Ukraine knocked out one of the legs of Russia's nuclear triad. This is astonishing. It is also a revolution in military affairs. And it is profoundly destabilizing.
This makes me think of Ogarkov and the "revolution in military affairs" of the 1980s. The Russian general Ogarkov knew that computer chips meant a change in war and society, and also that Russia would have trouble competing. The American use of cruise missiles against Iraq in 1991 showed how right Ogarkov was, and to some degree I think it must have been yet another factor encouraging the collapse of the Soviet system.
Now in 2025 Ukraine has become the military drone superpower of the world - with western backing I'm sure. (I have no idea if Trump was in the loop or not, but the declaration by the German chancellor that Ukraine now has permission to use western weapons within Russian borders, just a few days before Operation Spiderweb was finally deployed, speaks to me of strategic coordination.)
There must be factions in Russia who look at what happened and say, we need to reorient everything around this. But would they go so far as to topple Putin and bring in something new? And even if they wanted to, would they be able to? In 1991, Soviet society was already in ferment. In 2025, every threat from Prigozhin to Navalny has been crushed. I can imagine yet another failed revolt, perhaps a bloodless one by a siloviki faction who want change, and then Putin saying, like Stannis in "Game of Thrones", that "they can only play this trick once", and then pressing ahead with the war.
And what about Ukraine? I have long been fascinated by Zelensky's former advisor Arestovych, whose techno-futurist "Fifth Project" ideal for Ukraine is pro-western but powerful and independent rather than just incorporated into EU and NATO. Arestovych is planning his own presidential run from exile now, but perhaps his political moment has passed.
Ukraine gets intelligence from the Finnish company ICEYE. A couple of years ago, the CEO Rafał Modrzewski, visited my class. It was obvious from his demo that their satellites were more than capable of providing real-time military intelligence, but it was a secret then that they were supplying Ukraine. It's out in the open now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICEYE
Claire, my friend's take on how this is playing in the Pentagon:
"Unfortunately SECDEF has shifted the budget away from heavy armor and artillery to autonomous drone weapons systems like aircraft/ships/subs (think his point here is still on big-ticket end items vs. cheaper weaponry). But he’s also phasing out the Predator/ Reaper / Global Hawk UAVs and wants to replace them with smaller beehive connected swarm drones which are cheaper. Pentagon's not happy about Q series drones vulnerability to shoulder fired air defense systems. Plus Iran now has a Predator type drone and China has a pred type drone the size of a C130 (but looks like a predator) which can carry 100 smaller drones for swarm attacks. Meanwhile, the civilian and military leaders are totally afraid of SECDEF and TACO so they are just executing all of their orders. According to friends of mine in DC and defense contractors, everyone is cooperating with them because they are afraid to lose their jobs or contracts."
First, kudos to the Ukrainian armed forces. This strike is a testment to the skill and resolutuion of a great fighting force. And not incidentally, it's a testement to the ineptitude of the Russian armed forces. Welcome to your very own Pearl Harbor, V. Putin.
Second, however, a note of caution. Revolutions in the art of war are not just about gagetry. When a new weapon like the airplane, the tank, the submarine, or the guided missle appears, it usually takes a long time to work out how best it can be be employed—a process that necessitates determining its limitations as well as its potential. The tank, for example, was held by many of its early advocates to be a straightforward update of the cavalry arm: guns, armor plate and the internal combustion engine replacing the horse and the arme blanche. This turned out to be wrong, as the British Army learned to its discomfiture in the WW II Western Desert battles against Rommel's Afrika Korps.
It seems obvious that drones can be very effective against static targets like air bases, supply points, assembly areas, etc. How effective they might be against fast-moving or well-concealed targets on the battlefield remains to be seen. In and of themselves, drones don't solve the problem of target acquisition, which is an equation involving observation, classification, communication and, above all, time.
And finally, let us not forget that the most flexible weapons system of all, which can be produced at low cost by unskilled labor, is the human soldier.
Excellent article! In addition to us, and NATO, I imagine Israel must be shitting bricks as well.
We in the US at least have the comfort that we don't have an active war (even though plenty of people dislike us), and so an attack like this would be a provocation, however successful. (Russia had no such defense -- they were already provoked.)
But Israel is actively at war with people right next door. I imagine every Hamas officer is studying this very closely. Low cost. High impact. Start out under the Iron Dome. That's a significant threat.
Give it a few back and forth rounds, and the whole Middle East is on fire. And I share the fear of limited contingency planning in our gutted Pentagon and intelligence services.
There is no more absurd item in the portfolio of V. Putin's neocon cheering section than the argument that preventing Russia from conquering Ukraine means World War Three. After nearly three years of fighting, Russia hasn't managed to defeat Ukraine. V. Putin is a monster of evil, to be sure, but he's not stupid. He knows quite well that war with NATO would be the end of him and his vile regime. That's why despite all the nuclear saber rattling, he hasn't gone there.
As it happens, I disposed of this bogus neocon argument back in 2022:
This post may go unnoticed and unread, but I wonder if there's a relevant history lesson in Robert Skidelsky's NYRB piece on Niall Ferguson's Three Volume work on the Rothschilds. Skidelsky's review covers Volumes 1 and 2. "It suggests that it is wrong to think of the Rothschilds as a kind of international financial government capable of taming the rivalry among nations. This is brought out clearly by the failure of James Rothschild’s grand design to head off the Austro-Prussian war of 1866. James thought of states as businesses. Where historians see nation-building, James saw mergers and breakups of mergers. The Austrian Empire was virtually bankrupt. James’s solution to its problems was for Austria to sell Holstein to Prussia and Venetia to Italy. The states concerned should, he suggested, raise the money by selling or mortgaging their railways; Austria and Italy would get Rothschild loans in return for tax breaks on the Rothschild-owned Lombard railway, which ran through both states. James dreamed of “a complex of interdependent transactions designed to liquidate Austria’s unsustainable empire without the need for an economically disruptive war.”
But Austria would not accept the political condition for a loan. It went to war to defend its “property” and was rapidly defeated at Königgratz. To the extent that anyone controlled the plot it was Bismarck, not Rothschild. As compensation, “post-war indemnity transfers were a lucrative source of business….” James Rothschild’s blindness to nationalism was echoed by Mayer Carl in Frankfurt at the end of the 1860s. Bismarck, he argued, did not need a war with France to bring about German unification, economics was already doing it. Once again the statesmen ignored this logic, but the Rothschilds again made a large profit by helping France, after its defeat in 1871, pay reparations ahead of time. This “was, quite simply, the biggest financial operation of the century, and arguably the Rothschilds’ crowning achievement.” The pattern was established. The bankers could make money out of the policies of states. They did not control them.
In the quarter-century before World War I, nationalist and imperialist rivalry broke up the cosmopolitan ideal and practice of the Rothschilds and other bankers. The Rothschilds became patriots and their banks became national banks. Far from the bankers calling the tune, as Hobson supposed, it was governments which used private finance to cement political alliances. The French loans to Russia, the German loans to Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire, and the competition of German and French finance in Italy are the main examples. In 1890 the French foreign minister, Alexander Ribot, ironically told Rothschild Frères “not to make the bourse available to [Italy]…until she has properly learnt the lesson she is learning at the moment about the benefits of the Triple Alliance.” When the Russian finance minister, Sergei Witte, asked for a loan in 1898, “Natty” Rothschild informed Prime Minister Salisbury that “it would neither be in accordance with the interest nor inclination of Ld. Rothchild to encourage M. de Witte unless "Your Lordship" thought it desirable that he should do so.” Salisbury affirmed that it was “not in our interest to encourage the borrowing operations of Monsieur de Witte. But it may by some unforeseen turn of events, become so: & therefore it would not be prudent to show reluctance to help him too manifestly.” Ferguson comments that this reply “perfectly illustrates how the bond market and diplomacy interacted.” What, of course, it shows is that the bond market had become an instrument of diplomacy.
Partly because they hated tsarist Russia for its state-sponsored anti-Semitism, the English Rothschilds tried hard to promote an Anglo-German alliance. At a famous dinner in March 1898 Alfred Rothschild brought together the Conservative leaders Ar-thur Balfour and Joseph Chamberlain with the German Ambassador Count Paul von Hatzfeldt to discuss Anglo-German cooperation. This was the start of what Ferguson calls “a protracted period of diplomatic toing and froing between Berlin and London in which the Rothschilds played a pivotal role.” But apart from a minor Anglo-German agreement over China, their efforts were fruitless. Equally significant was the failure of financial leverage to stop Russia’s persecution of the Jews. Whether the Rothschilds used the carrot of loans or the stick of refusing them, Russian policy continued on its haphazardly brutal way.
