Donald Trump speaks during an RNC fundraising event at Mar-a-Lago on October 16, 2026. | Eric Lee/Getty Images
This story appeared in The Logoff, a daily newsletter that helps you stay informed about the Trump administration without letting political news take over your life. Subscribe here.
Welcome to The Logoff: President Donald Trump is cozying up to Russia again.
What’s happening? On Wednesday, Russia released an American prisoner, 74-year-old retired teacher Stephen Hubbard, back to the US. The US, Trump said in a social media post, “out of respect for President Trump, was not required to give anything in return.”
Hubbard’s release is unquestionably good news. But Trump is wrong: In just the last month, his administration has delivered for Russia in more ways than one, often inexplicably and despite bipartisan condemnation.
What is Trump doing for Russia? Late last week, he waived upcoming economic sanctions on Russia that he had only recently signed into law after they passed Congress with overwhelming bipartisan support. He also:
Announced — seemingly without talking to either party — a Russia-Ukraine “energy ceasefire” favorable to Russia (which has since fallen apart);
Temporarily interrupted US intel sharing with Ukraine and played a role in interfering with Ukraine’s access to Starlink, which helps power the country’s drone warfare against Russia; and
Called on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to be replaced.
Last month, Trump also invited Russian President Vladimir Putin to the annual G20 summit later this year, which would mark Putin’s first appearance since 2019.
What does Trump get out of all of this? There’s Hubbard’s release, but taking that on Trump’s own terms (muddled though they are), the US didn’t give anything to secure it — which means that all of those favors have amounted to not much at all, other than papering over Russia’s role as an international bad actor and breaking with US allies in Europe.
Why does this matter? Trump’s Russia embrace comes at an awful time for Ukraine, which, as the New York Times reported earlier this month, is facing a Russian campaign to “freeze Ukrainians into submission” as winter approaches. Nevertheless, on Wednesday, Trump envoy Steve Witkoff called Putin a “humanitarian.”
And with that, it’s time to log off…
I was delighted to learn about the US’s new national park yesterday, its 64th. Chiricahua National Park — until Tuesday, only a national monument — is the first new park in six years. Located in southeastern Arizona, it’s also called the “Wonderland of Rocks,” according to the Washington Post; you can read more about it here with a gift link.
Have a great evening, and we’ll see you back here tomorrow!
America’s descent into chaos and depravity was foretold 10 years ago at a press conference. Donald Trump, who had just been nominated for president at the 2016 Republican National Convention, issued an invitation for one of America’s foes to hack the emails of Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state and Democratic nominee for president. “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” he said. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
The call came only days after emails from the Democratic National Committee were released following the hacking of the organization’s computer servers, which was widely assumed to have been perpetrated by Russian agents. As would become the habit over the following decade, many dismissed Trump’s remarks as mere trolling that weren’t intended to be taken seriously.
This was not the first time he had invoked Russia. Throughout the primary season, Trump had gushed in multiple interviews about Russian President Vladimir Putin and signaled his intentions to draw closer to Putin once in office. Trump even defended the dictator’s extra-judicial killings, blithely explaining, “Our country does plenty of killing.” But the press conference did mark the first time he enlisted Russia as his ally.
The overtures continued throughout Trump’s first term, most infamously when he sided with Putin during a bilateral meeting over America’s own intelligence agencies, which had found that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election. The president suggested an “election integrity” sharing operation between the two countries, a proposal that made it clear Putin had Trump wrapped around his little finger.
Then came Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. Throughout the 2024 election, Trump pledged to end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours of taking office — or of being elected. (His rhetoric often shifted.) He apparently believed that he could get on the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and order him to immediately surrender or face his mighty wrath. Needless to say, this did not happen, and since then Trump has grown increasingly frustrated that he’s been shown to be nothing more than a paper tiger, a frustration that has now reached fever pitch due to his abject failure in the Iran war. Desperate for a “win” — by which he means a Russian win — the president is now in the process of completely selling out Ukraine to his good friend Vlad.
Trump has grown increasingly frustrated that he’s been shown to be nothing more than a paper tiger, a frustration that has now reached fever pitch due to his abject failure in the Iran war. Desperate for a “win” — by which he means a Russian win — the president is now in the process of completely selling out Ukraine to his good friend Vlad.
In recent days, Trump has signed an executive order temporarily lifting the sanctions on Russian oil. While supposedly done to secure diesel fuel for the United States, which has seen prices skyrocket due to the president’s war of choice with Iran, the act is in practice a sign of goodwill toward Putin, America’s enemy, and will help him fund his war against Ukraine, our erstwhile ally. A few days later, Trump waived several additional sanctions that a bipartisan congressional majority had passed just a few weeks ago at the behest of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who foolishly believed himself to have the president under his control.
