The Next War Is Already Here — Yaroslav Azhnyuk, The Fourth Law & Noah Smith, Noahpinion

So, think about this. 想想这个。 Last year, Ukraine produced 4 million FPV drones. 去年，Ukraine 造了 400 万架 FPV 无人机。 Ukraine is not the most industrious nation in the world. Ukraine 并不是全球工业最强的国家。 China can produce 4 billion of these FPV drones. China 能造 40 亿架 FPV 无人机。 Would you say that right now, China is now the supreme conventional military power on Earth given its ability to manufacture and deploy drones in the quantity and quality that you just described? 考虑到 China 制造和部署无人机的数量与质量，你认为现在 China 已经是地球上最强的常规军事力量吗？ I don't think we have all the information to claim that, but we cannot count it out. 我觉得我们没有足够的信息下这个结论，但也不能排除。 And that alone should be, you know, a big warning sign. 光这一点就应该是个大警告。 And yeah, as I say, some point in my life, I went from making cameras that uh fling treats to pets to cameras that fling explosives to the occupiers. 在我人生某个节点，我从做向宠物投喂零食的摄像头，转向了做向占领者投掷炸药的摄像头。 Um, so that's the short story. 简单说，就是这样。 And, uh, when you think about what your nation, what your compatriots are going through, uh, you realize that that's the only morally right thing to do is to fight back. 当你想到你的国家，你的同胞正在经历什么，你就会意识到还击是唯一道德正确的事。 and it is immoral not to fight back and then that the choice becomes very clear. 不还手才是不道德的，选择就变得非常清晰。 Welcome to Len Space. 欢迎大家来到 Latent Space。 Um I'm Brandon. 我是主持人 Brandon。 I normally do science podcast, but today we're going to do something a little bit different. 我平时做科学播客，但今天要做点不一样的。 I'm joined by uh Noah Smith of Noah Opinion on Substack and Twitter. 今天请到了 Noah Smith，他就是 Substack 平台上 Noahpinion 专栏的作者，也在 Twitter 上很活跃。 Uh and he has lots of interesting things to say about drones. 他对无人机有很多有意思的看法。 And uh as a guest we have Yarlov Ajinuk uh founder of the fourth law and several other um drone related startups. 还有一位嘉宾，Yaroslav Azhnyuk，The Fourth Law 及多家无人机相关创业公司的创始人。 Um but yeah to to get started um so it is uh February 23rd uh 2022 you are running a pet startup um you are connecting pets with their owners. 先从背景说起，2022 年 2 月 23 日，你在经营一家宠物科技公司，帮宠物和主人建立连接。 Let's go in just a little bit of background. 稍微介绍一下背景。 um where how did you get started in tech and uh what were you working on before the Ukrainian war started? 你是怎么入行科技的，乌克兰战争爆发前在做什么？ Yeah. 嗯。 Uh good to be here. 很高兴来这里。 Thank you. 谢谢。 Uh on February 23rd late in the evening, like I think like 11:00 p.m. KF time, uh my wife and I, we landed in Kiev actually then she was a fiance. 2 月 23 日深夜，大概是 Kiev 时间晚上 11 点，我和妻子，当时还是未婚妻，刚刚落地 Kiev。 Uh and and we were uh we came from Lviv where we were looking at a church uh where our wedding should have taken place and we got into this uh cab riding from airport to our home and the driver was like you crazy like everyone's leaving Ke why why do you come like what nothing's going to happen like dude chill and then obviously 8 minutes later or 8 8 hours later uh the bombs fell in the city was quite 我们从 Lviv 回来，在那里看了原本打算举行婚礼的教堂。打车从机场回家，司机说：你们疯了，大家都在撤离 Kiev，你们干嘛来这里，什么事都不会发生的，冷静点。然后 8 小时后，炸弹就落下来了，整个城市沸腾了。 That's surreal. 太魔幻了。 We probably landed on the last flight that landed in K or one of those last flights. 我们搭的那班飞机，大概是最后几班降落 Kiev 的航班之一。 Uh but yeah, you know, uh my background, I'm a tech guy. 我的背景嘛，我是个科技人。 Uh studied applied mathematics in K poly techchnics, born and raised in Kiev. 在 Kiev 理工学院读的应用数学，土生土长的 Kiev 人。 Uh parents, uh you know, all the PhDs from academia and grandparents to like everything uh you know from uh linguistics to nuclear physics and um I'm an entrepreneur so I built a bunch of companies. 父母都是学术界博士，祖父母涉足各个领域，从语言学到核物理都有。我是创业者，创办过好几家公司。 Uh Pet Cube is the one you were referencing. Petcube，就是你说的那家。 So I lived in San Francisco 2014 to 2020. 我 2014 年到 2020 年住在旧金山。 Uh building uh Pet Cube, which is uh one of the leading uh pet device companies in the world. 创办 Petcube，是全球领先的宠物设备公司之一。 