ. He pointed to Matthew 25 and reflected that if Jesus were physically walking through Ukraine today, He might say:He could have said I was in prison, I was in the hospital, l and I was in the trenches and you did not visit me.When War Comes to Your DoorstepThe interview itself took place only hours after one of the largest attacks on Kyiv in recent months. Andrii and his wife had chosen to sleep at the seminary that night rather than remain in their high-rise apartment on the 15th floor. Throughout the night they heard explosions nearby as drones and missiles struck the city. By morning, an entire section of a residential building had collapsed. Caleb described watching rescue workers pull bodies from the rubble only a short distance away from where they were filming.For Ukrainian believers, war is no longer distant news. It is outside their windows, above their rooftops, and sometimes directly over their heads.“We Are Fighting for Survival”One of the strongest themes Andrii emphasized was that Ukrainians do not see this war primarily as a battle over territory. I think it's important for the western audience to understand that Ukrainians are fighting for our survival.He explained that many Western narratives oversimplify the conflict as a political dispute over borders. But Ukrainians view it differently. They believe Russia seeks to erase Ukraine as a nation and suppress its identity, language, and freedom. This fear is not rooted merely in speculation, but in history. Andrii referenced the long history of Soviet oppression, mass killings, and persecution that Ukrainians endured under the Russian Empire and later the Soviet Union. Because of this history, many Ukrainians believe surrender would not end suffering, but instead deepen it.Religious FreedomMurzin challenged a common misconception heard in some Western Christian circles; that Ukraine and Russia are spiritually or morally equivalent. According to him, the difference in religious freedom is enormous. In Ukraine, evangelical churches have enjoyed broad freedom to preach the gospel since the fall of the Soviet Union. Churches openly evangelize, serve in schools, minister to soldiers, and conduct outreach across society.By contrast, he described Russia as increasingly authoritarian, where churches are expected to support state ideology and where religious groups with Western ties are often treated with suspicion or hostility. Many reports have also surged from occupied Ukrainian territories where priests and pastors from multiple denominations have been killed or persecutedThe Church in a Time of TestingWar has created both opportunities and pressures for the Ukrainian church. On one hand, churches are serving refugees, supporting soldiers, and ministering to grieving families. Thousands of Ukrainians who previously showed little spiritual interest are now suddenly confronting questions about death, eternity, and hope.[War] makes all people think about eternity, about your soul, about God, and spiritual issues.Chaplain ministry, especially among men in the military, has opened doors many churches struggled to reach before the invasion.Yet the war has also exposed fear within the church itself. Ukraine's military mobilization affects nearly every congregation. Some men avoid traveling across cities out of fear of being drafted. Others wrestle with anxiety about serving near the front lines. Andrii spoke carefully and compassionately about this reality, acknowledging the fear many experience. He himself was once detained and taken to a draft center. Still, he believes the gospel directly confronts humanity's deepest fear - death. He referenced Hebrews 2 and explained that Christ frees believers from slavery to the fear of death through His victory on the cross....So that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. - Hebrews 2:14-15Murzin emphases on the fact that this is a time when our actions have to prove that we really believe what we preach.The Gospel Still AdvancesEven in the middle of war, many churches in Ukraine have become places of refuge and hope for people who have lost homes, family members, or any sense of stability. Christians across the country continue sharing the gospel, serving their communities, and pointing people to Christ while daily life is still marked by uncertainty and air raid sirens. The war has turned Ukraine into both a battlefield and a mission field. And through the smoke, sorrow, and uncertainty, many Christians there continue proclaiming the same message the church has carried for centuries - Christ remains Lord, even in wartime.

We've heard this story before. From Nazi Germany to the Soviet Union to Japan and the European Union, Americans have repeatedly been told another world power was about to overtake the U.S. America is still leading the world in energy, agriculture, military strength, higher education, and innovation, and today's fears about a rising China are part of a much older pattern of American decline narratives, argues Victor Davis Hanson on today's edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In a Few Words.” 

