{"podcast":{"title":"Latent Space: The AI Engineer Podcast","slug":"latent-space-ai-engineer","podcast_index_feed_id":6058902,"rss_url":"https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/1084089.rss","website_url":"https://www.latent.space/podcast","image_url":"https://substackcdn.com/feed/podcast/1084089/ca7468da5614a246d2906ee8926f6de7.jpg","author":"Latent.Space","episode_count":204,"summary":"The AI Engineer newsletter + Top technical AI podcast. How leading labs build Agents, Models, Infra, & AI for Science. See https://latent.space/about for highlights from Greg Brockman, Andrej Karpathy, George Hotz, Simon Willison, Soumith Chintala et al!","last_synced_at":null,"page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/latent-space-ai-engineer"},"episode":{"title":"The Autonomous Drone Tech Stack & Economics of Drones — Yaroslav Azhnyuk, The Fourth Law & Guest Host Noah Smith, Noahpinion","slug":"the-autonomous-drone-tech-stack-economics-of-drones-yaroslav-azhnyuk-the-fourth-law-guest-host-noah-smith-noahpinion","published_at":"2026-05-18T13:45:32+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/latent-space-ai-engineer/the-autonomous-drone-tech-stack-economics-of-drones-yaroslav-azhnyuk-the-fourth-law-guest-host-noah-smith-noahpinion","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/latent-space-ai-engineer","url":"https://www.latent.space/p/the-fourth-law","audio_url":"https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/198200418/d911388480315e62363f89b6bb57a310.mp3","summary":"The future of war has been evolving before our eyes in Ukraine, yet the west still plans to fight the last war. In this special episode, guest host Noah Smith ( @noahpinion ) and Brandon Anderson sit down with Yaroslav Azhnyuk ( @YaroslavAzhnyuk ) , a serial tech founder who went from building PetCube to founding The Fourth Law , one of the world’s most advanced AI-guided drone companies. Over two hours we cover the technology, tactics, and geopolitics of drone warfare, and why the modern battlefield has already left the West behind: * Yaroslav’s personal history and the Ukraine war [00:01:04 – 00:14:01] * The modern drone tech stack: why FPV drones are the new god of war, the future of the rifleman, fiber optic vs. AI, five levels of autonomy, and the eight dimensions of the autonomous battlefield [00:14:01 – 01:05:13] * The geopolitics and economics of drones: China’s manufacturing advantage, the drone race, Western defense readiness, countermeasures, and why the gap is widening [01:05:13 – 01:58:57] For those looking for Noah Smith ’s commentary, it really gets going around the 00:51:31 mark. Yaroslav Azhnyuk / The Fourth Law: * X: https://x.com/YaroslavAzhnyuk * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yaroslavazhnyuk/ * The Fourth Law: https://thefourthlaw.ai Noah Smith : * Substack: Noah Smith * X: https://x.com/noahpinion Timestamps 00:00:00 Cold Open: China’s 4 Billion Drones and the Cameras-to-Explosives Pipeline 00:01:04 Introduction: Brandon, Noah Smith, and Yaroslav Azhnyuk 00:05:41 From Tech Entrepreneur to Defense: PetCube, Brave One, and the D3 Fund 00:10:42 The Ethics of Building Weapons: Dual-Use Technology and the Wolf at the Door 00:14:01 The Tech Stack: Cameras, Autonomy Modules, Interceptors, and a Semiconductor Fab 00:18:47 Fiber Optic vs. AI: The Ra…","meta_description":"The future of war has been evolving before our eyes in Ukraine, yet the west still plans to fight the last war. In this special episode, guest host Noah S…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":7168,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/latent-space-ai-engineer/episodes/the-autonomous-drone-tech-stack-economics-of-drones-yaroslav-azhnyuk-the-fourth-law-guest-host-noah-smith-noahpinion/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/latent-space-ai-engineer/the-autonomous-drone-tech-stack-economics-of-drones-yaroslav-azhnyuk-the-fourth-law-guest-host-noah-smith-noahpinion.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}