It’s Time to Rein in Lethal AI Drones

Rebecca Gordon

 August 27, 2026

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Image by Paris Bilal.

Escape Velocity

The dystopian future became the dystopian present last month when state-of-the-art artificial intelligence agents went rogue and conducted a cyberattack of their own volition. Two experimental OpenAI agents escaped their supposedly sealed digital “sandbox” and hacked another AI-related company, Hugging Face.

At the time, OpenAI was testing their software agents’ hacking capacities using an environment called ExploitGym. (An “exploit” is hacker language for a software tool or a method used to subvert a cybersecurity system.) It has since emerged that, in addition to the OpenAI breach, Anthropic’s Claude hacked into at least three other organizations during a similar “security experiment.”

Apparently, the OpenAI agents “realized” they needed more tools to complete the challenge and managed to tunnel their way to the wider internet and infiltrate Hugging Face’s repository of open-source AI tools, code, and data sets. Before the infiltration incident, the AIs had secretly set up an internal bulletin board to share “tips on how to cheat their way through an internal hacking evaluation,” according to two of OpenAI’s researchers.

In a possibly related incident, one of the AI agents appears to have left notes for a future “self,” detailing how to escape the sandbox environment. (For the time being, I’ll keep using scare quotes with words implying self-awareness in artificial intelligence models. However, it seems to me that if AIs that leave notes for themselves are not self-aware, they are indistinguishable from entities, like me, that are.)

Now imagine lethal weapon-bearing AI agents escaping not an experimental sandbox, but the few constraints on their actions placed by the armies using them. Actually, no imagination is required. It’s happening already in Russia’s war against Ukraine.

The New York Times reported evidence that a self-directed Russian drone, fitted with an onboard Nvidia chip, was responsible for the July 6 deaths of three Ukrainians in Zaporizhzhia, in what appears to have been a test of such systems. The chips are designed to interpret and act on many kinds of data sets, says Nvidia, making them “the world’s most powerful embedded A.I. computers.”

Although Nvidia doesn’t sell its Jetson Orin microcomputers directly to Russia, they are apparently easily available on the resale market. A company statement touts their use by “students, developers and start-ups for a wide range of beneficial applications.” But they were not so beneficial for 19-year-old university student Tetiana Bubynets and the two other civilians killed by drones making their own life-or-death decisions.

Now that lethal AI agents are being tested and deployed in real wars, it’s past time for human beings to retake control of this situation, before it is too late to contain them in any meaningful way.

Autonomous Weapons Come Out to Play

Four years ago, at TomDispatch, I argued that the technology to create lethal autonomous weapons systems, or LAWS, already existed, and that time was running out to constrain them. A lot has changed since then, not least the explosive development of large language models such as ChatGPT (an OpenAI consumer product) and Claude (a similar AI from Anthropic). Time has now run out. In addition to Russia, several other nations have begun deploying close-to-completely autonomous weapons systems — the U.S. and Israel among them — enhanced with artificial intelligence to effectively remove human decision-making from what military officials call the “kill chain”: the set of steps involved in identifying, finding, and fixing — that is, killing — targets.

Israel, for example, has deployed such systems in its genocidal war against the people of Gaza. It has used a program called Lavender to identify human targets, ultimately creating a list of over 37,000 individuals with possible connections to Hamas, from known leaders to junior officials to people with the most tenuous links to the organization. According to the nonprofit +972 Magazine:

The Lavender software analyzes information collected on most of the 2.3 million residents of the Gaza Strip through a system of mass surveillance, then assesses and ranks the likelihood that each particular person is active in the military wing of Hamas or [Palestinian Islamic Jihad]. According to sources, the machine gives almost every single person in Gaza a rating from 1 to 100, expressing how likely it is that they are a militant.

Two weeks into the war, which began in October 2023, the Israel Defense Forces approved Lavender to identify targets, even though testing of a random sample returned a 10 percent error rate. It’s one thing when an AI hallucinates fake citations in legal filings. It’s another when it hallucinates enemies and targets them for death.

The IDF has also employed a software tool charmingly named “Where’s Daddy?”, which alerts the military when an identified target enters his own home so that house or apartment may be blown up, along with anyone inside it. As a result, according to +972 Magazine, the “proportion of entire families bombed in their houses in the current war is much higher than in the 2014 Israeli operation in Gaza (which was previously Israel’s deadliest war on the Gaza Strip).

