He’s Forging the Future of War

Last week, I wrote about Russia’s war in Ukraine and the drone technology helping Ukrainians hold their own, at least for now. Today, I want to introduce you to the man in charge of that strategy.

Mykhailo Fedorov is Ukraine’s defense minister. He’s 35 years old. He used to work in tech. If the sci-fi dream (or nightmare?) of autonomous killer robots eventually comes to fruition, it may be in part because of him.

I’ll hand it over to my colleague Andrew Kramer, who leads the Times bureau in Kyiv, to tell you all about the man forging the future of warfare.

The man bringing Silicon Valley to Ukraine

By Andrew Kramer

Who is Mykhailo Fedorov? He’s the man President Volodymyr Zelensky put in charge of the Ministry of Defense four months ago, to help pursue a strategy that boils down to killing so many Russian soldiers that Moscow can’t recruit enough to keep fighting. (The goal is to raise the Russian casualty rate from 35,000 killed and wounded a month to more than 50,000.)

To get there, Fedorov is pushing for the introduction of autonomous drones, which could decide on their own to use lethal force.

One good quote: “Autonomous weapons are the new nuclear weapons. Countries that possess them will be protected.”

Who likes the sound of this? Defense-adjacent tech companies.

Fedorov, whose background is in digital advertising, has become Ukraine’s point person for Silicon Valley, touting the war as a testing ground for defense technologies. He’s working with Alex Karp, the chief executive of the defense-focused data analysis company Palantir, to integrate A.I. into Ukraine’s military. Fedorov has also met with Eric Schmidt, a former chief executive of Google who founded a venture fund, D3, focused on weapons development in Ukraine.

Fedorov is also leading an effort to monetize or trade Ukrainian military data, including a library of more than five million annotated videos of the battlefield filmed by surveillance and strike drones. These include footage showing how humans behave as killer drones close in, such as by running or hiding. Last month, Ukraine opened up the data sets to companies from allied nations: If they share their A.I. models with Ukraine, they can have access to Ukraine’s data.

Who’s not so sure? Some members of Ukraine’s military and human rights groups.

Fedorov has never served in the military, unlike many Ukrainian men of his generation, and there have been tensions between his office of young sweatshirt-wearing data analysts and members of the armed forces.

Last month a Ukrainian unit attempted a risky assault with a column of armored vehicles, and several soldiers were killed and wounded. An adviser to Fedorov sharply criticized the tactics in a social media post: “We often laugh at the enemy when he sends his troops in columns. Treating our people like this is a crime.” The unit responded that if the adviser knew how best to attack Russian positions, he should enlist in the military himself.

Human rights groups are also not fans of the use of A.I. in lethal weapons in Ukraine, warning that delegating life-and-death decisions to machines crosses a moral red line and risks unlawful civilian casualties. But Fedorov argues that “the risks are not as high as you think.”

Read Andrew’s full profile of Fedorov.

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