Worse yet, in what will go down as one of the most appalling betrayals by a U.S. president in history, Trump and his good friend Elon Musk apparently sabotaged Ukrainian intelligence by slowing the Starlink and Starshield communications systems the country relies on for its defensive and offensive weapons systems. Russia took swift advantage of the favor and unleashed one of the most massive bombardments of the war, killing civilians and hitting Ukraine’s energy sector. Trump also called for Zelenskyy’s ouster, and in an interview with Bloomberg published Sunday, the Ukrainian president accused Trump of pushing the country to surrender to Russia.
Trump has a number of apparent rationales for these moves. He wants to be seen before the midterms to be doing something about the price of gas and diesel. But that is a crisis of his own making due to his misbegotten war in Iran, for which he has no way out that will solve the problem. His ongoing war has altered the global energy markets in ways that are not easily fixed, which was the reason no president before him was stupid enough to attack Iran. So now Trump is blaming Ukraine because it is bombing Russian oil refineries and demanding they stop so that Russia can sell its diesel — and finance its war, which led to the sanctions in the first place. Not to be overlooked is that Russia is a staunch ally of Iran and is helping them fight us, which Trump has waved off as having “nothing.” Some might argue that could constitute providing “aid and comfort” to America’s enemy.
Meanwhile, fingers are being pointed in multiple directions. Musk said the government is to blame for the Starlink/Starshield gambit. According to sources in the Pentagon, the order came from the White House. Trump claimed he doesn’t know anything about it. Secretary of State Marco Rubio shrugged that “it just sort of happened.” Now, lest the Europeans get it in their heads that they should try to step up their own defenses by restricting Starlink in favor of a European-based system, the U.S. government is reportedly threatening them with “devastating” or “destructive” economic retaliation.
As a cherry on top of the administration’s full-on embrace of Russia, the Wall Street Journal reported that Putin has floated a summit with Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping to decide Ukraine’s fate. (On Monday, Trump told reporters he was open to a meeting but denied it would focus on Ukraine, saying he wanted to discuss denuclearization.) If Trump knew any history, he would know that such a meeting would prove to be his Yalta, the trilateral conference between President Franklin Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin that carved up Europe in the wake of World War II. The summit became widely seen by the right as “the sell-out at Yalta” because the Soviets ended up with Eastern Europe, but things have changed within the GOP.
The summit is clearly intended to elevate Russia back to superpower status, which it is not in any economic or military sense, and to demonstrate a new order in which Trump, Putin and Xi run the world. In reality, Putin and Xi now have the United States dancing to their tune, handing them power and influence to dominate their respective spheres.
The president’s flagrant betrayal of Ukraine is an outrage that has seemingly awakened some of the slumbering Republicans who know they are facing a drubbing at the polls in the quickly approaching midterm elections. Whether it will arouse the consciences of enough to truly step up and stop this breach of trust is unknown. But the mere fact that Trump has gone this far to salve his ego, defy his critics by embracing Putin even more fervently and drum up a lame excuse for what may be the worst national security decision in American history leaves this country weaker, poorer and more distrusted around the world. It hardly seems possible, but we have reached yet another new low.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed Sunday that the United States temporarily interrupted intelligence-sharing with Ukraine, as a Republican congressman demanded an investigation into separate disruptions affecting Ukrainian battlefield communications.
Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Zelenskyy said American intelligence used to detect incoming Russian missile strikes had been restored after a brief interruption.
“We are very thankful for this,” Zelenskyy said. “Now it works.”
President Donald Trump previously maintained that intelligence-sharing had never stopped, despite Ukrainian officials reporting that some Russian attacks occurred without warning.
Zelenskyy also criticized the administration’s decision to allow Russian diesel imports and waive new sanctions targeting Moscow, warning that Washington’s actions could undermine Ukraine’s defense.
“If the United States will officially take the side of Russia … we will not prevail and we will not be able to stand,” he said.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, appearing on the same program, declined three times to directly answer whether the United States considers Ukraine an ally.
“I’m not the secretary of state. I’m not the president,” Bessent said after repeated questioning by moderator Kristen Welker.
Bessent pointed to continued American intelligence and military assistance, arguing that Washington was seeking a negotiated end to the war.
Meanwhile, Rep. Mike Turner, R-Ohio, called for a congressional investigation into disruptions involving SpaceX’s Starshield satellite communications system, which Ukrainian forces rely on for battlefield operations.
