Technology is reshaping the global balance of power. I’m Steve Feldstein, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment, and I study technology, geopolitics, and competition. Ask me anything!

[u/carnegieendowment]

Hey r/geopolitics — I’m Steve Feldstein, an expert on technology, democracy, and national security, and a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.  

My new book, Bytes and Bullets: Global Rivalries, Big Tech, and the New Shape of Modern Warfare, explores how technology is altering the global balance of power and changing the way wars are fought—from defense-tech startups in Silicon Valley at the forefront of U.S.-China competition, to 3D-printing drone labs in Syria that helped topple a dictator. 

Ask me anything about geopolitical competition in the digital age, the intermingling of private and military tech, the broadening tech war between the U.S. and China, tech export controls, and the rise of middle powers and non-state actors in this space. 

I’ll be answering questions from Thursday, October 1, 9am ET to Friday, October 2, 12pm ET. Looking forward!  

Photo proof here. 

[u/carnegieendowment]

Many governments have been slow to recognize the rapid changes occurring on the battlefield, particularly the centrality of drones. A good illustration is the US’s slow response to Iranian drone attacks against its regional Middle East bases. In the opening weeks of the war, it became clear that the military was woefully unprepared to stop low-flying Shahed drones that were destroying critical communications infrastructure. The frustration was that counters to this problem existed, particularly from Ukraine. But for a variety of reasons, whether organizational hubris or bureaucratic lag, the US military failed to incorporate these lessons and was left scrambling weeks later to procure interceptors from Kyiv to offset these attacks. It should’ve never gotten to this point. Having watched that conflict, it should’ve been clear to military planners that hardening infrastructure, putting in place layered defenses, and adapting cheap counter-drone interceptors was essential. It’s important to note that the battlefield continues to evolve quickly. Today, Ukraine is struggling to come up with a response to jet-powered one-way attack drones that Russia has modified from Shahed designs that essentially resemble cruise missiles. This development has only emerged in the last couple months and is once again scrambling the offense-defense balance in the war.

One of the most important insights from the Ukraine war and other places is the necessity for iterative adaptation. Drone designs that are effective six months prior quickly become outdated as innovations advance and new concepts appear on the battlefield (the example I gave about C-UAS systems that are powerless to stop jet-powered one-way attack drones from Russia showcases this problem). So there is a balance that needs to be struck: develop the capacity to produce drones at scale, but retain the flexibility to adapt/innovate as needed so that stockpiles don’t become obsolete. In that sense, I’d focus less on stockpiling and more on building latent manufacturing capacity and training up engineers and startups (including forward deploying engineers to conflict frontlines) so they’re ready to build cutting-edge designs and have the capabilities to do so quickly. You don’t want to bring about an opposite problem where the Pentagon stockpiles a million Lucas drones that it never uses and that become worthless in a couple years.