Author: openjargon

• As college costs soar, Starbucks is doubling down on its free degree program for eligible employees.
• Enrollment is up 60% in the last five years, Chief People Officer Sara Kelly told Business Insider.
• Starbucks says the program boosts promotions, retention, and builds a stronger leadership pipeline.

Starbucks receives more than a million job applications a year, the company's Chief People Officer says one reason is a quietly powerful lure: the promise of a fully-funded bachelor's degree from Arizona State University.

For Brea Yancey, a barista in Washington state who has worked at the company for eight years, that benefit hasn't just reshaped her future — it reshaped her family's. She enrolled, then inspired her mother, a Starbucks store manager, to join her, turning a workplace perk into a two-generation push toward a goal neither woman thought was financially in reach.

"I didn't think college was going to be an option because of how much it costs with loans and things like that," Yancey, who celebrated her graduation on Monday, told Business Insider. "I know it's going to make all the difference in the world not having to worry about that."

Yancey pursued a degree in interdisciplinary arts and performance, with the goal of becoming a music teacher. Her mother graduated last semester with a degree in interdisciplinary studies, concentrating in sales, marketing, and project management.

"I'm glad that she got to finish school, because that's all she ever wanted, and she stopped originally because she got pregnant with me, but now we finished it together," Yancey said.

As college costs have soared, so has enrollment in Starbucks' College Achievement Plan (SCAP) program, Chief People Officer Sara Kelly told Business Insider. The program, which began in 2014, offers eligible employees 100% upfront tuition coverage for their first bachelor's degree, facilitated through online classes at ASU.

"Over the last five years, we've seen a 60% increase in participation," Kelly said. "We have 13% of our partners participating as scholars today."

That represents at least one enrolled Starbucks staff member at about 90% of its coffeehouses, Kelly added.

Starbucks isn't the only retail or Fortune 500 employer offering education benefits. Amazon, Walmart, and Chipotle also offer similar programs. However, compared to most programs in the US retail sector, Starbucks doesn't require reimbursement of tuition payments or require students to stay with the company for a certain amount of time after graduation.

Younger students are increasingly questioning the value of a college degree. A May 2024 Deloitte survey found that a third of Gen Z and millennials chose to skip higher education due to rising costs, and the average price of attendance for a student living on campus at an in-state public 4-year institution is $108,584 over 4 years, according to Educationdata — so you can't beat free.

"This started over 10 years ago, all in service of creating access to education, and the importance of creating access to education," Kelly said. "College is incredibly costly, and so how do we create access to that education for all of our partners? So we're really proud, because we see this as one of the most powerful expressions of our investment in our partners."

Starbucks has expanded the SCAP program in recent years, offering access to more than 150 degree pathways, providing enrolled students with a broader range of fields to pursue than in the program's early years. They've also added a "Pathway to Admission" support route for partners who don't initially qualify for university admission, allowing them to take preparatory courses and earn their way into ASU. Additionally, a "plus-one" benefit is available for eligible military and veteran partners, extending SCAP to a qualifying family member.

This year, Starbucks introduced new study abroad and coffee education opportunities, offering a hands-on sustainability immersion at Hacienda Alsacia in Costa Rica, where scholars study climate, agronomy, and the future of coffee at their global research and development farm.

Of course, the students aren't the only ones benefiting. The program is a significant retention win for Starbucks. Turnover is at record lows, Kelly said, and baristas who have spoken to Business Insider frequently cite the SCAP program as a reason they've stayed with the company.

The program also helps to strengthen Starbucks' talent pipeline, as the company has committed to a 90% internal hire rate or fill rate for its retail leadership roles.

"Our Starbucks college achievement plan partners are part of our pipeline for those management roles, and we're very excited about that," Kelly said. "But do they have to stay with Starbucks? No."

Starbucks has never considered adding a retention requirement to the program, Kelly said, because the company wants "to offer access to education that people can take with them on their journey, no matter where it takes them."

For Yancey, her Starbucks journey is winding down, but it's not over. She continues to work part-time as a barista and has a second job as a music instructor, while planning her next career moves.