In continents peripheral to the European balance of power, finance was able to play a more independent role. As their European bond business fell off, the English Rothschilds started lending heavily overseas, especially to Egypt and Brazil, and investing in extractive industries. “Mercury, gold, copper, lead, diamonds, rubies and oil: by 1900 the Rothschilds occupied a remarkable position in the world market for non-ferrous metals, precious stones and petroleum.” It was this diversification that made them players in the imperial game. Like other banks involved in overseas investment, the Rothschilds favored cooperative solutions; their ideal was what Ferguson calls “multinational imperialism.” And where the bankers had a relatively freehand, consortiums were easy to arrange. But the Rothschilds could not avoid getting caught up in the imperial adventures of Disraeli in Egypt and Cecil Rhodes in South Africa. Except possibly in independent Latin America, finance remained the instrument of European power politics.
As Ferguson’s account brings out, the Rothschilds were in a position to set financial but not political conditions for lending. In the last analysis, finance was the servant of politics. It is true that “financial realignments… brought France and Russia and ultimately England together to check the new Germany”; but this was a case of finance tracking diplomacy, not leading it. Competitive nationalism broke the trans-European links between the London, Paris, and Vienna houses. In World War I the Rothschilds fought on both sides. Lenin got the true situation upside down when he talked of “monopoly capitalism” driving the nations to war. States used finance much more than finance used states. Nineteen-fourteen made it crystal clear that “the banks could not stop a war, but war could stop the banks.”
This does not mean that international finance did not importantly discipline economic life in the nineteenth century. Its effect was particularly felt in the fiscal and exchange rate policies of states, just as it is today. Although the merchant banks were rivals, they could agree on what made a particular state credit-worthy. It was their business to do so, for had they not been able to secure their loans, no one would have invested in them. So the bond markets played a crucial role in promoting “sound finance.” The bankers were equally ardent advocates of “sound money.” By the end of the nineteenth century, Rothschild loans were usually made conditional on their recipients joining the gold standard. Here Ferguson opens up an important line of inquiry: How did the Rothschilds, and other merchant banks who dealt in bullion, lubricate the working of that mysterious, but highly successful, system?
Ferguson’s book is not easy to read. It is too densely packed for that. Was so much financial detail really necessary? It will fascinate aficionados of the bond market, and much of it helps to show the relationship between financial and political events. As Ferguson writes, in a particularly felicitious passage, the bond market was the nineteenth century equivalent of opinion polls. “If investors bid up the price of a government’s stock, that government could feel secure. If they dumped its stock, that government was quite possibly living on borrowed time as well as money.” But a clearer explanation of how the underwriting system worked would have been worth a mass of financial statistics.
Another snag is that multigenerational Rothschild family history, with its huge cast and a tiny number of first names, is apt to become very confusing, despite the help given by the genealogical tables. The shape of the story is sometimes overwhelmed by the richness of the historical archives, most of them being used for the first time, and by the detailed background given for each financial operation.
But these are minor quibbles. Taken together, Ferguson’s two volumes are a stupendous achievement, a triumph of historical research and imagination. No serious historian can write about the connection between the politics, diplomacy, and economics of the nineteenth century in the same way again. And, as any good work of history should do, it constantly prompts us to ask questions about our own age, when once again we have embarked on the grand experiment of a world economy without a world government. How did it work the first time around? And why did it end in a world war? (Robert Skidelsky.)
Interesting. Those familiar with the background to the war of 1866 between Prussia and the Habsburg Monarchy know that the crisis was engineered by Bismarck in order to provoke a war whose objective, for Prussia, was to break up the German Confederation and exclude Austrian from the affairs of Germany. With Austria out of the picture Prussia, enlarged by its absorption of Hannover and other north German territories, would be by far the strongest German state. No Rothschild-brokered territorial deal would have deflected Bismarck from his course.
I can't help but hearken back to Kuehnelt-Ledddihn's insights in this regard. "The duel between Austria and Prussia for the supremacy over the Germanys was finally ended in 1866 by the 'Inner-German War.' Prussia (i.e., Bismarck) entered into a not-s0-secret alliance with Italy, promising to give Italy the Austrian province of Venice in case of a Prussian victory.......In the ensuing war all the German states, with the exception of a few small north German principalities sided with Austria. The war was in fact a 'federal execution' by the league against a member state that had broken the covenant. But Prussia won- the criminal , tragically , overpowered the policeman and the defeated Italians got Venice....In historical perspective, the war was a catastrophe of the first order, 'Cascia il mondo!' ( 'The world is crumbling!' ) exclaimed Cardinal Antonelli. It proved an enormous victory for liberalism, progress, enlightenment, and 'modernity'--as well as for Prussia, whose preparation for the unification of the Germanys under her leadership had the enthusiastic blessing of all the advanced minds. (Footnote-One of them was William James, another one John Stuart Mill. But the 'leftist' admiration for Prussia was most alive in the French Revolution. Already Jacques Bainville (Histoire de France, vol. 1) had loved it. See the essay "Delusions of the West and First Warnings, Kucharzewski.)........Had Austria won, the unification of the Germanys would have taken place under her leadership........A very different Germany under Vienna, not under Berlin, would have been the result. However, history decided differently." (Kuehnelt-Leddihn.)
Taibbi's point is that he is concerned. Very concerned. What was the progressive mantra, past and present, "Be afraid, be very afraid?" Miscalculation, unanticipated developments, strategic and tactical blunders are the circumstance of most, if not all, military engagements and wider wars. I find your disposition and disposal reasonable, but ultimately, time will tell. Even clairvoyants miss appointments due to unforeseen circumstances.
Hoping to hear a bit more from your readership on the nature of his ignominiosness.......I subscribe to numerous journals, newspapers and magazines, his among them.
More from WSJ. "The military’s five prime contractors resemble power utilities. Having mastered a complex regulatory system, they maximize profit when production costs are highest, stuffing fees into obscure line items. Asked why a bag of bolts costs $90,000, the Air Force secretary said in April that overpricing was a “systemic issue.”
The military has expressed some interest in producing cheap AI drones. The flagship effort is called Replicator, capitalized with less than 0.2% of the defense investment budget. Replicator’s self-described “poster child” is a loitering bomb that is estimated to exceed $100,000 to build. There aren’t sufficient funds to mass produce at that price.
Change will require three steps. First, the defense secretary must insist that a million cheap AI drones are vital, as former Defense Secretary Robert Gates did when he declared “war on the Pentagon” to spend more than $40 billion on armored trucks. Drone scale can be achieved by shifting $20 billion over three years to new entrants.
Second, reallocation must be guided by an investment committee. This is standard procedure in major corporations, and the secretary of defense has an in-house equivalent, led by the Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation office. The problem is, the military doubts CAPE’s ability to optimize the portfolio, and Congress is openly hostile. CAPE must be empowered to make strategic decisions.
Third, Congress must authorize the secretary of defense to pivot on spending. Modern enterprise management is stymied by more than 1,000 regulations added since 9/11. Congress has additionally upended the budget with more than 50 continuing resolutions since 2010, creating a “use it or lose it” environment that handicaps new initiatives.
AI drones will put our forces at risk, from ships to infantry. Just as the armored blitzkrieg caught Europe off-guard in World War II, so has the proliferation of drone munitions today. America holds a distinct advantage in AI, but harnessing that advantage requires investment risk. That can happen only if generals and the defense secretary acknowledge that America’s expensive military machines risk being overrun by swarms of cheap versions of a technology that we invented."
Mr. West is a former Marine and partner of Goldman Sachs. He served as assistant defense secretary for special operations, 2017-19.
Off topic as an aside, my son, U.S. Army Captain and Blackhawk Pilot, experienced limited drone warfare in Kurdistan, Iraq about 2 years ago. After receiving various messages on events, I was terrified. He took things in stride. Thank God.
This article is from an article in WSJ from last year.
"The most formidable element of American power-projection has long been the warship. After the Oct. 7 attacks against Israel, the Biden administration sent two carrier battle groups to the region to deter Iranian aggression. One of those carriers, the USS Gerald R. Ford, was on its maiden voyage, having recently been completed at a price tag of $13 billion. This makes it the most expensive warship in history.
For that same sum, a nation could purchase 650,000 Shahed drones. It would only take a few of those drones finding their target to cripple and perhaps sink the Ford. Fortunately, the Ford and other U.S. warships possess ample missile defense systems that make it highly improbable that a few, or even a few dozen, Shahed drones could land direct hits. But rapid developments in AI are changing that.
