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Ukraine’s war in the 21st century has forced militaries to rethink the role of large, traditional ground formations. The decline of the giant army reflects a broader shift toward drones, precision weapons, dispersed units, and faster battlefield adaptation. This video focuses on how Ukraine has influenced modern military strategy and why the future of war may look very different from the mass-army model of the past. It offers a clear look at defense, warfare, and the changing nature of combat in the Russia-Ukraine conflict era.
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00:00For centuries, rulers believed one thing about war.
00:04If you could gather more men, more guns, and more territory behind you, you could grind
00:12your enemy down.
00:14Russia brought that logic into Ukraine, but Ukraine exposed something that may change
00:20war for everyone.
00:21A giant army can still destroy, occupy, and kill on a terrible scale.
00:27But it no longer guarantees victory.
00:31It is a break in military history.
00:34The closest comparison may be the First World War, when generals entered the war with one
00:39set of assumptions, and technology punished them for it.
00:45Machine guns, artillery, railways, barbed wire, and industrial logistics changed war faster
00:52than commanders could understand.
00:54Now, something similar is happening again.
00:59The war in Ukraine has not only changed Russia and Ukraine, it has changed how every country
01:05must think about armies, conquest, occupation, supply chains, drones, and survival.
01:12I am Elvira Barry, a writer born in the Soviet Union, and today I want to look at the war
01:19in Ukraine not only as a tragedy of the present, but as a preview of the future, where the giant
01:26army is no longer the ultimate answer, and security depends less on size than on adaptation.
01:34Here is our roadmap, the purpose of war, how the goals of modern war have changed, the hidden logic of
01:43war, why future wars may begin
01:46where law is weak and the global economy is vulnerable, the drawn future, how new technology
01:53is changing the battlefield, the new expectations of war, why occupation has become much more expensive, the new concept of
02:04security, what countries must do to survive the wars of the future.
02:09If you want more deep dives like this, subscribe, like, and share.
02:14You can also join my think tank, support through Paypal or Superthings, or tap Hype Points.
02:21And if you are listening on Spotify, follow the show there too.
02:26It really helps.
02:28Now, let's begin with the oldest question in war.
02:32What is war actually for?
02:35The purpose of war.
02:40For most of human history, war was robbery in different clothes.
02:45A tribe raided another tribe for cattle, grain, women, slaves, or treasure.
02:51Later, rulers fought for land because land meant food, taxes, workers, and soldiers.
02:58Then came empires.
03:00And the purpose of war became more complicated.
03:04Empires didn't fight only for the right to take something out of conquered lands.
03:09They also fought for the right to bring something in.
03:13Rome conquered territory, but it also built roads, ports, and administrative systems that tied conquered spaces into one imperial machine.
03:23Those roads moved soldiers.
03:26But they also moved taxes, goods, officials, and power.
03:30Much later, during the Opium Wars, Britain didn't simply want treasure from China.
03:36It wanted access to Chinese markets.
03:40After China's defeat, British merchants gained the right to trade through treaty ports, and Hong Kong was ceded to Britain.
03:50War became a tool for opening markets by force.
03:53So, the price of war changed.
03:56It became access and the right to decide who trades, who pays, and who is excluded.
04:02By the 20th century, war was increasingly explained as security.
04:08We must strike first.
04:10We need a buffer zone.
04:12Our neighbor is dangerous.
04:14If we do not dominate them, they will dominate us.
04:18This was the language behind much of the First World War.
04:22It was also part of the language behind the Second World War.
04:27Expansion was presented as defense.
04:29Conquest was presented as survival.
04:32Aggression was wrapped in fear.
04:35And this is exactly how Putin presented the war against Ukraine.
04:39He claimed it was about Russia's security.
04:42But the problem is obvious.
04:44No one was preparing to invade Russia.
04:47Europe had no interest in fighting a nuclear power.
04:51For years, it was much easier and cheaper to buy Russian oil, gas, metals, fertilizer, and other resources than to
05:02go to war.
05:03So, if the war was not really about security, what was it about?
05:09To answer that, we need to look at the hidden logic of modern war.
05:15The hidden logic of war
05:19The modern world is divided not only by ideology, wealth, or military power.
05:25It is divided by something more basic.
05:28Whether a ruler can be replaced without violence.
05:33In some countries, power can change hands legally.
05:36The transfer may be bitter, humiliating, even politically brutal, but it does not have to become a physical struggle for
05:45survival.
05:46The former ruler does not usually expect to be imprisoned, robbed, exiled, or destroyed by the next group that comes
05:53to power.
05:54However, that kind of peaceful transition requires law.
05:59The system must guarantee that losing power is not the same as losing everything.