"They find a way to make it work for whoever wants to go into the university through the SCAP program; they find a way for you to complete it," Yancey said. "I don't think finances or learning ability should hold anybody back, and they really delivered on that."

• Startup Natilus is building a "blended-wing body" aircraft that fits the cabin into one giant wing.
• Natilus' first announced airline customer is the Indian carrier SpiceJet.
• The up to 240-passenger plane may have less natural light but could offer lounges or kids' zones.

Another airline is placing bets on the radical "flying wing" plane that industry professionals foresee as the future of commercial aviation.

California startup Natilus announced Wednesday that Indian carrier SpiceJet will order up to 100 of its new airliner called Horizon. The triangle-shaped "blended-wing body" (BWB) aircraft ditches the traditional tube-and-wing design for one giant, sweeping wing with the cabin built inside.

It's a more efficient aircraft that allows for more space and fewer emissions. Natilus hopes to launch Horizon in the early 2030s.

Company CEO Aleksey Matyushev said in a press release that India's growing aviation sector will be short about 2,200 aircraft by 2040 and believes his next-generation BWB could help fill that demand.

India is the world's fifth-largest aviation market with about 211 million passengers in 2024 — an increase of about 11% year-over-year, according to the global airline trade association IATA.

SpiceJet said it will help Natilus navigate India's regulatory process, with the order contingent on the Horizon ultimately being certified in the country. Natilus also plans to source manufactured parts from India and has established a subsidiary called Natilus India, headquartered in Mumbai, to support its operations.

This is the first publicly announced international airline order for Horizon, but Natilus told Business Insider that its commercial order book — which also includes its BWB cargo version, Kona — stands at more than 570 orders valued at $25 billion following SpiceJet's order.

Kona has purchase agreements with carriers like US operator Ameriflight, a partner of FedEx, DHL, and UPS, as well as Canadian airline Norolinor. However, it's unclear if Horizon has other buyers besides SpiceJet.

Horizon could host unique cabin configurations

Horizon would bring a new type of aircraft to India's skies that promises better operating economics than those offered by the reigning Boeing-Airbus duopoly.

Matyushev previously told Business Insider that Horizon will offer improved efficiency because its wing design generates lift across a much larger surface area, cutting fuel burn by roughly 30% and operating costs by about 50% compared with similarly sized aircraft such as the Boeing 737 and the Airbus A320.

The plane, which could carry up to 240 people in a high-capacity configuration, would also fit into existing airport infrastructure and offer about 40% more cabin space thanks to its wider footprint.

Matyushev said this could translate into unique spaces that today's jets can't fit, like a lounge or a kids' playroom.

Renderings of Horizon published in July show a futuristic business class, up to three aisles between rows of a dozen economy seats, and dedicated privacy pods.

Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury recently said that it sees BWB planes as the future of aviation. But he said the jet may be windowless due to the curved structure. This means passengers could face minimal natural light, disorientation, and claustrophobia.

The wider cabin also poses additional safety challenges during emergency evacuations since those in the very center would be further from the exit doors than on today's aircraft, and the passengers and crew wouldn't be able to see the situation outside.

Matyushev confirmed to Business Insider that Horizon would have windows, but for those in the middle of the plane, it is also designing skylights and other lighting strategies to mimic the outside.

He has previously said Horizon would meet and exceed safety standards.

Companies have long experimented with passenger BWBs

The BWB concept is not new. It has long been used by the US military — among the most famous being the Northrop B-2 Spirit stealth bomber — and passenger variants have been studied by innovators like Airbus, NASA, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing for decades.

Sub-scale demonstrators have flown, but no full-sized BWB has been certified for commercial use.

With a team of employees who have worked for companies like Northrop Grumman and SpaceX, Natilus is betting Horizon can break into the fiercely competitive commercial aircraft market. But it's not the only player chasing that goal.

