Anne Applebaum

relatable part of the story, which is why has this happened?

Like, why is the Ukrainian drone industry so good?

What did they do?

And the answer is that Ukraine is a very decentralized country.

It's very messy, disorganized and chaotic country some of the time.

But it also means that there are these pockets of creativity.

So it's not like there's one Ukrainian state drone company that's giving orders for drones.

What you have is like literally hundreds of small companies.

They work with individual units or with particular commanders.

You know, there's this constant feedback.

When I was there

A few days ago, I met a CEO of a drone company.

I went to see his factory and he was kind of, you know, looking kind of scruffy because he'd just been to the front line for a few days and he just got back because he goes and, you know, meets soldiers and watches how they're using his drones and then they report back to him and then he makes alterations inside his actually incredibly high tech drone.

you know, warehouses where he where he does this work.

And so there is this there is a kind of feedback loop.

There's lots of different people trying experimentally different things at the same time.

They have European money.

They don't have U.S.

money.

And they have now a lot of joint ventures with European companies.