Uh selling uh lots of pet cameras. 卖了很多宠物摄像头。 And then yeah, as I say, some point in my life, I went from making cameras that uh fling treats to pets to cameras that fling explosives to the occupiers. 然后在我人生某个节点，我从做向宠物投喂零食的摄像头，转向了做向占领者投掷炸药的摄像头。 Um so that's the short story. 简单说就是这样。 Uh 嗯 yeah. 对。 So, uh, February 24th, um, I guess a few hours after you, uh, go to check out your wedding chapel. 2 月 24 日，就在你去看婚礼教堂的几小时后。 Um, what do you do? 你怎么做的？ Well, we had a plan for this situation. 我们为这种情况做过预案。 So, my my parents and family live in Kiev and, uh, we're like, okay, this has actually started. 我父母家在 Kiev，我们意识到，这事真的发生了。 The the worst has uh, come true. 最坏的情况成真了。 And, uh, so we basically packed our belongings and uh, got in the car and um, spent 17 hours riding west. 我们打包好行李，上车，往西开了 17 个小时。 Um and uh that was pretty sure most people in our audience watched an at least one apocalyptic movie in their life. 我们观众里大多数人至少看过一部末日电影。 So that was exactly like that. 就是那个感觉。 Like felt exactly like that. 感觉一模一样。 I you know missiles are falling like there was smoke in K like you know my dad and I went like to central part of the cities probably like 800 m from presidential office to pick some stuff in in his uh workplace uh cuz he's like the head of an academic institution so he had to uh get some of the things with him and uh super surreal like the the streets are empty. 导弹在落，Kiev 冒着烟。我父亲和我开到市中心，大概离总统府 800 米的地方，去他工作的学术机构取东西，他是负责人，得带走一些材料。街道空无一人，极度魔幻。 Like the gas stations are out of gas. 加油站没油了。 Like we found some gas station. 找到了一家还开着的。 Um we didn't have like spare canisters with us. 我们没带备用油桶。 So we're like um we we figured out like the car was diesel. 后来发现车是柴油的。 So like we figured out um if it's diesel, you can actually store it in plastic um canisters. 发现柴油可以存进塑料桶里。 And we bought some window wash for the cars. 就买了几桶洗车液。 We poured it out of the canisters and we poured the the diesel into that. 把洗车液倒掉，把柴油灌进去。 Uh yeah. 就这样。 So it was like that and then like you know helping friends get out like my friend and his dog like we found like my brother was also like riding in a separate car. 然后帮朋友撤离，我朋友和他的狗，我弟弟开着另一辆车，一起走。 We found the place for my friend who didn't have a car. 给没有车的朋友找到了落脚的地方。 It's like uh yeah it's like totally surreal. 完全是魔幻现实。 Wow. 天呐。 Yeah. 对。 And we didn't know you know of course then you didn't know this will last for so long. 当时根本不知道这场战争会打这么久。 You didn't know whether Kiev will be able to whether Ukraine will be able to defend Kiev. 不知道 Kiev 能不能守住，Ukraine 能不能保住 Kiev。 Um and it was like yeah very little information and very little insight into the future. 信息极度匮乏，对未来完全没有判断。 So what do you 那你当时怎么想 what are your thoughts with regards to how do you uh defend you know Ukraine? 关于如何保卫 Ukraine？ So you eventually start building drones? 后来你开始造无人机？ Yeah. 对。 like what is the process to get from there to you know or from where you were building you know devices that connect owners with pets to building drones and what other things did you do to help the war effort in the process? 从做宠物连接设备到造无人机，这个跨越是怎么走过来的？中间还做了哪些帮助战争的事？ Yeah, it's it's definitely non-trivial, right? 这个转变绝对不简单。 Like I I didn't go uh to I didn't get any like military education when I was a student. 我读书的时候没有接受过任何军事教育。 Like normally uh in Ukraine you would you would go to like this uh military school even if you're getting higher education in any any other uh sphere. 在 Ukraine，即使你读的是其他专业，一般也会上军事院校的课程。 Um I decided to skip that which which is like an unusual way to go. 我选择跳过了，这走法很少见。 Um and I never thought that I will be somehow engaged in war effort. 我从没想过自己会卷入战争。 Like what is war? 战争是什么？ Of course wars are over. 当然战争已经结束了。 It's the end of history. 历史已经终结了。 Um, so one thing you got to understand about like many Ukrainians and like I guess um it's also true about most of the people I met here in the US uh that your who you are in terms of your nationality is a big part of your identity. 