Airbus has been experimenting with commercial BWB aircraft since 2017 as part of its ZEROe program, which aims to build zero-emission airliners that run on hydrogen instead of traditional jet fuel. That project flew a demonstrator in 2019 but has since been delayed at least a decade from its initial 2035 timeline.

Another California startup, JetZero, is developing a 250-person BWB, called the "Z4," that is expected to launch in the early 2030s and offer up to 50% lower fuel burn. It could replace jets like the Boeing 767 or the Airbus A330.

United Airlines' venture capital arm, United Airlines Ventures, plans to order up to 200 Z4s. Managing director Andrew Chang previously described JetZero to Business Insider as a "living room in the sky."

"Everything around the customer travel experience — how they sit in the plane, board, and deplane, and how [crewmembers] serve them — can be reinvented around the new space within this new aircraft design," he said.

Palmer Luckey recently launched what might be his most ambitious endeavor yet. He's calling it his "I told you so tour."

On his raucous, relentless, revenge roadshow, the memelord weapons manufacturer has boasted to Joe Rogan that he has "plenty of money," and that when he retires he'll investigate UFOs as "the government's privately funded X-Files." He's told CBS News top dog Bari Weiss that America must become "the world's gun store," and has bragged about his distinctive métier: "I build cruise missiles, and I post on X." He's told tech's most terminally online podcasting bros that his AI munitions company, Anduril Industries, "did in two weeks what the Army had been working on for years," and that — to boost America's birth rate — he wants teens to get pregnant … right now. ("Let's not be politically correct.") He's called those he spats with on X "retard." The former journalism major has even taken interviews with the mainstream outlets he loves to hate, like CNBC, Bloomberg, and The Wall Street Journal.

"You even need the hate of the media," Luckey told firebrand flack Lulu Cheng Meservey in a podcast cameo. "You need to be this thing that people love to hate."

"Take me with a pound of salt," Luckey told Bari Weiss. "I am a propagandist."

Luckey's big, long gloat is in part a middle finger to Meta, née Facebook, which acquired his VR startup, Oculus, in 2014 for roughly $2 billion and, Luckey alleges, fired him in 2017 for supporting Donald Trump. (At the time, Meta denied Luckey left over his politics.) Ultimately, his gasconading is making what he calls Anduril's "killer robots" cool among investors, founders, and tech's ascendant generation.

When Luckey started Anduril soon after leaving Meta, defense was a dirty word in Silicon Valley. At the time, "investors would advise our companies not to sell to the government," Raj Shah, who cofounded national security-focused venture firm Shield Capital, tells me.

Not anymore. As the Trump administration ramps up defense spending, as the United States and its allies hustle to modernize warfare and keep up with foes like China, and as tech's elite have shifted to the right, defense has become, short of AI, the tech industry's buzziest and perhaps most consequential sector.

"Every venture fund" is now ravenous for defense tech, says Shah. Venture capitalists sunk $31 billion into defense-related companies in 2024, up 33% from the year before, according to McKinsey. Stanford students whose North Star used to be Google are now vying for jobs at Palantir; some are skipping college entirely to work for the ICE-contracting data juggernaut. Prominent tech executives like Meta's Andrew Bosworth and OpenAI's Kevin Weil are enlisting in the Army Reserve. And factory towns are whirring back to life: Anduril, whose valuation jumped from $14 billion in 2024 to more than $30 billion earlier this year, is planning to open a weapons manufacturing plant outside of Columbus, Ohio, next year.

Ew has morphed into oorah. And no one has summoned that vibe shift quite like Luckey. The goateed, mulleted, Hawaiian shirt-and-cargo-shorts-wearing 33-year-old — who has never served in the military — has become the foremost face and proselytizer of tech's emphatic embrace of war.

Over the past half-century, tech founders have reshaped how humans behave and think. Bill Gates changed how we work. Mark Zuckerberg changed how we relate to each other. Luckey is changing how we kill. And he's doing it the way he knows best. "Take me with a pound of salt," Luckey told Weiss in Washington, DC, in October. "I am a propagandist."