Stalin strategically delayed Operation Bagration until two weeks after D-Day, ensuring that the Western Allies would exhaust German forces first. Using American steel, fuel, and Studebaker trucks, the Red Army emerged as a massive, mechanized force capable of expanding Soviet dominance from Berlin to Beijing. Sean McMeekin explains that after the war, the U.S. facilitated this rise by arming Stalin's far eastern armies while cutting off aid to the Chinese Nationalists in 1946. Ultimately, Lend-Lease provided the mobility and resources—including butter and sugar—that created the conditions for the Soviet Union to emerge as a global superpower. (8/8)1900

Winston Churchill viewed the Soviet Union as a necessary bulwark against Hitler, leading him to treat Stalin as a "brother-in-arms" despite Soviet crimes. To keep the Russian army fighting as "cannon fodder," Churchill diverted crucial equipment—including 200 Hawker Hurricane fighters and tanks meant for Singapore and North Africa—directly to Stalin. This massive transfer of resources retarded Britain's own domestic manufacturing and aircraft industries. Sean McMeekin argues that Churchill's "historical imagination" allowed the British to avoid direct land combat with Germany for several years while the Russians suffered the brunt of the casualties, leading to modern Russian moral blackmail arguments. (3/8)1905 BAKU

FDR faced significant domestic opposition from powerful congressional voices like Harry Truman and Hiram Johnson, who viewed both Hitler and Stalin as "monsters" or "beasts." Internal polls showed that 54% of Americans opposed aiding the Soviet Union, with majority support in only 11 states. To bypass this political resistance, the Roosevelt administration kept the early stages of Soviet aid secret for six months. Sean McMeekin notes that it was only after the Soviet regime survived the 1941 winter that Roosevelt publicly admitted to a multi-billion dollar credit line with no strings attached, effectively winning the political battle through executive discretion. (2/8)1900 BAKU

The Soviet Union used Lend-Lease to "plunder" American technology, including entire Ford factories and suitcases of blueprints guarded by NKVD agents. Harry Hopkins personally intervened to facilitate the shipment of specialized chemicals and enriched uranium to the USSR. Sean McMeekin notes that while some officials like Harry Dexter Whitewere identified as NKVD agents, Hopkins acted as a devoted "agent of influence," routinely overruling ambassadors like Averell Harriman when they attempted to exert leverage over these transfers. Hopkins ensured that the flow of vital resources remained unconditional, viewing Stalin's interests as his own and outmaneuvering anyone who raised concerns. (7/8)UNDATED BAKU

I went through my Kurt Vonnegut phase in my late teens. I read Player Piano, Cat's Cradle, I think, Deadeye Dick, and of course, Slaughterhouse Five. I can't say I remember much from those novels. Nor can I recall why Vonnegut connected with me. Perhaps now is a good time to revisit them. Little did I know that Vonnegut had a large readership in the Soviet Union. His books were translated by Rita Rait-Kovaleva and published in hundreds of thousands of copies. And in late Soviet fashion they were also passed around by hand to those who couldn't secure copies. What did Soviet readers see in Kurt Vonnegut? How did the authorities regard this so-called “Anti-American American”? And what did Vonnegut think about his Soviet fans? Sarah Phillips wondered too after she participated in a project on Vonnegut. The result is her book, Kurt Vonnegut in the USSR. Sarah reached out to us, so we booked an interview. It turns out that Vonnegut has transcultural appeal. There's even a revival in Ukraine. But what does Vonnegut's popularity among Soviet youth say about really existing state socialism? Tune in to find out.Guest:Sarah Phillips is professor of anthropology at Indiana University-Bloomington. She's the author of Women's Social Activism in the New Ukraine and Disability and Mobile Citizenship in Postsocialist Ukraine, both published by Indiana University Press. Her new book is Kurt Vonnegut in the USSR published by Bloomsbury. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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.