06:05In countries where law is weak, the logic is completely different.
06:10The ruler and his circle cling to their positions because stepping down may be dangerous, as the next generation of
06:19elites may devour them.
06:21So, they do everything possible to change the law so it would let them stay in power forever, which destroys
06:29the very idea of justice.
06:31In a country ruled by arbitrariness, long-term investment becomes almost impossible.
06:39Why build something serious if it can be taken from you?
06:44Why risk your money, talent, and reputation if success only attracts predators?
06:50This is one of the hidden reasons authoritarian systems fall behind.
06:56When citizens are defenseless before the state, they become passive, cynical, and careful.
07:03This was one of the great weaknesses of the Soviet Union.
07:07The Soviet state could concentrate resources on a few strategic projects and produce impressive results.
07:15But it could not create a flexible, innovative, self-correcting society.
07:23Fear can mobilize people for a limited task.
07:27It cannot replace trust, protected property, open criticism, and personal initiative.
07:35And this matters for war because military technology does not come from nowhere.
07:40It grows out of the larger society.
07:44It depends on engineers, factories, universities, investors, entrepreneurs, logistics, software, electronics, and the ability to admit mistakes quickly.
07:57That is the autocrat's trap.
07:59Over time, autocracies tend to lose the deeper competition with open societies because open societies are better at correction, innovation,
08:10and long-term trust.
08:11So, what does an autocrat do when he cannot truly outcompete the democratic world?
08:19He looks for leverage.
08:21If he cannot build a stronger economy, he tries to control something stronger economies need.
08:28If he cannot create a more attractive future, he tries to make the future more dangerous for everyone else.
08:42But in the age of globalization, control over these arteries has become one of the most important weapons available to
08:51autocrats.
08:51A country may be corrupt, poor, technologically weak, or badly governed.
08:58But if it sits next to a vital chalk point, it can suddenly make the whole world nervous.
09:06This is why future wars will appear where ambition meets vulnerability.
09:13Near straits, near ports, near pipelines, near grain corridors, near the narrow places where the global economy can be squeezed.
09:24The war in Iraq was not only about ideology, terrorism, or dictatorship.
09:30It was shaped by the strategic importance of the Persian Gulf, oil, and the routes through which energy reaches the
09:38world.
09:39The wars in the former Yugoslavia were not only ethnic and political conflicts.
09:45They unfolded in a region that sits between Central Europe, the Balkans, the Adriatic, the Mediterranean, and the corridors connecting
09:55Europe to the wider Southeast.
09:58And the war in Ukraine follows the same pattern.
10:02Putin presented it as a war for security like it was in the 20th century.
10:07But in reality, he needs control over the territory for which Russian energy and goods move toward Europe.
10:16All of the wars of this type start in the same way.
10:20First, the ruler mismanages his own territory.
10:24He spends reserves, feeds his inner circle, makes mistakes, loses popularity, and begins looking for new resources.
10:33Then he notices a tempting target nearby.
10:38And suddenly, the propaganda machine discovers that this target is dangerous, that it is historically ours, that justice must be
10:48restored, that the nation is surrounded by enemies, and the war is not aggression, but self-defense.
10:56At the same time, democracies often hesitate.
10:59Europe, after two world wars, has a deep instinct to avoid direct military conflict for as long as possible.
11:08The United States is willing to fight only when it sees a clear threat to its own interests.
11:16And when the war can be kept far from American soil and fought by professional forces rather than by society
11:24as a whole.
11:25So the autocrat sees a chance.
11:27Democracies have elections.
11:31Democracies have public opinion.
11:33Democracies have voters who do not want inflation, mobilization, energy shocks, or dead soldiers.
11:41And if the pressure lasts long enough, they will tell themselves that one more concession will buy peace.
11:50We should look at the bottlenecks of the global economy that lie near aggressive autocracies or unstable regimes.
11:58The key question is not simply where there is old hatred or disputed territory.
12:04The key question is where control can bring money, status, and blackmail power.
12:10The Strait of Hormuz is one obvious pressure point because so much of the world's oil and gas passes through
12:19it.
12:19The Bab al-Mandeb between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden is another because it affects the route
12:28toward the Suez Canal.
12:30The Strait of Malaga matters because it connects the Indian Ocean and the Pacific and carries a huge share of
12:38trade between Asia, the Middle East, and Europe.
12:41The Taiwan Strait matters not only because of Taiwan itself, but because Taiwan sits at the center of advanced semiconductor
12:51production and major Pacific shipping routes.
12:55The Black Sea matters because it connects grain, energy, ports, Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, and Caucasus, and Europe.
