Status Quo Wins, Until It Doesn't

With all that’s going on – e.g., congrats to Spain for its World Cup victory, scary about the cyclosporiasis outbreak and the Canadian wildfire smoke, dismaying but entirely predictable that the Iran-U.S. war is flaring up again – you may have missed the news that Ukrainian President Zelensky fired defense minister Mykhailo Fedorov.

Better times for President Zelensky and (former) Defense Minister Fedorov. Credit: Radio Free Europe

Now, perhaps Mr. Zelensky was worried he was inadvertently creating a future political rival, or maybe there’s some kind of corruption scandal behind the scenes, but the most common take is that the old guard military establishment disliked the acclaim Mr. Fedorov had gotten and the power he was accumulating. After all, even during war – perhaps especially during war – protecting one’s own interests often comes first.

Mr. Fedorov, who is only 35, had been in the role for just six months, having previously served as a digital transformation minister. His push for increased use of drones, and innovations in how they were used, led to his appointment. By all accounts, Ukraine leads the world in drone warfare: offensive and defensive, learning to cope with mass attacks, jamming, fiber-optic controlled drones, and other tactics no military had attempted or had to defend against before.   

He even created an Amazon-like arms procurement system that soldiers on the front lines could use to get the right weapons they needed, bypassing normal procurement channels, which were slower, more centralized, and more expensive. That helped lead to an ecosystem of young Ukrainian entrepreneurs working on military start-ups. “This level of innovation, and the way it’s been integrated into Ukraine’s fight, wouldn’t be possible without these young people,” Per Holst, the deputy defense attaché at the Danish Embassy in Kyiv, told Constant Méheut of The New York Times.

Example of Ukraine's digital procurement system

"One of the faces of the modern and technological war, it's Mykhailo Fedorov. He totally changed the rules. He's not afraid to take some risk or responsibility," said Ihor Fedirko, who leads the Ukrainian Council of Defense Industry.

The final straw that seemingly led to Mr. Fedorov’s ouster was his blocking of the purchase of artillery shells, preferring that the money be spent on his preferred weapons. The commander of Ukraine’s military, Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, felt that the “old school” weapons were still needed for the old school battlelines.

Mr. Zelensky was caught in the middle. "I wanted unity very much," Zelensky told reporters. "The sides did not find it. And that is not only their problem, but mine as well. I do not absolve myself of responsibility. And I respect the sides, I know their strengths, I know their weaknesses, and I very much want them to strengthen Ukraine. But it is what it is."

It did not go smoothly. “The season of shooting oneself in the foot has opened,” Kostyantyn Batozsky, a political analyst, wrote on social media.  Mass protests broke out, expressing support for Mr. Fedorov and distain for General Syrskyi.  They demanded Mr. Fedorov be reinstated, and General Syrskyi be removed, by July 24 or they’d hold nightly rallies.

Some raised not-so-subtle charges of what was really at stake: “You can’t even imagine what streams of funding have been cut off,” Serhiy Sternenko, an adviser to the Defense Ministry wrote on social media. He subsequently quit as well.

Mr. Fedorov held his own press conference, saying: “Today, my task is to show what we’ve done, and to talk about the risks that lie ahead for all of us. I don’t want to later look my children in the eyes and realize that I didn’t speak up on what’s really going on.” He criticized General Syrskyi for being too focused on tactics and not enough on strategy.  

Paul Adams of BBC reports that many in the Ukrainian military are “outraged” by Mr. Fedorov’s dismissal. "It is a blatant slap in the face to all service members," said one soldier. Another cynically pointed out: "If you can't come to an agreement with the old fossils, they'll eat you alive," while military analyst and former intelligence officer Ivan Stupak made it clear who the old fossil was: "Fedorov is an iPhone 16, Syrskyi is a telephone from the 1980s.”

One soldier told The New York Times: “Right now, we are facing the enemy. We believed that there were no enemies behind our backs, in our rear. As it turns out, there are.”  Another noted: “Almost all conversations right now are about this.” This is not what you want on the front lines. 

President Zelensky is likely to survive this, as he did a corruption scandal last summer. He’s holding lots of meetings, including with both General Syrskyi and Mr. Federov, who promises: “There will definitely be changes.” “Decisions regarding the army will be worked out,” the president promised in a statement.

Meanwhile, General Syrskyi defends himself:

The strangest accusation I’ve heard is that I supposedly ‘don’t want to fight with drones,’ A person who ‘does not want to fight with drones’ does not create the world’s first separate branch of unmanned systems and does not appoint a commander to it, contrary to all traditions of the military hierarchy.

Fair points. I suspect that Mr. Fedorov did push harder than the military establishment was comfortable with, while that establishment did, in fact, adopt radically new tactics out of the sheer desperation of the situation. But, at some point, push came to shove.

I have to note that, with all the lessons Ukraine has learned/taught about the new era of war, the vaunted, hugely expensive U.S. military has seemed flummoxed by the same Iranian drones Ukraine has battled for four years. Despite all the new, tech-based military start-ups across the world, experts predict that the old guard military contractors will still rake in 80% of military spending by 2033.  

Credit: Boston Consulting Group

Lockheed Martin, for example, has taken lots of criticism for how expensive its Patriot missiles are, and for how long they take to produce, so they’re introducing a new, cheaper version: it only will cost $2 million per missile. I don’t think they’re reading the room, or the battlefield, correctly.

 It’s amazing the Ukraine has held on this long, and is now even taking the fight to Russia. But no one who has attempted innovation in a big corporation or in a big industry can be surprised at this drama. Change is hard. Status quo doesn’t give up easily.

The point isn’t that the future of war is drones, or even AI drones. The point is that the future of war – and, in an AI world, the future of every industry -- is constant, rapid innovation. We are not living in a time when the status quo can hold.