The key words to the success of the Chinese communist revolution are luck and violence — at least, that's according to Prof. Frank Dikötter.Continuing from our last episode on Prof. Frank Dikötter's new book, Red Dawn Over China, we trace the origin story of the Chinese Communist Party, and revisit how the CCP went from an obscure, unpopular, intellectual-led political force to take over the whole of mainland China.Prof. Dikötter is the Milias Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and chair professor of humanities at the University of Hong Kong. He is the most widely read living historian of modern China, with books translated into more than twenty languages. He is the author of The People's Trilogy, which includes Mao's Great Famine (2010), The Tragedy of Liberation (2013), and The Cultural Revolution (2016).We left off our story in 1929 last time, when the Soviet Union launched an oft-forgotten invasion into Manchuria and set the tone of Sino-Soviet relations. In this episode — which has been edited for clarity and brevity — we continue the story from 1929 to 1949, and trace the rise of the CCP through the Long March, the Yan'an period through the Sino-Japanese War, and how CCP emerged victorious in the civil war.The key words we explore are luck and violence. In other words, not your official nationalist communist history from the third “Resolution of the CPC Central Committee on the Major Achievements and Historical Experience of the Party over the Past Century” (emphasis added), but a history of how an incredible willingness to use force against fellow party cadres and civilians combined with extraordinary international luck. Japan, the Soviet Union, and the U.S. propelled the CCP to its self-proclaimed glorious founding of the People's Republic.Enjoy.LeoFor quick navigation to the specific sections:* The Japanese threat kept the Communists alive* Stalin, the great architect of Mao's Chinese communist revolution* How Edgar Snow put Mao on the map* The gift of Manchuria* No Stalin, no MaoBallerina - Yehezkel Raz, Artlist Original MusicPeking Hotel is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Recommended reads* Frank Dikötter, 2026, Red Dawn Over China, Bloomsbury Publishing* Frank Dikötter, 2010, Mao's Great Famine, Bloomsbury Publishing* Frank Dikötter, 2013, The Tragedy of Liberation, Bloomsbury Publishing* Frank Dikötter, 2016, The Cultural Revolution, Bloomsbury Publishing* Paul Hollander, 1981, Political Pilgrims, Oxford University Press* Edgar Snow, 1937, Red Star Over China, Random HouseAbout usThe Peking Hotel podcast and newsletter are digital publications in which Liu He interviews China specialists about their first-hand experiences and observations from decades past. The project grew out of Liu's research at Hoover Institution collecting oral history of China experts living in the U.S. Their stories are a reminder of what China used to be and what it is capable of becoming.We also have a Chinese-language Substack. We hope to publish more conversations like this one, so stay tuned!Shoutout!We would like to say thank-you to our supporters, especially to the following people who referred us to great many friends, colleagues and acquaintances:* China Books Review* Initium* Bill Bishop & Sinocism* Jordan Schneider & ChinaTalk* PC & What's Happening in China* 《人文中国》Humanities China* The Goldkorn Newsletter* 擦星星事务所* 不如读书* Matt Turpin & China Articles* Career China Newsletter* The China Week* The China-MENA NewsletterKudos to you, our network now has more awesome people like yourselves. Please keep spreading the word for us :) I appreciate it.Thanks for reading Peking Hotel! This post is public so feel free to share it. Get full access to Peking Hotel at pekinghotel.substack.com/subscribe

Comrades from the CPGB-ML visited the London Soviet Memorial, erected in 1999, to honour the 27 million Soviet citizens who gave their lives to smash fascism which secured the success of revolutions across the world and marked the beginning of the world's exit out of the explicit colonial era (with neocolonialism taking its place). Today, the history of who contributed the most towards this victory has been distorted by the Western imperialist states; it is no longer the Soviet Union in their history books but the U.S, the U.K, France et cetera. ______________________________________________ Subscribe! Donate! Join us in building a bright future for humanity! http://www.thecommunists.org http://www.lalkar.org http://www.redyouth.org Telegram: https://t.me/thecommunists Twitter: / cpgbml Soundcloud: / proletarianradio Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/theCommunists Odysee: https://odysee.com/@proletariantv:2 Facebook: / cpgbml Online Shop: https://shop.thecommunists.org/ Education Program: Each one teach one! http://www.londonworker.org/education... Join the struggle! https://www.thecommunists.org/join/ Donate: https://www.thecommunists.org/donate/

