So, 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. 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? >> I don't think we have all the information to claim that, but we cannot count it out. And that alone should be, you know, a big warning sign. And yeah, as I say, some point in my life, I went from making cameras that uh fling treats to pets to cameras that fling explosives to the occupiers. Um, so that's the short story. And, uh, when you think about what your nation, what your compatriots are going through, uh, you realize that that's the only morally right thing to do is to fight back. and it is immoral not to fight back and then that the choice becomes very clear. >> Welcome to Len Space. Um I'm Brandon. I normally do science podcast, but today we're going to do something a little bit different. I'm joined by uh Noah Smith of Noah Opinion on Substack and Twitter. Uh and he has lots of interesting things to say about drones. And uh as a guest we have Yarlov Ajinuk uh founder of the fourth law and several other um drone related startups. Um but yeah to to get started um so it is uh February 23rd uh 2022 you are running a pet startup um you are connecting pets with their owners. Let's go in just a little bit of background. um where how did you get started in tech and uh what were you working on before the Ukrainian war started? >> Yeah. Uh good to be here. Thank you. Uh on February 23rd late in the evening, like I think like 11:00 p.m. KF time, uh my wife and I, we landed in Kiev actually then she was a fiance. Uh and and we were uh we came from Lviv where we were looking at a church uh where our wedding should have taken place and we got into this uh cab riding from airport to our home and the driver was like you crazy like everyone's leaving Ke why why do you come like what nothing's going to happen like dude chill and then obviously 8 minutes later or 8 8 hours later uh the bombs fell in the city was quite That's surreal. We probably landed on the last flight that landed in K or one of those last flights. Uh but yeah, you know, uh my background, I'm a tech guy. Uh studied applied mathematics in K poly techchnics, born and raised in Kiev. Uh parents, uh you know, all the PhDs from academia and grandparents to like everything uh you know from uh linguistics to nuclear physics and um I'm an entrepreneur so I built a bunch of companies. Uh Pet Cube is the one you were referencing. So I lived in San Francisco 2014 to 2020. Uh building uh Pet Cube, which is uh one of the leading uh pet device companies in the world. Uh selling uh lots of pet cameras. And then yeah, as I say, some point in my life, I went from making cameras that uh fling treats to pets to cameras that fling explosives to the occupiers. Um so that's the short story. Uh >> yeah. So, uh, February 24th, um, I guess a few hours after you, uh, go to check out your wedding chapel. Um, what do you do? >> Well, we had a plan for this situation. So, my my parents and family live in Kiev and, uh, we're like, okay, this has actually started. The the worst has uh, come true. And, uh, so we basically packed our belongings and uh, got in the car and um, spent 17 hours riding west. Um and uh that was pretty sure most people in our audience watched an at least one apocalyptic movie in their life. So that was exactly like that. Like felt exactly like that. I you know missiles are falling like there was smoke in K like you know my dad and I went like to central part of the cities probably like 800 m from presidential office to pick some stuff in in his uh workplace uh cuz he's like the head of an academic institution so he had to uh get some of the things with him and uh super surreal like the the streets are empty. Like the gas stations are out of gas. Like we found some gas station. Um we didn't have like spare canisters with us. So we're like um we we figured out like the car was diesel. So like we figured out um if it's diesel, you can actually store it in plastic um canisters. And we bought some window wash for the cars. We poured it out of the canisters and we poured the the diesel into that. Uh yeah. So it was like that and then like you know 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 the place for my friend who didn't have a car. It's like uh yeah it's like totally surreal. >> Wow. >> Yeah. And we didn't know you know of course then you didn't know this will last for so long. You didn't know whether Kiev will be able to whether Ukraine will be able to defend Kiev. Um and it was like yeah very little information and very little insight into the future. >> So what do you what are your thoughts with regards to how do you uh defend you know Ukraine? So you eventually start building drones? >> Yeah. like what is the process to get from there to you know or from where you were building you know devices that connect owners with pets to building drones and what other things did you do to help the war effort in the process? >> Yeah, it's it's definitely non-trivial, right? Like I I didn't go uh to I didn't get any like military education when I was a student. Like normally uh in Ukraine you would you would go to like this uh military school even if you're getting higher education in any any other uh sphere. Um I decided to skip that which which is like an unusual way to go. Um and I never thought that I will be somehow engaged in war effort. Like what is war? Of course wars are over. It's the end of history. Um, so one thing you got to understand about like many Ukrainians and like I guess um it's also true about most of the people I met here in the US uh 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 um so I I day one I figured I'm going to I'm going to fight back with everything I can, right? But I I didn't think on day one that I'm actually going to do uh weapons. Um and you know there a bunch of things we were uh reaching out to a number of American uh congress people and senators um and uh basically advocating for support of Ukraine for voting for land lease which has happened in May 2022 but didn't actually work as expected. Um uh you know we we helped start uh Brave 1 uh which is uh now very important defense invasion cluster sort of like a DIU here in the US. We helped start um a fund called D3 uh it's like uh was uh started or co-started by Eric Schmidt former CEO of Google. Um, 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 uh 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 uh that can increase your battlefield capabilities uh you know in in a step change just overnight. It's like if you were able to push a software update and get all of your Roman legionaire's new helmet, you know, that has never been possible before. It's it's the first time in the history of war this is possible. So all of that many other things like you know supply chain fertilization uh and the impact that AI is going to have on all of this. All these things have become evident to me in 2003 and I was like okay I I I should do what I do best uh uh or what I know how to do best. start a tech company uh and sort of leverage the global techno capitalist machine uh to uh provide uh defensibility to uh Ukraine and the free world. So that's literally the mission of the company you know increase defensibility of Ukraine and the free world. Um and then there was some sort of soularching and like asking yourself is like okay am I actually I know nothing about weapons. Am I actually like ready to make, you know, things that other people use to kill other bad people? And uh when you think about what your nation, what your um you know compatriots are going through, you think about all the terror of places like like Bha, the occupied cities in the um east and and south, uh the abducted children, the raped women, all the economic damage that's being done and the intention to destroy whole nation to genocide the people of Ukraine. Uh you realize that that's the only morally right thing to do is to fight back and it is immoral not to fight back and then that the choice becomes very clear. Um and look, we're we're just passing the ammunition. We're not doing the actual job. The the actual fighters and defenders and heroes are people in in the armed forces or just support. Oh,

Okay, I have so many questions. Um actually I know you seem to have a question. Do you want to ask anything? >> No, no. I I I I'm just listening. Go ahead. >> Okay. Okay. Cool. Cool. Yeah, I do want to talk about um some of let's say the moral issues like you just said. Uh >> I think there are no issues there. >> Yeah. >> What would an example of a moral question be in this case? >> Well, no. I mean, okay. uh as you you just said um you know you are creating the tools but others are using them. >> Yeah. Um you know I I was maybe thinking having this conversation later but one of the questions is like is it actually you know 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 >> this you know you will probably be selling these to other people and yeah >> um so you know the the future is really where the moral issues may come into play. But >> yeah, this this uh question becomes um easier and more complete if we 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 um knife or fire you know 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. >> Cut tomatoes too. >> Cut tomatoes too. >> Yes. Knife. >> Yeah. >> It's in Japan. Sword and knife they you know call the same word. >> Yeah. So you know it's like um 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. Um so that's one side of the argument. The the other side is as a maker what is your responsibility for how the tools you're creating uh will be used? There's definitely some responsibility, right? Um then you know how 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 uh you know addressing the unwanted edge cases later. Um you know in ideal world where there's like or okay it's not ideal world in in a mythical world where there is some one governing party and it gets to decide everything and there is no other country uh that can uh you know decide on their own. You could say, well, we need to calculate for all the consequences and only then, you know, maybe build this building, you know, by by replacing this park because, you know, 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 uh in front of a wolf, you know, you first going to deal with a wolf that wants to eat you and then you're going to go consult Green Peace. So, that's kind of situation that Ukraine is in.