13:04The Turkish Straits matters because they control access between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean.
13:11The Arctic may become more important as new routes open and competition for resources increases.
13:18Even undersea cables and data hubs may become targets because modern economies depend not only on oil and steel, but
13:28on information moving safely across the planet.
13:32These are the places to watch.
13:35The Drone Future
13:39Drones changed modern war in several unexpected ways.
13:43It turned out that a smaller and poorer country can now build a serious defense without matching the aggressor tank
13:51for tank, plane for plane, or ship for ship.
13:55To attack, you still need people.
13:58But to defend, you increasingly need eyes in the sky, ship strike drones, and people who know how to operate
14:07them.
14:08That doesn't make soldiers unnecessary, but it changes what soldiers are for.
14:13A defender no longer has to meet a larger army with an equally large army in the old way.
14:20A defender operating drones can turn the battlefield into a transparent killing zone.
14:26This means that expensive military platforms no longer guarantee victory.
14:31A cheap drone can destroy a vehicle that took years to design and millions of dollars to build.
14:38A large number of soldiers no longer guarantees victory.
14:42Poorly trained and poorly protected, they are not a strategic advantage anymore.
14:48They are targets.
14:50An authoritarian state can mobilize men by force, throw them forward and call it strength.
14:57But if the defender can see them coming and strike them cheaply, mass becomes a liability.
15:05More money spent on mobilization.
15:08More weapons wasted.
15:09More training lost.
15:12And more bodies added to the build.
15:15This also changes the image of the ideal warrior.
15:18The most effective fighter is no longer necessarily the strongest and toughest man.
15:23Now, the decisive skill may belong to a person sitting behind a screen reading terrain and piloting a drone.
15:32This creates a serious problem for autocracies.
15:36The logical answer seems obvious.
15:39Build robots that can attack instead of humans.
15:45But autocracies struggle with exactly these things.
15:50They can give orders, but they are bad at open feedback, fast correction, protected initiative, and honest reporting.
15:58And the smartest people often do not want to build the future for a regime that treats them as disposable
16:05property.
16:05They leave, hide, avoid military projects, or work only as much as necessary to survive.
16:13There is another problem.
16:16Drones cannot be built entirely from domestic resources, even by a large country like Russia.
16:23They depend on global supply chains.
16:26Some of the components can be smuggled.
16:29Some can be brought through intermediaries or be hidden in civilian trade.
16:35This is exactly the world I explore in my upcoming novel,
16:40the Snow Queen's Spring, the grey channels, the fake paperwork, the people who move forbidden technology through the cracks.
16:50Marika Snegova, president of a powerful Russian company with deep ties to the state,
16:57lives with a terrible secret.
17:00When the war in Ukraine begins,
17:03her daughter Alisa leaves Harbour behind and heads for Kyiv.
17:13Marika's business survives on grey market deals, smuggling Western technology through a maze of sanctions.
17:22If the truth about Alisa comes out, Marika will lose everything.
17:28In Moscow, executives accused of disloyalty don't face courts.
17:36They fall from windows.
17:39When Alisa suddenly goes silent, fear turns into desperation.
17:45There's no way to find out what happened to your child.
17:53An American engineer in Kiev.
17:57An American engineer in Kiev.
17:57Her first love, Leo Bronneval.
18:01Torn apart in 1985 by the Cold War.
18:07Reunited now on opposite sides of a new one.
18:20The Snow Queen's Spring
18:25A novel about a collapsing empire
18:29And the people who don't break
18:45Sanctions still matter
18:49They do not stop everything, but they make everything slower, more expensive, more corrupt, and less scalable.
18:58And in drone warfare, speed of adaptation is as important as the drone itself.
19:05There is also a hidden trap inside authoritarian procurement.
19:09In a system without real law, every official knows that money is protection.
19:16So, when the state creates a large contract, the first instinct of many officials is not to build the best
19:24system.
19:25It is to redirect the cash flow.
19:28That means a giant drone program in an autocracy will not simply produce drones.
19:33It will produce kickbacks and fake reports.
19:36The more money the state pours in, the more people line up to steal from it.
19:42And because criticism is dangerous, the ruler may not even know which part of the program is real and which
19:50part is theater.
19:51This is why the drone revolution hurts autocracies in a strange way.
19:55At first glance, drones look perfect for them.
19:59Cheap, brutal, disposable, easy to use for terror.
20:03But the full drone ecosystem rewards exactly the qualities autocracies suppress.
20:09Initiative, transparency, experimentation, decentralization, problem solving, and fast correction.
20:19The new expectations of war.
20:23The morality of war has also changed.
20:26In the old world, conquerors were not much concerned with the local population.
