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A Ukrainian fibre-optic drone — copied from Russians. (АрміяІнформ, CC-BY 4.0) Mick Ryan describes the fast following loop in war.
Ukraine pioneered mobile teams to hunt drones. Russia copied it and incorporated it into its own defense. Russia came with unjammable fibre-optic drones but Ukraine quickly followed. After Ukraine developed uncrewed naval drones, Russia built its own.
The wheel of action and counteraction turns ever faster:
The most consequential fast following, though, has been institutional. Ukraine built the world's first Unmanned Systems Forces branch in 2024. Russia's Rubicon Center was established as a response to Ukrainian drone innovation and in November 2025 Moscow stood up its own Unmanned Systems Forces. Fast following has moved from copying a weapon to copying tactics to copying an entire force structure.
Extend that logic further, and eventually you’ll get to the level of grand strategy: If a particular type of state is better at waging war, maybe you want to become that kind of state rather than lose the war.
If meat waves confer an advantage on the battlefield, maybe Ukraine wants to become more like Russia, with a prostrate population easy to use as cannon fodder.
If Ukraine's decentralized Brave1 kill market [...]
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First published:
October 3rd, 2026
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/WyeYJ7cmeiSrXeCnM/you-can-t-use-it-without-becoming-like-me
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Narrated by
TYPE III AUDIO.
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