As promised in my last Substack, I wrote an article for the Atlantic, based on recent reporting from Kyiv. During the trip, I spoke to a range of people who work in the drone industry, especially those making long-range drones. Although I’ve written on this topic before, I still don’t think Americans and Europeans really appreciate the scale of the Ukrainian defense industry, which now includes hundreds of new companies, or the way in which Ukrainian technology has completely transformed the war. This is no longer a merely a war of attrition, but rather the most sophisticated competition on the planet. Both sides have learned to fight using artificial intelligence, electronic warfare, intelligent targeting and more. The Russians still have more industrial capacity, but the Ukrainians, so far, have the technological edge.

On this trip, I visited a factory:

The company that I visited, Fire Point, specializes in weaponry for these long-range attacks, producing large drones that can travel up to 1,400 kilometers and stay in the air for seven hours. Fire Point recently attracted attention for its newest product, the Flamingo cruise missile, which can hit targets at 3,000 kilometers, and the company is testing ballistic missiles, too. These capabilities have put Fire Point at the cutting edge of Ukraine’s most ambitious strategy: the campaign to damage Russian refineries, pipeline stations, and other economic assets, especially oil-related assets. Trump has still never applied any real pressure on Russia, and is slowly lifting the Biden administration’s sanctions by refusing to update them. By targeting Russia’s oil and gas industry, the Ukrainians have been applying “sanctions” on their own.

At the factory, and elsewhere, Ukrainians repeatedly told me that they now seek to make weapons with no Chinese components, and no American components. Their goal is independence. If President Trump deigns to help them, perhaps by selling some weapons systems, they will be delighted. If not, they will move on.

Already, they have thought carefully about how to use their new long-range capabilities so as to do the most damage to Russia’s ability to fight the war. I spoke to a Ukrainian officer, who told me that early on in the war, his colleagues realized that the Russians are not deterred by the deaths of their soldiers:

“Russia can sustain extremely high levels of casualties and losses in human lives. They don’t care about people’s lives.” However, “it is painful for them to lose money.” They need money to fund their oligarchy, as well as to bribe their soldiers to fight: “So naturally, we need to reduce the amount of money available for them.” Oil and oil products provide the majority of Russia’s state income. This is how the oil industry became the Ukrainians’ most important target.

The program is beginning to demonstrate real success:

Russian overall oil exports are now at their lowest point since the start of the war, and the Russians are running out of gasoline and diesel at home. The commander of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces has said that more than a fifth of Russian refining capacity has been destroyed. The regime has banned the export of refined oil products, because there isn’t enough for the domestic market. Gas stations are closed or badly supplied in areas across the country, including the suburbs of Moscow and St. Petersburg. Telegram accounts post videos of cars waiting in enormous lines. Earlier this month, Izvestiya, a state-owned newspaper, actually admitted to its readers that severe fuel shortages are spreading across central and eastern Russia, as well as in Crimea, a problem it attributed, laughably, to “the seasonal increase in fuel demand and the growth of tourism activity.”

The Ukrainians made two million drones last year and will make four million this year, among them the ubiquitous battlefield drones, the incredible sea drones (I wrote about them in 2023, even got to drive one) and the long-range drones described here. They do need funding to keep going, and the Europeans say they will provide it:

The Germans will invest $10.5 billion in support for Ukraine this year and next, a large chunk of which will be spent building drones. Sweden has pledged $7.4 billion. The European Union’s decision to invest $6 billion in a “Drone Alliance” with Ukraine is mostly designed to build anti-drone defenses along Europe’s eastern border, but that money will also accelerate production and benefit Ukraine as well.

Other means of stopping exports are also presenting themselves:

Both the Ukrainians and their European allies are also looking harder at the so-called shadow fleet, the oil tankers now traveling around the world under flags of convenience, fraudulent flags, or no flags at all, carrying illicit Russian oil. Many are old, dangerous boats, with inexperienced crew and little or no insurance. Some have been involved in accidents already, and they could do real environmental damage in the Baltic Sea. Sweden, Germany, and Denmark have all announced that they will check the papers of these shadow tankers and sanction those that aren’t insured, adding them to a growing list of sanctioned ships. The point, for the moment, is not just to protect the environment but to raise the costs of Russian oil exports and thus to reduce the amount of money flowing into Russia and back up Ukraine’s air campaign. More extreme measures, including banning these unmarked, uninsured ships from the Baltic altogether, are under consideration too.

The conclusion: Regardless of what Trump or Putin does or says, Ukraine will continue to defend itself. Europe will help. Or, to put it differently, Ukraine has cards.