“Absolutely not,” Turner said when asked whether Rubio’s explanation was sufficient. “There needs to be a congressional investigation.”
Turner warned that interrupted communications could endanger Ukrainian lives and urged Trump to reconsider waiving sanctions on Russia.
The tensions also provided material for Saturday night’s “SNL UK,” which spoofed Zelenskyy’s meeting with British Prime Minister Andy Burnham.
James Austin Johnson, reprising his Trump impersonation from the American “Saturday Night Live,” crashed the meeting as the fictional Zelenskyy pleaded for restored Starlink access. Johnson’s Trump offered to help Ukraine with anything, “provided it’s not help with war.”
“A decision was unfortunately made in America to completely disregard the Lindsey Graham Act, which was supposed to impose truly effective pressure on Russia to bring this war to an end,” Zelenskyy wrote Saturday.
Yesterday, the Russians carried out one of their largest attacks on Ukraine’s energy sector – more than 15 critical power generation and transmission facilities were targeted across different regions of Ukraine. Restoration work is ongoing, with all necessary services and all available resources of Ukrainian energy companies involved. I thank everyone working practically nonstop to restore power.
The most difficult situation was in Lutsk, Rivne, Zhytomyr, Vinnytsia, Shepetivka, Slavuta, and Netishyn. Energy facilities in the Kharkiv, Kyiv, Dnipro, and other regions were also hit. The Russians have scaled up their anti-energy operation and are trying to stretch our reserves and repair capabilities as thin as possible. Between 7 p.m. yesterday and 7 a.m. today alone, more than 320 jet-powered and gasoline-powered “shaheds,” along with loitering munitions, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles, were used against our energy sector, our cities, and our communities. And although our warriors are shooting down a significant number of them, the sheer scale and unrelenting pace of Russia’s strikes, specifically against our energy sector, are unfortunately having severe consequences.
It is important that our European partners have already prepared new support packages for Ukraine. I am grateful to them for this. And it is important that everyone in America also sees what is really happening. At a time when the Russians have carried out such a massive attack on our energy sector, a decision was unfortunately made in America to completely disregard the Lindsey Graham Act, which was supposed to impose truly effective pressure on Russia to bring this war to an end. This Act could have helped enormously – and still can! But it needs to actually work, and every voice in support of it matters.
Russia is trying to cause a blackout in Ukraine – right before winter. Russia is trying to leave millions of our people without electricity and heating. Pressure is needed to stop this. A U.S. sanctions blackout, easing pressure on the aggressor, financial rewards for Putin – all of this only encourages him to keep attacking. We must not give up ground. We must keep trying to end the war. To end it, not give Putin every reason to continue it indefinitely. I thank everyone who is truly fighting for peace and helping Ukraine!
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) October 17, 2026
“This Act could have helped enormously — and still can! But it needs to actually work, and every voice in support of it matters,” he added.
The White House said the waiver was in the national interest. The order suspends the new penalties but leaves existing sanctions against Russia in place.
Moscow, meanwhile, welcomed the decision. Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s investment envoy, called it an “important and truly historic moment,” suggesting it could open the door to renewed economic cooperation with Washington.
The move comes as Russia intensifies attacks on Ukraine‘s energy infrastructure ahead of winter. Zelenskyy said Russian forces targeted more than 15 energy facilities in an overnight assault. Ukraine’s air force reported 332 drones and four cruise missiles launched during the attacks.
Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., accused Trump of undermining bipartisan efforts to pressure Moscow.
“Trump’s latest surrender to Putin again betrays our Ukrainian partners and defies clear congressional intent of legislation designed to punish Russia for its illegal war of aggression,” Beyer said.
Trump just waived all of the sanctions on Russia provided for in the Lindsey Graham Sanctioning Russia Act, just as I and others warned he would.
Trump’s latest surrender to Putin again betrays our Ukrainian partners and defies clear congressional intent of legislation designed to punish Russia for its illegal war of aggression.
Trump has proven he will twist this law and abuse the powers it conferred on him, and while he has let the tariff powers lie for the moment, the law as written also empowers Trump to weaponize new trade authorities against our allies and trading partners.
Congress must fix this flawed law to stop Trump from capitulating to Putin and ensure that it truly supports Ukraine.
The Graham Act authorized new economic penalties, including tariffs targeting countries that purchase Russian energy, but also granted the president authority to waive them on national-interest grounds.
Coincidentally, at the same time, not a puppet but a convicted criminal, Donald Trump wants Ukraine to stop blowing up Russian oil refineries; someone inside the White House ordered Ukraine's Starshield military satellite service to be slowed to a crawl.