Okay, fair enough. Um because this is a tech podcast, I did want to spend some time talking about um sort of the tech and that you've developed and what you've been working on. Um so can you explain I guess first of all like the problem that you were trying to solve from a technical standpoint? Um, and I think and then maybe like go into some of the solutions and some of the the design process that led you from, you know, designing uh little laserg guided um, you know, guiding lasers with a with an iPhone versus having drones. >> Sure. Well, like uh it so happened uh that uh my partners and I we sort of so I started one company called the fourth law and it goal was and is um to um make uh massively scalable on drone autonomy. Um and then uh in parallel with that together with my uh pack co-founders, partners and friends, we started another company called Odd Systems which uh 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 this group of companies is currently the leading uh team in uh unrone AI and uh thermal imaging on the Ukrainian battlefield and u likely one of the leading if not the leading in the world. Um so we have these like three sort of business units which are uh cameras, drone autonomy and drones. Um, so the cameras in 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 the the UAV uh business unit sells the drones themselves to u the armed forces of Ukraine, Ukraine government. And there are different types of uh 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. Uh and there are different kinds of interceptors. We do shahan interceptors and we do ISR interceptors. We don't do the deep strike. >> What's an ISR interceptor? >> ISR is uh stands for intelligence surveillance reconnaissance and those are basically drones which are uh which you know Russians are using to uh watch over positions and and then communicate where uh targets are. Yeah, that's that's ISR is sort of a classical term for for reconnaissance drone. >> Are all of these battery powered drones that you just described? Because I know that the uh the sort of deep strike drones still have like um >> some sort of of >> internal combustion engine. >> Yeah, internal combustion engine. Um are all the things you're talking about battery powered? >> Yeah, what we're working on is all battery powered, right? We don't do the deep strikes, right? And then in terms of autonomy, >> you you can catch a shahad with a battery powered thing. It's not >> too fast to catch. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, absolutely. Look, uh, head interceptor like ours, it's called Zero. It goes up to 326 km per hour. >> For reference, how fast is a shahad? >> Hey, like on internal phase, it could be 280, but uh in in cruise phase, it's like 220ish. >> Okay. >> Uh, yeah. And sorry, I'm not like, you know, you can convert that into miles if you're interested. >> Multiply by 2/3 or points. >> Yeah, that's easy. Yeah, I was saying that for for autonomy modules, right? We um we make systems autonomous systems for front line for interceptors and some for deep strikes as well. And then different levels of autonomy. So from uh terminal guidance which is like lasts 500 m 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 uh and maybe some other platforms. Um so it's it's quite a wide variety of products. Um we also have like our own simulation. We have our own training school for the war fighters. Uh and we're we're about to start construction of um uh two uh semiconductor plans to make uh sensors for thermal cameras. Uh so that's super exciting for me as a computer science guy is like doing semiconductor super cool. But like in terms of kind of core drone technologies, you basically are one is an FPP replacement without fiber optics and the other is a single track with or without fiber optics. Fiber optics is just like >> uh sort of a communication module. So uh you can you can use classical analog uh video link and and and and radio link. Those 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 uh the distance and decreases uh how fast you can um sort of turn and and move with the drone. >> Do you need AI for fiber optic drones? >> Like you can use AI for fiber optic drones. Um um AI replaces a human, right? Fiber optic is uh making your communication link more resilient. So those are slightly different goals. Like if you want um you can have uh you know AI controlling hundreds of fiber optic drones instead of having 100 operators for each. >> Okay. So I I guess I thought that the the key reason that people moved to fiber optic drones was for like electronic um counter measures or I guess to counter those. Yeah, I think that's that's a correct assessment from sort of a public awareness standpoint. Uh in practice, it's somewhat more difficult. Um because besides electronic counter measures, you have these issues of um a radio horizon >> for FPV drones which means that you know as 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 here, if your drone is flying high, you have good direct radio visibility. If your drone goes low, and usually, you know, 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 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. Um, and then that is a real bummer because for the last be it 60 or 20 m 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 uh 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 km. >> What was drone dominance? What was that? >> Drone drone dominance is a is a a program started uh by the US government uh to uh accelerate the uh development of drone technology here. And the longest range thing they were using was 10 km. >> Was 10 km, right? In 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 km. And that's what expected from a regular 10- in uh FP drone. So at that distance even at altitudes of like 60 to 100 m you might start losing uh the the link. Uh so uh some 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 2 3 500 m you lock onto the target and then h it just uh drives the drone towards the target no matter what even after you lost the the visual connection. So optic fiber solves that. However, uh if you want to go like 20 km with optic fiber, that will add an extra 3 kilos uh of u useful weight to to your drone. So you >> So the cable that you have to unspool as you go weighs it is heavy. >> Yeah. So first like the spool is is about 800 g a bit less than a kilo and then and then think about 10 10 km optic fiber is is another kilo something like that. Um, so, so yeah, so that takes away from your useful mass and then now you have like you need a 15-in drone and it can only carry maybe one or two kilos of explosives if you want to go, you know, 20 km. 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 you know why? because uh because of all the data centers for AI. It's literally the same optic fiber that's being used there. So like when 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, you know, that's the craziest thing." So optic fiber went up in price from like $4 per uh kilometer to like $32 per kilometer in in in in a few months in the beginning of this year. Um and I'll be >> some clawed code is is stopping the Russian drone effort here >> and Ukrainian as well. Yeah. >> And Ukrainian but but um 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. >> How how accurate is that? >> The Russians were the first ones to scale that. I think by as of now Ukraine has catch caught up. I think like as of maybe 3 months ago, Ukraine has mostly caught up on fiber optic. Um, yeah. >> What percent of of damage would you say is in terms of FPV drone damage would you say is now fiber optic versus uh like autonomous? >> Yeah. Well, for our for our audience, um um I I actually I cannot answer that question. Like it's like I know the answer, but I would not disclose that. Uh but for our audience uh I think and another interesting fact is out of all the casualties on the front line between 70 and 80% are done by FPV drones. >> Right. FPV drones are the new weapon of universal weapon of warfare. >> Yeah. So it's like they they used to say that artillery is is a god of war because artillery used to cause like 80% of casualties and now >> on that ranking FPV drones rule >> FPV drones are the god of war >> sort of dethroned artillery but it's not to say that artillery is not use useful is not needed like all of these systems are needed uh maybe except cavalry although Russians still use it I know Have you seen the videos of Russians using mules and and horses? >> What is the usefulness of a tank in the >> That's where we need green piece to say a word, but they're silent. Yeah, >> fair. What's the use of a tank on the modern battlefield? >> It's diminishing.

Diminishing. >> However, uh I I think there might be technologies which will uh revive the tank. Look, tank still provides you armor and armor is important. like you still need to, you know, armor and firepower, right? Like you you can be an armored personal carrier that provides you armor. The 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 Ray Metal uh recently sort of ridiculed uh Ukrainian drone industry saying that uh like there's nothing interesting there no real innovation nowhere to stand you know compared to like Ray Matal or Boing and it's all made by housewives there was like obviously a ton of of memes about this people ridiculing the CEO of Ray Matal and uh one of the best quotes uh I heard on this topic is from my my friend Alexi Babeno who's uh the head of and founder of Vir drone which uh one of the largest manufacturers of FPV drones and they're our partner are using our autonomy. Um so he said that the drones we manufacture in one day will be more than enough to destroy all the tanks rain metal manufactures in a year. And then yeah, costwise, of course, a drone is like $500 and a Raymond tall tank is what? Probably five millionish or maybe more. >> Don't mess with those housewives. >> Yeah, drone wives. >> Drone wives. >> And that's it. >> So, there's a classic saying that everyone always fights the last war. Uh, yeah. How did So from your standpoint, how did we get to the point where tanks became irrelevant in at least for now um in you know a matter of just a few years? >> Well, look, I I think it's the same way. How do we get to the point that calculators become irrelevant? Oh, now we have iPhones. Like why would you need a calculator? Technology progresses and it's its influence grows nonlinearly. Uh it's all exponential. Uh so I can tell you that uh full autonomy when you put it on a drone so if you if you think about a tank and a drone like it's not direct comparison but even like a drone and artillery shell or like sort of cost cost per kill an artillery shell for 155 caliber uh which is a standard NATO caliber currently market price is about $4,000 per piece. So, you know, 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 uh capabilities it gives you as compared to drone. You'll figure out that an FPV drone is maybe three orders of magnitude uh more versatile, more useful, more capable than artillery. And in many of the classic artillery many of the are different types of artillery not just like one 155 you have mortars you have all of that but give or take you know roughly three orders of magnitude maybe again it it doesn't have that firepower it's not one in one comparison but still now take that FPV drone when you put full autonomy on that FPV drone which can be not very expensive like systems that were were uh producing they're like in hundreds of dollars of pure bomb cost. >> Just inter you said full autonomy but just a second ago you were saying that the autonomy here is guidance right it's not decision-m >> no I was I was saying that that's that's the first and sort of easiest pieces of autonomy that was fielded by us uh but if if you if you add full autonomy to a drone as >> he I think he's asking what is it can you for the listeners can you explain what the term full autonomy >> means yeah so basically uh I think a good way to think about an FPV drone is like an iPhone of warfare there. It's like very inexpensive, very mass-producible, very versatile. You don't need a bunch of other things when you