A FP-5 Flamingo cruise missile and a drone FP-1 from Ukrainian defense technology company Fire Point are shown on display at Eurosatory, a land and air land defense and security trade fair, in Villepinte on the outskirts of Paris, on June 16, 2026. (Julien de Rosa/AFP/TNS)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Edward Akrout is the founder of Art Shield, a foundation devoted to safeguarding and amplifying artists in crisis, specifically focusing on Ukrainian theater and the arts. He has garnered acclaim for his portrayals in film and television series, including the Dauphin in the BBC’s “The Hollow Crown” and Edward Steichen in “Rodin,” a Cannes Film Festival 2017 Official Selection, and Diego in the “Killing Eve” series.
It’s around 6 a.m. I have just arrived in Kyiv, Ukraine. We are in the middle of an attack, I am told. I hear it, I smell it, yet the streets are empty, the sun is warm, and the smoke almost smells festive. Near my apartment I ask my friend why my neighbor’s air conditioner is running so loudly. She is disoriented and doesn’t understand my smile. She spent the night in her bathtub, waiting for the nightly nightmare to be over. She has not slept properly in years. She looks at me in horror. “It’s not an AC.” Above us, a little black triangle hums against the blue sky like an inoffensive teenager’s moped. It tilts down and slams into the building next door.
A year later, I am in New York. From where I work, I can see One World Trade Center, and I remember being a kid in Paris and seeing the plane hitting the second tower, whilst standing in the street with a little group that had gathered outside the window display of a TV store. I remember thinking how big and bright the sky is in New York, how even through the television you could feel how crisp the air was. The weather is still warm. With the window open, every time the B train crosses the Manhattan Bridge, I have to remind myself that it’s the train I’m hearing.
I’m reading The New York Times report that a Russian drone guided by an experimental artificial intelligence system killed three civilians. I wonder what systems were already in use the last time I was there. In another tab, a short CNN clip of Jacob Coxon, the former Anthropic researcher warning about losing control of AI, plays, and I muse on the absurdity of the contrast. We keep pondering the moment our timeline might turn into Terminator 2, yet we don’t seem to understand that AI is already armed and our enemies are learning from it every day.
My last open tab is a CIA brief from its anniversary release, titled “Reports That Bin Ladin is Planning Attacks Inside the US.” It was dated 3 July 1998. The brief questioned the reliability of its sources and did not describe the September 11 plot. But the 9/11 Commission later documented how warnings failed to become adequate protection. I wonder how our own warnings will read in retrospect.
The question is what happens when knowledge of drone warfare travels beyond the Ukrainian battlefield. Who is studying these weapons? What will they take home? Must we wait for an attack here to begin answering? The next 9/11 will not require a plane, a pilot or even an organization sophisticated enough to train one. The cost of chaos and disruption has never been so low.
I have spent much of the past four years traveling through Ukraine and across the American and European defense industry.
In Ukraine, to my surprise, I met fighters who identified themselves to me as members of Latin American cartels. I met one in a club in Kyiv and another closer to the front. I spoke with one using the little Spanish I have. They said other cartel members were fighting for Russia.
Investigative journalists later told me cartel-affiliated fighters were present on both sides, doing R&D for their own weapons programs. In fact, last October, a report cited a Mexican cartel member travelling to Ukraine to learn drone skills.
It seems this war has become a university for the democratization of violence, and enrollment is international.
And yet at defense conferences, I still see companies selling the 20th century with updated electronics. Many of their machines remain necessary. But adversaries can change software between procurement meetings. I come away wondering whether we are talking about the same war.
Meanwhile, in America, 12 people were charged in June in an alleged operation using drones to deliver contraband into 10 prisons. Prison detectors helped investigators document the flights. Prosecutors nevertheless allege at least 38 deliveries. Elsewhere, even detection cannot be taken for granted: conventional air traffic radar can miss small drones flying close to the ground. We cannot assume that because the airspace above a hospital is regulated, somebody will warn it of an approaching drone. Terrorists do have a terrible track record of waiting for permission from the FAA.
A paparazzi drone can hover over your garden while you work out whom to call. The FAA still regulates it as an aircraft. Bring it down and you may become the one under investigation. Congress has given qualifying police agencies new powers to intervene, but those powers require trained officers, approved equipment and arrangements for using it safely. You can recognize the threat, report it and still be waiting for someone who can actually stop it.
There is work here for companies that have integrated technology developed alongside Ukrainian engineers and soldiers into effective and affordable detection systems. That technology has been shaped by the necessities of battle. Those systems are designed to be simple and quick to install, and need to be connected to local police who are trained, equipped and authorized to act. I want the security guard at a hospital entrance to know what is above him, whether it poses a threat and who will respond. Those arrangements need to exist before he makes the call. Government needs to fund that response and make it possible to buy equipment that can change as quickly as the threat.
We can act now, or leave another commission to explain why we did not. Nobody gets to call the next one a failure of imagination.
