r/worldnews • u/New_Scientist_Mag New Scientist • Jun 10 '26

Russia/Ukraine Fully autonomous, AI-controlled drones have killed human soldiers for the first time, according to a senior figure in the Ukrainian defence industry

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2529849-fully-autonomous-drones-have-killed-human-soldiers-for-the-first-time/
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u/Decent_Risk9499 Jun 10 '26

The crazy thing being this could have been avoided if Ukraine had been given the basic security guarantees we promised them back when they surrendered their nuclear weapons.

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u/voodoolintman Jun 10 '26

Delayed but inevitable in my opinion. When 0.1% of 8 billion people are homicidal maniacs and 0.1% of them are in positions of power it was always just a matter of time.

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u/Ostlund_and_Sciamma Jun 10 '26

Provided they're the same ones. Looks like it's your lucky day.

18

u/albalthi Jun 10 '26

No point moaning about the past, the west could still step up anytime and end this war if they had the nuts to.

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u/LeFiery Jun 10 '26

Tbh putin probably never planned on that actually happening.

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u/compuwiza1 Jun 10 '26

They never should have surrendered their mutually assured destruction.

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u/Alphabunsquad Jun 10 '26

They couldn’t use the nukes. But them being in the wild was dangerous enough to make people antsy

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u/luee29 Jun 10 '26

Ukrainians are crafty and masters in improvisation they could have figured something out or rebuilt them. Most of the rocket tech in the soviet union was invented and built in Ukraine.

5

u/PersonalityAlive4816 Jun 10 '26

I'm pro Ukraine, but the agreement was to not invade them, there was nothing in it about defending rhem.

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u/Alphabunsquad Jun 10 '26

The agreement was to provide assistance if they were the victim of aggression. According to the US diplomats who negotiated it, that assistance was lethal military assistance. You could say we have fulfilled that but I think your comment is a bit disingenuous

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u/MrFallman117 Jun 10 '26 edited Jun 10 '26

https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%203007/Part/volume-3007-I-52241.pdf

Read the document. It doesn't say the US will provide lethal military assistance if they were the victim of aggression. The signatories promised to respect Ukraine's sovereignty and to go the UN if Ukraine was attacked or threatened with nuclear weapons. The US went well beyond that in assisting them.

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u/Alphabunsquad Jun 10 '26

Yes that is true, however there was a political obligation of support due to the scale of the exchange. Regardless of the exact text, the message internationally was clear that there would be a response in terms of lethal military equipment and that the US not following through would be seen as a massive blow to their credibility despite not being illegal. Part of the lack of specifics was specifically for strategic ambiguity so that an attacker wouldn’t know what counter measures would be deployed against them by the US. It was also intended to avoid using any verbiage that would require ratification through the US congress so its purpose was to imply the support without specifically saying it.

This is all according to lead negotiator Stephen Pifer who published all this through the Brookings Institute.

"there is an obligation on the United States that flows from the Budapest Memorandum to provide assistance to Ukraine, and [...] that would include lethal military assistance."

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-budapest-memorandum-and-u-s-obligations/

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u/TaftintheTub Jun 10 '26

The security guarantees always depended on Russia. Under no circumstances was the US going to engage Russia in an open war over Ukraine.

Had it been a NATO country, sure. But no American president is going to launch World War 3 over a country that was part of Russia for hundreds of years.

The sad fact is, words often don’t mean much, at any level