have iPhone in your pocket. You don't have need an MP3 player. You don't need a calculator. You don't need other things. All right. So, have to be drawn as an iPhone. Uh or like, okay, Apple, please don't sue me as a smartphone. Um and then um when you add autonomy to it, it sort of becomes like Uber or right sharing. Okay. So what it means is instead of actually being a trained pilot who has this complex remote controller device which requires couple months of training to actually pilot the drone um and then having to pilot it for 30 minutes flying towards the target etc etc. Now you basically you have your smartphone um you have a drone uh 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 the the bad guys are supposed to be sees the bad guys bombs them return like watches uh so does does a damage assessment returns back sits down and then you can pick it up and and watch the video if you didn't have the radio link. Right. >> That's a bomber drone. >> That's that's full autonomy for a bomber drone. Right. >> So So you're saying that no human decisions made in this entire process? >> That's not human decision was made at the beginning of the process the same way as you would fire an artillery. When you fire an artillery, you don't stop at like 500 m away from a target and ask it whether you know you want to strike or not. So that's exact a human decision is always made at some point. Right. Okay. >> Um, so when you do that, 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. uh you can have 10 times uh mission success rate and you can have 10 times utility per per drone because now instead of being oneway kamicazi it's it can be a bomber. >> 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. >> Okay, but maybe uh to push back on >> they're super they're superhuman. They're they're 10x superhuman. They're not v vulnerable to electronic warfare. Uh they uh they don't care about the radio horizon. They don't lose track during navigation. Uh they are not susceptible to human error when you know 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 they literally said that their success what's first level autonomy. >> First level autonomy is just the terminal guidance. >> Okay. >> Yeah. By the way, we have a video of that. We can watch that. >> Terminal guidance means a human gets it nearby and then the AI takes over. >> So the the human flies it all the way like 30 km 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 the distance of 500 meters you do target lock and from there drone flies autonomously. So just that feature alone uh it has increased the guys's call sign is Grom. So it has increased his um mission success rate like like precision or miss yeah miss mission success rate from 20% to 71%. And it also increased his kill zone from 3 km to 10 km which means there's certain area around the front line which is designated kill zone. Whenever enemy goes into that area it's is almost guaranteed to be to be destroyed by uh by a drone. And then obviously the drones are not launched from like the zero line. They're usually launched from like minus 10 k. zero line is is sort of an imaginary line of uh of uh control uh of of two conflicting forces. >> Okay. >> It's important to explain these things to a lot of the listeners who are not familiar with with >> Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Right. So, so 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% to 71% or something like that. >> Increases the kill zone from Kome 10 km. So on >> actually real quick, can we define mission success and like maybe in a way what are the failure modes of missions? >> Yeah, I have a guess of a mission success. >> I mean well well yeah but I could >> get them. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. No, but that's a very good question in fact because um even if you fly into the target well first the target can be damaged or destroyed. Those are two different modes. Uh then there can be different targets you know a soul infantryman is one kind of target. Uh a dugout where suppose there are some uh enemies there is another kind of target and uh some mechanical equipment is another type of target. radio emmitting equipment which like often like the targets that the military want to get more than anything else is the some enemy radio tower something like that or some some small radio dish that really makes life difficult in that area in that commentary. So those are different targets, right? It can be destroyed, can be damaged. Then sometimes uh the drone hits but doesn't explode like that happens. Um and then there are other failure modes. You didn't even reach the target because you were uh a jammed by electronic warfare. B uh you lost the control over drone because of the radio horizon. Uh, see, you were jammed by a different type of electronic warfare that happens way before um you hit the target area. No, it's um impacting your uh uh video uh video receiver. Um so like jamming on video or jamming on controller, two different types of jamming. Uh then something malfunctioned on a drone, just a mechanical malfunction, maybe like a motor broke or like whatever. Um, so all of those are different failure mods. Yeah. Or maybe you got lost. You're navigating to to your to your target. You know, that happens too. >> Okay. And so the so level one autonomy basically you manage to point in a direction. Yeah. >> Uh you go there and then the last mile is the drone taking over. >> So we we define this like I defined 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 uh autonomous target detection and engagement decision. Level four is autonomous navigation. Level five is autonomous takeoff and landing. So >> those are good things to know. >> Those are five levels of autonomy. Now if you >> Yeah. Sorry. Like let me finish with the theoretical part. So >> what is Tesla running at right now? >> Tesla? >> No. Sorry. >> Well, that's that's a very good point. Like it's it's it's exactly it was inspired by the levels of self-driving autonomy. >> Whimo is level five, right? Um >> you just tell it where you want to go, it picks you up. >> I think like if if you look at the classic definitions of self-driving cars, Whimo is still like level four because it still requires even remote but still like human control. So like if Whimo gets in trouble, there is an operator who takes over and resolves this. So that will still be level four. It doesn't map directly, but it's also five levels. Um, >> can I can I interject a question here? >> So, in terms of an FPV drone that's like a suicide drone that'll just blow itself up, killing something. >> Um, how do you know 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 what happens to that? >> That's a great question. So, like the the current battlefield in Ukraine, it's saturated with different types of drones. So obviously you have all the FPV drones and you know 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. Um and then besides those there are different um reconnaissance drones, ISRs we call them and there are sort of tactical level ISR where we both Ukraans and Russians usually use uh Mavic uh drone by DJI. Um 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 maybe like half an hour and then you know there are drones that can stay for many hours or even up to a day. Uh and those drones have are more expensive have more expensive cameras etc etc. We hunt those drones that Russians launch Russians hunt our drones and so on. But ideally, ideally when you uh are uh a group of soldiers operating an FPV, uh you'll have someone in your uh company uh or someone in your platoon who has an ISR asset. They will do target designation for you. They'll say, "Oh, like there's there's a Russian vehicle over there. Uh go and get him." Uh and you go there, you get it, and they're like, "Okay, you know, uh confirm. guys are watching. They have their own drones in the >> destroyed. They have like a carousel of drones because like one maybe cannot stay more than 30 minutes. So like >> constantly surveilling the battlefield. >> Yeah. Almost almost every every spot on the battlefield. But it's not always the case. Sometimes you will not have a surveillance essence. So then you would launch another FPV just to confirm that there was a hit. And then if you see there was a hit and um you're not sure if it completely destroyed, you may be hit again for good measure. >> Double tap. >> Yeah. >> Um so that's how it works. But I was about to uh give you another sort of piece of tonomy. So you have five levels of autonomy, right? And then you have sort of eight dimensions of autonomous battlefield. So what is eight dimensions? uh it's crucial to understand how autonomy evolves in a modern uh battlefield environment. So dimension number one is level of autonomy. You know what are the capabilities that your asset has. Dimension number two is a platform you're operating on. So it can be a quadcopter, a fixed wing drone, um different types of you know uh um maybe like long range drone or short range drone but can also be a missile. you're gonna 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 interception or ground to sea or sea to air that are all like all all the nuances with with different domains. Uh then level four uh would be higher levels of autonomy such as swarming uh drone carriers, drone nests. >> And now when you're saying level, you're talking about dimensions, not sorry. Yeah. I mean I mean I mean dimension. Yeah. Yeah. I used to say u supposed to say dimension. Uh I say dimension because each of them works with another right. So you you might have um like third level autonomy fixed wing drone operating in land to air um and stuff like that. Right? And then operating in a swarm or operating from a nest. All right. Then you have uh sort of dimension number five is environment. So is it day or night? Is it summer or winter? Is it u humid, cold, uh dry? Um what kind of target is it? Is your target hiding in a forest or is it you know behind a hill or within buildings? So all of that is environment. Then you have uh dimension number six is command and control. How are you dealing with mill or like you know tens of thousands of those assets around the battlefield? How are you coordinating that on the higher levels of command? Are you collecting data? All that. Uh dimension number seven would be infrastructure. So things like simulation, data collection tools, uh security, uh deployment mechanisms, etc. So all those systems have to be developed separately and integrate with all of the others. And finally, dimension number eight is um um sort of distribution. uh have you deployed 100 of these systems or 100,000 of these systems because those are two very different ball games. Um so that now gives you a more broad overview of how autonomy propagates across the uh battle space. So, as someone who has done machine learning and had gone out of distribution and had things uh go horribly wrong, um you were talking several of these uh 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. >> Likewise, >> I mean, well, I mean, first of all, >> I'm very interested in sort of sort of kinds of scenarios that you're thinking about. >> Yeah. I mean like the most obvious one is uh you if I assume these are you know computer vision guided systems for at least the last mile. Um you know how do you ensure that oh well like you now have some fog roll in or something and you you know the drones just attack the wrong thing or maybe I mean it probably will not turn around and fly back. >> The same question. How do you sure that your mortar fire hits the right thing? was like mortar fire give or take half half a kilometer could be you know plus or minus. So maybe you fire one and then you fire another. Uh so drones are actually much better in in being precise in those scenarios. And uh um I think you know to your point I think 5 to 10 years from now it will be immoral to use weapons without AI because weapons without AI will be more likely to cause collateral damage or unwanted damage. Same way it it will be immoral to drive your own car manually on a public road because it's it's more likely to cause um unwanted damage.

