Ukraine's drone war: Operation Spiderweb destroyed 33% of Russia's air-launch cruise missile capacity

think you were halfway across the world. I am in uh New York City right now. Cool. For the illustrious, decadent, incredible New York City Tech Week. Oh, fun. How is it? Fun fact, I created New York Tech Week, co-founder right here. Yeah. Yeah.

Years ago, passed it off to Andre after the first year, but uh but yeah, the very first New York Tech Week was by yours truly. One of the biggest still on the domain. Yeah. Uh yeah, break it down for us. What What What have the best events been? Is it mostly VCs, entrepreneurs?

There a lot of pitching is how are the ads? Are there good sponsorships? There's a lot of ads and I think the like attendee toe event ratio has like shifted massively compared to previous years. I only went to two events by the way. So everything that I say take it with a grain of salt.

I'm actually just in New York and then it happens to be during tech week. Cool. Um there's a lot of events, a lot of sponsors virtually for every single industry. Like there's a million NATSC events, there's a million interesting tech events. It's like virtually every industry. Uh every type of person.

What's the reaction? You seem a little tired, Patrick. Were you up a little late last night? I've been up late a lot this week and the previous week and the week before that to be honest. New York is an exhausting city. It's not quite uh uh the same as San Francisco.

You sleep more when you're in Ukraine or New York, dude. I actually sleep really well in Ukraine. I find the food to be so much better, too. So, you can like somehow smoke a bunch of cigarettes and drink a lot and still sleep really well. It's a true meme. The meme is real. Nice. Interesting.

What's the reaction been in at these cocktail parties to the Trump Elon news? Uh, that's a good question. It came up a lot last night. It wasn't actually a tech week party, but um, you know, part of the it was a it was a couple of dissident right events, we might call it that.

Um, I think I think uh people don't care as much as Twitter to be honest. Uh, no one no one really had like any strong takes. No one's taking sides, I guess, is the point. Yeah. There's just not that much to go on.

like it's it's it's still like it's like crazy but then in and out in a few minutes but uh certainly something to track. Uh but let's move on to the reason we wanted to have you on. Uh can you give us your reaction and breakdown to the Ukrainian operation that I believe happened last weekend?

Uh we covered a little bit on the show, but I'd love to get your take and uh maybe just introduce exactly what happened and then we can go into some of the history and implications. Yeah.

So at a high level what happened obviously everyone heard about it but um you know specifically um you Russia had a very very big part of its like nuclear triad uh get degraded so they lost like 33% of their kind of air launch cruise missile capacity um it's a bunch of strategic bombers that they manufacture during the Soviet Union um completely irreplaceable and so one of the kind of big asymmetric advantages of Russia during the war has been that they can just launch a massive amount of stuff from really far away, like way beyond the range of Ukrainian fighters, Ukrainian air defense systems.

Um, they use cruise missiles, which obviously have a uh propulsion on the munition, so it goes much further um than it otherwise would.

And they also have glide bombs that they've been using for the last uh you know, 3 years of the conflict, which is basically just taking dumb bombs and making them fly much further than they otherwise would. Um, and so really all Ukraine has been able to do is destroy the platforms.

like there's just no way that they're going to shoot down every single cruise missile. They're not going to shoot down every single shied and so um this is essentially the best thing they can do is just like go to their airfields and blow things up when they're still on the ground. You mentioned the nuclear triad.

So these bombers that were destroyed were actually capable of carrying and dropping nukes even though that's not directly relevant in this conflict at least not yet. They're all nuclear capable or a lot of them. Yeah.

And so um you know you have ballistic missile submarines, you have strategic bombers, you have ground launch ICBMs um and ideally you want all three because the idea is essentially that you have too many nuclear assets in too many different places that um you know you want essentially deterrence.

So even if the US were were able to first strike with, you know, hypersonic missiles every single ground silo that uh the the Russian Federation has, they'd still have a bunch of strategic bombers on station, a bunch of submarines on station. Um so we would still be screwed basically.

I It's crazy to think of Russian nuclear submarines like just trolling around the ocean. I feel like they've been like so pushed back, so contained, but of course that's obviously Well, that's the point of nuclear submarines. you can go down and just hang out for quite a long time.

Um, how what what do you think the uh is this type of attack a one and done? They operated it on cellular networks which was a surprise. Do you think that Russia will make changes that make that a lot harder in the future? Uh what's your kind of uh reaction there?

I think the reality is that um Russia is a very poorest country. like it's exceptionally easy to get things in and out to their advantage and to their disadvantage. Like people don't realize how many Western components are in like every single Russian drone.

Um like they're still heavily, you know, using Western companies and components for virtually everything. Um they get in through a wide variety of ways, but to our advantage, obviously the Ukrainians can do the same thing as they've demonstrated in this case. Um I think, you know, the future attacks are going to rhyme.