Diaper Don calls the attacks a "disgrace," and blames them, not his war in Iran, for skyrocketing energy prices. — Read the rest
This week, this dark, very American story advanced to its inevitable next chapter, as a young man who police have described as unstable targeted a Hindu temple west of Chicago for a mass shooting.
However, when 19-year-old Alexandros Paporakis showed up at the temple in Aurora, Illinois, his gun jammed, police say.
He texted a colleague at Taco Bell, where he worked, about what he was up to. The colleague called the authorities.
“I think we were very fortunate that something much, much worse did not happen,” Palatine, Illinois’ police chief, Bill Nord, told press. “The seriousness of this alleged threat cannot be overstated,” he said later.
Police found tactical gear and hundreds of rounds of ammunition at the 19-year-old suspect’s home, as well as white nationalist material. They also found a manifesto titled “Why I Fought: A.K.A.: (Aurora Shooter’s Manifesto).” The manifesto targeted South Asian, Jewish and Black people, per local reports.
Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) was at the temple on Sunday when Paporakis turned up, he said, and on Thursday called on the feds to get involved.
“We know this type of hate is coursing thorough social media online, it’s exploded,” Krishnamoorthi told a local news station. “We can’t rely on luck, that’s why we have to condemn the hatred. We can’t stay silent, or worse, condone it or fan the flames.”
“Secondly,” he continued, “we have to redirect the FBI’s focus to domestic violent extremism and trying to uncover these plots.”
The FBI, under Trump, has largely abandoned efforts to track neo-Nazi extremists, in some cases repositioning resources toward targeting the president’s critics and political enemies.
Trump’s Long-Brewing Effort to Oust Ilhan Omar From America
WASHINGTON, DC December 10: U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) poses for a portrait in her office on Capitol Hill on Wednesday December 10, 2025. (Photo by Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
The Trump administration effort to eject Muslim representative Ilhan Omar (D-MN) from the country is the culmination of a years-long fixation.
Way back in 2019, TPM reporter Christopher Mathias noted this week, attendees at Trump rallies were chanting “send her back” when the president mentioned Omar.
That year, the Washington Post reported yesterday, a “political appointee in the first Trump administration” demanded that DHS scrub Omar’s immigration records for any indication of fraud. It ultimately did not find what it needed to to move forward with a case.
In its second term, the Trump administration is increasingly attempting to make use of denaturalization, an extremely difficult outcome to achieve legally. That, however, is the goal with its latest investigation of Omar, per the Wall Street Journal.
To successfully denaturalize someone, “the government needs to show that there was an omission or falsehood on the naturalization paperwork of such magnitude that it would have prevented the person from getting citizenship had the truth been shared with immigration authorities,” writes TPM’s Josh Kovensky, who has been covering the administration’s denaturalization efforts for us since 2024.
The administration appears to specifically be looking into whether Omar’s father filed immigration paperwork claiming she was 17 when she was actually 18, a theory that has been pushed on the right for years, most prominently by a QAnon-supporting candidate who once challenged Omar in a primary campaign, Josh reports. A 17-year-old minor naturalizes with their parent when their parent obtains citizenship, while an 18-year-old adult must apply for citizenship independently.
“I think her citizenship is solid and there wasn’t any fraud there,” one former official involved in the 2019 investigation told the Washington Post.
Tabs
The White House is denying that Trump himself gave the order to restrict Ukraine’s access to Starlink, Bloomberg reports. But the order came “from inside the White House,” Reuters reports. “The officials said leaders at the Defense Department received a message that the SpaceX Starshield service for the Ukrainian military needed to be slowed,” the Reuters report says.
Meanwhile, Ukraine has run out of patriot missiles, CNN reports. The U.S. seems to be withholding them as Trump punishes the country’s leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, for criticizing his pre-midterms diesel deal with Russia. Patriot missiles, which are used as interceptors, are in extremely short supply more generally thanks in part to the war with Iran. As a result, Russian missiles are more easily striking Ukrainian targets.
Hunter Walker profiles Bobby Pulido, the Tejano singer who, thanks in part to a GOP Texas gerrymandering effort that appears increasingly to have been misguided, stands a real chance of flipping his district from red to blue.
