From Consumer Toys for Pets to War Drone — Yaroslav Azhnyuk, The Fourth Law & Noah Smith, Noahpinion
Yaroslav Azhnyuk · Noah Smith · The Fourth Law / Odd Systems — founder · Noahpinion — writer
Yaroslav Azhnyuk built Pet Cube in San Francisco — "cameras that fling treats to pets" — and then, after Russia's invasion landed on the last flight into Kyiv on Feb 23, 2022, pivoted to building drone autonomy, thermal cameras, and FPV strike drones for the Ukrainian armed forces. With Noah Smith and Latent Space's Brandon, he walks through five levels of drone autonomy, eight dimensions of the autonomous battlefield, why FPVs replaced artillery as "the god of war" (~80% of frontline casualties), and the disquieting arithmetic of China's drone manufacturing scale (4M Ukrainian FPVs/year vs ~4B Chinese capacity).