Drones are simple, cheap and available to militaries the world over—they’re the sarissas of today. But what those militaries have yet to achieve is the conception of war that will fulfill the potential of these unmanned systems. Much as the sarissa changed the face of warfare 2,000 years ago when employed in a phalanx of well-trained soldiers, the drone will change the face of warfare when employed in swarms directed by AI. This moment hasn’t yet arrived, but it is rushing to meet us. If we’re not prepared, these new technologies deployed at scale could shift the global balance of military power." (Ackerman and Stavridis)
"For almost ten years we’ve had a consensus mechanism that evaluates all things this way: if it’s bad for Trump, it’s good for the world. It started with being “disappointed” to learn Robert Mueller didn’t find Russian agents in the White House and progressed to “told you so” tales of 400,000 deaths proving Trump wrong about Covid. Now we have the best political Schadenfreude story ever: Nuclear showdown proves Trump’s incompetence. Or, as Walter Kirn put it, ending the world to own Trump.
The Maddow segment was one of a pile of ebullient “Peace Averted!” responses to Ukraine’s “Operation Spiderweb,” which in any normal era would be covered first as an unprecedented escalation of nuclear tension. Officially now, politicians and media have gone mad, so focused on Trump that they no longer see or acknowledge danger to you, me, and the rest of the world beyond. The headlines alone are mind-boggling:
“Trump administration left clueless about Ukraine’s attack on Russia,” chirped Salon. “Lindsey Graham leads GOP push to Punish Putin as Trump Dithers,” countered the Daily Beast. “Trump Silent on Ukraine Drone Attacks as MAGA Blames ‘Deep State,’” read Axios. “Trump Promised Peace in Ukraine in a Day. Here’s What Actually Happened,” roared NPR. “Ukraine Shows It Can Still Flip the Script on How Wars Are Waged,” cheered the New York Times, which quoted experts saying Ukraine “has taken warfare to the next level” and also exposed Donald Trump’s missile defense plan:
General Hodges and several other people said that Ukraine’s strikes should, at least, force the Trump administration to rethink its plans for a “golden dome” missile defense shield, which President Trump unveiled last month… Administration officials say it will be a next-generation military system designed to guard against a variety of ballistic, hypersonic and cruise missiles deployed by adversaries such as Russia.
But the missile shield as envisioned wouldn’t protect the United States from the types of drones Ukraine used.
Few outlets attempted to answer what should be the first question after these attacks. How much danger are we in? What is the likelihood of a Russian response in Europe or the United States? The only context I saw in which this issue was even addressed was as an element of irrational paranoia described in Tal Axelrod’s Axios story, about how “MAGA blames ‘Deep State.’” This passes for political commentary in America:
MAGA’s alarm over Ukraine’s attack — and comparative silence when Russia targets Ukrainian civilians — underscores the movement's deep skepticism of the Western-backed government in Kyiv.
Incredible. The reason there’s less “alarm” about Russian attacks in Ukraine is that Ukraine does not have nuclear weapons and has no capability of starting an apocalyptic missile exchange. No one is comparing levels of moral “alarm.” They’re doing what alleged grownups in the White House and Pentagon should have done from the start, namely weighing strategic pros and cons for the American population. There are no “implications to our national security,” as Nicolle Wallace put it, in Russia’s attacks. There are following Ukraine’s. That’s the entire issue, for those of us who are thinking about our kids, not playing “Risk” with other peoples’ lives.
The implications of Ukraine’s attack, particularly Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s post-attack TD dance about how “the preparation took over a year and a half,” are drastic and obvious. The symbolism of the attack being launched a day before peace talks also speaks volumes about Ukraine’s attitude toward potential settlement, as well as the attitude of Ukraine’s backers in the West. These people don’t want a negotiated peace of any kind, among other things for the beyond-bat-bleep reason that it might be perceived as a political win for Trump.
The Trump administration claims it was not informed of these attacks, which may be true. However, it strains credulity to think no one in NATO or the CIA or the Pentagon had inkling of this plan. The New York Times take about the status of U.S.-Ukraine joint planning hardly inspired confidence:
Ukraine has always been protective of its operational security; even more so in recent months since senior Trump administration national security officials inadvertently disclosed operational American strike plans in Signal group chats. There currently is no joint planning between the United States and Ukraine on strikes in Russia.
Not “currently,” but perhaps before? It’s bad either way.
If the Trump administration knew, and does not move quickly to disavow Ukraine, Russia will be forced to conclude there is no post-election policy change, and the Trump White House helped carry out a dangerous Biden-era mission. If Trump didn’t know, that’s worse: now the presidency itself, the last avenue by which the American population could ask out of this conflict, has been humiliated and rendered irrelevant.
This is the situation being celebrated." (Taibbi.)
"I just hope it has a similar effect on us—because it damned well should. We’re no less vulnerable. I hope the Pentagon is in an outright panic, frankly, because now is the time to be in it. We really shouldn’t wait until our own airbases lie in smoking ruins."
A few years ago, a few of us original subscribers dug deeply into this notion of drones and drone swarms and the imperious exposure of the US Military's assets. Back then a lot was secret squirrel (so I had to be cagey with what I knew) but now more information is released for public consumption; one example is this excellent but lengthy MIT Tech Review article...
"Every branch of the service and a host of defense tech startups are testing out new weapons that promise to disable drones en masse. There are drones that slam into other drones like battering rams; drones that shoot out nets to ensnare quadcopter propellers; precision-guided Gatling guns that simply shoot drones out of the sky; electronic approaches, like GPS jammers and direct hacking tools; and lasers that melt holes clear through a target’s side. Then there are the microwaves: high-powered electronic devices that push out kilowatts of power to zap the circuits of a drone as if it were the tinfoil you forgot to take off your leftovers when you heated them up."
Hi Claire. Yes, I will have more to say later, as I am off to school in 15. A couple short thoughts: your piece was a great collective--I hadn't seen the Japanese reaction; it frankly brought tears to my eyes. The two things I thought of (and you brought up) were the psychological effect on Russia and our (the US) preparedness or lack thereof.
Among the things the Russians have spent a ton of time, money and energy doing since Putin started trying to reform the military, are far flung exercises in places like the Laptev Sea, moving air assets 10,000 km--all heavily centered on defending Russia's vast expanses. At least one analyst I read opined then that all that "strategic depth" was also a damned lot of ground to cover and defend. But defend they do. Or think they must. And practice, plan and resource heavily to do. The MENTALITY was there, and they've always taken it very, VERY seriously, whether it was entirely born of nostalgia, myth and paranoia or not.
And all of that has SO been punched in the gut. Or worse. I think this new reality, along with the economic doom you forecast (Paul Warburg thinks by the end of this year) could convulse Russia, and the world, in ways we can only begin to imagine.
Which (I think our minds work alike) immediately makes me think about our own illustrious National Command Authority. For all of our justified worries and daily proclamations, there has to this date, been precious little in-our-face consequence to the circle-is-complete incompetence of our national leaders. I think this is the bell toll for THAT too. I think we are fast approaching OUR Pearl Harbor (Part Deux)--when something happens that finally exposes this in a way that even TACO can't lie his way out of. We can only hope that this one, like the OG version, is more spectacle than long-lasting strategic reality. I'm not so sure it will be.
You asked about dealings in the Pentagon. I will ask. I think the corresponding question is, how far down has the purging gone? I read about the vast numbers of leadership who've been fired at FBI since High Chair Kash took over, and I wonder if there's been something similar ongoing with Commander Pete.
Anyway, I loved this article. I will re-read it too.
Great article Claire! You anticipated one of my main questions, which was--'If this attack blows up a lot of conventional wisdom about the military advantages conferred by Russia's geographic isolation, then wouldn't that apply to us as well?'
Also interested in what you said about the impact this could have on internal perceptions of Putin's level of vulnerability, and his grip on power. As the US has drifted away from liberal democratic norms in recent years, I've grown increasingly alert to the extent to which strength and the *perception of strength* are inextricably linked in authoritarian systems in a way that's very distinct from liberal democratic models (we were discussing a related topic on here a few weeks ago as it pertained to MAGA and the idea of *revolutionary consciousness*). Are you familiar at all with the blog/newsletter Epsilon Theory published by Ben Hunt? Apparently it's associated with a global investment firm called Second Foundation Partners, and it tends to address some of these questions from a game theoretic perspective.
A concept I've returned to a lot in trying to understand how authoritarians operate and how/why they manipulate public perception through lies and spectacle is the idea of *Common Knowledge*. I'm not just referring to the colloquial definition of the term, which is basically "Knowledge that everyone knows." *Common Knowledge*--in the game theoretic context--also refers to "What everyone knows about what everyone knows, and what everyone knows about what everyone knows about what everyone knows....." I first encountered it in the math world in the form of a famous riddle called the "Green Eyes/Brown Eyes Problem." And for a couple years I'd beed batting around the idea of trying to write an article about its applicability to politics--that is until I discovered that I'd been "scooped" by Epsilon Theory last summer (here is the link to their article--https://www.epsilontheory.com/joe-biden-and-the-common-knowledge-game/).