Well, I never considered that might be >> really. >> Yeah, >> that's definitely coming. Anyway, >> but that's an an obvious an obvious thought. I agree with you. >> I I uh No, I mean they obviously they're not going to let you drive once most of the cars on the road >> that don't I believe. No, I think you were you were talking about drones, right? >> The weapons, right? >> Friendly fire and collateral damage and stuff like that. It's all minimized with uh with AI. But um okay, so here's my question. >> Take all let's go to level six autonomy. Let's take all of the um you know, target selection. Let's 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 and agentically do target selection. Yeah, it's a general. It's um you've cut humans out of the loop except maybe as dextrous robots, you know, repairing drones and fastening things to drones or maybe something like that because you don't have those robots yet. Um how soon are we there? >> AI general. >> Well, the most important thing to ask ourselves is who will be faster to that? Us or our adversaries? >> I assume us. But how fast will we be to that? >> I hope us. >> I hope so too. But how fast can we like when are we looking at that in terms of like Horizon's years >> you know like technically uh it could could be done now uh the the question is of course there's you know some engineering work to be done um the bigger challenge is deployment uh right so okay technically you know like operation in Iran right they they the you know publicly uh it was claimed that poller system was used for target designation etc etc. uh it it it is not exactly as you say the the AI makes all the decisions but basically AI goes through all the data you have gives you these 1,27 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 um so that that's I think that's where we are now already or we were a couple weeks ago as we're recording this on uh April 10th. Um, another question is uh you know 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? Uh and then different levels of command and control, you know, there you have like the the platoon, the company level, the the battalion, etc. etc., etc. But but you know the tricky thing here when we get into that territory, the tricky thing is if you're enemy is getting advantage of being thousand times faster than yourself by deploying such systems. Um you know what do you do? So you gotta >> the if the enemy is a thousand times faster than you deploying those systems >> like if if enemy starts deploying level six autonomy as you call it and you have not started doing that >> you're in trouble. >> 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 u survival right like one person who doesn't think doesn't get to think about the ethics of the war is that person that person surely doesn't doesn't get to think about it >> what would be the safety risk of such a system >> well of friendly fire. >> Uh just wrong decisions, right? I see. >> Uh you know um maybe um you know these decisions >> AI decides it's going to use these army decisions will not only be made about drones. They they are likely to made about what the humans should do on on your side as well. And then obviously some environments are more like Ukrainian Russian war uh where you have >> to choose to risk lives. It will have to choose to sacrifice human lives on your side >> of course. And then some environments are are just like dead like dead zones and uh there are no civilians. There are virtually no 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. and there's like a group of terrorists or a group of civilians or or like it's like like the uh recent operations in Iran. I imagine that the US and Israeli forces do not want to harm civilians. They only only only targeted the military targets there. Right? So in those situations, it's it's a different level of responsibility for that decision making as well. Um and then there are just such a big variety of those military missions. And I'm not even like wellinformed or well educated in military science to tell you about all those scenarios. We would need to uh you know uh put put some some general besides me and maybe a Ukraine general and American general would would have told you very different stories about these things. >> Got it. Um can I ask a few more questions? >> Yeah. All right. So, in 2013, I wrote one of my first uh paid articles ever was uh about how the era of drones will change human society. Um I was just sitting on board thinking about things. >> You were way ahead of your time. >> And I said I said the following. >> This article is real. I've read it. Yeah, >> I said small small autonomous uh suicide drones um will cleanse the battlefield of of human infantry. Human infantry will not be able to stand against swarms of AI powered um suicide drones. That was, you know, I didn't even know about, you know, like Alexet at the time, I think. And then >> you're just an avid sci-fi reader. >> I'm an avid sci-fi reader, but also like it's not like like there will be a way to do that. It's a it's a nonlinear multi-dimensional search problem and you get enough compute, you'll find some search algorithm that will get you there. Um, and so uh I yeah I think that that one sentence describes the bitter lesson right there is just like it's a multi-dimensional search space. You search it somehow. I don't know. Figure out some get a grad student. It's not that hard anyway. Okay. So, but then but I guess the point is um uh the point is that human infantry on the battlefield will be will be gone. And 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. Um you know, like you need humans to hold ground. Uh that's something you still hear from a lot of people on social media today. Uh 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 uh where you know human infantry are basically guys like a few guys hiding in dugouts for months and I'm not >> Ukrainian side on on the Russian side that's just like a Zerg rush. >> The Zerg rush and then they just die and then but they have some guys in dugouts too, right? Hi like hiding in in dugouts for months. >> Yeah, they have. Yeah. >> Okay. But like but that like what are those guys doing in the dugouts? Are providing like frontline like like reconnaissance? Like what are they doing? >> Well, you know, if there is a guy in a dugout with a with some bullets and automatic weapon, uh the other guy cannot come and take that that that dugout. So that's they're they're establishing control over surgery. >> I see. So, so, so that is So, there still is a use for human infantry on the battlefield as of today. How long will that last? >> I think it will last for a while. There's, this is funny. Uh, there's this whole um layer of the modern culture, a modern Ukraine culture built around the war related stuff. So there is this uh punk rock band uh that is called uh SZ C I guess in English that would be uh which which stands short for uh like a deserter or something like that. Uh so anyhow this band has a song titled 2030. is basically about the year 2030 and the war st still goes on. It's like the the whatever third world word war or whatever and uh they they basically they sing 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 that's sort of the the theme of the song. Uh, and it seems like that's actually what's going to happen. Uh, >> ground robots will not replace humans in the dugouts soon. >> You know, I'm I'm I'm very much interested and following the whole humanoid robot theme. And uh >> what about like a dog dog robot >> or just mobile spider or something? Yeah. >> Anything evolves into a crab? >> Crabization of warfare. the there is a lot of utility in humanoid robots because the world is designed around humanoids. Um so I would not like 100% disqualify the possibility that uh you know sometimes 10 years into the future humanoid robots uh will be actually fighting. So that's that's an actual Terminator kind of scenario. You have in in the first Terminator movie you look at what they've got on the battlefield. They've got flying bomber drones and humanoid robots. Mhm. Yeah. And then look, the cost of uh large language models of running them is getting so low. Um you can have basically an inexpensive computer running, you know, what was a state-of-the-art model 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, etc. Um so that is already possible and with when when when when we're looking at the acceleration of of the neural nets uh you know I would have if not the acceleration of of of the large language models I would have said that you know I I don't think that humanoid robots will be able to be useful in the battlefield earlier than in 10 years but you know if you account for the exponential uh it might be you know five years or The problem with all of the autonomous systems and it it it's like starts with self-driving cars and even even with uh all the AI like modern day AI agents to make them really uh useful you have to solve such a long tale of edge cases uh that it's really difficult to make them useful like we were promised uh you know self-driving cars what like 2007 question in Google and even before that all the challenges everything and Elon of course told us it's going to be you know one year from 2014 and now we still don't have self-driving Teslas everywhere we have Whimos and SF and some other places but they're still like not not perfect so I think you know 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. Um there is a 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. Um but but uh the the the race with um uh like AI coding tools is just insane. uh so things might accelerate very fast faster than we can imagine. >> So I think your point is that with um you know due to this longtail 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. >> Yeah. You know, it's it's actually interesting that you say it that way and I I thought about this 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 um targeting or terminal guidance. It seems like we're like the only company that actually solved that >> because I'm saying it's trivial but it's at least something that you imagine given our >> user like Eric Smith's companies are are pretty good. 