"The Wizard Of The Kremlin" is a 2025 English-language French political satire film directed by Olivier Assayas, who co-wrote the screenplay with Emmanuel Carrère. It is based on the 2022 novel by Giuliano da Empoli. It follows the fictional government official Vadim Baranov (Paul Dano) during the final years of the Soviet Union and the turbulent early years of the Russian Federation, as a young Vladimir Putin (Jude Law) rises to power. It also stars Alicia Vikander, Will Keen, Tom Sturridge, and Jeffrey Wright. Dano and Assayas were both kind enough to spend some time talking with us about their work and experiences making the film, which you can listen to below. Please be sure to check out the film, which is now playing in theaters from Vertical Entertainment. Thank you, and enjoy! Check out more on NextBestPicture.com Please subscribe on... Apple Podcasts - https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/negs-best-film-podcast/id1087678387?mt=2 Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/7IMIzpYehTqeUa1d9EC4jT YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWA7KiotcWmHiYYy6wJqwOw And be sure to help support us on Patreon for as little as $1 a month at https://www.patreon.com/NextBestPicture and listen to this podcast ad-free Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

New York Times bestselling author Peter Schweizer joins host Cliff May to discuss his new book, "The Invisible Coup: How American Elites and Foreign Powers Use Immigration as a Weapon." The two take a deep dive into the recent U.S.-China summit, comparisons between the Islamic Republic and the former Soviet Union, Russia's war in Ukraine, and Peter's explosive discovery of a "Manchurian Candidate"-style weaponization of the U.S. immigration system.

Episode 69 - I explore consciousness with energetic healer Nonna Gerikh. Born in the Soviet Union, Nonna is a professional cellist and has an exceptional record in wellness and healing.Disclaimer: Please note that all information and content on the UK Health Radio Network, all its radio broadcasts and podcasts are provided by the authors, producers, presenters and companies themselves and is only intended as additional information to your general knowledge. As a service to our listeners/readers our programs/content are for general information and entertainment only.  The UK Health Radio Network does not recommend, endorse, or object to the views, products or topics expressed or discussed by show hosts or their guests, authors and interviewees.  We suggest you always consult with your own professional – personal, medical, financial or legal advisor. So please do not delay or disregard any professional – personal, medical, financial or legal advice received due to something you have heard or read on the UK Health Radio Network.

105 - Is there a 100 year plan with China and should China buy up all of the US farmlands? 110 - Did any history dictate back when Reagan was in office and dealing with Gorbachev in the Soviet Union? 115 - Your calls 120 - Brandon Gill takes Fairfax County Attorney to task at a Congressional hearing, what is the difference between Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner and this attorney? 130 - Your calls 135 - John Allante McCauley calls in to the Dom Show a few days before the May 19th PA GOP Committee Election. How is he feeling about his chances of winning the election? What is the significance of June 2nd to Allante? 150 - Dom Giordano Presents: Progressive Women Gone Wild! 155 - Your Calls

