A Front Line Frozen by Drones

Malik said the front line has barely moved in nearly five years. Drones have extended the “kill zone” to as much as 50 miles, and Ukraine is turning to unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) that commanders believe could replace up to 60% of frontline infantry. By his estimate, Ukraine needs about 500,000 a year and currently produces roughly 20,000. Each of Ukraine’s more than 100 combat brigades now has an unmanned battalion, he said, and those units account for about 80% of Russian casualties.

Cheaper Weapons, Changing Math

Cost is central to that shift. Malik said a Shahed-type attack drone costs between $50,000 and $150,000, while a fighter jet starts around $15 million and a Patriot missile can cost up to $4 million, which makes conventional air defense unsustainable against mass drone attacks. Ukraine answered with its own interceptor drones, he said, and builds a drone-missile hybrid called Flamingo at an unofficial cost of about $600,000, compared with $1.5 million or more for a Tomahawk. A high-intensity war, he argued, is won with cheap systems that can be made in large numbers, not with a few hundred advanced aircraft, and Ukraine’s private defense firms are finding new battlefield uses for the technology nearly every month.

The constraint, both speakers said, is money more than ingenuity. Ukraine spends about 40% of its GDP on defense, compared with roughly 10% in Russia, and 3.5% in the U.S. Vacroux urged Europe to disburse a promised €90 billion loan faster and to resolve the impasse over frozen Russian assets.

A War the World Is Watching

The speakers noted that Ukraine’s rivals are studying the war more closely than its partners. Malik said North Korea has supplied ballistic missiles and soldiers to Russia, and Vacroux said the country is bringing that experience home for a possible fight with South Korea. China, she said, is doing the same as it thinks about Taiwan. The Americans and Europeans, by contrast, are mostly not gaining firsthand experience, and cutting off Ukrainian partnerships cuts off the chance to learn without sending their own troops into that kind of war. Malik predicted that U.S. forces will soon face jet-powered Shaheds in the Middle East, and said neither the United States nor Europe has an affordable way to stop them at scale.

Pressure on Russia, and on Europe

Vacroux said sanctions and Ukrainian strikes on refineries are straining Russia’s economy, though economic pressure alone is “necessary but not sufficient” to end the war. She also described a rise in Russian sub-threshold attacks on Europe, including cyberattacks, arson and drone incursions, which she said test the credibility of NATO’s Article 5.

Peace Talks, Nuclear Threats, and the Will to Keep Fighting

When asked about negotiations, Malik was blunt. “Negotiations are one very big myth,” he said. Vacroux noted that some channels still produce prisoner exchanges. Both viewed Russian nuclear threats as deterrence more than intent. Vacroux said about three-quarters of Ukrainians want elections to wait until the war ends, and 62% say they will keep fighting “as long as it takes.” Malik expected another wave of residents to leave Kyiv this winter.

Vacroux closed by sharing her belief that Ukraine’s only dependable security guarantee is the one it builds itself. “It cannot rely on the United States. It cannot rely on companies like Starlink. It cannot rely on the Europeans.”

View a full recording of the conversation:

*This article was supported by research using Claude. All outputs were reviewed by humans, and the final expression was produced by the author.

Our team traveled to the Philippines in March for a week of fieldwork as part of our capstone project on carbon markets. In partnership with the Asian Development Bank, we are examining how international climate finance can be mobilized for carbon projects under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, with a focus on agriculture, forestry, and other land use (AFOLU), including rice cultivation, mangroves, and seagrasses. Over five days in Manila and Laguna, we met with government agencies, project developers, investors, startups, and multilateral partners to better understand the opportunities and constraints shaping the country’s emerging carbon market.

The field visit brought our research into direct conversation with on-the-ground realities. Across 21 interviews and three site visits, we found strong interest in the Philippines’ potential for AFOLU carbon projects, but also significant barriers to scaling them. Stakeholders pointed to the fragmented policy framework  for Article 6, unresolved land and carbon rights, limited bankable project pipelines, and continued concerns about carbon credit integrity. We also explored sector-specific challenges in rice, forestry, and biomass management, including emerging technologies such as biochar and biodigesters.

A key takeaway from the trip was that unlocking climate finance for AFOLU projects will require progress on several fronts at once: clearer institutional pathways, stronger support for project development and aggregation, and more credible long-term demand signals from buyers and investors.

To complement our on-the-ground fieldwork, one team member attended CERAWeek in Houston — one of the world's foremost gatherings of energy industry leaders — where engagement with a broad set of energy stakeholders further reinforced the direction of our research. Conversations with executives from major players, some of whom are actively navigating their entry into voluntary carbon markets, highlighted that purchasing decisions are increasingly driven by credibility, policy durability, and the ability to stack economic value across compliance and voluntary mechanisms.