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 uh they have good engineering. Yeah. So I wasn't I wasn't saying it was trivial. I'm just saying this is a something naturally adaptive based upon things that we know work um 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. >> Yeah. like the the more complex behavior you're trying to simulate, uh the the more edge cases there are, right? The 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 the robot is represented as some something that has the the sort of uh sensor input and then you have three uh levels of uh sort of logics or or decision- making which are perception, planning and control and you have actuators as output. So uh you know pre- neural nets uh you would do perception output and control all with classic logics right then you know with Alex net and computer vision you you could do perception with uh neural nets and the rest with logic you can 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. Um, so you can also like think about that. Um and the way you implement those features uh 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 P filter uh P controllers etc or you can do a neural net uh that that was trained in a gym with a reinforcement learning etc. Um and th those would be two different behaviors of a system. Yeah. Okay. I maybe my point was just much more high level. >> You can like if if you go even like if if you go high level, you can you can like try to like have whatever like Fy Lee and and folks who are doing like physical uh sort of world models, right? Physical intelligence. uh that they're trying to make these big big models and sort of understand the world and and then supposedly you have such model and you can tell a drone okay like go over 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 uh that's one way and 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 uh And those are again very different behaviors. Uh and then it's not that one is necessarily better than than the other and we might have more technological capability to do one or another. Uh 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 the systems as well. >> Yeah. I guess where I'm going with this back to Noah's original thought with the end of the, you know, end of the soldier. And so in order to replace >> the end of the rifleman, let's >> the rifleman. Yeah. >> Yeah. I'm I'm not seeing that very close. And it was like I'm, you know, as much as I'm I'm a lover of sci-fi and all of that and a technologist, the more I I I try to be um like the the try try to have certain humility about these things. uh and like the the military um domain and there was just so much human history and blood and and tears uh dedicated to uh sort of understanding the art of war and perfecting it and and so on. Uh there's so much knowledge in there that I don't feel like I I even started to comprehend a lot of that. But one thing that I really understood is that even though drones are now making 80% of of of the casualties, you go to the actual officers, you you you talk to the actual like brigade commanders, core commanders um and they explain to you uh how all of it fits together. how when you're thinking about an operation that involves a couple thousand people to, you know, get g get this piece of land uh out of the enemy's hands, deocc deoccupy it. How it it is so complex. It involves, you know, 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 essential latest coolest thing doesn't mean that now it's that and only that, right? Um, so yeah, whoever is looking into that, I I think should should realize that it it's it's not just what the press talks about that the reality is much more difficult, much more complex. Let's talk about China and China's manufacturing capabilities. So suppose that someone like suppose the United States went to war with China >> and then >> I hope not. >> 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 uh 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." Um, I know that a number of countries including Ukraine and Taiwan have been making moves to um China proof their drone productions that China couldn't do that. Uh examples of things they might be able to cut off might include rare earths, uh fiber optic cable that you were talking about before, um various other things that where even if they don't control 100% 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, etc. 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? >> Yeah. Well, let me start with a saying that um although China does not sell directly to Ukraine and it does sell directly to Russia, um a lot of Ukrainian supply chains uh they start in China, right? And um we're not in a conflict with China. Uh and we would not want to be in a conflict with China. And um we'd hope that China stays a neutral power between Ukraine, Russia and the US as well. Uh that said, the scenario that you're describing, everything is much much much worse. So 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. China can make them not drones with propellers but fixed wing drones which go not 40 km far but maybe two or 300 km in land slightly more expensive >> with internal combustion or >> no no battery power yeah battery propulsion system on those propellers >> yeah yeah >> I don't I just don't know how that works >> yeah yeah yeah >> um so you have that they can also make them all fully autonomous they have DJI the world's most advanced drone company, they can make them fully autonomous without GPS, without anything. And then they can put those drones on um you know, maybe tens of thousands of fully autonomous underwater submarines or maybe not even that, just on shipping containers and uh you know, uh barges that ship goods, freight ships. Um, and then they show up with uh, you know, millions of drones packed onto those uh, sea vessels. They show up to any coastline in the world, be it Taiwan or be it California, and they have millions of long range impactors targeted at a at a piece of land. What do you do with that? There are not enough hunter submarines. There are not enough anti- um >> ship missiles. >> Yeah, anti-hship missiles, anti-ship planes. uh they can produce these assets uh on in tens of thousands of factories because they're so simple to produce that you know even the if if the FBI director picks a phone calls to the president of the United States says hey the scenario oursel was warning us about is beginning to unfold we need to do a preemptive strike uh you wouldn't have enough assets to to do preemptive strikes because there can be like tens of thousands of places where these things are being manufactured. Uh and then so to counteract a scenario like that we would need to have like a similar amount of mass similar number of drones. >> Yes. To intercept that like either in sea or in in air etc. at a similar cost. Right. So economics should should work out. I'll tell you that currently we in the west and we in the United States we don't have the technology to do that. We don't have >> what technologies key technologies do we lack >> like autonomy mass drone manufacturing stuff like that >> we lack autonomy technology. >> Well I think so if >> because our computer vision algorithms are not as good. >> It's not only about the computer vision algorithms. like the like if if if if a group of companies by Eric Schmidt founded two or three years ago and uh my small small startup uh was like maybe not as small but also founded 3 years ago uh are sort of two of the leading companies in the world and maybe couple others who are capable of something like that but not really on small drones. uh I I do think we we were behind China in technology. So we lack technology, we lack mass manufacturing capacity, we lack the components and we lack the rare earth materials. sort of four layers in which we're behind this challenge and that's why it is my point that uh we in the in the west and especially in the United States we should there should be far more smarter people working on defense and should be more funding uh if we want to keep the resemblance of our good past life >> that's really important would you say that right now as things stand in conventional terms terms, not you know abstracting from strategic nuclear weapons, but in conventional terms, would you say that 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? Look, I I don't I don't think we have all the information to claim that, but we cannot count that out. And that alone should be um you know a big warning sign. We have not seen Chinese drones in action. We've seen some of the Iranian drone in action and Russian drones in action not Chinese Israeli not seen Chinese forces in action. Obviously, you know, hopefully this never happens, but the conflict of a scale, US, China, there are many sort of classical assets that, you know, we should not discount as we just discussed. We should not discount artillery in the land war. We should not discount, you know, air air carrying groups and, you know, the the the air force uh and long range missiles and and electronic warfare and satellites, etc. But then there are also things that you know we at least we as a general public don't really know about China. I'm sure there's a lot of information that the US intelligence has about the Chinese capabilities. Um but yeah, I think if you if you get back to the scenario that I just described and if you take that like sort of to the maximum, you basically see that whoever has bigger manufacturing capacity, that side wins. >> That's just a typical law of conventional warfare and has been forever. >> Sort of. >> Do you read Noah's blog? Uh I not as often as I would like but I I read no's act. >> It's not necessary. >> It's it's a theme where you >> don't don't read my my ax. >> Yeah. >> It's just he has no opinion around things. Yeah. >> No opinion. >> Um but okay. So here's the um I guess there's two questions here. The question of could the United States and other countries allied with the United States even develop supply chains that are independent of China to make any of these drones? And the second question is could they do it in sufficient mass? And so I think the answer to the question of can they do it in sufficient mass is today no. Um but in a extended prolonged war situation things change a lot and um you know all the development restrictions that we put on new factories go out the window and a sense of urgency you know I mean Ukraine obviously wasn't making all these drones before the war and so if America had the same kind of urgency that Ukraine has now you know things would happen things would move and of course America has allies too or had allies until recently and may have them again in the future. Um but but America has or had allies that would also scale up very quickly like Japan and um you know European countries if we ever ally with them again etc. And so um a lot of things could then change in terms of the actual mass. So I in terms of looking at China and saying they have all these factories today and looking at the history of conventional warfare, you know, America had very few military facility on the eve of World War II and it ended up easily outproducing everyone else even >> maybe not easily. Yeah, >> not easily, but but I mean by a long long >> added benefit of not being attacked. >> That's right. That's right. >> That helps. >> Yeah. And so um who knows how secure they are now but um or what you know we're cyber >> look I totally agree with your sentiment like and I'm not as I'm I'm l