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From listening to hours of his "I told you so tour," it's clear that Luckey's cult-of-personality campaign to win over Silicon Valley and the Pentagon, a bravura display of his wily business acumen and winking weirdness, has three rules: attack, attack, attack; lose nothing, post everything; and claim victory, even in defeat.

In 2023, Luckey realized the Defense Department needed a rebrand. Meservey, the comms warrior, explained in a blog post that Luckey thought the DoD sounded flaccid and vague and that the government should resurrect the pre-Cold War name, the Department of War. This would adequately state its purpose: to fight. The propagandist was looking for, as Meservey put it, "a more honest name."

"The Department of War had a much better track record than the Department of Defense," Luckey posted on X in August. A week later, Trump signed an executive order to rechristen the department. (Though formally changing the name requires an act of Congress.)

A few years ago, Luckey was one of the few in tech to throw his weight behind defense. While Anduril worked on one of its first major projects — equipping the southern border of the US with an AI-powered, virtual surveillance wall — employees at tech giants protested their companies' military contracts. In 2018, about 4,000 Google workers signed a letter asking the company to cancel Project Maven, an intelligence-gathering Pentagon program, and to get out of "the business of war." Later that year, after the company did call it off, Luckey chastised Google for being "controlled by a pretty radical fringe." Anduril later won a Project Maven contract, The Intercept reported in 2019.

In the years since, Luckey has repeatedly retold this story to cast himself as a fearless defender of freedom, a throwback to Cold War-era Silicon Valley, when tech executives and Stanford academics courted the Pentagon. "If both the smartest minds in technology abandoned defense innovation, the United States would forever lose its ability to protect our way of life," Luckey wrote in an essay for The Free Press earlier this year. "And if no one else was willing to solve that problem, I would." He's also long maintained that those concerned with the morality of autonomous weapons should be the ones developing them: "There's no moral high ground in outsourcing that work to people who are less ethical and less competent than you," he told Rogan earlier this fall.

Such rectitude has instilled in some tech bros the confidence to start their own chest-thumpingly patriotic companies.

"Palmer is a guy who everyone in the defense tech ecosystem looks up to," Fil Aronshtein, who cofounded Dirac, an AI manufacturing company, tells me. "He has inspired a lot of founders to be unapologetically themselves instead of trying to fit into Silicon Valley's idea of a tech founder." Where this stereotypical founder is "a shy, hunched-over nerd or laptop creature," Aronshtein insists he isn't so ungainly. "I'm very pro-American, and I'm proud of that. I lift weights. I can definitely be way more myself after seeing that Palmer can be himself."

I'm very pro-American, and I'm proud of that. I lift weights. I can definitely be way more myself after seeing that Palmer can be himself.Fil Aronshtein, cofounder of Dirac

When he's most himself, Luckey — whom his disciples have called a "real-life Tony Stark" — is nerding out over anime and sci-fi. "Science fiction informs reality," he told reporters in October. "It's not even so much that it predicted the future as it literally caused the future." (Anduril is named after the "Flame of the West" sword in "The Lord of the Rings.")

He's also bantering with the bros or cracking bawdy jokes on X. In December, when Anduril announced its autonomous submarines had traveled more mission miles than a lap around the Earth, Luckey quipped on the social media site, "almost as far as the circumference of my post-holidays waistline!" Some of his shock jock takes could pass for those of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth: "There's too many people who drink Starbucks and not enough who drink Mountain Dew," Luckey told Rogan. "And you know exactly what I mean when I say that." Some pro-natalist beliefs he espouses — that having fewer than 2.1 children is treasonous — track the talking points of his serial-X-poster investors.

With Silicon Valley elites going MAGA post—last year's election, Luckey is taking a Trump-stanning victory lap. After all, he was "one of the true Trump OGs," he told Rogan. When Luckey was 15, he wrote Trump a letter asking him to run for president: "I loved his extremist rhetoric going back to 2009!" Trump seems to stan Luckey, too: At a press conference in the spring, the president archly called Anduril's Roadrunner drone a "nasty looking thing."

