The Coming Drone-War Inflection in Ukraine

WHEN KYIV-BORN ENGINEER Yaroslav Azhnyuk thinks about the future, his mind conjures up dystopian images. He talks about “swarms of autonomous drones carrying other autonomous drones to protect them against autonomous drones, which are trying to intercept them, controlled by AI agents overseen by a human general somewhere.” He also imagines flotillas of autonomous submarines, each carrying hundreds of drones, suddenly emerging off the coast of California or Great Britain and discharging their cargoes en masse to the sky. “How do you protect from that?” he asks as we speak in late December 2025; me at my quiet home office in London, he in Kyiv, which is bracing for another wave of missile attacks . Azhnyuk is not an alarmist. He cofounded and was formerly CEO of Petcube , a California-based company that uses smart cameras and an app to let pet owners keep an eye on their beloved creatures…