A $400 suicide drone designed and assembled by a Ukrainian engineering student can take out a $10 million dollar Russian tank (Russia has even more drones).

Apparently both Ukraine and Russia go through tens of thousands of drones per month.

I’m surprised I’m not seeing a lot of coverage of the dramatic shift away from traditional military equipment like tanks and attack helicopters in Ukraine, and a rapid adoption of FPV (first person view) drones.

We’ve all seen horrifying footage of these drones taking out individual soldiers (very depressing), but there’s been very little talk about the strategic shift going on and what it means.

The implications of this massive paradigm shift are significant.

It appears to be as big of a shift as the move away from horse calvary in WW1 to mechanized warfare (tanks, airplanes, machine guns, submarines, gas, etc), and we are in the very early stages.

Ukraine has apparently stopped asking the US for tanks and other expensive traditional military equipment and wants supplies for suicide drones and loitering munitions.

We could see swarms of millions of suicidal drones wiping out hundreds of military targets (including aircraft carriers) in a single morning. A 21st century version of D-Day.

Imagine AI doing most of the work of identifying and locating a target, then phoning home to a drone operator to pull the trigger. Drone operators will shift away from “flying” drones and locating targets, and instead will be preoccupied with switching to various drone screens on ready to attack targets dozens of time throughout the day.

And because hard targets like tanks will increasingly become sitting ducks (even with sophisticated jamming that can be overcome by “signal boosting drones”) there will eventually be far fewer hard targets on the battlefield to attack. The primary targets will be humans. Yes this issue is being discussed, but it deserves a lot more discussion. Whoever can mass produce the most drones and leverage AI to automate them most effectively will not only dominate the battlefield, but also the world.

I look at other competitors cars, and I’m constantly reminded of the 2012 Fisker Karma, one of the first “Tesla killers”. Competitors aren’t laser focused on manufacturability at scale. It’s not about bells and whistles, it’s about manufacturing efficiency and lowering costs. Every piece of trim you see, every knob, every gimmick or flashy feature that doesn’t have a very very clear added benefit to the vehicle owner will dramatically slow manufacturing and lower margins on their cars. Low margins means no pricing power, and no scaling potential.

1/ The biggest Industry ripe for disruption isn’t energy, transportation, finance, or healthcare.

It’s education, and it’s not even close.

We are wasting a good part of the first 22 years of people’s lives, all around the world.

Tests, memorization, obedience, rule following 2/ Emphasis should be placed on understanding and the importance of adding value over memorization and maintaining the status quo.

Teach basics like reading/writing/math, then how to effectively use the internet for research.

Kids should immediately start creating/building.

@TtvJokester 1. Great question. Here's what I would do today if I were 18. @TtvJokester 2. I would finish college as quickly as possible and in the most economical way possible. This means community college and then transfer to a top tier school. I'd study computer science, or economics + learn to code on the side. Work every summer and try to graduate debt free.