Author: Revaz Topuria

Abstract

This article examines what the war reveals about the actual military utility of battlefield AI, its genuine contributions, its structural limitations, and its implications for the future of armed conflict. Drawing on operational reporting, peer-reviewed analysis, and critical war studies scholarship, it traces AI’s role across Ukrainian drone warfare and targeting, the compression of the intelligence-to-strike cycle through platforms such as Palantir, Russia’s more centralised and comparatively underdeveloped AI posture, and the unprecedented involvement of Western private technology firms as de facto participants in the conduct of hostilities. The analysis finds that AI has not proven decisive in the conventional sense, its battlefield value is highly context-dependent, eroded rapidly through adversarial adaptation, and ultimately contingent on institutional integration rather than algorithmic sophistication alone. Engaging Bousquet’s concept of technoscientific regimes and Der Derian’s theory of “virtuous war,” the article argues that AI has made the battlefield more legible without making it more decisive, thinning the fog of war while leaving the underlying frictions of logistics, organisation, and political will largely intact. It concludes that the war’s deepest lesson is not technological but structural, that the states best positioned for future conflict will be those that master not the algorithm, but the organisation built around it, a finding with significant implications for the unresolved governance of autonomous weapons and the growing privatisation of military AI.

ავტორი: ნატა ქორიძე

Putin’s Russia is directly associated with the so-called power-vertical (vertical vlasti) in which every
major political decision regarding structural changes is linked to the Kremlin, i.e., Putin and his
entourage. Nonetheless, as in every authoritarian system, personal loyalty does not preclude from
building informal alliances and shared interests between powerful actors, whether political or eco
nomic. As there is no way of changing the political regime in Russia democratically, and the only
remaining option is a coup d’état-like scenario, the key question remains – who will become Putin’s
successor, and consequently, which powerful actors will build alternative power centers rivaling for
political survival and ultimate political dominance in post-Putin Russia?
While focusing on the mentioned puzzle, the research project followed the logic of the sequence of
analytical steps. First, the snapshot of the current situation in Russia, i.e., a comprehensive analysis
of the socio-political and economic status quo was done, in which major sectors of Russia’s politi
co-economic fabric were reviewed and assessed. The sectoral dynamics review was followed by
an analysis of major actors, their relevance, and their interests in respective sectors. These included
both political actors (individuals and institutions) as well as oligarchs and regional elites, with their
respective sector-linked power, financial resources or personal ties. In the end, the hypothetical
scenario, in which Putin’s figure no longer exists and power-vertical becomes questionable, made it
possible to construct a number of prospective rivaling power-centers, in which personal, corporate,
political, and financial interests of powerful actors converge. These power-centers will inevitably try
to acquire political legitimacy, oligarchic resource base, and hard (military) power, to compete and
survive. All these findings are addressed by this research, sufficiently elaborated and presented for
further discussion.