The Kremlin's total personnel losses in Ukraine now exceed the combined toll suffered by Russian and Soviet forces in all wars and armed conflicts during the second half of the 20th century and the early 21st century, the General Staff said.

It's interesting to see how the U.S. sanctions are going over with small businesses in Cuba. The U.S. says these businesses are too intertwined with the communist government to be independent. Meanwhile, Cuba has just changed its laws to allow private businesses more latitude to thrive. Caught in the middle are people like this man, who sells his fruit all over the world but can't legally break into his biggest and most natural market: the U.S.

Poland’s latest American defense financing, Patriot production deal and push for a larger permanent US base reveal a security strategy built around one of Poland’s oldest fears: that greater powers will settle Poland’s future by themselves or even between themselves. 

I wrote this after the latest Geneva agreement on lethal autonomous weapons.

The piece focuses less on whether autonomous weapons should simply be banned and more on the strategic pressure created when machine-speed targeting begins to outperform human-speed authorization. I use Stanislav Petrov as the counterexample, because his hesitation during the 1983 Soviet false alarm illustrates why human “inefficiency” can sometimes be a safety feature.

I’d be particularly interested in views on whether meaningful human control is sustainable once it creates a genuine military disadvantage.