The defense tech industry stands to benefit from the Trump administration. This month, Hegseth announced a plan to throw $1 billion behind American drone manufacturing. In November, he said in a speech that the Pentagon will acquire more off-the-shelf tech from companies that surge "at the speed of ingenuity." That's a reversal from the government's decades of work with defense primes like Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, which have long depended on funding from lengthy contracts to make their products. Earlier this year, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll said on tech talk show TBPN that the death of one of those primes would be a "success."

This has been Luckey's pitch all along; he told Rogan his goal at Anduril is "saving taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars a year." The company bills itself as the antithesis of a traditional defense prime. Instead of using government contracts to cover project expenses, Luckey's startup sells ready-made weapons to the government at a fixed price. To Shah, the defense tech investor, Anduril is a beneficiary of a "cultural shift where we expect technology to move fast."

That shift is paying dividends. In 2024, Anduril's unmanned fighter jet Fury beat Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman for the Air Force's Collaborative Combat Aircraft program. The company is on a path to go public in "low single-digit years," Luckey told Bloomberg this fall. OpenAI is partnering with Anduril to build AI systems to thwart drone attacks. Even Luckey's old foe Meta is now working with Anduril on augmented reality wearables for the Army. The headsets turn warfighters into, as Luckey has written, "technomancers" who slay IRL opponents while peering at a screen that looks straight out of "Call of Duty." "I don't want to sound arrogant here," Luckey told reporters about the collab, "but I've got this shit figured out."

But will Anduril's autonomous weapons work reliably in combat? Late last month, The Wall Street Journal and Reuters reported that the company's software platform, Lattice, as well as its suite of drone and counterdrone products, have been stymied by technical challenges and failed military tests. "It is not surprising that Anduril, as a leading new defense technology company, is subject to increasing scrutiny," the company wrote in a blog post responding to the reports, adding that the articles covered only "a fraction" of the company's testing. "We welcome that scrutiny."

Luckey also fired back on X: "This is what weapons development SHOULD look like," he wrote, and a few days later added, "We aren't going to change. We aren't going to slow down."

A cadre of Luckey's fans came to his defense. "This is the way," Marc Andreessen posted, with an American flag emoji. (His firm, Andreessen Horowitz, is an investor in Anduril.) Palantir's in-house defense historian wrote an essay in the pro-tech, anti-woke blog Pirate Wires against the "hatchet jobs about Luckey's Anduril," proudly proclaiming, "Yes, Blowing Shit Up is How We Build Things." And a few days later, the Defense Department released a video in which Hegseth visited Luckey and Anduril, demoed some headsets, and, over a triumphant score, made a promotional pitch for the company: "We're gonna compete," Hegseth said. "We're gonna move fast. We're gonna do open architecture. We're gonna innovate. We're gonna scale. And we're gonna do it at cost."

As his "I told you so tour" soldiers on, other tech executives have given Luckey plenty of ammo to prove his point. Zuckerberg and Google's Sundar Pichai were among the several tech billionaires cheering Trump on at his inauguration in January. Nvidia's Jensen Huang is praising Trump for, as he put it in a recent keynote address, "making America great again." Executives everywhere are becoming more brash, meme-driven, and nationalistic — from the once-prototypical Zuckerberg kvetching about the "culturally neutered" workplace and calling for more "masculine energy" in the office, to Alex Karp proudly proclaiming that Palantir is "the first company to be completely anti-woke." Even those that said no to war just a few years ago, like Google, are reembracing the military.

The economic story of tech in 2025 — as you've heard, unless you live under a data center — is the AI boom, and possible bubble. The cultural story of tech in 2025 is its leaders becoming more harcore, right-leaning, iconoclastic, and unapologetic. No one has willed or embodied that shift more than the missile maker in the Hawaiian shirt.

And for tech's future leaders yearning for their own "I told you so tour," Luckey has a message: "Different founders are going to have different things that are available to them," he told Meservey. "They're probably not going to have a cult behind them. Maybe they should try and develop one."