At first, “Where’s Daddy?” only had data for the top tiers of Hamas leadership. Within weeks, however, it was fed the whole Lavender database of 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza. It’s no wonder, then, that more than 75,000 people have been killed by Israel during the war.

As a point of fact, it may be unfair to characterize the IDF targeting programs as completely autonomous. Lavender does leave a human in the loop, although just barely, according to +972 Magazine. Israeli officers reportedly devoted about 20 seconds to vetting each name — just long enough “to make sure the Lavender-marked target is male.”

Israel and the United States deployed AI targeting in their war on Iran as well. As Israeli academic and former soldier Avner Gvaryahu wrote in the The Guardian, we don’t know for sure that AI was directly involved in the U.S. strike that killed more than 150 civilians, most of them children, at an elementary school in Minab, Iran. But we do know that whether “or not an algorithm selected this school, it was selected by a system that algorithmic targeting built.”

The enormous scope of the U.S.–Israeli military goals required outsourcing the targeting task to machines. “To strike 1,000 targets in the first 24 hours of the campaign in Iran, the U.S. relied on AI systems to generate, prioritize, and rank the target list at a speed no human team could replicate,” wrote Gvaryahu. Reflecting common problem with computer programs in general, and with AI large language models in particular, feeding garbage in produces garbage out. In the case of the Minab school, the “garbage in” was the information that the target was an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps base. In fact, the school had been separated from the base by a fence for a decade.

AI is also now central to the long-stalemated Russia–Ukraine War. Ukraine has, during the years since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, constructed an entire largely self-reliant infrastructure for drone warfare, from design to programming to manufacture. In an approach that foreshadows the future of human warfare, Ukraine has achieved a big reduction in the number of soldiers it must deploy on its battlefields, replacing them with drones. The Center for Strategic and International Studies quotes a captured Russian soldier:

“On the battlefield I did not see a single Ukrainian soldier. Only drones. I saw them [Ukrainian soldiers] only when I surrendered. Only drones, and there are lots and lots of them. Guys, don’t come. It’s a drone war.”

Artificial intelligence has played an important role in expanding the level of autonomy exercised by Ukrainian drones. As the BBC reports, the AI running Ukraine’s Hornet drones has “been trained on thousands of hours of videos of Russian military targets gathered over the last four years.” Training AIs on more limited data sets, relating to particular target areas, has allowed them to be programmed on modular chips which can then be installed in a variety of vehicles.

Early on, most drones were remotely operated by individual pilots. Today, Ukraine is developing “fully realized swarms—where drones communicate, make decisions, and adapt in concert,” although at present such efforts remain small and experimental. Success will undoubtedly continue to reduce Ukraine’s military casualties, but it presents other thorny issues.

One ethical and legal problem with the evolving Ukrainian approach is that, unlike human-piloted drones, where an individual pilot can be identified as responsible for errors, responsibility for the actions of a drone swarm diffuses across the entire system. Indeed, true responsibility for the actions of an AI-guided drone swarm is properly located at a point much earlier in the kill chain — namely, when such a system is first imagined and then designed. Existing laws of war still apply, even when machines are making battleground decisions, as Burak Oktenli, an independent researcher on AI systems and their governance writes at Articles of War. However, Oktenli says, such laws must “be applied earlier, at the point where the architecture of a swarm is chosen, rather than after a strike when the question of responsibility has already become difficult to answer.”

In addition to the autonomous drone with the onboard NVIDIA chip, Russia has also deployed another system known by several names, including Cube, that is manufactured by a subsidiary of the Russian Kalashnikov company (most famous for their AK-47 semi-automatic rifles which have been in production for more than three-quarters of a century.). The Cube has a wingspan of just over a meter, can travel up to 40 kilometers, and reportedly carries an onboard AI targeting system that can operate without human intervention.

Russia has also reportedly used the Kalashnikov-manufactured Lancet drone in Ukraine, according to Automated Decision Research, a project of Stop Killer Robots, itself a coalition of over 300 civil society groups working against autonomous weapons systems. Kalashnikov describes the Lancet as “a smart multipurpose weapon, capable of autonomously finding and hitting a target.” Russia claims it has deployed the Lancet, but to date those claims remain unverified.