I'm I'm even less doomerish than than you are or as as as it seems to me you you're a little bit doomerish but like in the long term you're bullish. >> I'm not doomerish. I'm I'm thinking about the I'm thinking about what we need to do, you know. I'm not I'm not thinking like oh we're doomed. That's not my point. It's never useful saying that. Um, if you're doomed, then just don't go on podcast. Um, you know, go pet a rabbit and play a video game or something. Anyway, no, if you're we're not doomed, but um but uh I'm saying step one, how what are the key choke points that we need tomorrow besides rare earths, which we already know, what are the other key choke points that the west needs to free itself from Chinese supply chains on in order to manufacture even one drone free of Chinese supply chains? >> You know, there there are companies here who are doing that like our we have good friends, a company called Nuros. I know they're down in Elsagundo or whatever, like somewhere on South California. >> One of the most pressing choke points besides rare earths that everyone talks about. >> Yeah. You know, that's one of the pieces that we do, thermal cameras. Uh that's like actually a big one. Um >> thermal cameras. >> Yeah. Uh then like uh the motors. Uh like you you need um >> the after you have the magnets, then you turn them into a really good motor. >> Yeah. Yeah. you you have you need these special magnets and then that's sort of your rare earth component and like rare earth is not that oh like there are these mthals that only for for some reason God only put them under the Chinese territory and not not under any others no like they're distributed there are plenty of them around earth is it's about the refining capabilities and like investing into that and and so on and then like frankly at some point we don't have that many humans like uh that's where the humanoid robots help like China is a big populist country. uh the the population of like United West is uh comparable to that but the population of the US is much slower than that and I definitely think that you know the whole west should get their act together uh because uh you know Victoria Concordia there's always victory where where there is union agreement yes >> um so I think we we we sort of as as the free nations of the world, we should get their act together because freedom is what what unites us. And I'm, you know, I'm I'm also like pretty mad at what's happening in the European Union. Uh and I think that um you know, uh current US administration is the best thing that has ever happened to Europe since World War II probably uh or since post World War II because World War II wasn't the best thing. Trump withdrawing the image of omnipotent American support forced the Europeans to get their butts in gear, unite and >> Yeah. And also like doing that not in a nice way, right? Like when JD Vans came to Munich forum one year ago, he wasn't like super nice like, "Oh, please our European friends, please could you please increase your defense spending?" He was somewhat pushy, let's put it that way. And that I I think that was a necessary measure. like I've been I've been thinking about that. Could it could it have been he maybe he could have been nicer? I was like no because like the voters of European leaders, the European countries would have not understood this. They they would not get the message. And now I think the message was gotten across but Europe is still sort of slow to wake up. I would put it that way. things are getting better, but I'm not happy about the speed of how they're getting better. So when I when I like when I would go to some of the European capitals, I would get back pretty depressed from like talking to their, you know, military officials and their entrepreneurs, etc. Here, I've been US for the last month or so. I'm not not depressed. I'm actually I'm I'm actually excited. I still think you should like 10x the effort in um sort of making sure that uh you remain the the the strongest power uh in in the world and you can defend your values etc. But um but I'm I'm very optimistic and definitely once we are in danger I think u or just like lots of very smart people in the west who can figure these things out. Uh but people in China are also extremely smart. It's it's very different from even the cold war sort of situation like Soviet Union was uh economically uh very declining power. China is not like that and then if if we look at you know electric car race I think they're ahead of the US and ahead of the whole world definitely ahead of Europe which used to be sort of a car superpower. Um, when you look at AI, I think they're almost where we are, maybe slightly behind. Uh, when you look at humanoid robotics, I would argue they're ahead. And, uh, in many other like in like medicine and biosciences, there's lots of interesting things there. And like in consumer space, there are lots of interesting things there. I don't know if you heard this podcast called 996. Uh, I don't know if if it's still airing or not. There used to be a fantastic podcast by some American American Chinese businessmen maybe venture funds uh Chinese about about China from a sort of tech venture point of view. Um so and I I lived in China for maybe 4 months and I visited a couple times. Um like even even we chat is like such a more advanced app than anything we have in the west. Um so we it's very important not to be too arrogant and I think we're guilty of that like definitely in the US uh you know sometimes we tend to be too arrogant like I I think like humility helps always at least to me personally. Um yeah and then I I think like we don't have to we don't have to obviously be enemies. So, um, you know, like with Ukraine and Russia, it's like Russia came to kill all of these people and get all of this territory. With China and the US, it's not like that. And thanks God it's not like that, right?

Well, those examples did rely on Chinese supply chains though. >> Um, partially yes. But then if you think about Ukraine in February 22 2022 to you know first half year or year wasn't much reliance on Chinese supply chain. We were just relying on whatever we we've got. So that's one side of things. Another side of things is um is is basically how much suffering can you withstand along multiple axis. It's not just the military axis. It's also like the economic axis and the political axis. I would I would argue. So like one of the reasons why wars stop or start is because the political pressure on the leadership internally in the country is so high that you just have to stop that. All right. Um so I think that differs big times uh from whether you were the one who's seen by the population as the party which started the conflict or the one who was attacked. That's one part. another just by overall state of the society like and one thing I'm worried about in Europe now that people are not ready to fight even if they are attacked like when people are asked about that they're like oh I'm just going to move to somewhere where there's like less there's no war um so that's a challenge and that's what makes Europe weaker right now and you know the US didn't really have to ever I think fight a foreign war on its own turf. Um I hope that never happens but in case that would have happened. I don't know what what would be you know how would the rich cities of uh east or west coast how would people behave like would would all the wall street bankers and Silicon Valley VCs uh you know mobilize and really start working on on on defense stuff? I I would love to think so. I like that's the way I think about the Americans >> the way we did in World War II >> in a way. But look like it wasn't that that clear in World War II and like Churchill was like famously said America will always make the right decision after trying all the wrong ones, right? And it's like one could argue that there's this sort of this USA that lives in popular culture and was sort of created by Hollywood's like cool dudes that will always come and do the right thing, right? And then if you if you look at like uh international politics, it it doesn't necessarily always look like that, you know, like the Budapest memorandum like Ukraine gave all of its nuclear weapons, the second world's third largest nuclear arsenal. Um you know, because the US and and and Russia and the others were uh very persuasive and they're like, "Yeah, just give it away. We we guarantee you security." And they're like, "Oh, it's not guarantees. It's asurances." We use the word asurances. So therefore, we didn't promise you much. You just gave it away for free. And then like Russia attacks and like no reaction. So the whole world like 2022, the whole world looks at it and it's like, "Oh, okay. So maybe we should get nukes." So like my prediction next couple decades, a lot more countries uh will be working their own nukes. >> They really should. I'm consistently advocated for uh specifically Japan, South Korea, and Poland to get nukes, >> but obviously Ukraine shouldn't as well. someone someone could argue that if if a country currently doesn't work on their own nuclear program, they're doing a disservice to their country and the government should be fired like because it seems like from the recent world history that that that is like the only way to actually provide credible deterrence. All right. Um so I I I guess I think like in Europe people are not quite sure uh how will America behave. Will it behave as the Hollywood hero or will it behave pragmatically as it did at the beginning of World War II or as it did you know with when when Ukraine was attacked by Russia and uh you know the US just decided to sort of push the Budapest memorandum uh aside because of course Russia's nuclear power and like we don't want to mess with it. >> Everyone says Russia's behind right now in the drone war. >> Um but that wasn't true a year ago. So, a year ago, people were saying either Russia was ahead or they're at parody or maybe a year and a half ago. >> Russia has more people, four times as many people about um or more. >> Yeah, I think give or take. Yeah. >> Yeah. >> 30 versus like 120ish. Yeah. >> Yeah. So, so four times as many people um more help from China >> like economy is like 10 10 20 times bigger right now. a lot of oil. A lot of oil money that Ukraine just doesn't have. More direct help from China than Ukraine is getting. Um >> so Russia just has this massive advantage in in scaling against Ukraine itself. Ukraine has financial systems from the EU. But um uh right now Ukraine is ahead in the drone race by >> I'm not sure about that by the way. >> Okay. Is that I was well that was going to be my next question. Is that true? And if it is true, how long before Russia manages to pivot, course correct, and regain the lead? >> Sorry, for my own curiosity, can we define drone race? >> Yeah, look, I think