Man of the Hour
WASHINGTON, DC – MARCH 17: Paolo Zampolli (C), who was appointed by U.S. President Donald Trump to the board of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts stands on the stage of the Opera Hall with fellow board members following a meeting on March 17, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
It’s longtime Trump friend and now-former State Department Special Envoy for Arts and Culture Paolo Zampolli, who, Politico recently reported, has been in a bizarre, long-running, sprawling feud with his boss, cc-ing a dozen-plus people as they snap at each other over email. Among other issues, Zampolli blamed said boss, Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau, for, he thought, being the source of a New York Times article that said Zampolli got his longtime girlfriend deported by ICE as part of a custody battle over their son. (Yes, it’s messy.) The girlfriend, in turn, threatened to reveal details she said she knew about Trump, Melania, and Jeffrey Epstein. (Messy.) Anyway, Trump — who, as Josh Marshall observes, suddenly seems to have no taste for drama — canned Zampolli yesterday
Are We at War?
No, says Rep. Rob Wittman (R-VA).
“Right now we are defending U.S. assets there, so there is no war as we speak,” Wittman told HuffPost Thursday.
Earlier this month, three data centers in western Russia suddenly went dark due to a “rapid unplanned disassembly,” to use euphemistic engineering parlance. They exploded, in other words. Operated by Yandex, a Russian technology company often compared to Google that offers many similar services — a search engine, online shopping, cloud computing and the like — the centers were heavily damaged in a series of coordinated drone strikes over four days by Ukraine, which saw them as a valuable target in the country’s military campaign against Russian infrastructure.
As Russia’s war against Ukraine slogs on, both sides are increasingly adopting this strategy. While power plants and oil refineries have been hit, data centers and internet facilities are becoming the latest quarry for drone and missile strikes — and not just in Europe. Data centers operated by Amazon in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates have also been targeted in the ongoing Iran war.
Few Americans have probably heard of Yandex, let alone use its services, and most likely didn’t notice when many of its hosted websites became inaccessible. But after Ukraine’s attacks, many people started to claim that social media was seemingly different. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was quick to suggest his country had dealt a massive blow to Russia’s online disinformation machine, saying, “It suddenly became a little easier to breathe on many social platforms. There was less hate, less division and fewer provocations.” Several reports seemed to support his claims, citing data from internet monitoring service Cloudflare, that allegedly showed “Russia’s Yandex bot traffic nearly eliminated overnight.”
But the truth is far more complicated, as some experts have noted. Yandex did experience a crash in bot activity, but at least some of that traffic seems to be legitimate. “When Cloudflare data shows a precipitous drop in ‘bot’ traffic, that does not mean ‘automated social media troll accounts’, it means ‘software that makes automated web requests on a large scale,’” Michał ‘Rysiek’ Woźniak, an internet infrastructure expert, told The Guardian. Others noted that they haven’t seen an actual drop in online disinformation. “Our platforms are still monitoring Russian social networks across the world and there is no discernible change in their posting patterns,” said Amil Khan, the chief executive of Valent, a tech startup that tracks disinformation.
None of that has stopped Reddit and other corners of the web from celebrating and memeing the issue. If those celebrations aren’t quite justified, there’s still something to be learned from the ordeal, which digs into the so-called dead internet theory. The basic premise is that almost nothing we see online is human-generated anymore. In his 2025 book “Market-Oriented Disinformation Research,” business academic Carlos Diaz Ruiz, who has studied how disinformation spreads in social media echo chambers, describes what many of us experience online on a daily basis: “an eerie feeling that the Internet is made up of bots talking to bots, following and liking bots, and posting AI-generated content designed for machine consumption, the algorithm, not humans.”
Indeed, bot traffic makes up an increasingly large share of the internet, surpassing human traffic for the first time in history over the summer, according to a June Cloudflare report. No doubt the surge in generative artificial intelligence use is what tipped the scales, but of course, not all bots are created equal. Many have legitimate, beneficial uses, like archiving web data.
Some people have wedged dead internet theory into a conspiracy theory that Diaz Ruiz divides into “weak” and “strong.” The weak version of the theory is that the internet is now little more than a hall of mirrors used to manipulate the masses into fighting a culture war instead of a class war. “The Internet drama keeps the population occupied and distracted, preventing them from resisting the elites secretly controlling the world,” as Diaz Ruiz says. “The ‘strong’ version of the dead internet conspiracy theory claims that online activity is entirely disconnected from human activity because our society ceased to exist some time ago. In some versions, a catastrophic event occurred in the past, triggering society’s collapse.”
OK, so we’re basically talking the plot of “The Matrix” here. The argument that humanity peaked in 1999 may be compelling, and I won’t argue against it. If reality truly is nothing more than a hallucination, dream or computer screensaver in the brain, why should we waste time disputing it? Proving a negative with such a lack of evidence is fruitless. The point is, some people may be taking dead internet theory a little too far, but that doesn’t change the fact that within the last week people felt like they got a taste of some version of it.