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Julia Hornstein covers Silicon Valley and defense tech for Business Insider. Reach Julia at jhornstein@insider.com or securely on Signal at juliah.22. Use a personal email address, a nonwork device, and a nonwork WiFi connection. Here's our guide to sharing information securely.

• China's AI chip boom is minting billionaires at breakneck speed, even as the economy sputters.
• Surging investor interest in domestic AI and semiconductor stocks is driving rapid wealth gains.
• US chip bans are supercharging China's homegrown AI champions.

China's deepening property crisis has crushed household wealth and dented the fortunes of some of its biggest tycoons — but a new class of AI-era billionaires is rising fast.

This year, the standout winners are coming from China's red-hot AI chip sector.

On Wednesday, shares of MetaX Integrated Circuits Shanghai — a GPU startup founded by former AMD executives — skyrocketed as much as 755% on their first day of trading on the Shanghai Stock Exchange's tech-focused STAR Market, before closing up about 700%.

The surge catapulted its chairman and cofounder, Chen Weiliang, into one of China's fastest-rising tech moguls. Chen's stake in MetaX is worth about $6.5 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Other early insiders also saw eye-popping paper gains.

MetaX's other two cofounders and co-chief technology officers, Peng Li and Yang Jian, hold stakes worth hundreds of millions of dollars after the blockbuster debut, according to Bloomberg's calculations.

China's AI rush

Chen's rise follows that of another GPU entrepreneur, Zhang Jianzhong, the founder and CEO of Moore Threads Technology.

Earlier this month, Zhang's net worth jumped to $4.3 billion after his company's successful IPO, continuing a wave of investor enthusiasm for homegrown semiconductor players.

The richest figure in China's AI chip scene is Chen Tianshi, a cofounder and CEO of Cambricon Technologies — a company retail traders have dubbed "China's Nvidia."

Cambricon's Chen is now worth $22.5 billion, making him the country's 16th-richest individual on Bloomberg's list. He is the 115th richest person in the world.

These new fortunes reflect a sharp shift in investor sentiment.

Chinese AI and semiconductor stocks have been on a tear since the breakout of the China-made DeepSeek-R1 AI model released in January. The model helped spark a rally in local tech names and pushed the Hang Seng Tech Index up more than 20% so far this year.

Washington's tightening export controls on advanced Nvidia chips also contributed to the boom.

Such restrictions on high-end AI processors have choked China's access to cutting-edge US hardware and pushed Beijing to lean harder on domestic suppliers.

Still, China's new AI billionaires remain far from the top of the country's wealth rankings. The upper tier is still dominated by long-established tycoons.

In the top spot is Zhong Shanshan, the low-key bottled-water magnate behind Nongfu Spring, with a fortune of $68.1 billion, per Bloomberg.

Pony Ma, a cofounder and CEO of Tencent, ranks second with $66.5 billion — a fortune up 38% this year, on the heels of Tencent's AI-induced rally — while ByteDance cofounder Zhang Yiming comes in third with $65.2 billion.

• Russia published new statistics and figures on Wednesday on its side of the war in Ukraine.
• These include new figures on its war spending and the number of new soldiers it has recruited.
• While not necessarily reliable, the statistics shed light on the Kremlin's goals and ambitions.

Russia's defense ministry broadcast its wide-ranging annual review on Wednesday of the Ukraine war, providing clues about its military goals and performance this year.

Andrei Belousov, the Russian defense minister, presented the official statistics during the Defense Ministry Board's expanded meeting in Moscow.

Business Insider could not independently verify the defense ministry's claims, which often differ significantly from those of international observers. Russia's leader, Vladimir Putin, said at the meeting that the Kremlin's troops were "crushing" Ukraine, despite the war dragging on for nearly four years.

The disclosures also come as Russia has sought to project strength and demanded heavy concessions from Ukraine while negotiating potential peace terms with the Trump administration.

However, Belousov's presentation offers insight into Russia's ambitions for the war and its official narratives surrounding how it fights and plans to fight next year. Several new official figures were also announced.