it's also for for our listeners, uh, as helpful to understand that there are at least 30 different types categories of drones, right? Like you have if you if you first you have like different domains. You have flying drones uh ground vehicles and you have sea vehicles and you have undersea vehicles, right? Then for each of those domains you have multiple use cases like for ground vehicles you have logistics, evacuation, mining, demining um yeah like maybe something else. For uh for aerial you have reconnaissance uh front strike, mid strike, deep strike, mining, demining, radio repeating, uh kamicazin bombing, um um ISR, different types of surveillance. So tactical surveillance, operational level surveillance, uh maybe strategic level surve surveillance at some point. um logistics also with aerial drones for sea drones same thing. So in each of those categories you have dozens sometimes over 100 companies uh and uh products which compete. So that's the current Ukrainian uh battlefield. From the Russian side, it's less of a zoo as we say. So they in each category they usually have one, two, maybe three products and um then they scale it sort of in a centralized fashion. Um and then so when you talk about whether we are behind or who's behind or or ahead in drone warfare, you got to analyze that asymmetric area by area, right? So if you like talking about the front strike, I would argue that Ukraine has gotten ahead recently with u after scaling the um fiber optic. Uh before that, Russia was um slightly be slightly ahead. So so Ukraine got ahead um with like mid strikes something like 40 to 200 km. Um, it's hard for me to judge. At some point, Russia was was ahead. I I think maybe we're we're getting ahead as well. In deep strike, we recently got ahead. So, we were we were doing more damage to Russia with deep strike drones than they're doing to us. Um, in sea drones, we're consistently ahead. Always were ahead. In ground drones, I think we're ahead. Yeah, I think like on like >> Where are they still ahead >> in general? I think we're we're ahead. where they where they are still ahead. Um I think in certain parts um of the components uh like GPS free navigation like these CRPA antennas, they're pretty good. Uh they have uh these uh winged uh bombs that they drop from their bomber planes. Um I I forgot the English name for it. >> Glide bomb. >> Yeah, sort of. Yeah. So they're ahead on that side and it's like it's difficult to protect from those. Um >> what's the range of that? >> It can be pretty big. I think it's like can be up to 80 kilometers. >> Yeah. And then obviously the range >> a fighter plane like a strike. >> Yeah. The range is is a very iffy subject here because the range is is like basically the distance from where you drop the bomb to where it lands. But also you drop it from from a fire plane and then fire planes are susceptible to aerial interceptor missiles. So on our side we have our own fighter planes and we have the ground anti-air systems and then and then those two assets they have their radars and radar fields and then uh you know depending on the enemy tactics you can uh you know calculate how big is the aerial area that you cover with those assets. And look you know I'm not a professional military guy so I'm covering these topics in a in layman terms. Don't quote me on this. I'm just trying this to make this as understandable to an average listener as as possible. >> Um, helicopters. I uh um I've recently seen reports of drones taking out helicopters in the air and that this is new. >> Yeah. >> Is that new? Is that going to be a big deal? Is that going to increase like is that going to eventually get rid of helicopters the way drones are getting rid of tanks in the battlefield? >> Yeah, look, helicopters are also ver versile assets. uh front strike helicopters. I think we're we're going to be seeing fewer and fewer of them. These few Russian helicopters that Ukraine intercepted with drones were more like edge cases than a systematic um sort of helicopter hunting campaign. I think it is possible to turn it into a systematic uh counter measure against helicopters. Um >> what kind of will those be battery powered drones themselves? >> Uh yeah, potentially. Uh and there there are like so many different scenarios. Uh like you can have large aerial drone carriers carrying interceptor drones that then go hit the helicopters >> for example. Or or you can have um battery powered interceptor drones but not of a uh missile with a propeller type uh as many of these well-known drones like Sting or P1 Sun. uh they look like basically a missile with a quad quadcopter uh behind it. Uh but you you can also have a plane or like fixed wing like uh aerial interceptors. >> Does any does anyone have like a little like uh drone that flies super low under the helicopter and like shoots it from underneath? >> I mean like in theory you can imagine that but but surface a drone that carries surfacetoair missiles somehow. Yeah, I don't think that's very practical because whatever you have going on land will be just super slow and not not fast enough to to be able to hunt down the helicopter. >> I mean, like in the in the air, is it is is there a drone capable of carrying a a a small surfaceto-air missile that can like skim, you know, low and then launch its little missile, like a flying missile >> in theory? But like a big part of a mission like that is not just kinetically getting to a helicopter, but also identifying it. I know either by means of first raider and then visually and placing the asset you have the interception asset you have in the right place in the right time. So the combination of th those things is much more complex than just you know how can we strike it like from behind or from below. Uh but then helicopters are not does not mean they're becoming like completely useless. Um like for example helicopters are used to uh um intercept um deep strike drones like Ukraine uses a lot of helicopters to shoot down shahads >> and Russia uses helicopters to shoot down our deep strike drones. >> Um a lot of people talk oh so um some some ideas about drone countermeasures things people do technologically to try to shoot down FPV drones or bomber drones or whatever. Um, dumb question that I probably already know the answer to, but for the listeners, why can't you use a shotgun? Shoot down drones that are coming after you. When you have like a guy, why can't you use >> that's the main uh weapon that people use against him? >> Why aren't they very good? >> They're they're pretty good. Like there are there are like hundreds maybe thousands of cases of drones being shot down with shotguns both by Definitely thousands, but both by Ukrainians and Russians. There's even like statistics of like what is the percentage of Ukraine FPV drones that didn't accomplish the mission because they were shot down by a shotgun. >> Got it. So if I'm a guy with a shotgun, I'm walking around FPV drone comes for me. Um >> I don't recommend that. >> No, I I I don't plan on it. But I'm saying suppose that were the case. Okay. >> In in or suppose there's there is a guy. He's not me. >> Yeah. >> He's dumber than me. Okay. He's got a shotgun. He's walking around. FPV drone is sent. You know, someone says, "Okay, there's a guy walking around. Kill him. FPV drone, go." >> FPV drone goes after him. What? And he has a shotgun. What are his chances of using that shotgun to shoot down the drone before the drone gets him? Can is Are you allowed to say that? >> Depending how good you are with a shotgun. I I I'll tell you like I was I was talking to uh some Ukraine pilot group and they told me like there was this Russian guy. He was just like Rambo. He like he like he shot down like seven FPV drones. They couldn't they couldn't get him. They finally got him. But it was like nothing they've seen before, right? Like >> But your average non- Rambo >> average non- Rambo will just die. >> We'll just die. So there's like very low chance that they'll be able to use a shotgun to shoot down the drones. >> Rather low chance. >> Well, that that was the kind of question I was getting at. And there's no um there's no sort of portable electronic countermeasure that can get FPV drones if you're just holding it. >> Um very effective. >> There are plenty of it. Just uh depends on it. It's it's always like electronic contra measures are used all across the front line. The the tricky thing is electronic contra measures cover certain uh radio electronic bands of frequencies. Let me simplify my question. Each side tries to tries to find a frequency that >> Let me simplify my question. Is there a manportable system that will give me a greater than 50% chance of living if an FPV drone specifically targets me to come kill me right now? Well, look, if your system jams the frequency the drone works on and the drone doesn't have optic fiber or uh a last mile autonomy, then you have 100% chance that it will will not fly towards you. But then what is the chance to to to not have drone that can either use different frequency or autonomy or fiber optic? Well, that depends on the on the area you're in and who's who's your adversary in that area in that zone. Um, >> okay. Well, let's I guess this question was maybe too dumb that I was trying to ask. >> No, it's it's a great question. There are no dumb questions here. And it's just like my answers if you if you feel the common theme here is that things in practice in war things are way way way more complex than they seem. >> Okay. What? But so, um, I want like I want, you know, I I've read tons of things that say that basically if you're walking around in the open and drones come for you, you're not 100% dead, but you're probably dead. And I've read a bunch of things that say that. I want listeners to understand why like you know pe people uh who are paying a tiny bit of attention to this debate to this this issue from far away intermittently in America uh who don't I think don't understand the weakness of our military against this kind of uh attack against drone attack >> I think there was >> have a lot of mechanisms psychological mechanisms by which they cope with the mental idea of drones I would like to bust those mechanisms by explaining Why drones defeat in human infantry on the battlefield? >> Yeah. I mean, it's it's just like guided guided bomb flying at you and it knows exactly where you are, right? Uh it's not that it's it's the ultimate weapon, but I think like one of the things that went viral in in Ukrainian defense tech bubble even before the words of uh the CEO of Rain Metal was some American um uh tank uh battle tank pilot uh who was interviewed and he was he was asked whether he's afraid of FPV drones and he's like no it's like we have our tanks are strong And that that went viral among Ukraans because they're like, "Dude, you have no idea what you're talking