Ukraine Just Demonstrated What AGI War Could Look Like

Time​ Magazine

a day ago

Bombers in flames on social media. Photos of trick shipping containers packed with drones. Defiant statements from both sides about the scale of the damage.
targeted several Russian air bases using first-person view (FPV) drones, cheap aerial vehicles which are remotely operated by pilots using camera feeds. According to reports, Ukraine used machine-learning algorithms to guide the drones to the target area.
The attack, dubbed 'Spider's Web', demonstrated the current hardware capabilities of modern warfare. And as companies and governments race to develop Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)—in which advanced artificial intelligence systems can quickly understand, learn, and apply knowledge—the operation also provides a glimpse into what the future of warfare could look like.
Spider's Web and the impact of FPV drones
The Security Service of Ukraine's (SBU) operation knocked out targets up to 8,000 kilometers (nearly 5,000 miles) from the frontlines. As the dust settles, analysts are starting to wonder whether anywhere is truly beyond the reach of FPV drones.
Some reports suggest dozens of strategic bombers (some said to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons) were destroyed or disabled by 117 FPV drones, though Moscow countered that only a handful of planes were struck. Western assessments put the figure at no lower than 10.
But the scale of the attack, while impressive, isn't its most remarkable aspect. After all, the operation follows a Russian drone attack at the end of May involving almost 500 unmanned aerial vehicles. Ukraine's attack may have been smaller, but it more than made up for it in logistical brilliance.
First, the parts were smuggled into the country and the drones were assembled. Vasyl Maliuk, the head of the SBU tells the BBC that they were then loaded onto lorries with secret compartments and driven by unsuspecting Russian couriers to locations near air bases. When the shipments reached their destination, roofs on the lorries retracted to reveal the hidden hardware. And the drones took off.
Spider's Web depended on three distinct but related capabilities: logistics to deliver the drones, deception to keep them hidden, and coordination to pilot dozens of them concurrently.
Yes, the attack confirms that expendable drones are the weapon of the 21st century. But Ukraine's strike serves as a visceral example of how AGI will work as a warfighting tool—and how humans will work alongside AGI.
War powered by AGI
Make no mistake, AGI-fueled warcraft is coming. Over the past two years, the AI industry has increasingly invested in military applications of AI and gravitated towards 'security' as one of its organizing principles.
Frontier labs are embedding themselves into the national security state. For instance, in June 2024 OpenAI appointed retired U.S. Army general Paul Nakasone to its Board of Directors. In December 2024, the AI-giant announced it had partnered with defense military technology outfit Anduril to develop drone defense systems. And Google, my former employer, scoped out 'national security imperatives for the AI era' earlier this year.
The technology sectors' allusions to national security and AI have a certain shape-shifting quality to them. It's not always clear whether someone is referring to defensive or offensive AI capabilities, or whether it is even possible to neatly separate the former from the latter.
In the context of armed conflict, things get even muddier. The idea that a sufficiently capable AGI system might eventually pilot drones is already on the minds of military planners, but Ukraine's strike on Russia gives us a much more specific picture of what to expect.
Spider's Web had been in the making for eighteen months. During this time,150 small attack drones and 300 explosive devices were smuggled into Russia to stage the attack.
Rather than one large shipment, the SBU likely engaged in piecemeal smuggling to avoid detection. Possibly bringing components across borders, using front companies, or bribing officials to pass through checkpoints.
The fog of war is thick. We may never know for certain, but we do know that the final drones were packed into special mobile containers that looked inconspicuous from the outside.
According to reports, the drivers of the lorries all told a similar story. A businessman approached them to pick up what seemed to be wooden cabins and deliver them to various locations around Russia. They agreed and thought little of it.
Once the trucks were in position, the strike was launched. At the predetermined moment, each container's roof panels were remotely opened to release a swarm of drones (likely piloted remotely by piggybacking on Russian telecommunications networks).
The future of warfare
Spider's Web offers a window into how AGI could supercharge similar attacks in the future.
AGI could analyse transportation routes to find the safest, fastest, and least conspicuous way to move cargo. It could plan truck routes that avoid busy checkpoints, choose transit times when border guards are understaffed, and even account for satellite overpasses or drone surveillance.
Such a system could coordinate multimodal logistics (think planes, trains and automobiles) with timing that no human team could match. Not to mention it could crunch traffic patterns, rail schedules, and weather data to find the perfect moment for an attack.
This hypothetical warfighting AGI could automatically generate corporate entities complete with registration documents, tax records, and websites to serve as cover. It could forge driver's licenses, passports, and employee IDs that pass automated verification—much faster than humans today could.
Aside from paperwork, an AGI could manage a whole suite of deception technologies. For example, AGI could emit fake GPS signals to confuse satellite tracking or hacking into a facility's CCTV feed to loop old footage while operatives move equipment. When it's time to strike, AGI could guide each drone to its target as part of a single unified swarm, optimised to prevent collisions and spaced to maximize coverage.
AGI may even make it possible to monitor the electronic warfare environment and switch frequencies if it senses jamming on the current channel. If an air defense system starts tracking the swarm, the AGI might command all drones to disperse or drop to terrain-hugging altitude to increase their odds of survival.
As soon as the destination is in range, AGI could help drones autonomously recognise target types and aim for the most damaging impact points (say by guiding a drone to the exact location of an aircraft's fuel tank).
The limitations, and dangers, of AGI
To be sure, these are still predictions about what AGI may be capable of in the future. And there will likely be limitations.
Precision hand-work like soldering detonators, balancing rotors, and packing warheads remains hard to automate at scale without a bespoke factory line. Robots can do it, but you still need humans to do the initial set-up. Plus, explosives sweat, lithium-ion packs puff, and cheap FPV airframes warp if left in non-climate-controlled depots. Periodic maintenance like changing desiccant packs or swapping bloated cells would likely still remain vital. A swarm of AGI-powered drones would probably still need caretakers who can move around without drawing attention.
Finally, jamming-resistant links need spectrum licences, custom SIM provisioning, or pirate base-stations smuggled in-country. Deploying that communications infrastructure (like antennae or repeaters) requires boots on the ground.
But even with a heavy dose of scepticism, I find it hard to see the Ukrainian strike as anything other than a postcard from the future. Problems might look insurmountable to us, but you should never bet against the machine conjuring up an unorthodox solution.
I fear that the best case scenario ahead of us is one where attacks such as these can simply be delivered slightly faster. The worst case scenario is one in which a Spider's Web-style operation can be conducted orders of magnitude faster by just a handful of people.
Thinking about the implications of AGI is useful in that it reminds us that power flows to whoever can orchestrate complexity faster than the adversary can comprehend it. Complexity is the strategic currency of war in the information age, and AGI is a complexity accelerator.
If AGI finds its way into the wrong hands, it could become much easier to pull off a deadly attack. That is as true for the great powers as it is for rogue actors. This is the new strategic reality, and every military has to plan for it.
What Ukraine's Spider's Web strike taught us is that the hardware for an AGI warfighter is ready. All that remains is the software.