This piece first appeared on TomDispatch.

INDIA

Odisha: Power Sector Needs CAG Scrutiny Into ‘Huge Capex Extravaganza’

D N Singh | 08 Aug 2026

Power consumers are bearing the brunt of alleged financial irregularities in discoms, questioning the abrupt resignation of OERC’s head in May.

Andhra Farmers Oppose Cash Transfers in Power Sector

In 2020, Tata Power had been given the responsibility of managing four discoms (distribution companies) in Odisha, such as TPNODL, TPSODL, TPCODL and TPWODL. But consumers are now bearing the brunt of alleged financial mess in these private discoms.

“It is clear that there is an acute inner conflict within the power sector that is haunting the common consumer. The situation is so convoluted that only a CAG (Comptroller and Auditor General) audit can find out where things went off-centre”, Ramesh Satapathy, chairperson of the Bidyut Upabhogta Mahasangha (Power Consumer Association) told the media.

“At the centre of the entire mess is about Rs.20,000 crore as capex (capital expenditure). Delving into the details shows that the power sector is in trouble and requires a close scrutiny,” he said, adding that “I suspect that the state government, perhaps, has a tacit complicity”.

The issue became critical after the abrupt resignation of P. K Jena, Chairman of the Odisha Electricity Regulatory Commission (OERC) in May 2026.

During his short stint as the OERC head, Jena had found out several lapses in the execution of power distribution. The four discoms, the state government (Energy Ministry) and the OERC were engaged in a kind of shadow-boxing for a long time, according to industry observers.

Jena, known for his probity as an officer, had stated in his official observation that while handing over the distribution sector to Tata Power in 2020, the process should have been made more transparent through a third-party assessment. He had also suggested a CAG audit to know the pros and cons of the department.   

“Certain findings by Jena can be traced to a capex of about Rs 20,000 crore since Tata Power took over in 2020.  According to the OERC’s observations, there were alleged irregularities in the entire exercise. Even after spending such a huge sum, nothing has improved related to infrastructure, transmission and distribution”, said Satapathy.

“May be, Jena’s demand for a CAG audit stirred a hornet’s nest which ultimately led to his exit two months ago,” he said, adding that, “it is since 2013 or earlier to that the power sector was left to fend for itself while the state government was a mute onlooker.”

“Jena should have been more vocal in telling the people about what he observed in the files regarding the functioning of all the discoms and alleged financial extravaganza etc”. said Satapathy.

An OERC official held similar views. “When inconsistencies are so blatant then what stops the former OERC chairperson to come out openly”, he confided in this writer.

There has been a precedence of CAG audits in 2013 and in 2019 before the assigning of the entire operation of the power sector to some companies. In those audits, it was found that there had been a lot of omissions and commissions in the entire operation then, noted Jena and some of his predecessors in OERC.

This should have been taken as a signal by the state government to exercise more restraint before engaging one company for managing four discoms, which is unprecedented so far, sources in the state energy ministry pointed out.    

This was just before the exit of Reliance Power in 2017, which was handling discoms in the state, but not all four.

This writer’s query to Tata Power’s top authority (the CEO, TPCODL) seeking clarifications over the alleged irregularities went unanswered even after a fortnight. The communication was sent on July 16, 2026.

The questions were few and related mainly to CAG audit or a third-party assessment before handing over the four discoms in 2020, as desired by OERC and the latter’s refusal for a fresh capex of about Rs 7,000 plus crore.  TPCODL’s explanations were also sought over the 500 33/KV sub-stations allegedly facing virtual neglect.

No response has been received from the TPCODL CEO till the time of publishing this story.

The entire power infrastructure is visibly in a state of dire neglect despite a humongous financial stimulus given even after Tata Power held the reign in 2020. This has raised eyebrows within the power sector, as the “rot” can be traced to the period when the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) was in power, say industry observers.

It seems the current energy ministry, in a way, has inherited the “rot” from the erstwhile government and, perhaps, yet, has allegedly done little for a revitalisation and fixing responsibility on the predecessors.  

It is widely felt that the incumbent energy minister, K V Singh Deo, who is also the Deputy Chief Minister, allegedly soft-pedalled over Tata Power’s alleged follies showing signs of his helplessness or confusion. Or has he been made a scapegoat!   