They're not going to be exactly the same. Like what Russia is probably going to do is improve their uh jamming operations at airfields that uh traditionally have not been subjected to Ukrainian drone strikes. Um they're going to change their procedures around daytime operations.

So generally one-way attack munitions both on the Russian and Ukrainian side happen at night. Mhm. Um it's kind of random that like on a Sunday morning basically um you know there were a couple hundred Ukrainian drones sitting on all these airfields. It's like quite uncommon. Mhm.

Um, and we don't know where the failure was on the Russian side. Like, were the jammers online and the Ukrainians just knew what frequencies the jammers were working on and so they just operated outside of that?

Was the Russian jamming guy who just sits there with a big red button just not at his station at the time because he wasn't expecting it? Um, there's kind of a lot of open questions around that and I'm sure there's going to be like procedural changes.

Um, but when you when you kind of step back from the specific attack of like big trucks with garden sheds that are containing all these drones near air bases, um, and you just look at the basic kind of formula there, which is civilian infrastructure near military assets, um, the attack surface is just really wide.

So like it could be a rail car, it could be a truck, it could be a van, um, it could be a ship in a port, right? The military facility doesn't have to be an air base. It could be a factory, could be the Kremlin, could be any logistics depot, could be a base.

Um, and so when you multiply all that complexity basically across the 11 time zones that Russia has territory with hundreds of critical facilities, it's it's it's kind of unstoppable to be honest. Yeah, that's interesting. How are um how are you thinking of investing in drones as a category?

You've been on the ground in Ukraine. You've seen, I'm sure, a lot of the stuff that they're doing, which is evolving constantly.

I'm sure you've met a lot of the American uh drone startups and obviously, you know, there's a huge range of players from Nuros to uh you know, Anderoll to, you know, counter drone uh startups like uh ACS. Uh but how are how are you looking at the category and and um where where do you think it's investable?

So I think um Ukraine is interesting specifically and then I'll I'll answer your question. Ukraine's interesting specifically because you have a lot of like consolidation around the same exact ideas. So like I've seen a lot of the drone factories spread out around Ukraine.

They're all making generally the same stuff within FPVs at least. And like you have different components like oh this FPV we're going to use fiber cable for it because this area is jammed. Um but at a high level every FPV in Ukraine is like exceptionally attractable.

It's like 3D printed, very cheap components from China or now some sometimes domestically produced, but like very very cheap. Those are not really what I think of as venturebackable. Um, you also have all obviously all the added unique risks of their factory might get blown up by a cruise missile.

The founders in many case are also active duty soldiers. So you have to kind of underwrite the additional risk of them getting killed on the front. Um, not to be so morbid, but it's true.

in the US ecosystem more like a traditional startup obviously like there are no founders who active duty in the US um there isn't exactly the same set of risks and they're much more focused on selling to kind of the creme creme customer the DoD so the capabilities are just much more exquisite um and so there's a lot of stuff to bite off because the US similar to you know Russia operating in 11 time zones the US operates in every time zone because we have bases literally all over the world and so every single climate every single uh potential adversary like Iran, China, North Korea, Russia, etc.

They demand different solutions uh in each theater, they demand different solutions for different operations uh during different times of the day, different weather, like all these different things. Um and so the reality is that there's actually a lot to invest in.

Um, specifically with drones and counter drone stuff, um, I think the future of like the integrated air defense system, like you know, we think of as like the Iron Dome, it's going to be much more heterogeneous, right? So like Israel now has like five or six different types of missiles they use. They're testing lasers.

They're testing a kind of other couple stuff, but it's like a much more stationary and static type of system. The integrated air defense system of the future is going to be like three or 400 different things.

like this is going to jam this one thing, this is going to intercept this one thing, this, you know, is just hitting an FPV, so it can be a small gun like in the case of ACS. Um, and then other things, you know, you need uh ballistic missiles to destroy other ballistic missiles.

So, you basically are going to have this system like a command and control system that senses all these different things and then essentially triages. What is uh Russia doing on the FPV drone side? We've heard that Ukraine is producing I think millions a year now. It seems like really really mega scale.

Has Russia been able to match that at all or do they take a different tact? I don't know where the official numbers are to be honest, but I would be surprised if Russia was producing less to be honest. I mean I think certainly within the same order of magnitude.

Um obviously there's very poor fidelity on the Russian side. But one thing that you can just look at um and this isn't just FPV drones, this is just drones broadly. One of the things that you can look at is like how many Shaheds are attacking uh Ukraine every single night. Sure. It's in the hundreds.

Like they're literally just lobbing hundreds of Shahed drones at Ukraine every single night of the week. Um and so I don't know if you guys saw, but they did their quoteunquote retaliation last night. It was basically like any other night. They just lobbed a bunch of drones at Ukraine.