If we lift the hood on some of these conspiracies, we can understand what people are really afraid of. Last December in the journal Computer, Hal Berghel, a computer science professor at the University of Nevada, argued the dead internet is more than a conspiracy and should not be dismissed, writing, “There’s certainly evidence of the distortion of the internet from the original concept as a liberating, self-healing, packetized purveyor of useful and important information: the original commitment to net neutrality is on life support, the goal of a shared public information repository is constantly compromised by paywalls, the content has moved from valuable scholarship to a sub-cerebral landfill, and the users are subjected to a mind-numbing cacophony of digital threats: spam, phish bait, spyware, malware, online bullying, online fraud, extortion, hacking, VoIP 911-swatting, doxing, slander, pretexting, etc.”
In other words, there’s a good reason so many people find dead internet theory attractive. Once a zone of promise and connection, the web has not only rotted and enshittified, it’s turned into a literal warzone. There really are algorithms out there, unleashed by governments actively dropping bombs on one another, that are designed to infect our minds and prejudice our ability to perceive the truth. It’s one of the many ways modern warfare has become invisible, pervasive and endless. No wonder social media is making so many people depressed — it can be a form of assault.
“In tandem with proxy warfare, cyber operations have become a central pillar of modern statecraft. Cyber warfare enables states to conduct aggressive acts; espionage, sabotage, infrastructure disruption without engaging in kinetic violence,” philosophers Oluyemi Opeoluwa Adisa and Kareem Shwan Adham wrote last year in a study published in the International Journal of Scientific Research and Management. “The strategic advantage of cyber warfare lies in its stealth and ambiguity. Because it blurs the line between war and crime, attribution becomes difficult, enabling perpetrators to operate with minimal consequences.”
How do we even tell how much of the dead internet theory is true? Perhaps through that old tech-support adage: Turn it off and back on again. And no, I don’t mean bombing more data centers, though we’re likely to see more of that, for better or worse. If everything feels fake, maybe we’re better off getting outside and experiencing something real for a minute. Yeah, yeah, we’ve all been told to touch grass so much that such advice is routinely mocked, and anyway, not everyone can easily do that.
But here’s your daily reminder that humans are primates whose still-evolving brains are exponentially outpaced by technological advancement. Being in nature is essential because we are nature. There’s a certain reset available in the presence of trees, birds and clouds. Even more important is connecting with real humans: family, friends, neighbors. Socialization is the essence of the primate brain too. You don’t have to uninstall any apps or delete Facebook, though you could try it too. Off, on again.
And when you are online, which is unavoidable for many of us, try to remember that you are probably interacting with fewer humans than you might think. So don’t take it so seriously. Temper those outrageous emotions, the ones the algorithms have gotten so good at teasing out of us. Maybe instead we can fortify them into weapons to attack the real problems we face, like widening wealth gaps, destruction of the environment and the rise of authoritarianism.
Russian forces struck Ukrainian energy infrastructure Sunday after President Donald Trump declared an immediate ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine, according to Ukrainian officials, raising questions about an agreement that Moscow has yet to publicly confirm.
“Effective immediately, there is an ENERGY CEASEFIRE in the War between Russia and Ukraine,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Both parties have agreed. Do not break it!”
But Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reported continued Russian attacks, including strikes on energy facilities in Kyiv and Kharkiv after Trump’s announcement.
“Today, there was a statement from the President of the United States that an energy ceasefire has been secured,” Zelenskyy said in a video posted to X. “This is good news for everyone – and it is important that it become reality.”
Today, there was a statement from the President of the United States that an energy ceasefire has been secured. This is good news for everyone – and it is important that it become reality.
Unfortunately, Ukrainian skies have been infested with Russian “shaheds” all day today. There have been glide bomb strikes and strikes on our energy infrastructure too. A power plant in Kharkiv was attacked this evening.
Overall, this past week alone, the Russians have carried out more than 200 strikes on our electricity generation and transmission facilities in Ukraine, and another 17 strikes this week targeted gas and oil facilities. They have killed more than 150 of our people, and more than 700 people have been wounded.
Ukraine has proposed many de-escalatory steps. Putin had one answer to all of them – “nyet.” We do hope that he will finally say something to America, Ukraine, and the entire world that will lead to a real and dignified peace.
Ukraine wants peace. The question is whether Russia does. The Armed Forces of Ukraine have received all the appropriate orders. We are awaiting clear details of the dialogue between America and Russia – and we expect Putin to follow through on what President Trump said.