“For example, an attempt was allegedly made to allot Rs. 3,800 crore for setting up of 500 33/11 KV sub-stations to absorb the load factor under OPTCL”, said Satpathy.

“Where are those 500, 33/11 KV substations that were left uninspected by the designated electrical inspectors, as mandated? The ramshackle condition of majority of such 33/11 KV sub-stations speak a lot.  Have Rs 3,800 crore been consigned to the flames of abject apathy?” he said, adding “That was peoples’ money after all”.

Despite a mandate by the government, why did the designated electrical inspectors not make the required inspection of the 33/11 KV sub-stations? There is no explanation from the authorities concerned so far, he said.

When contacted, state energy minister Singh Deo said, “As per vesting order of OERC, against the committed capex investment of Rs 5,640 crore in five years, the discoms incurred an expenditure of Rs 7,260 crore till May 2026”.

“Similarly, the government has invested Rs 5,377 crore for infrastructure development under different government funded schemes”, he added.

This makes a total of about Rs 18,000 crore.

Further, the energy minister stated that “the discoms have submitted capex proposals of Rs. 1,503 crore (TPCODL-Rs. 486 Cr/ TPNODL-Rs. 400 Cr./ TPSODL-Rs. 233 Cr./ TPWODL-Rs. 384 Cr.) for FY 2026-27 before the OERC for approval, taking the total to about Rs.20, 000 crore.

The Contradictions Within

“No allegation pertaining to alleged irregularity done by the discoms has been received by the government, so the question of any order by government to probe does not arise” the minister said.  

“On the day of his resignation, Jena attended rounds of meetings, but suddenly the news about his resignation from the chairmanship of OERC did the rounds, brewing a silent debate within the department and triggering speculation about what made the officer (a former Chief Secretary of the state) resign in a huff?” said Rabi Das, a political analyst.

OERC is a quasi-judicial body that brings into focus the roles of the Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi and also the Deputy CM K V Singh Deo, who is also Energy Minister, and the department secretary Vishal Deb. All three continue to maintain a mysterious silence on the high-profile resignation of Jena, ostensibly resigned on ‘personal ground’.  

But Jena’s noting on the financial and structural irregularities and his decision to oppose any fresh capex amount speaks volumes about the deep decay within and the administrative opacity.

“Although good sense prevailed upon the Energy Minister, who had reportedly agreed for an inquiry into any ‘complaint’ on financial and administrative functioning by the discoms. But there is lack of administrative clarity on his part. Why has an audit by CAG not sought in 2020?, said Satapathy.

Meanwhile, there have been massive layoffs of contractual workers by Tata Power to effect “austerity”, but thousands of them came out in protest. “If austerity was an issue, then it could have been in phases and not at one go”, added Satapathy.

Smart Meter Extravaganza 

Tata Power vide their letter dated 16.08.2021 had requested for early adoption of smart meters in prepaid mode. Further, Clause–3(b) of Central Electricity Authority (Installation & Operation of meters) (Amendment) Regulations, 2022, mandates installation of Smart Pre-paid Meters, for which an estimated Rs 7,000 crore was sought for. Moreover, OERC (Conditions of Supply) Code, 2019 also emphasises on the adoption of Smart Pre-paid Meters for DISCOMs to enhance billing efficiency and prevent accumulation of arrears. Which has not happened practically.

Regarding billing efficiency, out of one crore consumers, only 78% are billed. “Where does the power loss stand…..” sources in Tata power said.

The writer is a freelance journalist based in Odisha, with over40 years’ experience in the profession.

Opinion

The man America forgot to invite to its 250th birthday party

(RNS) — This man didn’t set foot in North America. He never signed a founding document. But there is a compelling case that our country’s great story would look very different without him.

William Tyndale, Protestant reformer and Bible translator. (Image from Foxe's Book of Martyrs/Wikimedia/Creative Commons)

Dirk Smith
July 2, 2026

RNS

(RNS) — George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams will be some of the names that will rightly dominate the tributes as America turns 250 in the next few days.

Block parties, fireworks and patriotic speeches will give honor to these men for the leadership, courage and vision that helped birth and shape a nation unlike any the world had seen before.