Um you know, the Russian economy now is like literally entirely a war economy. Like I don't know what it would look like as you know, defense as a percentage of GDP.

Yeah, that's that's one of the big issues with peace, at least uh on the Russian side, is what happens to the economy if you no longer need to be producing, you know, huge volumes of tanks and drones and missiles and all these other things. It's so depressing. So many great mathematicians there.

They should just be building hyperscaled data centers and racing for AGI. You know, they have the talent and they're focused on, you know, kinetic warfare. death. It's fighting fighting the last war. Um Well, that's why we got to end the war so that we can do joint AGI development with Russia. Exactly. Exactly. War.

Yeah. Or maybe just more brain drain. I wonder if there are more Russian scientists that are leaving because of uh how crazy the war effort is and if that'll make it easier to recruit, you know, brilliant scientists.

There's a lot of people just hiding too, mostly on the Ukrainian side because Ukraine obviously has the draft, but a lot of Russian scientists left in the first few days of the war through like Georgia and Armenia and now they're just like refugees. And then a lot of Ukrainians within AI and tech.

Um, obviously a tremendous amount of them have joined the military and they're now developing drones, but there's still a lot of Ukrainians are just like hiding in their houses basically and their wives just do all their errands for them.

Like they're they're not allowed to leave the house cuz they're going to get conscripted. Yeah. Um, so their wife gets groceries and everything. Can you talk to me about what is actually involved in visiting Ukraine right now? Is this something where you need to fly to a different country and take a train in?

Is the airspace dangerous? Do you need a visa? What does the State Department think about visiting Ukraine right now? If anyone in the audience is considering going, uh, what's the what's the vibe on the ground? Where do you stay? How do you actually get connected?

Can you walk me through your experience visiting Ukraine? Yeah, it just it kind of depends on what you want to do.

So, um I don't know how specific I should be about my next trip, but um the more east you go, the more difficult things become obviously in both in terms of getting approvals, but also just like transportation and then also your risk tolerance would have to go way up.

So, like you know, hypothetically, if I go to Harkke, um which is very close to the Russian border, it's basically on the Russian border.

um the risk considerations are just very different um in terms of what to expect every night from Russian strikes, what to expect in the context of the war, like there is always some kind of an offensive going on around Hardke um and so you do have to be careful.

Um you know what I would say is that um I obviously have a high risk tolerance. What I would say is um it's not as dangerous as people think statistically. Mhm.

So like you know um the likelihood that you're going to get killed even in a drone strike when like if you're in if you're in Kev let's say or Kev and they're striking it hundreds of times per night. These are big cities you know so the likelihood that you actually get hit by anything is pretty low.

Um in terms of getting in in the country you have to fly in through Poland basically. So you go into Poland and then you drive into Ukraine and it's a big country so it's like 14 hours from Poland to to Kev. Yeah.

I mean, we've heard I mean, we saw during the global war on terror, like there were plenty of journalists that made it in and out. Obviously, it's extremely dangerous, but it is it is doable if you're if you're careful enough. Uh, can you talk about the public relations strategy around the Ukraine attack on Russia?

I found it interesting that we were getting like highfidelity video, really detailed analysis. It felt party video. Exactly. And and the sentiment in the early war was very much like support Ukraine. Then there was recently some push back about are we spending too much on this?

Is this is this even our war to be fighting? And that was a kind of political football that went back and forth both on the left and the right in some ways.

Uh this makes this feels like um it like it feels like the takeaway is that the Ukrainians are innovative and they're and they're adapting and they're not letting down and so maybe it's not time to back down in supporting of them. Is that deliberate?

Where do you think this goes from here in terms of support from America? I think there's like different groups of people that the Ukrainians want to kind of attract or get attention from these kinds of attacks.

And the reason why they're so public about it, including posting footage, is that they're trying to basically convince the rest of the world that they're worth supporting in a very pragmatic way.

It's like, forget about the fact that Russia started the war, that Ukrainians are being killed, any any of that's kind of irrelevant.

The main calculus is hey yes we are you know 1/5if the population of Russia we have a much smaller economy um you know we have manpower issues all these things are true you know Russia historically you don't want to fight a land war against over an extended period of time we do these operations the Ukrainians do these operations because it's a way of showing that they've essentially found asymmetric ways to offset it and that if you send them money if you send them weapons if you provide intelligence support they're going to keep finding new ways to So it's just them basically showing every 6 months.

We're going to find a new way to reinvent ourselves and keep Russians on their feet basically. Very cool. Well, good luck on your next trip. Stay safe out there and enjoy the rest of New York Tech Week. Appreciate it. I will. Thank you guys so much. Be safe. We'll talk to you soon. Great talking to you. Bye.

Uh next up we have Jeremy from Circle IPO on the horizon. I'm so excited for this. I I'm I'm still learning about quiet periods and when folks can talk, but uh we certainly not