One of the basic insights that I think *Common Knowledge* provides when it comes to the behavior of strongman leaders is that a lot of their propaganda isn't merely aimed at altering perceptions among the public. It's aimed at altering perceptions *about* perceptions. Big lies--even ones that almost everyone knows are lies--can still have tactical utility when a leader is trying to thwart collective action by confusing, dividing, or demoralizing their opposition *if* enough people *believe* that others believe them.
The article I linked to above mainly applied this concept to the chaotic political situation in the United States immediately following Biden's disastrous debate performance last June (though it also offers quite a bit of other background, including a link to a description of the *Green Eyes/Brown Eyes problem*). But I think it's broadly applicable in *any* instance in which a leader (particularly a strongman) loses face in a way that causes an abrupt change in the public's perception of their level of vulnerability.
Given that you've written about stuff like this for years, I imagine I'm telling you some things that you already know. But if you're not familiar with Common Knowledge, Epsilon Theory, or the article linked above, then I'd definitely recommend checking them out.
p.s. I'd been meaning to ask--Do you know why I can't italicize text inside of your replies? Ordinarily in substack you can italicize a word or phrase by putting it inside asterisks. But I notice in your replies it just prints the asterisks as is (I don't know if maybe this has something to do with the settings you're using. I haven't noticed it elsewhere on the platform).
> In March alone, the Russians suffered an estimated 41,000 combined killed or wounded in action, with 272 Russian tanks, 1,644 artillery systems, and 607 combat armored vehicles destroyed or disabled. (Since the start of the war, Russia has lost an estimated 12,835 tanks and armored vehicles, 305 aircraft, and 22 naval vessels.)
> In May 2025, Ukraine demonstrated another technological breakthrough when two Russian Su-30 fighter jets were shot down over the Black Sea by AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles launched from Magura-7 naval drones. It was the first time that a crewed jet was downed by missiles fired from uncrewed surface vessels; naval warfare continues to evolve over the Black Sea.” . .
> Drones equipped with surface-to-air missiles, machine-gun modules, and FPV drone “carriers” shifted the advantage back to Kyiv. These upgraded drones are relatively sophisticated but still cost-effective, “with costs ranging from $250,000 to $300,000 per unit,” said Kuzan. “This is about five times cheaper than a Harpoon antiship missile and slightly more than the cost of an M982A1 Excalibur shell or a Javelin ATGM.”
> Yes, the Russians have largely forced Ukrainian forces back out of Kursk Oblast, the Russian territory that the Ukrainian military seized in a surprise attack in August. But for four consecutive months, the Russians gained less territory than the preceding month. In March, Russia advanced 99 square miles, a land mass roughly the size of the city limits of Sacramento. In April, Russia broke the streak by gaining 166 square miles, a land mass roughly the size of the city limits of Wichita.
> According to a Bloomberg analysis published in May 21, “Battlefield data indicate that — despite a consistent advantage in manpower and steady gains — Putin’s military has fallen far short so far of satisfying his war aims. The pace of Russia’s main advance in eastern Ukraine has halved since the start of the year compared with a similar period through the end of 2024.”
"Accounts read like a science fiction thriller. Over the course of 18 months, Ukrainians constructed hundreds of low-cost quadcopter drones armed with explosive devices, smuggled them into Russia, and piled them into modified mobile cabins. Those cabins were loaded onto trucks where they were ferried to locations adjacent to several Russian airbases. There, the trucks opened remotely, releasing a fleet of suicide drones that executed simultaneous strikes on more than 40 strategic Russian military aircraft.
The strikes were wildly successful. Ukraine claims that roughly 34 percent of the aircraft used to deliver ballistic and cruise missiles to Ukrainian targets were damaged or destroyed — an assessment we shouldn’t gainsay since Ukraine did most of the intelligence gathering ahead of this strike. The U.S. did not provide support, Washington insists. Ukraine targeted airfields as far away as Irkutsk, thousands of miles from home. Ukrainian operatives had already been withdrawn from Russia ahead of the strikes, which Volodymyr Zelensky claims were prepared right under the noses of Russian security forces. “What’s most interesting, is that the ‘office’ of our operation on Russian territory was located directly next to FSB headquarters in one of their regions,” he said.
This is a success on par with Israel’s pager attacks, and it has been received with the same negativity that followed Israel’s coup. Just think about how exposed our own bomber fleet is to that sort of attack, the handwringers mourned. Could the U.S., too, see its strategic air force grounded in the opening hours of a war with a near-peer power in the same way? After all, if Ukraine was able to negotiate the entire Russian Federation despite its wartime posture, how easy would it be to smuggle weapons of war into the American landscape?
And how will Russia respond to this incredibly successful attack on one of the pillars of its nuclear triad? Anything that alters the nuclear-deterrent dynamic that typifies stable relations between Moscow and the West is inherently dangerous. Have Ukraine’s attacks on the systems that Russia employs to deliver nuclear attacks made the Kremlin’s trigger fingers a little itchier? Do we have more to fear from a Russia that is on the backfoot than one that’s confident, extroverted, and eagerly gobbling up sovereign territory in Europe?
These questions and worries are valid. They should be of great concern to Western strategists and war planners, but they should not obscure the prospects for positive outcomes.
The aircraft Ukraine disabled — supersonic Tu-22M long-range bombers, Tu-95 flying fortresses, A-50 early warning warplanes, etc. — are not easily repaired or replaced. This isn’t the first time Ukraine has targeted Russian military infrastructure and brought Russia’s war of choice home, but it is the most comprehensive of those attacks. Vladimir Putin’s capacity to sustain his expansionist war depends to some extent on the Russia military’s ability to absorb its losses. The more losses, the harder they are to absorb, and the closer we get to a just settlement to this conflict.
The Ukrainian operation has already had other clarifying effects. Russia’s insistence that any threat to its nuclear-delivery vehicles could trigger a nuclear response has been revealed as just one more of Moscow’s illusory red lines. The vivid illustration of the threat that low-cost drone swarms pose to sophisticated aerial assets should and will light a fire under Western efforts to harden its defenses and speed counter-drone innovation. And the contrast the Ukrainian operation strikes with Russia’s conduct of its war is instructive. While Moscow rains rockets, drones, and missiles down on Ukrainian population centers, Ukraine goes to extended lengths to limit its activities to legitimate military targets. Just as Israel’s pager attacks could not have been more discreet, Kyiv’s circumspection accentuates the glaring moral distinction between the aggressor in this war and the target of its aggression.
America has many reasons to celebrate Ukraine’s battlefield successes. Among them, that it provides yet more evidence that America’s partners abroad are not the burdens their detractors make them out to be. They are clever and brave, ambitious and steadfast. Their fight against our mutual enemies represents a profound contribution to our own safety and the preservation of the geopolitical order we take for granted. America’s frontline partners are awesome. They put their doubters to shame." (Rothman.)
Ukraine has been looking to multiple sources for satellite imagery in recent months, notably Japan. If they’ve been working on this 18 months, they probably couldn’t have been planning on that, though.
Perhaps the possible Russian fears of US involvement in attacks on their nuclear bombers are the reason it’s being so loudly announced that Trump knew nothing about this. You’d want anyone nonessential kept out of the loop anyway, and certainly anyone given to bluster or rambling.
Another Substacker, Commander Salamander, pointed out that US air and naval bases are concentrated in ways that would make the organization vulnerable to attacks like this- a few major air and naval bases handle large chunks of our combat power. Also that there are a fair number of Russian, Chinese, and Iranian immigrants here. This has its obvious benefits- Russian military-age men moving abroad has probably taken as much conscriptable potential manpower off the board as war casualties, and they’re most likely doing useful work in countries where they move long-term- but a tiny number of saboteurs could cause a lot of trouble.
I love how this attack exposes Russia’s inability to rebuild many of those planes. They are so much weaker today than they were as the Soviet Union and the takeaway is clearly they can’t be allowed to rebuild those capabilities and their empire because they are legit terrorists.
And what a brave new world militarily overnight. Occurs to me that aircraft carriers seem particularly exposed. Submarine and stealth airborne drone carriers are def going to be a thing, maybe even drones within missiles. Delivering these tools close to targets is going to be a huge arena for innovation. And defensive drones are going to need to be innovated to counter all this.
This makes me think of Ogarkov and the "revolution in military affairs" of the 1980s. The Russian general Ogarkov knew that computer chips meant a change in war and society, and also that Russia would have trouble competing. The American use of cruise missiles against Iraq in 1991 showed how right Ogarkov was, and to some degree I think it must have been yet another factor encouraging the collapse of the Soviet system.
Now in 2025 Ukraine has become the military drone superpower of the world - with western backing I'm sure. (I have no idea if Trump was in the loop or not, but the declaration by the German chancellor that Ukraine now has permission to use western weapons within Russian borders, just a few days before Operation Spiderweb was finally deployed, speaks to me of strategic coordination.)