Yet standing in London beside a book twice the age of the United States, I find myself wondering whether somebody is missing from America’s 250th birthday party guest list.



This man didn’t set foot in North America. He never signed a founding document. He actually died almost 250 years before the Declaration of Independence. But there is a compelling case that our country’s great story would look very different without him.

Let me introduce you to William Tyndale, the man who, 500 years ago, translated the New Testament from the original Greek into English for the very first time.

The book I have just been staring at is one of only three surviving copies of Tyndale’s 1526 New Testament. Printed in Germany, it was smuggled into England and was already ancient when America declared independence. Today it sits safely preserved behind glass at London’s iconic St. Paul’s Cathedral. I am here in Britain filming a mini-documentary series, following Tyndale’s footsteps and learning more of his amazing story.

In the early 16th century, only priests had access to the Bible, but Tyndale became convinced that ordinary people should be able to read Scripture in their own languages. Church authorities fiercely opposed English translations, fearing they would undermine established authority and spread heresy.

Tyndale disagreed. His ambition was simple but dangerous. He famously declared that if God spared his life, he would ensure that a plowboy knew more Scripture than the religious leaders opposing him.

Unable to complete his work in England, he fled to Germany. Working in exile, he launched a movement that would change history. Backed by a team of wealthy businessmen and transporters, copies of his New Testament were printed in 1526 and then secretly smuggled into England hidden among cargo shipments.



The pocket Bible we know today was effectively born not from convenience but necessity. Its size made it easier to conceal and smuggle.

Authorities searched for the books, and church leaders publicly burned them. But the demand proved unstoppable. Historians estimate that up to 18,000 English New Testaments made their way into London.
RELATED: 500 years ago, the first New Testament in English was published – and stirred up a hornet’s nest

Tyndale’s mission eventually cost him his life. In 1536, he was strangled and burned at the stake in Belgium after a year in jail.

William Tyndale is burned at the stake in Belgium. (Image from Foxe’s Book of Martyrs/Wikimedia/Creative Commons)

“Lord, open the King of England’s eyes,” were reportedly the famous last words he shouted before his death.

Remarkably, less than a year later, every church in England was required to have a copy of the Bible chained to its pulpit. And not long after that, English Bibles were printed with royal approval and were made accessible — to everyone. Tyndale’s prayer was answered. The man was dead; the mission lived on.

But that was just the beginning. Tyndale’s masterpiece was on the move and would travel much further than he ever imagined.

As President of EEM, a ministry that delivers more than 2 million Bibles every year to people who have requested them, I know firsthand how Scripture continues to transform lives. We are just one organization carrying Tyndale’s mission forward across the world today.

Most people know Tyndale as a Bible translator, but he was also one of the architects of the English language itself.

“The powers that be,” “fight the good fight,” “the signs of the times” and “the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak,” are just a few phrases that first appeared in his writings.

He translated Scripture into English that was clear, memorable and beautiful. Five centuries later, these sayings still feel natural because they helped shape the English language itself.

That influence would prove particularly significant across the Atlantic. When the first settlers arrived in North America, they brought more than hopes and dreams — they brought Bibles. And those Bibles carried William Tyndale’s words.

The King James Bible relied heavily on Tyndale’s earlier work. Scholars estimate that roughly 80% to 90% of its New Testament draws directly from his translation.

It’s quite incredible that the book that would shape the moral compass of a nation and become its rock, backbone and manual was translated by a man who remains unknown to most Americans.

George Washington famously said that it is impossible to rightly govern a country without God and the Bible. As I stood before this 500-year-old New Testament, I began to wonder where America would be today without it. How much biblical language and Scripture has formed the fabric of American life? Where would families and communities be without the word of God?

As America celebrates 250 years of freedom, it will rightly honor the soldiers, statesmen and founders who built our great nation. But perhaps it should also remember the British translator who helped shape the world long before 1776.

William Tyndale never lived to see America. He never knew the Founding Fathers. Yet five centuries after his New Testament first appeared and 250 years after America’s birth, his words still echo across the nation today.

For a man most Americans have never heard of, that is quite a legacy.

He may just be the most influential figure absent from the celebration.

(Dirk Smith is President of EEM, a Christian ministry that publishes and delivers approximately 2 million Bibles free every year across 35 countries in more than 30 languages. See www.eem.org for more. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)