20:32They took resources and loyalty by force.
20:35If the conquered people suffered, that was their problem.
20:40But today, if you seize territory, you cannot simply say,
20:45we took it because we could.
20:47You must say, we liberated it.
20:50We protected people.
20:52We restored justice.
20:55You must bring good, at least on television.
20:59After annexing Crimea in 2014, Russia had to pour money into the peninsula.
21:04Public sector salaries were raised.
21:07Pensions were converted and increased.
21:10Moscow built the Kerch Bridge, new power plants, roads, and other infrastructure.
21:17The point was not only practical.
21:20Crimea had to look like proof that Russia makes life better.
21:24That is the trap of modern conquest.
21:27You must pay for the victory after you have already paid for the war.
21:32And even then, the story may still fail
21:35because occupation creates new problems, such as sanctions that isolate the territory
21:41and drive businesses away.
21:44That is how the conquered land turns into a permanent bill.
21:48In Crimea, outside analysts have estimated that Russian subsidies ranged from about $1 billion
21:56to almost $3 billion a year in some periods.
22:00These subsidies made up a huge share of Crimea's budget.
22:05And that money did not appear from nowhere.
22:09It was taken from mainland Russia.
22:12Somewhere in Perm or Samara, hospitals were not built, gas lines did not reach remote villages,
22:20and ordinary Russians paid the hidden price of imperial pride.
22:25Now look at the territories Russia has destroyed in Ukraine.
22:29Mariupol, Bakhmut, Papasno, Siverdonetsk.
22:33Vast areas with villages and even cities erased.
22:38Mines flooded.
22:39Factories and houses shattered.
22:42Locals who either fled or were killed.
22:45Russia will have to invest billions to make these places livable again.
22:50The new concept of security.
22:56The best defense against future war is making blackmail unprofitable.
23:01If the enemy wants to squeeze a bottleneck, then your job is to not let one bottleneck decide your fate.
23:10This begins with energy.
23:12A country that depends on one supplier, one pipeline, one refinery, one port, or one grid structure is inviting pressure.
23:23The answer is not romantic self-sufficiency, but diversification.
23:29Multiple suppliers and terminals.
23:32Smaller storage facilities and power sources spread across the country.
23:37Faster repair teams.
23:39Ukraine has shown this under brutal conditions.
23:43Last winter, Russia attacked its energy system again and again, trying to freeze the country into submission.
23:50Ukraine survived because people repaired, rerouted, improvised, and kept going.
23:57That is the new definition of strength.
24:00Not invulnerability, but fast recovery.
24:05The same applies to industry.
24:07Large factories are efficient in peacetime, but in war, they become easy targets.
24:13Future defense needs distributed production, with smaller sites and more 3D printing where it makes sense.
24:21Then comes air defense.
24:23No country can keep shooting million-dollar missiles at cheap drones forever.
24:28That is how the attacker wins the math.
24:33Defense must become cheaper, layered, and mobile.
24:37Electronic sensors, interceptor drones, decoys, and civilian reporting networks.
24:44Democracies should use their natural advantage – the ability to adapt quickly, correct mistakes, and find the best technical solutions.
24:53Europe is slowly waking up to this, admitting that drones are now a permanent threat, and that no country can
25:00solve it alone.
25:01If drones can cross borders, then defense must also cross borders.
25:07The same logic applies to the sea.
25:10Undersea cables need mapping, surveillance, repair capacity, and consequences for sabotage.
25:17Ports need cyber protection.
25:20Shipping needs protected corridors when a crisis hits.
25:24Insurance markets need coordination with governments because attackers now understand that frightening insurers can be almost as useful as sinking
25:36ships.
25:37And finally, democracies need political clarity.
25:41Gray zone aggression works because the victim hesitates.
25:45Was it an accident or a provocation?
25:49Some criminal group or state behind it?
25:52The attacker enjoys that fog, so the response must be planned before the incident.
26:00That is how blackmail fails.
26:03Before you go, I want to ask you something practical.
26:07Have you ever seen a big, powerful system fail because it couldn't adapt fast enough?
26:14If this video helps you see the war in Ukraine as a preview of what comes next, please like the
26:21video and subscribe.
26:23Share it with one person who still thinks size alone wins wars.
26:28And if you want to support this work directly, you can join my think tank or use Paypal or Superfanks.
26:35You can also tap high points to help this episode travel further.
26:40And if you are listening on Spotify, follow the show so you don't miss the next episode.
26:49See you next time.
27:05See you next time.
27:07See you next time.
27:11See you next time.
27:11See you next time.
27:12See you next time.
27:15See you next time.
27:15Amen.
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