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Monday Miscellany, 7/6/26

Monday Miscellany, 7/6/26

Last updated on: July 7, 2026 at 7:37 am by Gene Veith

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Monday Miscellany, 7/6/26 2026-07-07T07:37:41-04:00 Gene Veith

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What Ukraine has done with drone warfare. Netherlands euthanizes children. And the government releases super-AI into the wild.

What Ukraine Has Done with Drone Warfare

The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) is said to have been a showcase for 20th-century war technology, a proving ground for the hardware and tactics that would be used in World War II. The war between Russia and Ukraine may be a showcase for 21st-century war technology.

Ukraine has been pioneering drone warfare, and what they have done in the last few weeks may change the course of the war. Their new tactic is to overwhelm Russian defenses by launching waves of hundreds of drones at a time. Russian defense systems, which can handle only four targets at a time, shoot down some of the drones in the first wave, but that doesn’t matter–they are only drones–and with the help of AI this gives the other drones the information they need to avoid the defenses.

The swarms are aimed at Russian oil refineries and other infrastructure. They have knocked out 20% of Russia’s oil refining capacity, and President Putin is reportedly feeling it.

“Russia’s huge size—historically an advantage in defending the country—is now working against it,” comments a Wall Street Journal story, quoting an American military analyst. “’Russian air defense has to cover a 1,200 kilometers front line, but also a vast territory over which infrastructure is spread out,’ said [Michael] Kofman.”

The drones are inexpensive and easy to mass produce. Ukraine expects to produce 7 million drones this year.

Netherlands Euthanizes Children

“Right to die” laws are really a right to kill. And when a compassionate-sounding euthanasia law is passed, its scope inevitably widens.

The Netherlands was an early adopter of euthanasia, legalizing it in 2002. According to the law at that time, killing a sick person could only be carried out with the patient’s consent. Children under 12 were spared on the grounds that they are below the age of consent. An exception was made allowing for the killing of newborns!

Two years ago Dutch lawmakers closed the consent loophole as it applied to children. Recently, in the first application of that new law, doctors killed a child under 12. (No other details were given.)

As Wesley Smith notes, neighboring Belgium has already euthanized a nine- and eleven-year old. A number of Dutch teenagers have also been killed, including some whose only sickness was mental illness. And infanticide has been practiced for 24 years. Smith points out a chilling fact:

After the Holocaust, infanticide was considered such an egregious human rights atrocity that some German doctors were hanged for having killed disabled babies. Their excuse? Killing these babies was compassionate and for the benefit of the babies as well as their parents and the Reich. (See, for example, the story of Baby Knauer, as reported by Robert Jay Lifton in The Nazi Doctors.)

That defense didn’t fly. But it might these days, as Dutch doctors do the same thing and it is depicted benignly as “death with dignity.”

Government Releases Super-AI Into the Wild

Last week we reported that the U.S. government has embargoed Anthropic’s super-AI systems Mythos and Fable, preventing them from being sold internationally, lest they endanger our national defense with their capability of hacking into security systems.

Because of the difficulty of keeping something released to the American public from being shared across our borders, this also caused Anthropic to pause the American release of Fable, supposedly a less dangerous version of Mythos.

Now the international embargo has been lifted for Fable, after Anthropic added some protections. Mythos, at Anthropic’s initiative, remains restricted to a few big tech companies so that they can use the program to identify weaknesses in their security systems with a view to correcting them.

The Trump administration, which previously has given open-ended support to the AI industry, has put into place a government approval process for new AI models. The tech industry is complaining that this supposedly unprecedented government interference into private companies will hamper AI development. AI safety advocates say the approval process is too little, too late.

euthanasia of infants and children

Netherlands' euthanasia law

Ukraine war

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