As we move into the final phase of the capstone, we are using these insights to refine practical recommendations for how the Philippines can attract international finance while building a more credible and investable carbon market.

Our five-day fieldwork trip to Kyiv, Ukraine, gave us valuable firsthand insight into how key stakeholders view municipal bonds as a potential tool for municipal-level reconstruction and development. Over the course of the trip, we met with experts, ministry representatives, and municipal actors to better understand existing financing structures and to assess perceptions of municipal bonds as a possible solution for Ukraine’s reconstruction needs. 

We also participated in a roundtable with representatives from the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry for Development of Communities and Territories of Ukraine, the National Bank of Ukraine, the National Securities and Stock Market Commission, as well as our partners NGO EU-LEAP and MP Oleksiy Movchan.

These meetings helped us better understand both Ukraine’s capacity to develop a municipal bond market and the barriers that currently stand in the way. They also highlighted key stakeholder concerns, institutional constraints, and differing perspectives on the viability of this approach. In parallel, we had the opportunity to present several of the more innovative financing ideas we are continuing to refine.

In the coming weeks, we hope to develop a viable policy solution and produce a final report on approaches to expanding sub-sovereign financing for Ukraine’s reconstruction, informed by our updated analysis.

Our team traveled to London to examine the growing gap between rapid AI deployment and governance in the United Kingdom's communications sector. Engaging directly with stakeholders on the ground provided a valuable opportunity to root their research in real-world perspectives and observe how these challenges are unfolding in practice.

While in London, the team met extensively with government, regulatory, industry, and research institutions. We presented initial findings to their partner, the AI Security Institute (AISI), and consulted with experts from Oxford Martin AI Governance Initiative. The trip reinforced the importance of clear guidance and risk frameworks, cross-sector coordination, and adaptive governance as the UK navigates the safe integration of AI into its communications systems.

We engaged a range of stakeholders in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and Armavir, Armenia to assess how city leadership can build public trust amid increasing mis- and disinformation.

In Scranton, we met with leadership and staff across City Hall, university faculty, community leaders, and local youth center practitioners. We then travelled to Armavir — Scranton's sister city — where we met with the mayor, a local NGO, and a fact-checking organization to better understand how mis- and disinformation spreads and how local actors are responding.

Across both cities, a consistent theme emerged: trust depends on clear, two-way communication with constituents, especially through in-person engagement. We are now developing solutions to operationalize this insight, refining our approach as we identify and integrate new evidence, and building stakeholder alignment ahead of our report to both cities in June.

Over five days in Tokyo, our team met with officials across Japan's Ministry of Agriculture (MAFF), Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST), and the Defense Innovation agency (DISTI/ATLA), as well as private sector and public-private institutions including Mitsubishi Corporation, the Development Bank of Japan, JICT Fund, and Deloitte Tohmatsu.

Our fieldwork revealed a persistent gap in Japan's path from research to deployment. The country invests heavily in frontier R&D through programs like its Moonshot Research and Development Program, but startups struggle to commercialize that research, and the broader ecosystem is not set up to help them. Large corporates and government agencies lack clear procurement pathways for working with startups, meaning that even promising technologies stall before reaching operational use.

Understanding where and why that pipeline breaks down became central to our final recommendations for how a foreign climate tech company can position itself within Japan's institutional landscape.

The team divided fieldwork across multiple locations to engage the wide range of stakeholders shaping U.S. space launch resilience and capacity. One team member met with space policy researchers at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and with U.S. Special Operations Command’s space-related research and development stakeholders in Tampa. Another attended Satellite Show 2026 in Washington, D.C., where he engaged representatives from industry, policy research organizations, government, and other space stakeholders.

A third team member traveled to Australia to meet with officials and commercial space actors about allied partnership opportunities, while another traveled to New York City to speak with representatives from the United Arab Emirates about potential areas for cooperation.

This division of labor allowed the team to examine the policy, operational, commercial, and international dimensions of the U.S. space launch challenge at the same time. Across these engagements, the team explored how coordination gaps, infrastructure constraints, and the interests of allies and private-sector actors affect U.S. launch cadence and resilience.

The fieldwork helped the team refine recommendations focused not only on physical launch infrastructure, but also on the broader network of institutions, partnerships, and policy mechanisms needed to strengthen the United States’ ability to sustain space access in both routine and contested environments.

Introduction and Contribution:

The ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War has been one of the most devastating conflicts of the 21st century. Since Russia’s 2022 invasion, Ukraine has experienced not only mass casualties but immense cultural destruction, as well as the forcible deportation and adoption of thousands of Ukrainian children to Russian families. Ending the war requires understanding its causes, particularly from the point of view of Vladimir Putin and other key Russian decision-makers. 