12 - Days before the PA Primary, Stacy Garrity is getting pushback? 1210 - Upcoming guest John Allante McCauley is calling in at 1:30, Trump's visit to China and was asked if Xi is a dictator? 1215 - Side - Someone associated with the police 1220 - What are Dems are doing about Josh Shapiro? 1230 - Did any Dems sign a resolution on supporting police officers during National Police Week or are they still wanting to defund the police? 1235 -Chief Patrick Malloy from the Abington Township Police Department joins the show today. Dom asks the chief why aren't people in Congress not supporting a resolution supporting police officers? What does training look like when a police officer is approaching a driver these days? 1240 - Friday's Top 5- Male Actors 105 - Is there a 100 year plan with China and should China buy up all of the US farmlands? 110 - Did any history dictate back when Reagan was in office and dealing with Gorbachev in the Soviet Union? 115 - Your calls 120 - Brandon Gill takes Fairfax County Attorney to task at a Congressional hearing, what is the difference between Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner and this attorney? 130 - Your calls 135 - John Allante McCauley calls in to the Dom Show a few days before the May 19th PA GOP Committee Election. What is the significance of June 2nd to Allante? How is he feeling about his chances of winning the election? 150 - Dom Giordano Presents: Progressive Women Gone Wild! 155 - Your Calls 2 - Recap from the noon hour on why Dems are not supporting police officers as this is Police Appreciation Week? 205 - Dr Victoria Coates joins the Dom Show for her Friday weekly visit. What are her thoughts on Taiwan and would there be a conflict? Is there going to be a 100 year plan with China? Would there be a deal reached when it comes to Iran? 215 - Dom's Money Melody! 225 - Your calls 230 - Why is Dems voting present? Are they really supporting the defunding of the police? And why is the media covering it up? Or complicit? 235 - Your calls 250 - The Lightning Round!

Peter Savodnik joins us to talk about Nicholas Kristof's column alleging abuse of Palestinian prisoners, including the most extreme dog-rape allegation, and how pro-Israel people should respond when the reporting is weak but the underlying issue may still deserve investigation. We talk about the difference between bad journalism and false accusations, the danger of reflexively circling the wagons, Ben-Gvir and the Israeli prison system, antisemitism, double standards against Israel, whether Jews are being pushed back into history, JD Vance, Marco Rubio, Gavin Newsom, Jonathan Haidt, Twitter addiction, and the general collapse of everyone's sanity online. Peter Savodnik reported for The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, The Guardian, GQ, Wired and other venues from the former Soviet Union, the Middle East, Asia and across the United States. His book, The Interloper: Lee Harvey Oswald Inside the Soviet Union, was published in 2013 by Basic Books. He is now a senior editor at The Free Press and based in Los Angeles. https://x.com/petersavodnik Chapters: 00:00 Intro and Peter Savodnik joins 01:16 Nick Kristof's Israel prison-abuse column 06:15 Olmert, Benny Morris, Haviv Rettig Gur, and what may actually be true 10:00 Double standards, bad reporting, and how Israel should respond 15:56 The dog-rape allegation and the danger of reflexive denial 22:22 Why Israel may need its own serious investigation 24:23 Circling the wagons vs. demanding proof 28:17 What real reporting would require 34:03 Retractions, antisemitism, and “emptying our pockets” for every accusation 38:27 Are Jews and Israel entering a more dangerous historical moment? 49:11 JD Vance, Rubio, Trump, and the future of the Republican Party 57:18 Gavin Newsom, 2028, and the Democrats 59:26 Jonathan Haidt, NYU, wokeness, and phone addiction 01:04:13 Twitter fights, the new Comedy Cellar room and final thoughts

Over time, the Soviet Union developed a system of centralized planning that became synonymous with socialism. How did the system work? What did it get right? And why did it ultimately become so associated with shortages and stagnation? On the latest episode of Confronting Capitalism, Vivek Chibber and Melissa Naschek discuss the ambitions and challenges of economic planners, and why the defects may be hardwired into the structure of central planning. The latest issue of Catalyst is out and you can subscribe for just $20 using the code CONFRONTINGCAPITALISM: https://catalyst-journal.com/subscribe/?code=CONFRONTINGCAPITALISM Read show transcripts here: confrontingcapitalism.substack.com Have a question for us? Write to us by email: confronting.capitalism@jacobin.com Confronting Capitalism with Vivek Chibber is produced by Catalyst: A Journal of Theory and Strategy and published by Jacobin. Music by Zonkey.