Here are 10 highlights from Belousov's end-of-year review.

1. Russia's war budget is about $138 billion

Belousov said that Russia's war spending is on track to reach about 5.1% of the country's GDP in 2025, out of an overall defense budget that reaches 7.3% of its annual GDP.

The country's nominal GDP in 2024 was about 201.2 trillion rubles, and is expected to grow 1% this year to about 203 trillion rubles, or $2.52 trillion.

Russian independent media, however, reported that the economic ministry has forecast a GDP of about $2.7 trillion for the year.

A war budget of 5.1% would therefore be somewhere between $128 billion and $137.7 billion.

This is the first time Russia has publicly disclosed the amount that it spends specifically on the war. Previously, the Kremlin only announced figures for total defense spending.

The US, by comparison, is planning to spend $901 billion on its military, or about 3.4% of its GDP.

2. Doubling down on motorcycle and quad bike assaults

Belousov said that his ministry delivered roughly 38,000 motorcycles, buggies, and all-terrain vehicles to its troops on the front lines in 2025.

"This is 10 times more than last year," he said, adding that Russia plans to reach "full strength" in these vehicles next year.

Russian troops have increasingly been using motorcycles, quad bikes, and other small, unarmored vehicles to assault or approach Ukrainian positions, trying to use their speed and small size to avoid drone attacks.

Ukrainians have also adopted the tactic, with one regiment even establishing an official motorcycle attack company in May.

3. 409,000 new contract soldiers

Belousov said that Russia hired 409,611 new contract soldiers in 2025, down from 449,243 in 2024.

However, that already exceeds the Kremlin's 403,000 person recruitment goal for the year.

"Nearly two-thirds of them were young men under 40," Belousov said of the new recruits. "More than a third have higher or specialized secondary education."

Ukraine and Russia have both been hard-pressed to fill their ranks as Moscow pressures Kyiv's forces with a continuous grind of frontal infantry assaults.

To maintain its flow of troops, Russia often entices recruits with hefty sign-on bonuses or pardons for crimes committed in the country.

4. FPV drones dominate Russia's hits

Belousov said that about 50% of Ukrainian casualties from Russian attacks come from first-person-view drones, or FPV drones. These are the small quadcopters mounted with explosives that have become a hallmark of the war.

In the summer, Russia said that it was outproducing Ukraine on FPV drones, though Kyiv's officials have since said their country has caught back up.

Ukrainian leaders have said that 70% of all casualties inflicted during the war involved FPV drones.

5. Making a whole new FPV drone force

Belousov said that Russia plans to create a new drone formation called the Unmanned Systems Forces next year, which would train "tens of thousands" of people.

Russia has already created an official drone unit called Rubicon, which was formed last August to prioritize fighting with FPV drones and has often been described as fielding its most elite pilots.

Now, Moscow appears to be trying to make such warfare an official pillar of its fighting force.

Belousov said the Kremlin needed to transition FPV drone attacks from individual tasks carried out by each unit to "integrated joint operations" among its forces.

Ukraine launched its own Unmanned Systems Forces last year, appointing the previous commander of the elite unit, Magyar Birds, as its leader.

6. 27,000 drones over Russian territory

Roughly 27,400 Ukrainian long-range drones were intercepted this year over Russian territory, with the bulk appearing after the summer, Belousov said.

Belousov said that Ukraine initially began sending about 1,000 drones a month into Russia, but that the monthly number began hitting 3,700 by May.

The defense minister claimed that Russia's interception rate "averages 97%" for the year.

Ukraine has typically used fixed-wing drones to attack deeper into Russia, targeting what it says are oil and gas facilities and military production sites.

Notably, Belousov mentioned that Russia has also been exploring FPV drones that can serve as high-speed interceptors, a technology that Ukraine has been refining to counter Moscow's Shahed waves.

7. Russia received two modern strategic bombers

Belousov said that Russia received two Tu-160Ms, which are modernized, supersonic bombers that can deploy nuclear weapons or powerful stealth missiles.