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) October 11, 2026
He said Russian drones remained active over Ukraine throughout the day and that a power plant in Kharkiv had been attacked Sunday evening.
“Ukraine wants peace. The question is whether Russia does,” Zelenskyy said.
The Ukrainian leader welcomed the proposed ceasefire but emphasized that Kyiv was still waiting for details from Washington and a response from Moscow.
“Ukraine supports such a step, and we have stated that, but now Russia’s response is needed,” Zelenskyy wrote after speaking with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.
I am grateful to @MarkJCarney for his sympathy for Ukrainians amid the ongoing Russian strikes. The Prime Minister is very well informed about our defense needs, particularly anti-ballistic defense and preparations for winter. It is very good that Canada has become actively involved in developing the FREYJA anti-ballistic system jointly with Europe. This is exactly what can provide greater protection not only to Ukraine but also globally.
Of course, we also discussed the energy ceasefire announced by the President of the United States. Ukraine supports this step, and we have stated so, but now we need a response from Russia – what Russia will say to the American President and whether it will stop striking our energy infrastructure.
I thank everyone who helps defend Ukraine and advances clear, fair steps toward peace! Thank you to Canada and Mark personally for their full support!
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) October 11, 2026
Zelenskyy said Ukraine’s armed forces had received appropriate orders, although he did not specify what those instructions entailed.
The announcement came amid tensions over Trump’s decision to ease restrictions on Russian diesel exports, a move intended to lower fuel prices. Trump subsequently criticized Ukraine’s attacks on Russian oil refineries and suggested that Zelenskyy should be replaced.
Zelenskyy said Ukraine would stop striking Russian refineries if Moscow ended its attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure, provided the arrangement included credible guarantees.
The Russian diesel deal has also drawn objections from U.S. lawmakers. North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis questioned its legality Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” warning that easing pressure on Moscow could have deadly consequences.
Trump announced a similar energy ceasefire in September, but neither Russia nor Ukraine confirmed that agreement, and attacks continued.
American health officials are on high alert following reports of a death in Russia that may be linked to pneumonic plague. The cause of death for the individual has yet to be officially confirmed by lab testing, but Daria Shipilova, a 28-year-old lab technician, worked at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute of Siberia and the Far East, an institute that, as the name implies, is dedicated to studying plague. The illness is highly fatal, with average fatality rates approaching 100%.
Pneumonic plague is also highly contagious and can spread from person to person via air droplets. That gives the disease a high potential for an epidemic spread or even a global pandemic, but health officials have cautioned we have a long way to go to get to that point. The plague is treatable with antibiotics, but must be caught early enough. Due to the potential severity here, approximately 200 people have also been placed under medical observation in Irkutsk, a region in eastern Siberia, and some hospitals have been placed under quarantine.
U.S. officials are paying close attention. The State Department, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response, and other agencies are all trying to learn more. Axios reported this info as a “scoop,” but it’s relatively routine to surveil any pathogen that could cause severe damage to national security. However, Russia does not seem to be fully cooperating, with reports that Russian officials’ are being hesitant to share info while Russian intelligence officers are reportedly getting involved.
“We don’t have a lot of intel,” one U.S. health official told the Washington Post. “It’s in Siberia. Unless someone gets on a plane and gets to the U.S., it is low risk. We should be alert but not panicked.” Based on the available information, the World Health Organization said “the public health risk to the general population appears to be low.”
Even President Donald Trump weighed in, telling reporters Monday that “We’re looking at it very strongly. He said he hasn’t yet talked with Russian President Vladimir Putin about it, but offered U.S. help with the issue. “It’s a rough disease. You know, that’s a disease we used to be able to control, but somehow those microbes have gotten stronger and smarter,” Trump said. “Anybody that has that kind of a problem we’ll always [be] willing to help. We’ll help you.”
A battlefield dominated by fully autonomous drones capable of selecting and engaging targets without human intervention sounds like a dystopian sci-fi plot. And while that scenario has not yet arrived, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine has moved modern warfare a notch down that road.
In recent years, both nations have deployed semi-autonomous drones in combat and are rapidly racing toward fully autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles.
Given these developments and the pace of Russian and Ukrainian drone production, a battlefield with hundreds to thousands of fully autonomous drones operating is plausible within the next few years. Yet, the technology underpinning autonomous warfare risks outpacing the Russian and Ukrainian frameworks for maintaining some degree of human control over weapons.
As an expert on weapons technology, I worry that the battlefield incentives to deploy more autonomous drones will completely push aside human targeting decisions related to using proportional force, avoiding strikes on non-combatants and limiting collateral damage.