During the Second World War, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, joined by Winston Churchill, sat down with Chinese nationalist leader Chiang Kai-Shek. The purpose of the meeting, now known as the Cairo Conference, was to strategize against the Empire of Japan and make preparations for a post-war Asia.  Nearly 30 years later, President Richard Nixon, seeing an opportunity to widen the distance between China (now Communist) and the Soviet Union, paid a visit to China to meet Mao Zedong, the chair of the Communist Party. This opened diplomatic relations between the countries.  Since then, presidents have held meetings with Chinese leaders with some regularity. And President Trump is no exception. This week, he will be meeting with Xi Jinping, the President of the People's Republic of China. From AI to Iran, there is a lot on the table. To understand what to expect from this meeting, I sat down with Andrew Harding, Policy Analyst for National Securityand Indo-Pacific Affairs at The Heritage Foundation.    Email us with thoughts, questions, or suggestions: HeritageExplains@heritage.org   More on China from Heritage Experts: https://www.heritage.org/china 

1. AOC Misunderstanding or misrepresenting American history Promoting socialist/communist ideology Opposing wealth creation and free-market capitalism 2. The American Revolution AOC’s claim: The Revolution was against wealth concentration and powerful elites Counterargument in the text: The Revolution was about freedom from government power (King George), not wealth inequality Wealthy individuals (e.g., Robert Morris, George Washington) actually funded the Revolution 3. Wealth and Billionaires AOC’s position (as described): Billion-dollar wealth is “unearned” Counterargument: Wealth can be earned through innovation and value creation Examples used: John D. Rockefeller (oil industry) Henry Ford (assembly line, middle class growth) Elon Musk (technology, space, EVs) 4. Critique of Socialism/Communism Communism historically leads to: Economic failure Human rights abuses Authoritarian control Examples cited: Soviet Union, China, Cuba, North Korea Key idea: Centralized government power = loss of freedom and prosperity 5. Race, Democracy, and U.S. History AOC’s statements: Black Americans “created democracy” Counterargument: U.S. democracy originated from: Declaration of Independence Constitution The U.S. has improved over time (e.g., civil rights movement) Slavery is described as a “moral wrong” 6. Immigration and Government Power AOC warns: Immigration enforcement systems could expand and threaten broader populations Counterargument: Immigration enforcement is framed as law and order The concern about government abuse is dismissed as fearmongering Argument reversal: Leftist governments historically used detention systems more aggressively 7. Use of Historical Comparisons Historical examples to support arguments Comparisons to: Nazi Germany Soviet gulags Japanese internment camps (under FDR) To argue that authoritarianism is tied to left-wing systems Please Hit Subscribe to this podcast Right Now. Also Please Subscribe to the 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson and The Ben Ferguson Show Podcast Wherever You get You're Podcasts. And don't forget to follow the show on Social Media so you never miss a moment! Thanks for Listening YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@VerdictwithTedCruz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/verdictwithtedcruz X: https://x.com/tedcruz X: https://x.com/benfergusonshowYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@VerdictwithTedCruzSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In 1978, a nine-year-old girl in a red coat went looking for a kind man she'd met at a train station. She never came home. Over the next 12 years, at least 52 more would follow. But in the Soviet Union's supposed utopia, serial killers didn't exist — and a government more committed to its own mythology than to its citizens would pay a terrible price for that belief. Crimes of the Centuries is a podcast from Grab Bag Collab exploring forgotten crimes from times past that made a mark and helped change history. You can get early and ad-free episodes and more over at www.grabbagcollab.comOrder the Crimes of the Centuries book at your favorite bookstore or at www.centuriespod.com/book!Follow us on Instagram and other social media: @centuriespodEpisode Sponsors:Hims. Start your free online visit at hims.com/COTC.Home Chef. Get 50% off your first box, free shipping, and free dessert for life at HomeChef.com/COTC.Hiya Health. Get 50% off your first order at hiyahealth.com/COTC.