There must be factions in Russia who look at what happened and say, we need to reorient everything around this. But would they go so far as to topple Putin and bring in something new? And even if they wanted to, would they be able to? In 1991, Soviet society was already in ferment. In 2025, every threat from Prigozhin to Navalny has been crushed. I can imagine yet another failed revolt, perhaps a bloodless one by a siloviki faction who want change, and then Putin saying, like Stannis in "Game of Thrones", that "they can only play this trick once", and then pressing ahead with the war.
And what about Ukraine? I have long been fascinated by Zelensky's former advisor Arestovych, whose techno-futurist "Fifth Project" ideal for Ukraine is pro-western but powerful and independent rather than just incorporated into EU and NATO. Arestovych is planning his own presidential run from exile now, but perhaps his political moment has passed.
Wonderful analysis Claire. Thank you
Ukraine gets intelligence from the Finnish company ICEYE. A couple of years ago, the CEO Rafał Modrzewski, visited my class. It was obvious from his demo that their satellites were more than capable of providing real-time military intelligence, but it was a secret then that they were supplying Ukraine. It's out in the open now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICEYE
Claire, my friend's take on how this is playing in the Pentagon:
"Unfortunately SECDEF has shifted the budget away from heavy armor and artillery to autonomous drone weapons systems like aircraft/ships/subs (think his point here is still on big-ticket end items vs. cheaper weaponry). But he’s also phasing out the Predator/ Reaper / Global Hawk UAVs and wants to replace them with smaller beehive connected swarm drones which are cheaper. Pentagon's not happy about Q series drones vulnerability to shoulder fired air defense systems. Plus Iran now has a Predator type drone and China has a pred type drone the size of a C130 (but looks like a predator) which can carry 100 smaller drones for swarm attacks. Meanwhile, the civilian and military leaders are totally afraid of SECDEF and TACO so they are just executing all of their orders. According to friends of mine in DC and defense contractors, everyone is cooperating with them because they are afraid to lose their jobs or contracts."
Well done Claire! Vary clear and brave work! Thanks vary much😄💪🏼
First, kudos to the Ukrainian armed forces. This strike is a testment to the skill and resolutuion of a great fighting force. And not incidentally, it's a testement to the ineptitude of the Russian armed forces. Welcome to your very own Pearl Harbor, V. Putin.
Second, however, a note of caution. Revolutions in the art of war are not just about gagetry. When a new weapon like the airplane, the tank, the submarine, or the guided missle appears, it usually takes a long time to work out how best it can be be employed—a process that necessitates determining its limitations as well as its potential. The tank, for example, was held by many of its early advocates to be a straightforward update of the cavalry arm: guns, armor plate and the internal combustion engine replacing the horse and the arme blanche. This turned out to be wrong, as the British Army learned to its discomfiture in the WW II Western Desert battles against Rommel's Afrika Korps.
It seems obvious that drones can be very effective against static targets like air bases, supply points, assembly areas, etc. How effective they might be against fast-moving or well-concealed targets on the battlefield remains to be seen. In and of themselves, drones don't solve the problem of target acquisition, which is an equation involving observation, classification, communication and, above all, time.
And finally, let us not forget that the most flexible weapons system of all, which can be produced at low cost by unskilled labor, is the human soldier.
Very interesting that Trump did not condemn Ukraine’s attacks. I wonder if he secretly approved it?
Excellent article! In addition to us, and NATO, I imagine Israel must be shitting bricks as well.
We in the US at least have the comfort that we don't have an active war (even though plenty of people dislike us), and so an attack like this would be a provocation, however successful. (Russia had no such defense -- they were already provoked.)
But Israel is actively at war with people right next door. I imagine every Hamas officer is studying this very closely. Low cost. High impact. Start out under the Iron Dome. That's a significant threat.
Give it a few back and forth rounds, and the whole Middle East is on fire. And I share the fear of limited contingency planning in our gutted Pentagon and intelligence services.
Shouldn't hurt to entertain a contrary and reasonable point of view. At the very least, I hope not.
https://www.racket.news/p/ending-the-world-to-own-trump?r=3qd0x&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&triedRedirect=true
There is no more absurd item in the portfolio of V. Putin's neocon cheering section than the argument that preventing Russia from conquering Ukraine means World War Three. After nearly three years of fighting, Russia hasn't managed to defeat Ukraine. V. Putin is a monster of evil, to be sure, but he's not stupid. He knows quite well that war with NATO would be the end of him and his vile regime. That's why despite all the nuclear saber rattling, he hasn't gone there.
As it happens, I disposed of this bogus neocon argument back in 2022:
https://unwokeindianaag.substack.com/p/vladimir-strangelove-putin?utm_source=publication-search
This post may go unnoticed and unread, but I wonder if there's a relevant history lesson in Robert Skidelsky's NYRB piece on Niall Ferguson's Three Volume work on the Rothschilds. Skidelsky's review covers Volumes 1 and 2. "It suggests that it is wrong to think of the Rothschilds as a kind of international financial government capable of taming the rivalry among nations. This is brought out clearly by the failure of James Rothschild’s grand design to head off the Austro-Prussian war of 1866. James thought of states as businesses. Where historians see nation-building, James saw mergers and breakups of mergers. The Austrian Empire was virtually bankrupt. James’s solution to its problems was for Austria to sell Holstein to Prussia and Venetia to Italy. The states concerned should, he suggested, raise the money by selling or mortgaging their railways; Austria and Italy would get Rothschild loans in return for tax breaks on the Rothschild-owned Lombard railway, which ran through both states. James dreamed of “a complex of interdependent transactions designed to liquidate Austria’s unsustainable empire without the need for an economically disruptive war.”
But Austria would not accept the political condition for a loan. It went to war to defend its “property” and was rapidly defeated at Königgratz. To the extent that anyone controlled the plot it was Bismarck, not Rothschild. As compensation, “post-war indemnity transfers were a lucrative source of business….” James Rothschild’s blindness to nationalism was echoed by Mayer Carl in Frankfurt at the end of the 1860s. Bismarck, he argued, did not need a war with France to bring about German unification, economics was already doing it. Once again the statesmen ignored this logic, but the Rothschilds again made a large profit by helping France, after its defeat in 1871, pay reparations ahead of time. This “was, quite simply, the biggest financial operation of the century, and arguably the Rothschilds’ crowning achievement.” The pattern was established. The bankers could make money out of the policies of states. They did not control them.
In the quarter-century before World War I, nationalist and imperialist rivalry broke up the cosmopolitan ideal and practice of the Rothschilds and other bankers. The Rothschilds became patriots and their banks became national banks. Far from the bankers calling the tune, as Hobson supposed, it was governments which used private finance to cement political alliances. The French loans to Russia, the German loans to Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire, and the competition of German and French finance in Italy are the main examples. In 1890 the French foreign minister, Alexander Ribot, ironically told Rothschild Frères “not to make the bourse available to [Italy]…until she has properly learnt the lesson she is learning at the moment about the benefits of the Triple Alliance.” When the Russian finance minister, Sergei Witte, asked for a loan in 1898, “Natty” Rothschild informed Prime Minister Salisbury that “it would neither be in accordance with the interest nor inclination of Ld. Rothchild to encourage M. de Witte unless "Your Lordship" thought it desirable that he should do so.” Salisbury affirmed that it was “not in our interest to encourage the borrowing operations of Monsieur de Witte. But it may by some unforeseen turn of events, become so: & therefore it would not be prudent to show reluctance to help him too manifestly.” Ferguson comments that this reply “perfectly illustrates how the bond market and diplomacy interacted.” What, of course, it shows is that the bond market had become an instrument of diplomacy.
Partly because they hated tsarist Russia for its state-sponsored anti-Semitism, the English Rothschilds tried hard to promote an Anglo-German alliance. At a famous dinner in March 1898 Alfred Rothschild brought together the Conservative leaders Ar-thur Balfour and Joseph Chamberlain with the German Ambassador Count Paul von Hatzfeldt to discuss Anglo-German cooperation. This was the start of what Ferguson calls “a protracted period of diplomatic toing and froing between Berlin and London in which the Rothschilds played a pivotal role.” But apart from a minor Anglo-German agreement over China, their efforts were fruitless. Equally significant was the failure of financial leverage to stop Russia’s persecution of the Jews. Whether the Rothschilds used the carrot of loans or the stick of refusing them, Russian policy continued on its haphazardly brutal way.
In continents peripheral to the European balance of power, finance was able to play a more independent role. As their European bond business fell off, the English Rothschilds started lending heavily overseas, especially to Egypt and Brazil, and investing in extractive industries. “Mercury, gold, copper, lead, diamonds, rubies and oil: by 1900 the Rothschilds occupied a remarkable position in the world market for non-ferrous metals, precious stones and petroleum.” It was this diversification that made them players in the imperial game. Like other banks involved in overseas investment, the Rothschilds favored cooperative solutions; their ideal was what Ferguson calls “multinational imperialism.” And where the bankers had a relatively freehand, consortiums were easy to arrange. But the Rothschilds could not avoid getting caught up in the imperial adventures of Disraeli in Egypt and Cecil Rhodes in South Africa. Except possibly in independent Latin America, finance remained the instrument of European power politics.
