Though the notion of artificial humans can be found across cultures throughout history, and working automatons have been recorded as far back as ancient China and Greece, the world was first introduced to our modern conception of a robot in a 1920 play: Rossum’s Universal Robots by Czech writer Karel Čapek. In the century that followed, our collective fascination with the idea of mechanical servants only grew by leaps and bounds. By the mid-20th century, with the sci-fi boom at its peak and robots more popular than ever, some films and authors—most notably Isaac Asimov and Philip K. Dick—began to explore the hypothetical material and ethical pitfalls that might arise if humanity were to entrust a synthetic-but-sentient subcaste with undesirable and dangerous work. Just a few decades later, as advancements in real-world robotics began to close the gap with those presented in fiction, films like The Terminator and WarGames presented a far more dystopian thesis—robots and AI as weapons of war will invariably lead to the end of civilization.
Life imitates art, and in the 21st century, the tech bros and sociopaths in charge of the world are also pathologically incapable of gleaning the moral of a story. And as a recent update from the War in Ukraine indicates, we’re still going full steam ahead on “creat[ing] the Torment Nexus from [the] classic sci-fi novel Don’t Create The Torment Nexus.”
A new video post from the official Office of the President of Ukraine YouTube account—highlighted by 404 Media—features President Volodomyr Zelenskyy doing a walk-and-talk across a stage full of missiles, drones, and other cutting-edge armaments. With a 9:41 runtime and production value that’s giving Top Chef x Raytheon, the video was already poised to be an historic Defense Industry Worker Day speech from the president before he offered up the lede.
Praising robots as the future of war, Zelenskyy boasted of a “world’s first” in the history of nation-on-nation violence: enemy troops surrendering to robots.
“For the first time in the history of this war, an enemy position was taken exclusively by unmanned platforms—ground systems and drones,” crowed Zelenskyy. “The occupiers surrendered, and the operation was carried out without infantry and without losses on our side.”
The tone of Zelenskyy’s statements could easily be seen as a pitch to other nations to buy Ukrainian tech now that it’s battle-tested. The President preferred to emphasize “security partnerships – long-term and profitable for Ukraine.” And when reflecting on the progress of Ukraine’s military development since the war began, he compared his country to the pirates of Silicon Valley:
At the start of the war, we lacked many things – but we had you. All those who did not stand aside, who found solutions, who launched the first new production lines in hangars and garages – and there is truly nothing shameful about that. The story of Apple and many of the world’s top companies began the same way. What matters is not where you start, but the goal you are moving toward.
The Ukrainian president’s claim of a drone-forward operation comports with on-the-ground reporting by The Wall Street Journal from this March, 404 Media notes. The Journal article covered a December 2025 operation in which Ukraine’s 13th National Guard Brigade Khartiya took a position north of Kharkiv using dozens of land and aerial drones.
Zelenskyy continued to spout off drone dubs in the video, claiming over 22,000 missions carried out via human-guided bots in the past three months alone. “This is about high technology protecting the highest value—human life,” he proclaimed.
On that note, the only dissonance between the WSJ report and the propaganda video put out by Zelenskyy is the claim of surrendering Russians. After reviewing the drone footage for their article, the Journal confirmed that Ukraine had taken the position, but reported no surrenders. The article also noted that a 13th National Guard spokesperson later informed the reporter of Russian casualties scattered across the target area once human Ukrainian forces arrived.
That said, Ukraine did establish a program in 2022 called “I Want to Live,” where enemy troops could text their desire to desert and flee to the frontline at a designated time.
But whether you choose to believe the polished political video from a wartime head of state or the critical analysis of footage by a relatively respected journalistic outlet, we should all be able to agree that this whole robot warfare thing is a harbinger of doom. With everyone from academics to U.S. military brass questioning the ethics of this brave new bot-filled war strategy, perhaps we should all take a beat and revisit the classics before getting swept up in the President of Ukraine’s vision of drone abundance.