Some observers of Russian and global politics — as well as Putin and his allies — have claimed that the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO caused the war. The argument here is that as a superpower, Russia could not tolerate the security implications of a country on its border joining a rival alliance. Russia’s war, then, was a preventive one — less a choice than a strategic necessity. Any superpower in such a situation would do the same.

In “NATO Did Not Cause Putin’s Imperial War,” James Goldgeier and Brian D. Taylor convincingly challenge the NATO hypothesis, showing it to be more a piece of Kremlin propaganda than a plausible account of Putin’s decision-making process. Instead, the authors draw our attention to Putin’s most deeply held and longstanding beliefs: that Ukraine is not a legitimate nation state, that Ukrainians would not freely associate with the West and its alliances (unless they were being manipulated), and that dominating Ukraine is essential to Russia reclaiming its status as a global superpower, one that is constantly disrespected by the West. 

As many social scientists focus on improving the causal power of their statistical inferences, Goldgeier and Taylor helpfully focus our attention on the beliefs and reasons of political actors who cause political outcomes such as wars and revolutions. More importantly, the authors provide a starting point for thinking about ending the Russo-Ukrainian war, one focused not on the distraction that is NATO arguments but on Putin’s imperial ambitions.

Pitfalls of the NATO Explanation:

The authors begin by noting that NATO enlargement clearly played a role in the deterioration of relations between Russia and the West over the past 25 years. In part, this is because many Russian elites — owing to their imperialistic beliefs, more on this below — never accepted that former Soviet Republics were free to join the alliance. However, NATO enlargement was but one item in a long list of Russian grievances, some based in reality and others fictional. These include the 2003-04 Color Revolutions — mainly reflecting widespread domestic sentiment, not Western machinations — and alleged American support for the 2011-13 Russian protests in the aftermath of Putin’s rigged elections, which were similarly homegrown.

There is good evidence that Putin and his inner circle neither feared NATO aggression nor believed that Ukraine could realistically join the alliance. After George W. Bush’s failed bid for Ukrainian membership in 2008, no American president has seriously entertained or pushed for Ukraine’s admission. NATO took minimal action after Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine, before which time Ukrainians themselves didn’t support joining the alliance (likely because they anticipated the negative consequences for Russia-Ukraine relations). NATO itself has worked against admitting Ukraine; indeed, much of its security assistance has been designed to make it possible for Ukraine to defend itself without formal admission. What’s more, no country bordering Russia joined NATO after 2004 until Finland did so in 2023.

When Putin decided on war in 2021, his invasion plan was based on the assumption that victory would be quick and easy, evidencing his lack of concern for NATO intervention. Further, he knew that NATO lacked the troops and would be extremely wary of confronting nuclear Russia. 

Putin’s Imperial Beliefs and Goals:

For several decades, Putin has expressed the belief that Ukraine is not a genuine nation-state and that Russia both gave away and was “robbed” of much of its territory. One of Putin’s key goals is arguably to rebuild Russian greatness via imperial conquest. The West is not merely intervening in Eastern European politics but, according to Putin, actively working to downgrade Russia to a second-class country and undermine its sovereignty. Putin views the war as key to reversing Russia’s declining status.

Because Putin and his inner circle view Ukraine to be a natural part of Russia, the possibility that Ukrainians would freely tie their fortunes to the West is inconceivable — Ukrainian elites must have been tricked, co-opted, or bribed. Some Russian propagandists have even described the war as one of “Russians killing Russians.”

Putin’s imperialism is not only confined to privately held beliefs. During COVID-19, he spent a great deal of time reading historical texts to prepare a 5000-word article on the alleged historic inseparability of Russia and Ukraine. What could such an undertaking have to do with NATO expansion?

Russia’s wartime conduct also provides strong evidence for the imperialism explanation. As mentioned above, Russia has gone to great lengths to destroy Ukrainian culture. It has rejected multiple peace deals that would have prevented Ukraine from joining NATO. Putin saw these as failing to address the conflict’s “root causes,” arguably a euphemism for Ukrainian sovereignty. Instead, Russian conditions for peace include making Russian an official language, disbanding “nationalist” political parties, and ensuring the influence of Moscow’s Orthodox Church. These conditions smack of Russian chauvinism.

Of course, elites’ imperial beliefs do not necessarily lead to war. And indeed, Putin initially sought to control Ukraine through political measures, such as election interference. However, the authors argue that when President Volodymyr Zelenskyy seized the assets of a key Putin ally, Putin realized his position was weakening. Russian security officials then assured Putin — likely out of fear — that overthrowing Ukraine’s government would be easy. This flawed decision-making process led to war. Readers will come away struck by how many lives have been lost while policy and scholarly debates remained focused on the NATO hypothesis.

*Brief prepared by Adam Fefer.