Ukraine’s Software Warrior Brigade
They are bringing tech innovation to the battlefield faster and more effectively than Russia is.
By Shyam Sankar
March 8, 2023 6:00 pm ET
image A Ukrainian serviceman flies a drone near Bakhmut, Ukraine, March 3.PHOTO: EVGENIY MALOLETKA/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Ukraine is learning what happens when you conscript 300,000 of the world’s most capable software engineers, product managers and technologists and send them into battle.
The story usually goes something like this: An employee of a small information-technology outsourcing company becomes a unit commander on the frontlines. He sends his battle-born ideas back to his former colleagues in the tech-company lab. They rapidly build prototypes to show to Defense Ministry officials responsible for military technology procurement. The government then buys these prototypes and asks for more.
It’s a virtuous circle of innovation and entrepreneurship that has led to a proliferation of startups in Ukraine, including dozens of drone companies since the beginning of the war. Among other things, Ukraine’s wartime tech community has developed 3D-printed fins that can attach to Soviet-era grenades to maximize accuracy when dropped from greater heights. This innovation has turned consumer drones into remote bombers with a payload of up to six grenades that can deliver precision strikes on Russian lines.
In February, I traveled to Ukraine to see firsthand how defense and intelligence agencies are using technology. I also wanted to get a sense of what we could be doing to help Ukrainian forces increase their situational awareness on the battlefield.
What I saw was that Ukrainian conscripts are connoisseurs of software. They have a visceral knowledge of how it is built. Crucially, they have the vocabulary to provide feedback that can help developers improve the product. Their knowledge and experience has laid the foundation for collaboration among allied international software developers looking to help.
In other circumstances, I’d be trying to hire them as engineers.
So many of the most common defense-tech problems I’ve seen over the past 15 years—including the difficulty of adopting and rapidly deploying new technologies to the field—have melted away in Ukraine during this war. The urgency is simply overwhelming.
Militaries generally don’t understand software. They have a process, a mental mode and a funding model to buy tanks, weapons and other hardware. Software is largely considered an afterthought, or a piece of the hardware itself. This is changing in the U.S. but remains a challenge for every Western country.
In Ukraine, the military became discerning consumers of software practically overnight. Perhaps more important, they became discerning consumers of software talent. Highly technical Ukrainian war fighters are able to identify and work with world-class software engineers, allowing them to rush advanced technological solutions to the battlefield. Ukraine’s 300,000 computer-science conscripts are quick to try new things, challenge sacred programs that aren’t delivering, and fund multiple competing efforts. They understand that software requires constant innovation, iteration and updates. You don’t just set it and forget it.
Even though it would be easy for Kyiv to bestow special monopoly status on a handful of programs during wartime, Ukrainian officials continue to see value in funding multiple overlapping efforts. They are willing to trade bureaucratic orderliness for increased innovation, lethality and capability on the battlefield.
As American venture capitalist Ben Horowitz pointed out in a famous 2011 essay, there is a difference between a wartime CEO and a peacetime CEO. Each takes a different view on what is necessary for success. There’s an analogous difference between a peacetime defense program and a wartime defense program. The peacetime view is that you invest in military innovation before war begins and be ready to fight with the technology your investment produces. You fight with the hardware you have. The wartime view is that you get the software you need for the fight you find yourself in.
Ukraine is showing the world how the wartime view can produce the software necessary to win the fight. After Ukraine wins, there will be 300,000 war heroes who happen to be computer scientists. They will be as comfortable wielding Javelins as Jupyter notebooks. I can’t wait to see what they build.
Slava Ukraini.
Mr. Sankar is Palantir’s chief technology officer.