As Ferguson’s account brings out, the Rothschilds were in a position to set financial but not political conditions for lending. In the last analysis, finance was the servant of politics. It is true that “financial realignments… brought France and Russia and ultimately England together to check the new Germany”; but this was a case of finance tracking diplomacy, not leading it. Competitive nationalism broke the trans-European links between the London, Paris, and Vienna houses. In World War I the Rothschilds fought on both sides. Lenin got the true situation upside down when he talked of “monopoly capitalism” driving the nations to war. States used finance much more than finance used states. Nineteen-fourteen made it crystal clear that “the banks could not stop a war, but war could stop the banks.”
This does not mean that international finance did not importantly discipline economic life in the nineteenth century. Its effect was particularly felt in the fiscal and exchange rate policies of states, just as it is today. Although the merchant banks were rivals, they could agree on what made a particular state credit-worthy. It was their business to do so, for had they not been able to secure their loans, no one would have invested in them. So the bond markets played a crucial role in promoting “sound finance.” The bankers were equally ardent advocates of “sound money.” By the end of the nineteenth century, Rothschild loans were usually made conditional on their recipients joining the gold standard. Here Ferguson opens up an important line of inquiry: How did the Rothschilds, and other merchant banks who dealt in bullion, lubricate the working of that mysterious, but highly successful, system?
Ferguson’s book is not easy to read. It is too densely packed for that. Was so much financial detail really necessary? It will fascinate aficionados of the bond market, and much of it helps to show the relationship between financial and political events. As Ferguson writes, in a particularly felicitious passage, the bond market was the nineteenth century equivalent of opinion polls. “If investors bid up the price of a government’s stock, that government could feel secure. If they dumped its stock, that government was quite possibly living on borrowed time as well as money.” But a clearer explanation of how the underwriting system worked would have been worth a mass of financial statistics.
Another snag is that multigenerational Rothschild family history, with its huge cast and a tiny number of first names, is apt to become very confusing, despite the help given by the genealogical tables. The shape of the story is sometimes overwhelmed by the richness of the historical archives, most of them being used for the first time, and by the detailed background given for each financial operation.
But these are minor quibbles. Taken together, Ferguson’s two volumes are a stupendous achievement, a triumph of historical research and imagination. No serious historian can write about the connection between the politics, diplomacy, and economics of the nineteenth century in the same way again. And, as any good work of history should do, it constantly prompts us to ask questions about our own age, when once again we have embarked on the grand experiment of a world economy without a world government. How did it work the first time around? And why did it end in a world war? (Robert Skidelsky.)
Interesting. Those familiar with the background to the war of 1866 between Prussia and the Habsburg Monarchy know that the crisis was engineered by Bismarck in order to provoke a war whose objective, for Prussia, was to break up the German Confederation and exclude Austrian from the affairs of Germany. With Austria out of the picture Prussia, enlarged by its absorption of Hannover and other north German territories, would be by far the strongest German state. No Rothschild-brokered territorial deal would have deflected Bismarck from his course.
I can't help but hearken back to Kuehnelt-Ledddihn's insights in this regard. "The duel between Austria and Prussia for the supremacy over the Germanys was finally ended in 1866 by the 'Inner-German War.' Prussia (i.e., Bismarck) entered into a not-s0-secret alliance with Italy, promising to give Italy the Austrian province of Venice in case of a Prussian victory.......In the ensuing war all the German states, with the exception of a few small north German principalities sided with Austria. The war was in fact a 'federal execution' by the league against a member state that had broken the covenant. But Prussia won- the criminal , tragically , overpowered the policeman and the defeated Italians got Venice....In historical perspective, the war was a catastrophe of the first order, 'Cascia il mondo!' ( 'The world is crumbling!' ) exclaimed Cardinal Antonelli. It proved an enormous victory for liberalism, progress, enlightenment, and 'modernity'--as well as for Prussia, whose preparation for the unification of the Germanys under her leadership had the enthusiastic blessing of all the advanced minds. (Footnote-One of them was William James, another one John Stuart Mill. But the 'leftist' admiration for Prussia was most alive in the French Revolution. Already Jacques Bainville (Histoire de France, vol. 1) had loved it. See the essay "Delusions of the West and First Warnings, Kucharzewski.)........Had Austria won, the unification of the Germanys would have taken place under her leadership........A very different Germany under Vienna, not under Berlin, would have been the result. However, history decided differently." (Kuehnelt-Leddihn.)
Taibbi's point is that he is concerned. Very concerned. What was the progressive mantra, past and present, "Be afraid, be very afraid?" Miscalculation, unanticipated developments, strategic and tactical blunders are the circumstance of most, if not all, military engagements and wider wars. I find your disposition and disposal reasonable, but ultimately, time will tell. Even clairvoyants miss appointments due to unforeseen circumstances.
Matt's such an ignominious Russian tool.
Hoping to hear a bit more from your readership on the nature of his ignominiosness.......I subscribe to numerous journals, newspapers and magazines, his among them.
More from WSJ. "The military’s five prime contractors resemble power utilities. Having mastered a complex regulatory system, they maximize profit when production costs are highest, stuffing fees into obscure line items. Asked why a bag of bolts costs $90,000, the Air Force secretary said in April that overpricing was a “systemic issue.”
The military has expressed some interest in producing cheap AI drones. The flagship effort is called Replicator, capitalized with less than 0.2% of the defense investment budget. Replicator’s self-described “poster child” is a loitering bomb that is estimated to exceed $100,000 to build. There aren’t sufficient funds to mass produce at that price.
Change will require three steps. First, the defense secretary must insist that a million cheap AI drones are vital, as former Defense Secretary Robert Gates did when he declared “war on the Pentagon” to spend more than $40 billion on armored trucks. Drone scale can be achieved by shifting $20 billion over three years to new entrants.
Second, reallocation must be guided by an investment committee. This is standard procedure in major corporations, and the secretary of defense has an in-house equivalent, led by the Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation office. The problem is, the military doubts CAPE’s ability to optimize the portfolio, and Congress is openly hostile. CAPE must be empowered to make strategic decisions.
Third, Congress must authorize the secretary of defense to pivot on spending. Modern enterprise management is stymied by more than 1,000 regulations added since 9/11. Congress has additionally upended the budget with more than 50 continuing resolutions since 2010, creating a “use it or lose it” environment that handicaps new initiatives.
AI drones will put our forces at risk, from ships to infantry. Just as the armored blitzkrieg caught Europe off-guard in World War II, so has the proliferation of drone munitions today. America holds a distinct advantage in AI, but harnessing that advantage requires investment risk. That can happen only if generals and the defense secretary acknowledge that America’s expensive military machines risk being overrun by swarms of cheap versions of a technology that we invented."
Mr. West is a former Marine and partner of Goldman Sachs. He served as assistant defense secretary for special operations, 2017-19.
Off topic, but relevant. From WSJ, more than a year ago.
https://www.wsj.com/tech/drone-swarms-are-about-to-change-the-balance-of-military-power-e091aa6f?msockid=2b7fd0357f5961fe097bc37b7b596f81
Off topic as an aside, my son, U.S. Army Captain and Blackhawk Pilot, experienced limited drone warfare in Kurdistan, Iraq about 2 years ago. After receiving various messages on events, I was terrified. He took things in stride. Thank God.
This article is from an article in WSJ from last year.
"The most formidable element of American power-projection has long been the warship. After the Oct. 7 attacks against Israel, the Biden administration sent two carrier battle groups to the region to deter Iranian aggression. One of those carriers, the USS Gerald R. Ford, was on its maiden voyage, having recently been completed at a price tag of $13 billion. This makes it the most expensive warship in history.
For that same sum, a nation could purchase 650,000 Shahed drones. It would only take a few of those drones finding their target to cripple and perhaps sink the Ford. Fortunately, the Ford and other U.S. warships possess ample missile defense systems that make it highly improbable that a few, or even a few dozen, Shahed drones could land direct hits. But rapid developments in AI are changing that.
Drones are simple, cheap and available to militaries the world over—they’re the sarissas of today. But what those militaries have yet to achieve is the conception of war that will fulfill the potential of these unmanned systems. Much as the sarissa changed the face of warfare 2,000 years ago when employed in a phalanx of well-trained soldiers, the drone will change the face of warfare when employed in swarms directed by AI. This moment hasn’t yet arrived, but it is rushing to meet us. If we’re not prepared, these new technologies deployed at scale could shift the global balance of military power." (Ackerman and Stavridis)
"For almost ten years we’ve had a consensus mechanism that evaluates all things this way: if it’s bad for Trump, it’s good for the world. It started with being “disappointed” to learn Robert Mueller didn’t find Russian agents in the White House and progressed to “told you so” tales of 400,000 deaths proving Trump wrong about Covid. Now we have the best political Schadenfreude story ever: Nuclear showdown proves Trump’s incompetence. Or, as Walter Kirn put it, ending the world to own Trump.