有一点你要理解，很多乌克兰人，包括我在美国认识的不少人，民族身份是自我认同的核心组成部分。 So when that gets under attack, it's something deeper than just the country you live in gets under attack, right? 当那个认同遭到攻击，它比「你住的国家被攻击」要深得多。 And um so I I day one I figured I'm going to I'm going to fight back with everything I can, right? 第一天我就决定：要用我所有的力量还击。 But I I didn't think on day one that I'm actually going to do uh weapons. 但第一天我没想到自己会做武器。 Um and you know there a bunch of things we were uh reaching out to a number of American uh congress people and senators um and uh basically advocating for support of Ukraine for voting for land lease which has happened in May 2022 but didn't actually work as expected. 我们联系了很多美国国会议员和参议员，推动他们支持 Ukraine，为 2022 年 5 月通过的《武器租借法》投票，但效果不如预期。 Um uh you know we we helped start uh 我们还帮助创立了 Brave 1 uh which is uh now very important defense invasion cluster sort of like a DIU here in the US. Brave 1，这是一个非常重要的国防孵化集群，类似美国的 DIU。 We helped start um a fund called D3 uh it's like uh was uh started or co-started by Eric Schmidt former CEO of Google. 还帮助创立了 D3 Fund，由前 Google CEO Eric Schmidt 联合发起。 Um, so a bunch of these odd things, but then eventually I was like, okay, by 2023 it was obvious this thing a is going to last a lot more time and b that the whole world is shifting and uh that there's going to be a new arms race that the warfare is redefined by drones as platforms and for the first time in history you have a platform that is software defined uh that can increase your battlefield capabilities uh you know in in a step change just overnight. 做了一堆这样的事。到 2023 年，我意识到：这场仗还要打很久；整个世界的格局在转变；一场新的军备竞赛已经开始；无人机作为平台正在重新定义战争；而且历史上第一次，出现了一种软件定义的平台，可以一夜之间让战场能力发生阶跃式提升。 It's like if you were able to push a software update and get all of your Roman legionaire's new helmet, you know, that has never been possible before. 就好比你能推送一个软件更新，让所有罗马军团士兵同时换上新头盔，这以前从未有过。 It's it's the first time in the history of war this is possible. 这是战争史上第一次可以做到这件事。 So all of that many other things like you know supply chain fertilization uh and the impact that AI is going to have on all of this. 所有这些，还有供应链优化，以及 AI 将对这一切产生的影响。 All these things have become evident to me in 2003 and I was like okay I I I should do what I do best uh uh or what I know how to do best. 这些事在 2023 年对我都变得清晰了，我想：该做我最擅长的事了。 start a tech company uh and sort of leverage the global techno capitalist machine uh to uh provide uh defensibility to uh Ukraine and the free world. 创办一家科技公司，利用全球科技资本主义的力量，为 Ukraine 和自由世界提供防御能力。 So that's literally the mission of the company you know increase defensibility of Ukraine and the free world. 这就是公司的使命：提升 Ukraine 和自由世界的防御能力。 Um and then there was some sort of soularching and like asking yourself is like okay am I actually I know nothing about weapons. 然后经历了一段灵魂拷问，我真的什么武器都不懂。 Am I actually like ready to make, you know, things that other people use to kill other bad people? 我真的准备好了吗？做出让别人用来消灭坏人的东西？ And uh when you think about what your nation, what your um you know compatriots are going through, you think about all the terror of places like like Bha, the occupied cities in the um east and and south, uh the abducted children, the raped women, all the economic damage that's being done and the intention to destroy whole nation to genocide the people of Ukraine. 当你想到你的国家、你的同胞正在经历什么，想到布哈那样的地方，东部和南部被占领的城市，被拐走的孩子，被强奸的妇女，造成的所有经济破坏，以及那个意图，摧毁整个民族，对 Ukraine 人民实施种族灭绝。 Uh you realize that that's the only morally right thing to do is to fight back and it is immoral not to fight back and then that the choice becomes very clear. 你意识到，还击是唯一道德正确的选择，不还手才是不道德的，这个选择就变得非常清晰。 Um and look, we're we're just passing the ammunition. 我们只是在传递弹药。 We're not doing the actual job. 真正的战斗不是我们来打的。 The the actual fighters and defenders and heroes are people in in the armed forces or just support. 真正的战士、守卫者和英雄，是武装部队里的人，或者是后勤支援的人。 Oh, 哦，