San Francisco-based company Scale AI says the Pentagon should shift from the current use of large language model AI to a new form of combat that the advanced-tech company is calling “agentic warfare.”

“Genuine strategic advantage in this new era will not come from stealthier jets, faster missiles or larger drone swarms alone; it will come from new kinds of human-machine teaming that drive accelerated decision-making,” according to a new report by Scale AI executives Dan Tadross and Jared Jonker.

They write that the essence of agentic warfare is providing “decision advantage” at all levels of command, an advanced warfighting capability that will allow U.S. forces to outpace and outmaneuver the most capable enemies. They also warn that China’s military already has begun reorganizing its forces around “intelligentized warfare” and “command brains” — tools that seek to cognitively overwhelm enemies not equipped with AI-enabled systems.

Video-confirmed drone kills are now responsible for 80% of Ukraine’s destruction of Russian targets, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The announcement marks another evolution on the battlefield for modern drone warfare and a dramatic shift away from traditional artillery-supported combat.

“In just the past year alone, 819,737 targets were hit by drones,” Mr. Zelenskyy said this week. “We clearly record every single hit.” Ukraine’s military has created a points system for verified strikes that gives first-person view (FPV) operators a chance to buy new equipment in an online marketplace, similar to a video game.

Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s new minister of defense, revealed in a video posted on Telegram this week that Kyiv has completed a centralized national system for managing all drone operations. The video shows FPV pilots controlling multiple types of drones, both in the air and on the ground, to execute missions in the field. Their statistics are then sent back to what the Ukrainian government has dubbed its “Mission Control” system.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday called for a deepening of U.K-China ties based on a “strategic partnership” aimed at thawing tensions between the two nations amid growing international turbulence and great power competition.

The two met for 80 minutes in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing in an attempt to smooth over years of U.K.-China acrimony, stemming from allegations of Chinese spying in Britain, China’s support for Russia in Moscow’s war on Ukraine and the crackdown on freedoms in Hong Kong.

The meeting comes as President Trump also pursues a summit with Mr. Xi. Neither Mr. Starmer nor Mr. Xi publicly mentioned Mr. Trump in public remarks about Thursday’s meeting, according to The Associated Press. However, the Trump administration’s recently released National Defense Strategy notably calls for more accommodation of communist China toward the goal of deterring Beijing in the Indo-Pacific through “strength, not confrontation.”

Despite the ayatollah’s best efforts, Iranians are still reporting, organizing and sharing information with the outside world, thanks to “years of sustained and strategic U.S. government investments,” write Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee and Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas. “In Congress, we have championed these efforts to counter digital authoritarianism with the types of ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit that make our nation so great.

“In 2021, we led the enactment of the Open Technology Fund Authorization Act, which authorized a dedicated U.S. government-funded technology incubator to make strategic, targeted investments in the development of innovative technologies capable of circumventing even the most sophisticated authoritarian censorship,” the two Republican lawmakers write in an op-ed for The Washington Times. “In the intervening years, the Open Technology Fund has had enormous success, working at the speed of private industry to ensure that people living under repressive regimes can learn the truth.

“Now is not the time to constrain President Trump’s ability to get crucial information to the Iranian people,” they write. “As the administration reorients U.S. global broadcasting to ensure it serves America’s interests first, we are hopeful that the U.S. Agency for Global Media will fully use the Open Technology Fund and its suite of capabilities. Congress must continue to do everything in its power to safeguard these critical tools and stand for freedom.”

• Jan. 29 — Pax Silica: Under Secretary of State Jacob Helberg on the AI Race and Economic Security, Hudson Institute

• Jan. 30 — Exploring Global AI Policy Priorities Ahead of the India AI Impact Summit, Center for Strategic & International Studies

• Feb. 2 — The Results and Implications of Myanmar’s Elections, Stimson Center

• Feb. 3 — Reimagining Mediterranean Security with Greek Minister for National Defense Nikos Dendias, Foundation for Defense of Democracies

• Feb. 3 — STARTing Over? Russo-American Arms Control at a Crossroads, Stimson Center

• Feb. 5 — Bluff or Death? How to Assess Nuclear ‘Threats,’ Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

• Feb. 10 — Assistant Secretary of Defense Michael Cadenazzi on Rebooting America’s Defense Industrial Base, Hudson Institute