Send us Fan MailToday, we revisit the life of Leon Trotsky with our focus being on who he was as a person and how he became the revolutionary that would help the Bolsheviks take control of Russia.Support the show

Live May 10Victory Day (May 9) -- Russia's Role in WW2 | Yaron & Nikos ShowFrom the joint invasion of Poland with Hitler in 1939, to the Nazis at the gates of Moscow, to the Red Army overrunning half of Europe and forging an empire that confronted the West for the next 45 years...what was the role of the Soviet Union in WW2, and what are the lessons for today?More on Nikos -- https://www.nikos.orgSupport Nikos -- / nikossotirakopoulos

In this episode the guys break down six training secrets discovered by Soviet Union sports scientists — the methods that made them the most dominant strength athletes in the world before steroids were even part of the conversation. They also get into the surprising dopamine-boosting effect of exogenous ketones, a study on how a father's attractiveness influences his daughter's looks more than the mother's, which group of young men is happiest (married dads by a wide margin), and Gen Z data showing 1 in 8 believe scrolling is more pleasurable than sex. Then they answer questions submitted through their Instagram page, coaching callers live on air.   MAPS 15 BOGO — https://maps15bogo.com Buy 1 get 1 FREE — limited time   Submit a live caller question: https://mplivecaller.com Mind Pump Store: https://mindpumpstore.com Instagram: @mindpumpmedia   SPONSORS   Ketone IQ — https://ketone.com/MINDPUMP 30% off subscription orders + free gift with second shipment (6-pack, merch & more) — no code needed.    Crisp Power — https://www.crisppower.com/mindpump Code: MINDPUMP — 10% off. High protein, high fiber, low carb.   Our Place (cookware) — https://fromourplace.com Code: MINDPUMP — 10% off sitewide. 100-day trial with free shipping and returns.   Mind Pump Fitness Coaching — https://mindpumpfitnesscoaching.com 1.9 NASM CEUs   0:00 - Intro & sponsors 2:04 - 6 Soviet Union training secrets that built the greatest strength athletes ever 12:52 - Prolev's chart — the exact optimal reps & sets at every intensity level 15:33 - Soviet secret #2: Plyometrics & the depth jump — how power training was born 20:12 - Soviet secret #3: Undulating periodization — why structured deloads beat linear training 23:13 - Soviet secret #4 & 5: Sub-maximal reps & complex contrast methods (PAP) 24:25 - Ketone IQ deep dive — exogenous ketones raise dopamine without stimulants 28:44 - Dad's attractiveness influences daughter's beauty more than mom's (study) 30:38 - Face swap app nostalgia & grocery store facial recognition cameras 32:29 - Amazon TV ads you can add to cart mid-commercial 38:44 - Study: Married dads 22–35 are 2x happier than single childless men 44:47 - Gen Z study: 1 in 8 say scrolling is more pleasurable than sex 52:13 - Crisp Power snack break & Our Place cookware sponsor 55:35 - Caller: Josh (Vermont) — 100lb weight loss, 5 years sober, CrossFit addiction & sobriety 1:08:18 - Caller: Kelly (Massachusetts) — RED-S, under-eating, lost menstrual cycle, needs a reverse diet 1:17:41 - Caller: Ted (Indiana) — Truck driver on a brutal sleep schedule, how to stay healthy on the road 1:28:06 - Caller: Alexandra (Washington) — Hypermobility/EDS, training with joint laxity, and personal training career path  

