Surprise Russian Vyshneve Attack In Fog Wiped Out By Ukrainian Forces

Aside from the news that an entire attacking Russian unit was annihilated by infantry and drone operators working in tandem through dense fog, what is interesting about this action is the intel that the Russians felt compelled to attack despite long odds because they had recently lost ground to Ukraine. 

This reveals that Russian frontline commanders remain under intense pressure to take whatever territory they can for propaganda purposes and that they are expected to try to claw back lost ground immediately as the Kremlin attempts to counter the narrative that its forces are losing the ground war. JL

RFU News reports:

Thick morning fog along the Yanchur River reduced visibility to only a few meters for Ukrainian soldiers. Russian troops launched a surprise assault, but the Ukrainian battalion commander improvised and redirected a ground drone toward the defenders to function as a mobile reconnaissance platform. Because visibility near ground level was slightly better than from the air, the robot transmitted a live video feed back to the commander, who directed defenders in real time. Guided by these images, the Ukrainian soldiers engaged approaching Russians with precision. Guided from the command post, a hexacopter released its munition directly into a cluster of Russian troops, and when the smoke from the explosion settled, seven Russian soldiers were dead. As half an hour passed, the weather began to improve so Ukrainian FPV drones joined the fight. Russian infantry attempting to avoid accurate rifle fire from defenders found themselves forced into the open streets

Due To AI, New York Surpassed SF Bay Area In Tech Jobs For First Time

In a first for tech hiring in the past generation, New York has surpassed the Bay Area. This is due to demand for AI skills from the financial services industry in NYC as non-AI jobs have been cut in the Bay Area. 

The change may be anomalous and could swing again, but the new data supports the demonstrable interest in AI talent from industries besides tech, with New York as the US metropolitan area with companies in finance, communications, advertising, publishing, real estate and other white collar fields, as well as the money to pay for them. JL

Cris Tolomia reports in Quartz:

New York City has surpassed the San Francisco Bay Area as the largest tech talent market by headcount in the U.S., according to CBRE's 13th annual Scoring Tech Talent report. New York's 394,300 tech talent jobs surpassed San Francisco's 375,730 — a milestone that marks the first time New York has claimed the top position in the history of CBRE's analysis. The shift reflects two forces working in opposite directions: layoffs of non-AI tech workers in the Bay Area, and strong AI and finance-driven hiring in New York. "There've been cuts in the Bay Area, so the tech industry has contracted the size of the tech talent workforce, and the finance sector [in New York] has hired a lot of tech talent and a lot of AI workers."

Moscow Military Festival Cancelled For Fear of Ukrainian Drone Attacks

Another embarrassment for Putin as a military festival he commissioned almost 20 years ago is cancelled over fears of Ukrainian drone attacks - and Russia's inability to stop them. JL

Daria Zakharova reports in Politico:

A major military festival in Moscow has been canceled four days before it was due to start. The event, which began in 2007 at President Vladimir Putin’s orders, is one of Russia’s most prominent military-themed events, alongside the May 9 Victory Day parade in Moscow and the Navy Day show in St. Petersburg. The move comes amid an increase in Ukrainian drone attacks on the Russian capital.

Ukraine Is Winning Escalating Space War With Russia

Ukraine is increasingly hitting Russia's aero and outer space production and storage assets as the Kremlin uses them for targeting Ukrainian cities. 

Kyiv's identification and striking of these targets has seriously damaged Russia's ability to use space as a military resource because the lead times for building these complicated and expensive facilities are so long. JL

Kevin Platt reports in Forbes:

Ukraine's bombing of a major Russian space rocket assembly center is the latest in a growing barrage of missile and drone strikes on the Kremlin’s aerospace labs. “While Russia is targeting purely civilian infrastructure and sites” across Ukraine, killing citizens and children in the process, “Ukraine is restricting its strikes to military or dual-purpose targets.” Ukraine’s attack on the Progress Rocket and Space Center, in western Russia, triggered a major setback for the Russian space program. The center produces the Soyuz rockets, for decades the main Russian boosters to launch space capsules destined for the International Space Station and imaging satellites that track U.S. defense worldwide and the movement of Moscow’s own tanks and missile brigades around occupied Ukraine. 

Ukraine's Infantry Is Adapting to A War Of More Menacing Drones

The key to winning and survival is adaptation based on intelligence and planning.

The result has been lower Ukrainian casualty levels despite increased success in advances against Russian held territory. JL

Tamar Jacoby reports in Washington Monthly:

The main activity is planning - a new kind of detailed forethought required by drone warfare. A trio of screens dominates a corner -16 flickering feeds from friendly UAVs in the area. This isn’t a drone command center—the feeds have become essential to planning- intel that guides the dangerous slog to and from the trenches, supply runs, and battlefield ops. Robots haven’t replaced soldiers. “Drones or no drones, infantryman is still the hardest job in the army.” Two recent innovations - heavy multicopter bomber drones and those piloted by fiber optic cables - demand the biggest adjustments on the ground. The steepest new challenge is distance - the vast, growing gray zone between the rear and the line of contact. Recruits are guaranteed 14 weeks of training or more. Every significant battlefield operation is followed by an after-action review to identify mistakes and improve planning. “We used to be afraid of Russian artillery. Now we don’t even think about it.” 

The Real Trap of Pokrovsk Is Russia's Inability To Extricate Itself and Advance

Remember Pokrovsk? The Russian military sure does. Because it has been unable to turn its bloody, eventual capture of that smoking heap of rubble into operationally significant advances.

The Russians remain mired in draining combat around Pokrovsk, as Ukrainian units force them to continue to commit substantial resources, including elite airborne troops. This means that the ultimate trap of Pokrovsk, which breathless western observers once opined would be the end of Ukraine has now become a tar-baby from which the Russian military cannot disengage, meaning that it cannot mass enough forces to generate breakthroughs elsewhere as Ukraine hits other weakened Russian sectors. JL

Owen Warner reports:

The real “trap” of Pokrovsk was never a dramatic physical encirclement. It was that Russia would spend an extraordinary amount of combat power taking the city, only to discover that the battlefield beyond it remained just as difficult.  Russian forces seized Pokrovsk but failed to turn the capture into operationally significant advances. Despite the capture of the city, Russian troops achieved modest gains around the perimeter. On August 7, there were 192 combats across the front, with the Pokrovsk sector having the most. On 12 August, 237 clashes were reported on the front, many again in Pokrovsk and Kostiantynivka. Months after the city fell, Russian troops were still fighting through the surrounding sector. Collapse had not followed. Ukrainian forces continued contesting attacks, disrupting infrastructure, and forcing Moscow to commit substantial combat power. Pokrovsk had fallen. The battle for what came after Pokrovsk had not.

AI's next Big Leap Is Into Real World Robotics

The goal is not superintelligence or other cult-like musings, but training for practical applications that can actually produce and operate in real world settings in order to improve performance. 

Considered low-brow by some, many investors see this as the gateway to operating efficiencies and, ultimately, the real pay-off for AI. JL

Christopher Mims reports in the Wall Street Journal:

AI models are being trained on videogames and simulations, rather than literature, code and images. They have reached a point where they can navigate in three-dimensional space and even manipulate objects autonomously with just a set of instructions. World-model startups want to create a control system that’s as versatile when piloting robots as today’s LLMs are when crafting text, from sonnets to software. The bet is a model can pilot a robot in the real world as if it were a character in a videogame. One caveat: It has to send a live video feed to a user, and can be controlled with a videogame controller, or mouse and keyboard. This is typical criteria for mainstream robots, but it excludes most two-legged humanoid robots.