about. Like, don't mess with those drones." Like, you know, Abram's tank, great tank, but against an FP drone, sorry, dude, but not going to work. Yeah. >> Oh, I was like, maybe not not from one drone, but like a dozen drones, we'll we'll take it out. So, um yeah. Uh but there is hope. Um so you just have to have kinetic counter measures. Interesting thing >> kinetic counter measure means a thing that shoots down the drone. >> Well can mean many things. So if you if you go to uh Ukrainian east and sort of territories close to the front lines I think like about 50 kilometers in from the front line all the roads are covered by fishnetss. So you literally you ride in a corridor of fishnetss and that's the mechanical countermeasure against the drone. >> You count that as a kinetic countermeasure. >> Well mechanical. Okay. Okay. Got it. Got it. I don't know all the jargon so it's I'm >> whatever. Then the tanks if you look at Russian tanks and sometimes Ukrainian tanks or or equipment they they all look like porcupines. They have these long sticking uh I don't know poles. We talked about poles already in this podcast. >> Different kind of poles. Yeah. Uh and and uh that's that's the way to protect from drone. That's to make to that's a way to make the drone detonate uh maybe half a meter or a meter away from from the actual shell of the tank. uh or uh yeah, sometimes there are like nets on on top of these tanks just welded on some extra um sort of equipment. Uh then of course uh there are um guns that um like what both Russians and Ukraine or Ukraine are beginning to experiment with is um kind of interceptor drone, anti-FPV interceptor drone which you put on top of something like a gun like harpoon sort of thing and when you see like a drone coming at you maybe you can notice or hear it from two 100 meters or 100 meters. So you have a couple of seconds and you grab that thing, you point it and you fire it and then on board it has certain AI that helps it to um guide the the small drone towards an attacking drone and intercept it that way. M >> um so those are the things that are being developed and like we're working on some of these things as well. And then you can imagine like an armor with um hundreds of of of drones on top of it which are protector drones sort of like active armor. Whenever they see a drone coming at you they like take off. >> That's cool. What about um what about the kind of things that the the Germans are building which is basically like a big truck with a some sort of automated shotgun on it. >> Yeah. like they have Skynx. It's u by Ry Matal by the guy whom we mentioned today. Um Skynx is considered to be an okay weapon. Their their shots are quite expensive though >> and um so I'll tell you this different story um about u cost to fire each shot really. >> Yeah. Cost to effect in in sort of a more more abstract way. So I was uh last year I was speaking at uh a land euro conference. It's the biggest USAA US USA USA army um conference in Europe uh called the land euro um and um there was an expo there and uh there was like a Rathon RTX booth there and Rathon is amazing company. Gosh, we love Rathon. They're making Patriots. Patriots are the best. Um and they make a bunch of other things and they they had this laser uh laser gun product ask so laser thing was like they have in two variations 2 kow sorry 10 kow laser and 20 kow laser I'm like okay 10 kow laser tell me about it like can it take down an FPV drone like yes of course it can I'm like okay cool how much time does it take to take down an FPV drone and they're like Well, maybe 3 seconds. I'm like, hm, 3 seconds, that's like a lot of time, but okay, maybe fine. And what if F3 drone tries to evade, right? And it's like, well, we will retarget it again. It's like, and then 3 seconds start again. Yeah, okay. Well, can it take down like a dozen FPV drones? Like, yeah, for sure. I'm like, okay, dozen FPV drones. 30 seconds. Uh, maybe yes. 2 km, maybe yes, maybe no. Um, and I'm like, "Okay, how how much does it cost?" And he says something like $3 million or something like that. And I'm like, "Okay, $3 million." So that is 6,000 FPV drones. I doubt this thing will be able to handle 6,000 FPV drones or even 600 FPV drones coming at it at the same time. So you have this kind of economic and you know this product may not be necessarily a product against an FPV drone. It might or against an FPV drone in an active battlefield environment. It might be guarding a stadium in a peaceful country. Uh and then you know for some random dudes launch couple drones above a stadium, shoot them down. Okay, everyone's happy. Although the drone will fall down, maybe fall in someone's head. That wouldn't be cool. So you would want something like catching bad drones with a net above a stadium or something like that. But whatever my point is the economics >> if you sent them one by one it wouldn't you know it would just bew but if you sent a mass of 6,000 >> yeah um >> what about just like a more powerful laser like a 100 you know kilowatt laser something they wouldn't need to spend >> no that's worse you need less powerful laser that that achieves the same effect and more powerful yeah more powerful laser would be >> more expensive heavier more difficult to transport. Uh it will be more difficult to make many of them. Uh and therefore you wouldn't be able to cover a long front line and would be super expensive to replace if it gets damaged. All of those issues. So the the reason why FPV drones or iPhones become so popular is because they're small and everyone can have one, you know, and so is with the counter measures. Um, so that's, you know, you were asking me about sort of policy advice. So that's like another sort of mental shift that you got to got going to go through. It's it's no longer about an aircraft carrier that costs whatever $14 billion and takes forever to build. It's it's about mass uh that is you can iterate on very quickly. You can upgrade it. Everyone can operate it. And then that mass when it is combined or the technologies when they're you know uh extrapolated from like one domain to another domain they add up all right as as it happens with software. Um so I think that's that's important.

Can I ask a follow-up question? So um Russia is not necessarily the smartest army you could be fighting. What would happen if you your adversary was smarter? Do you think things would change meaningfully? >> Look, I don't know if I fully agree with not the smartest army. Who is the smartest army? >> Great question. >> I don't know. I don't know. Uh I I think that those are like very dangerous assumptions to make. >> Who was the smartest army in World War I? Like define smart. Why? Why do you think so? >> Why do you think Russia is not the smartest army? >> Okay. I mean, maybe this is just my own, you know, information. >> Maybe I agree with you, you know, but I'm just like I'm naturally wired now to challenge those assumptions. >> Okay. No, no, that's a that's a that's a really good point. I I guess um when I for my information bubble, it seems like Russia's strategy has largely been to just throw resources. Well, you're living in a western propaganda information bubble. Of course, like as as am I. Like we're all rooting for Ukraine to win, right? But yeah, sorry. Go on. >> Yeah. Yeah. I mean, in But you know, going back to this, granted, there's a history of large powers failing to take over smaller um you know, strategically, you know, >> David and Goliath. >> Yeah. This is >> they fail a lot more now than they used to. >> Yeah. >> The the success rate of taking places over has gone way down. >> Yeah. And certainly, yeah, but regardless, it does I do wonder like if if Russia had not essentially assumed victory early on. They're super stupid. Of course, like they were marching at K with their parade uh costumes and like, you know, they were thinking they're going to have a parade in K in a few days. Like that was super stupid. And like there were lots of stupid things. They're like they have no regard, no care for human life. are sending those Russian folks just like without armor without anything like fork folks on crutches like sending them to storm Ukraine positions and it's like >> you think at this point they're >> I have like I have actually good friend he's he's American he's uh he's from Seattle uh he's uh you know served uh u had been in special forces here in the US had been in maybe three deployments and then went to Ukraine volunteered and he's been fighting since like uh 2022 too. He's a very good friend of mine. So, at some point he's he's been texting me and he is like, "Okay, I'm near Pocross and not Pocross. was um gosh the other city uh chass >> and and he's like okay so what Russians are doing they're just creating so much work for all the all the psychologists who are going to heal those Ukrainian um um uh whatever riflemen or or machine gunmen uh who are just like shooting at the Russians who are like going non-stop right so it's like causing Russians are causing psy psychological trauma on Ukrainians because they're dying in such stupid way. Um, so that is indeed stupid of of sort of Russian higher command, etc., etc., etc. Um, but then that's the resource they have. >> Um, and >> if you've got if you've got zerglings, you use your zerglings. >> That's the way that's their strategy. That's that's their way of strategy. You >> want to play Zerg? >> Oh, yeah. Yeah. Back in the day, that's what you did. >> If you play Starcraft, that's how Zergs win, right? Are Ukrainians the ter? >> Uh, >> I don't know. I I I I I hope we we will become protests soon. >> I'm working on that. I'm working on that. I feel like but then like a fairly bad political man. >> I wish I wish I wish like protos with with a speed closer to to like humans or tyrants, whatever it is. Uh hopefully we we can do protos technology with Zerg speed. That that would be the best. that I think that's that's what the housewives are working on. In fact, >> you cannot beat those housewives. Do not oppose Ukrainian housewives mess with Ukraine housewives for sure. Yeah. >> Two final questions. First one, you started out by telling us a story about going to a chapel on February 23rd. >> Yeah. >> Um were you able to get married there? And >> yeah, can you finish that story? We actually we we did get married but we postponed the wedding as social event uh until the war is over. >> Okay, cool. And then last question, um what do you want our audience to take away? If you have one point you want to want them to walk away with, what would it be? >> You want peace, be prepared to war. Got to got to invest in in defense and security. >> All right. Thanks. Thank you for talking with us. >> Thank you. And uh thank you Noah for all the great >> Absolutely. It was great. Yeah. Great to >> Yeah, that was fantastic. Thanks so much. >> Awesome. Thanks.