The Maddow segment was one of a pile of ebullient “Peace Averted!” responses to Ukraine’s “Operation Spiderweb,” which in any normal era would be covered first as an unprecedented escalation of nuclear tension. Officially now, politicians and media have gone mad, so focused on Trump that they no longer see or acknowledge danger to you, me, and the rest of the world beyond. The headlines alone are mind-boggling:
“Trump administration left clueless about Ukraine’s attack on Russia,” chirped Salon. “Lindsey Graham leads GOP push to Punish Putin as Trump Dithers,” countered the Daily Beast. “Trump Silent on Ukraine Drone Attacks as MAGA Blames ‘Deep State,’” read Axios. “Trump Promised Peace in Ukraine in a Day. Here’s What Actually Happened,” roared NPR. “Ukraine Shows It Can Still Flip the Script on How Wars Are Waged,” cheered the New York Times, which quoted experts saying Ukraine “has taken warfare to the next level” and also exposed Donald Trump’s missile defense plan:
General Hodges and several other people said that Ukraine’s strikes should, at least, force the Trump administration to rethink its plans for a “golden dome” missile defense shield, which President Trump unveiled last month… Administration officials say it will be a next-generation military system designed to guard against a variety of ballistic, hypersonic and cruise missiles deployed by adversaries such as Russia.
But the missile shield as envisioned wouldn’t protect the United States from the types of drones Ukraine used.
Few outlets attempted to answer what should be the first question after these attacks. How much danger are we in? What is the likelihood of a Russian response in Europe or the United States? The only context I saw in which this issue was even addressed was as an element of irrational paranoia described in Tal Axelrod’s Axios story, about how “MAGA blames ‘Deep State.’” This passes for political commentary in America:
MAGA’s alarm over Ukraine’s attack — and comparative silence when Russia targets Ukrainian civilians — underscores the movement's deep skepticism of the Western-backed government in Kyiv.
Incredible. The reason there’s less “alarm” about Russian attacks in Ukraine is that Ukraine does not have nuclear weapons and has no capability of starting an apocalyptic missile exchange. No one is comparing levels of moral “alarm.” They’re doing what alleged grownups in the White House and Pentagon should have done from the start, namely weighing strategic pros and cons for the American population. There are no “implications to our national security,” as Nicolle Wallace put it, in Russia’s attacks. There are following Ukraine’s. That’s the entire issue, for those of us who are thinking about our kids, not playing “Risk” with other peoples’ lives.
The implications of Ukraine’s attack, particularly Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s post-attack TD dance about how “the preparation took over a year and a half,” are drastic and obvious. The symbolism of the attack being launched a day before peace talks also speaks volumes about Ukraine’s attitude toward potential settlement, as well as the attitude of Ukraine’s backers in the West. These people don’t want a negotiated peace of any kind, among other things for the beyond-bat-bleep reason that it might be perceived as a political win for Trump.
The Trump administration claims it was not informed of these attacks, which may be true. However, it strains credulity to think no one in NATO or the CIA or the Pentagon had inkling of this plan. The New York Times take about the status of U.S.-Ukraine joint planning hardly inspired confidence:
Ukraine has always been protective of its operational security; even more so in recent months since senior Trump administration national security officials inadvertently disclosed operational American strike plans in Signal group chats. There currently is no joint planning between the United States and Ukraine on strikes in Russia.
Not “currently,” but perhaps before? It’s bad either way.
If the Trump administration knew, and does not move quickly to disavow Ukraine, Russia will be forced to conclude there is no post-election policy change, and the Trump White House helped carry out a dangerous Biden-era mission. If Trump didn’t know, that’s worse: now the presidency itself, the last avenue by which the American population could ask out of this conflict, has been humiliated and rendered irrelevant.
This is the situation being celebrated." (Taibbi.)
"I just hope it has a similar effect on us—because it damned well should. We’re no less vulnerable. I hope the Pentagon is in an outright panic, frankly, because now is the time to be in it. We really shouldn’t wait until our own airbases lie in smoking ruins."
A few years ago, a few of us original subscribers dug deeply into this notion of drones and drone swarms and the imperious exposure of the US Military's assets. Back then a lot was secret squirrel (so I had to be cagey with what I knew) but now more information is released for public consumption; one example is this excellent but lengthy MIT Tech Review article...
< https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/29/1117502/epirus-drone-zapping-microwave-us-military-defense/ > (Comment edited to correct MIT link.)
"Every branch of the service and a host of defense tech startups are testing out new weapons that promise to disable drones en masse. There are drones that slam into other drones like battering rams; drones that shoot out nets to ensnare quadcopter propellers; precision-guided Gatling guns that simply shoot drones out of the sky; electronic approaches, like GPS jammers and direct hacking tools; and lasers that melt holes clear through a target’s side. Then there are the microwaves: high-powered electronic devices that push out kilowatts of power to zap the circuits of a drone as if it were the tinfoil you forgot to take off your leftovers when you heated them up."
Excellent!
Hi Claire. Yes, I will have more to say later, as I am off to school in 15. A couple short thoughts: your piece was a great collective--I hadn't seen the Japanese reaction; it frankly brought tears to my eyes. The two things I thought of (and you brought up) were the psychological effect on Russia and our (the US) preparedness or lack thereof.
Among the things the Russians have spent a ton of time, money and energy doing since Putin started trying to reform the military, are far flung exercises in places like the Laptev Sea, moving air assets 10,000 km--all heavily centered on defending Russia's vast expanses. At least one analyst I read opined then that all that "strategic depth" was also a damned lot of ground to cover and defend. But defend they do. Or think they must. And practice, plan and resource heavily to do. The MENTALITY was there, and they've always taken it very, VERY seriously, whether it was entirely born of nostalgia, myth and paranoia or not.
And all of that has SO been punched in the gut. Or worse. I think this new reality, along with the economic doom you forecast (Paul Warburg thinks by the end of this year) could convulse Russia, and the world, in ways we can only begin to imagine.
Which (I think our minds work alike) immediately makes me think about our own illustrious National Command Authority. For all of our justified worries and daily proclamations, there has to this date, been precious little in-our-face consequence to the circle-is-complete incompetence of our national leaders. I think this is the bell toll for THAT too. I think we are fast approaching OUR Pearl Harbor (Part Deux)--when something happens that finally exposes this in a way that even TACO can't lie his way out of. We can only hope that this one, like the OG version, is more spectacle than long-lasting strategic reality. I'm not so sure it will be.
You asked about dealings in the Pentagon. I will ask. I think the corresponding question is, how far down has the purging gone? I read about the vast numbers of leadership who've been fired at FBI since High Chair Kash took over, and I wonder if there's been something similar ongoing with Commander Pete.
Anyway, I loved this article. I will re-read it too.
Great article Claire! You anticipated one of my main questions, which was--'If this attack blows up a lot of conventional wisdom about the military advantages conferred by Russia's geographic isolation, then wouldn't that apply to us as well?'
Also interested in what you said about the impact this could have on internal perceptions of Putin's level of vulnerability, and his grip on power. As the US has drifted away from liberal democratic norms in recent years, I've grown increasingly alert to the extent to which strength and the *perception of strength* are inextricably linked in authoritarian systems in a way that's very distinct from liberal democratic models (we were discussing a related topic on here a few weeks ago as it pertained to MAGA and the idea of *revolutionary consciousness*). Are you familiar at all with the blog/newsletter Epsilon Theory published by Ben Hunt? Apparently it's associated with a global investment firm called Second Foundation Partners, and it tends to address some of these questions from a game theoretic perspective.
A concept I've returned to a lot in trying to understand how authoritarians operate and how/why they manipulate public perception through lies and spectacle is the idea of *Common Knowledge*. I'm not just referring to the colloquial definition of the term, which is basically "Knowledge that everyone knows." *Common Knowledge*--in the game theoretic context--also refers to "What everyone knows about what everyone knows, and what everyone knows about what everyone knows about what everyone knows....." I first encountered it in the math world in the form of a famous riddle called the "Green Eyes/Brown Eyes Problem." And for a couple years I'd beed batting around the idea of trying to write an article about its applicability to politics--that is until I discovered that I'd been "scooped" by Epsilon Theory last summer (here is the link to their article--https://www.epsilontheory.com/joe-biden-and-the-common-knowledge-game/).