In the late 1950s, the United States found itself trailing in the Space Race as the Soviet Union achieved one milestone after another.  In response, NASA launched Project Mercury, an ambitious effort to put an American into space using little more than experimental rockets, cramped capsules, and sheer determination.  Explosions, near disasters, and political pressure surrounded every mission, yet the program would lay the foundation for landing humans on the Moon.  Learn more about the Mercury Program and America's first manned space flights on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Sponsors Newspapers.com Honor the past by uncovering its stories at Newspapers.com  Promo Code EVERYTHINGEVERWHERE Samsara Don't wait for the next accident to take action. Head to Samsara.com/EVERYTHING ButcherBox Get your choice between chicken breast or top sirloin for a year OR ground beef for life, PLUS $20 off when you go to ButcherBox.com/everything Quince Go to quince.com/daily for 365-day returns, plus free shipping on your order! Mint Mobile Save 50% on Unlimited premium wireless plans starting at $15/month at MintMobile.com/EED Audible Listen to Project Hail Mary Audible.com/hailmary Fast Growing Trees Get 20% off your first purchase when using the code DAILY at checkout at fastgrowingtrees.com/daily Subscribe to the podcast!  https://everything-everywhere.com/everything-everywhere-daily-podcast/ -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Charles Daniel Associate Producers: Austin Oetken & Cameron Kieffer   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Discord Server: https://discord.gg/Ds7Rx7jvPJ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/everythingeverywheredaily Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/  Disce aliquid novi cotidie Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On Thursday's Mark Levin Show, victory requires finishing off the Iranian regime through military, economic, and internal pressure: arming Iranian resistance groups, targeting the IRGC and internal security forces, encouraging the regular army to turn, and backing opposition operations with U.S. and Israeli airpower. With 92 million Iranians facing intensified oppression and executions, this environment is ideal for supporting internal revolt, as done successfully in past operations. The enemy must surrender or die. Also, the Democrats and the media are repeatedly wrong, for example, Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), was mocked as "Star Wars" fantasy despite expert advice. Reagan fought for its funding, envisioning missile-on-missile defense, ultimately leading to the Patriot system. This pressured Mikhail Gorbachev contributing to a nuclear deal and the beginning of the Soviet Union's end. Reagan armed freedom fighters to halt communism in places like Africa and Afghanistan, and it succeeded. The CIA should do the same thing today to support the Iranians, who have repeatedly tried and failed to overthrow their regime by arming them to help both the Iranian people and U.S. interests. Later, Zohran Mamdani is intentionally creating a violent and hostile environment for the Jewish community in New York City. Jews are being harassed, pushed, and beaten on the streets and outside temples using bullhorns, while swastikas and other hateful symbols appear in Jewish neighborhoods. Thugs, Islamists, and neo-Nazis act freely because they know they can get away with it. Mamdani speaks out of both sides of his mouth, fully aware of the situation, and is deliberately working to depopulate the city of Jewish people in order to turn it into a permanent center for people of his own faith. Afterward, Gov Ron DeSantis calls in to break down Florida's new redistricting map and the possible elimination of property taxes in Florida. Finally, Gov Greg Abbott calls in and explains that he designated CAIR as a foreign terrorist organization using new authority granted by the Texas legislature. In response, CAIR filed a federal lawsuit to overturn the designation. Texas is using the litigation to demand extensive discovery, including all of CAIR's bank records, financial transactions, meetings, travels to terrorist-linked locations, and funding sources and recipients. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ian Shapiro, professor of political science and global affairs at Yale University, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of After the Fall: From the End of History to the Crisis of Democracy, How Politicians Broke Our World (Basic Books, 2026), traces the breakdown in democratic institutions to missteps by Western leaders following the fall of the Soviet Union. Photo: US President George HW Bush (in grey suit) and Russian Federation President Boris Yeltsin (1931 - 2007) (in black suit) wave as they step off Marine One, Maryland, June 17, 1992. (Photo by Ron Sachs/CNP/Getty Images)

They were ambitious students at Cambridge University who went on to climb the ranks of British government and intelligence. But they had a secret. All the while, they were working for the Soviet Union. For a transcript of this episode: https://bit.ly/campusfiles-transcripts To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

John Stossel. The Complete Guide to Socialism vs Capitalism (Myths Explained) People find fault with capitalism. Many think they'd prefer socialism. Why? Because they believe absurd myths about it For example: When socialist countries fail, defenders say: “That wasn't real socialism.” Some say that about the Soviet Union (which made private business illegal). “That's about as close as the world ever saw to the purest socialist end of the spectrum,” explains economist Ben Powell. Meanwhile, capitalism gets trashed. We are told billionaires get rich by making others poor. But that's another myth. In the video above, we debunk 5 myths about socialism, and capitalism. Watch this video at- https://youtu.be/OhZr03g1PI4?si=ijf152nk1XtrcObZ John Stossel 1.15M subscribers 1,247,132 views Dec 23, 2025 . ——— To make sure you receive the weekly video from Stossel TV, sign up here: https://www.johnstossel.com/#subscribe ———