The creeping drone war
Both Ukraine and Russia have increasingly prioritized the use and production of drones since the war began in February 2022. Unable to produce large numbers of one-way attack drones at first, Russia turned to Tehran for technological assistance – and has steadily developed its own capacity. Ukraine had a nascent drone industry and has grown it using private defense firms and technological innovation.
As the war has progressed, both sides have added autonomous features to existing drones, as well as developed new drones with autonomous capabilities. Specifically, both Russia and Ukraine have deployed drones with autonomous functions using AI on the battlefield to recognize targets, navigate and self-guide to targets.
In November 2025, a Ukrainian first-person-view drone used an AI-assisted guidance system to strike a probable Russian tank after the drone’s communications link with its operator was disrupted. A human operator selected the target, but the drone itself guided the final stages of the attack.
Reliable estimates of the numbers of these drones on the battlefield are unavailable. However, reports on their usage suggest they represent only a small percentage of the millions of drones both sides have deployed to date.
At the advanced end of the spectrum, Russia reportedly fielded at least one model of a fully autonomous unmanned aerial vehicle in early 2025. Ukrainian analysis of recovered Russian V2U drones revealed a small Nvidia computer designed to run AI-enabled decision-making software. Variants recovered in late 2025 no longer contained the external communications systems suggestive of operator control.
Autonomous targeting
The V2U’s technical systems are configured to enable autonomous selection and engagement of targets without operator intervention following launch.
Human operators have generally selected intended targets or target areas for moral reasons, highlighting the significance of the V2U’s ability to carry out these missions autonomously.
The onboard AI utilizes computer vision, allowing the drone to analyze images from its onboard sensors. It can autonomously recognize objects, track them, navigate and select potential targets.
In July, Russia employed a different AI-enabled drone in combat that demonstrated a less comprehensive form of autonomous targeting. The strike, on a gas station in Zaporizhzhia, killed three Ukrainian civilians. Human operators selected the gas station as the target area, while onboard software independently picked the final aim point.
Russia is also integrating versions of a similar technology into its Geran series unmanned aerial vehicles, which are based on Iran’s delta-wing Shaheed-136 attack drone. Some Gerans include a seeker guidance package that allows the onboard computer to guide the drone in the final flight phase, after a human operator initially selects the target.
Ukraine, for its part, has focused on modular AI-driven packages, including chips with embedded software and sometimes cameras, that it can install widely across drone and other platforms. It has fielded drones that use onboard AI to identify targets and guide them in their final flight phase.
One such module tracks targets and guides the drone the final 500 meters to them. The company that makes the computer advertises more advanced modules, which it claims will provide additional and even full autonomy.
Ukraine claims to have used more advanced autonomous drones on the battlefield as well. Former Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said in July that Ukraine used a drone that autonomously chooses targets with no radio connection to a human pilot in strikes in Russian-occupied Crimea at an unspecified date. He added that Ukraine has not mass-produced this drone.
Ukraine also reportedly employed what have been dubbed fully autonomous quadcopter drones two years ago against Russian forces near Bakhmut, Ukraine, killing Russian soldiers. However, reports that the drones were preprogrammed raise questions about whether the drones independently selected the targets.
Battlefield advantages, ethical concerns
Russian and Ukrainian drones with autonomous capabilities already have had battlefield impact, even though Kyiv and Moscow have not yet deployed the most advanced systems in large numbers.
The benefits of deployment are clear. Drones with autonomous functions reduce their dependence on communications links and can continue despite jamming and other forms of electronic warfare. These capabilities help enable strikes deep into each other’s territory.
Autonomous navigation and guidance in the final portion of flight can also improve drones’ ability to engage moving targets. Deployment of fully autonomous drones at scale could reduce the personnel required to operate large numbers.
But autonomous drones come with serious ethical concerns.
A major risk is that the development and employment of this technology leapfrogs the ability of Russia and Ukraine to maintain some type of human control over autonomous weapons. Ukrainian Ministry of Defense rules require keeping humans in the loop for “combat” decisions, meaning that humans verify targets in the “final stages of interception.”
In contrast, Russia’s arms control positions provide insights into its views on human control. Russian officials highlight “human control,” with a focus on the ability to alter the system, deactivate it or provide limitations, such as on the types of targets that it can engage. But Moscow does not stress that a human has to be in the loop for verifying targets before they strike them.
As worrying as that sounds now, the next step in AI drone warfare is even more concerning: Swarming drones that can hunt in packs of a few to thousands and autonomously alter their behavior based on communicating with one another present a frightening challenge to maintaining human control.
Login