One of the basic insights that I think *Common Knowledge* provides when it comes to the behavior of strongman leaders is that a lot of their propaganda isn't merely aimed at altering perceptions among the public. It's aimed at altering perceptions *about* perceptions. Big lies--even ones that almost everyone knows are lies--can still have tactical utility when a leader is trying to thwart collective action by confusing, dividing, or demoralizing their opposition *if* enough people *believe* that others believe them.
The article I linked to above mainly applied this concept to the chaotic political situation in the United States immediately following Biden's disastrous debate performance last June (though it also offers quite a bit of other background, including a link to a description of the *Green Eyes/Brown Eyes problem*). But I think it's broadly applicable in *any* instance in which a leader (particularly a strongman) loses face in a way that causes an abrupt change in the public's perception of their level of vulnerability.
Given that you've written about stuff like this for years, I imagine I'm telling you some things that you already know. But if you're not familiar with Common Knowledge, Epsilon Theory, or the article linked above, then I'd definitely recommend checking them out.
p.s. I'd been meaning to ask--Do you know why I can't italicize text inside of your replies? Ordinarily in substack you can italicize a word or phrase by putting it inside asterisks. But I notice in your replies it just prints the asterisks as is (I don't know if maybe this has something to do with the settings you're using. I haven't noticed it elsewhere on the platform).
https://www.wsj.com/world/russia/ukraine-says-its-drones-destroyed-warplanes-deep-inside-russia-50a634c6?st=BisMGv
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/country-that-allegedly-had-no-cards-to-play-keeps-finding-new-cards-to-play/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=right-rail&utm_content=corner&utm_term=fourth
Excerpt:
> In March alone, the Russians suffered an estimated 41,000 combined killed or wounded in action, with 272 Russian tanks, 1,644 artillery systems, and 607 combat armored vehicles destroyed or disabled. (Since the start of the war, Russia has lost an estimated 12,835 tanks and armored vehicles, 305 aircraft, and 22 naval vessels.)
> In May 2025, Ukraine demonstrated another technological breakthrough when two Russian Su-30 fighter jets were shot down over the Black Sea by AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles launched from Magura-7 naval drones. It was the first time that a crewed jet was downed by missiles fired from uncrewed surface vessels; naval warfare continues to evolve over the Black Sea.” . .
> Drones equipped with surface-to-air missiles, machine-gun modules, and FPV drone “carriers” shifted the advantage back to Kyiv. These upgraded drones are relatively sophisticated but still cost-effective, “with costs ranging from $250,000 to $300,000 per unit,” said Kuzan. “This is about five times cheaper than a Harpoon antiship missile and slightly more than the cost of an M982A1 Excalibur shell or a Javelin ATGM.”
> Yes, the Russians have largely forced Ukrainian forces back out of Kursk Oblast, the Russian territory that the Ukrainian military seized in a surprise attack in August. But for four consecutive months, the Russians gained less territory than the preceding month. In March, Russia advanced 99 square miles, a land mass roughly the size of the city limits of Sacramento. In April, Russia broke the streak by gaining 166 square miles, a land mass roughly the size of the city limits of Wichita.
> According to a Bloomberg analysis published in May 21, “Battlefield data indicate that — despite a consistent advantage in manpower and steady gains — Putin’s military has fallen far short so far of satisfying his war aims. The pace of Russia’s main advance in eastern Ukraine has halved since the start of the year compared with a similar period through the end of 2024.”
https://www.nationalreview.com/2025/06/the-wests-frontline-partners-are-awesome/?bypass_key=a05sakFOaFRGNU1vNmFKa01aNWVBQT09OjpaREpsVFN0dVRWZDNWRUZtUVZsNGN6VnRVa1k1ZHowOQ%3D%3D
"Accounts read like a science fiction thriller. Over the course of 18 months, Ukrainians constructed hundreds of low-cost quadcopter drones armed with explosive devices, smuggled them into Russia, and piled them into modified mobile cabins. Those cabins were loaded onto trucks where they were ferried to locations adjacent to several Russian airbases. There, the trucks opened remotely, releasing a fleet of suicide drones that executed simultaneous strikes on more than 40 strategic Russian military aircraft.
The strikes were wildly successful. Ukraine claims that roughly 34 percent of the aircraft used to deliver ballistic and cruise missiles to Ukrainian targets were damaged or destroyed — an assessment we shouldn’t gainsay since Ukraine did most of the intelligence gathering ahead of this strike. The U.S. did not provide support, Washington insists. Ukraine targeted airfields as far away as Irkutsk, thousands of miles from home. Ukrainian operatives had already been withdrawn from Russia ahead of the strikes, which Volodymyr Zelensky claims were prepared right under the noses of Russian security forces. “What’s most interesting, is that the ‘office’ of our operation on Russian territory was located directly next to FSB headquarters in one of their regions,” he said.
This is a success on par with Israel’s pager attacks, and it has been received with the same negativity that followed Israel’s coup. Just think about how exposed our own bomber fleet is to that sort of attack, the handwringers mourned. Could the U.S., too, see its strategic air force grounded in the opening hours of a war with a near-peer power in the same way? After all, if Ukraine was able to negotiate the entire Russian Federation despite its wartime posture, how easy would it be to smuggle weapons of war into the American landscape?
And how will Russia respond to this incredibly successful attack on one of the pillars of its nuclear triad? Anything that alters the nuclear-deterrent dynamic that typifies stable relations between Moscow and the West is inherently dangerous. Have Ukraine’s attacks on the systems that Russia employs to deliver nuclear attacks made the Kremlin’s trigger fingers a little itchier? Do we have more to fear from a Russia that is on the backfoot than one that’s confident, extroverted, and eagerly gobbling up sovereign territory in Europe?
These questions and worries are valid. They should be of great concern to Western strategists and war planners, but they should not obscure the prospects for positive outcomes.
The aircraft Ukraine disabled — supersonic Tu-22M long-range bombers, Tu-95 flying fortresses, A-50 early warning warplanes, etc. — are not easily repaired or replaced. This isn’t the first time Ukraine has targeted Russian military infrastructure and brought Russia’s war of choice home, but it is the most comprehensive of those attacks. Vladimir Putin’s capacity to sustain his expansionist war depends to some extent on the Russia military’s ability to absorb its losses. The more losses, the harder they are to absorb, and the closer we get to a just settlement to this conflict.
The Ukrainian operation has already had other clarifying effects. Russia’s insistence that any threat to its nuclear-delivery vehicles could trigger a nuclear response has been revealed as just one more of Moscow’s illusory red lines. The vivid illustration of the threat that low-cost drone swarms pose to sophisticated aerial assets should and will light a fire under Western efforts to harden its defenses and speed counter-drone innovation. And the contrast the Ukrainian operation strikes with Russia’s conduct of its war is instructive. While Moscow rains rockets, drones, and missiles down on Ukrainian population centers, Ukraine goes to extended lengths to limit its activities to legitimate military targets. Just as Israel’s pager attacks could not have been more discreet, Kyiv’s circumspection accentuates the glaring moral distinction between the aggressor in this war and the target of its aggression.
America has many reasons to celebrate Ukraine’s battlefield successes. Among them, that it provides yet more evidence that America’s partners abroad are not the burdens their detractors make them out to be. They are clever and brave, ambitious and steadfast. Their fight against our mutual enemies represents a profound contribution to our own safety and the preservation of the geopolitical order we take for granted. America’s frontline partners are awesome. They put their doubters to shame." (Rothman.)
https://archive.is/dVnxk
Ukraine has been looking to multiple sources for satellite imagery in recent months, notably Japan. If they’ve been working on this 18 months, they probably couldn’t have been planning on that, though.
Perhaps the possible Russian fears of US involvement in attacks on their nuclear bombers are the reason it’s being so loudly announced that Trump knew nothing about this. You’d want anyone nonessential kept out of the loop anyway, and certainly anyone given to bluster or rambling.
Another Substacker, Commander Salamander, pointed out that US air and naval bases are concentrated in ways that would make the organization vulnerable to attacks like this- a few major air and naval bases handle large chunks of our combat power. Also that there are a fair number of Russian, Chinese, and Iranian immigrants here. This has its obvious benefits- Russian military-age men moving abroad has probably taken as much conscriptable potential manpower off the board as war casualties, and they’re most likely doing useful work in countries where they move long-term- but a tiny number of saboteurs could cause a lot of trouble.
Good points.
Wild to watch warfare change at such speed.
I love how this attack exposes Russia’s inability to rebuild many of those planes. They are so much weaker today than they were as the Soviet Union and the takeaway is clearly they can’t be allowed to rebuild those capabilities and their empire because they are legit terrorists.
And what a brave new world militarily overnight. Occurs to me that aircraft carriers seem particularly exposed. Submarine and stealth airborne drone carriers are def going to be a thing, maybe even drones within missiles. Delivering these tools close to targets is going to be a huge arena for innovation. And defensive drones are going to need to be innovated to counter all this.
Slava Ukraini!
Couldn't agree more--every word.