Read the whole article (gift link)

Lessons for Americans

This year, the Atlantic held its annual festival in New York. I did two panels last weekend with Atlantic colleagues, including this one with Jeffrey Goldberg, George Packer, and Adam Serwer. We talked about violence, polarization, and the sources of both. You can listen here:

I also recorded a live podcast with Garry Kasparov. We focused more directly on what Americans can do to improve their bad politics. He and I didn’t agree on everything, but we did both conclude that Americans cannot allow ourselves to be distracted or depressed by Trump’s attempt to reshape the political landscape and alter our institutions. Like the Ukrainians, we need to stay focused, stay involved, vote in large numbers next year and not let the ugliness of our current politics make us apolitical, cynical or nihilistic.

Finally, I went to an evening showing of a new documentary about Lynsey Addario, the war photographer who traveled to Sudan with me. Love and War is an unusual film, a frank portrait of a person who repeatedly puts herself at risk in order to tell the world’s most difficult stories. Afterwards I moderated a conversation with Lynsey and Chai Vasarhelyi, the director (alas there is no video). The film is being shown at festivals right now, but will eventually be available on Netflix, so look out for it.

 

 

Kleptocracy Tracker

Continuing to monitor conflicts of interest, ostentatious emoluments, outright corruption and policy changes that will facilitate outright corruption. (Read my original article, Kleptocracy Inc.)

September 14

• Steve Witkoff sold a $120 million stake in his real estate company to resolve a conflict of interest, though he still holds $350 million in assets, including stakes in SpaceX and World Liberty Financial.

September 15

• Before Trump approved the export of advanced AI chips to the UAE—a move previously considered a US national security risk—the head of the $1.5 trillion Emirati sovereign wealth fund deposited $2 billion into World Liberty Financial.

September 16

• Oracle, the tech company co-founded by Larry Ellison—a friend of Trump and the father of Paramount Skydance chairman and CEO David Ellison—is poised to take a stake in TikTok after Trump brokered a deal with China to transfer ownership of the platform.
• The Air Force has begun retrofitting the jumbo jet gifted to Trump by Qatar, a project that could cost up to $1 billion.

September 17

• SEC Chair Paul Atkins announced plans to roll back enforcement of compliance standards that had been aggressively applied during the Biden administration.

September 18

• Tiffany Trump and her husband have received luxury perks tied to her father’s presidency and her father-in-law’s work for the State Department in the Middle East and Africa, including a stay on a mega-yacht in the French Riviera.

September 19

• The Securities and Exchange Commission dropped civil enforcement cases worth hundreds of millions of dollars against three men convicted of fraud who had previously received clemency from Trump.
• Trump has been soliciting donations from business executives for the construction of a White House ballroom, with companies such as Google, R.J. Reynolds, Booz Allen Hamilton, Lockheed Martin, Palantir, and NextEra Energy already contributing millions of dollars.

September 22

• Border Czar Tom Homan accepted a $50,000 cash bribe in exchange for promising immigration-related contracts during an FBI sting operation conducted before the start of Trump’s second administration—though the investigation was ultimately shut down by Kash Patel.

To-Read List: Global Musk

I don’t think Americans really understand the role that Elon Musk is now playing in the politics of other countries, most recently the UK. On September 15, he made a video appearance at the far-right “Unite the Kingdom” march. Musk told the protesters, “Violence is coming to you” and “You either fight back or you die.” Then he called for the dissolution of Parliament. Earlier this year, shortly after his apparent Sieg Heil salute, he addressed a rally in support of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), a party the German government has classified as neo-Nazi. Read the AP account of the UK rally here.

Ironically, or perhaps not, Musk’s support for the far right in the UK is part of MAGA’s global assault on the national sovereignty of other countries. Janan Ganesh of the Financial Times points out that Trump, JD Vance and others denounce threats to their own national sovereignty from immigrants or “globalists,” but are very happy to impose their own views on everyone else. Read more here (gift link).

The Economist thinks this effort might backfire, because European nationalist parties are very different from one another, and because the interdependency of Europeans means that any strict sovereignty project is bound to fail (like Brexit). Also, if they want to win, in parliamentary systems, they have to sound more moderate. Read more here (gift link).

More worrying to me is the reflection of Musk’s extremism is the X algorithm, a platform that still shapes political debate in many countries, if only because journalists read it. Europe will truly be free of Musk’s influence only when Europeans demand transparency from social media platforms, and when they take back control of their own political debate from America’s oligarchs. As I wrote at the beginning of this year, we are still a long way from that moment:

Global democracies could demand greater transparency around the use of algorithms, both on social media and in the online-advertising market more broadly. They could offer consumers more control over what they see, and more information about what they don’t see. They could enforce their own campaign-funding laws. These changes could make the internet more open and fair, and therefore a better, safer place for the exercise of free speech. If the chances of success seem narrow, it’s not because of the lack of a viable legal framework—­rather it’s because, at the moment, cowardice is as viral as one of Musk’s tweets.

Maybe European regulators could learn more from the Ukrainians too…

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