That's a clue about the production rate of the bombers, which are part of a small fleet that forms a vital pillar of Russia's nuclear triad. Several of Russia's older bombers were reported severely damaged in Operation Spiderweb, an audacious Ukrainian drone attack in early June that targeted a fleet of about 41 warplanes.

Ukrainian sources claimed that several Tu-160s were also hit, although this was not confirmed by independent open-source intelligence at the time.

8. Russia created 30 new regiments, with 39 more planned

Russia's military also appears to be modifying its organizational structure.

Belousov said that the Kremlin had created five new divisions, 13 new brigades, and 30 new regiments in 2025. International think tanks estimate that Russian divisions can consist of between 10,000 and 20,000 troops, while regiments within typically have about 2,000 soldiers and are further split into battalions.

Brigades, which typically exist as a separate formation, often have about 3,500 to 4,500 troops.

Belousov said this new structure included a new division, called the Aerospace Forces, which has a regiment "equipped with the unique S-500 antiaircraft missile system, capable of striking targets in near space."

Next year, the Kremlin plans to add four more divisions, 14 brigades, and 39 new regiments, he added.

Some of these figures encompass formations that Russia has transformed, so they aren't necessarily an indicator of how widely Russia is expanding its military organization structure. For example, Belousov said two marine brigades were turned into a single division.

9. Drone deliveries by air and land

Belousov said that Russia had expanded its use of drones and all-terrain vehicles to deliver gear from a "one-time operation" in 2024 to carrying 12,000 tons of cargo this year to the front lines.

"By 2026, this figure must be at least doubled," he said.

Both Ukraine and Russia have been developing uncrewed ground vehicles, or ground-based drones, that can be remotely operated to deliver supplies to the front line or even conduct assaults.

The emerging technology is especially useful for dangerous tasks that would otherwise have to be filled by a human soldier.

Some military units have also reported using drones to deliver equipment by air, such as one Ukrainian commander who said his forces used drones to send an e-bike to a stranded soldier.

10. Russia is targeting Ukraine's energy grid

Belousov's presentation made it clear that Russia has been conducting precision strikes against Ukraine's power facilities.

More than 70% of Ukraine's thermal power plants and 37% of its hydroelectric plants have been disabled, Belousov said.

"The effectiveness of Russian precision strikes is about 60%, which is an order of magnitude higher than the effectiveness of Ukrainian strikes on Russian territory," Belousov said.

"Ukraine's energy capacity has been reduced by more than half," he added.

Attacking energy infrastructure is a war crime if it's found to be intentionally carried out to cause harm to civilians. Ukraine's besieged power grid is especially crucial, as it's essential for keeping its citizens warm during harsh winters.

Belousov said the strikes on energy facilities were targeting the Ukrainian military, and that disabling the grid cut off power to Kyiv's forces.

However, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said last September that Russian attacks on Ukraine's power grid were found to be severely affecting civilians and had "disproportionately impacted" vulnerable groups.

Ukraine also carries out attacks on Russian oil and gas facilities, though it said its aim is to cripple Moscow's ability to export energy and sustain war production.

• Microsoft AI CEO says a huge price tag is needed for keeping up with frontier AI.
• "We're absolutely pushing for the frontier," Mustafa Suleyman said.
• His comments come as other tech leaders have spoken about the staggering cost of chasing AGI.

Microsoft AI CEO says there's a huge price to pay for staying in the AI game.

Mustafa Suleyman said in an episode of the "Moonshots with Peter Diamandis" podcast published Wednesday that it's going to cost "hundreds of billions of dollars" to compete at the frontier of AI over the next five to 10 years.

"Not to mention the prices that we're paying for individual researchers or members of technical staff," he added.

Suleyman compared Microsoft to a "modern construction company," where hundreds of thousands of workers are building gigawatts of CPUs and AI accelerators.

The scale of investment that is required is huge, and "clearly there's a structural advantage by being inside a big company," he said.

Microsoft, which has a market capitalization of $3.54 trillion, brought in $77.7 billion in revenue for the quarter ending in September, surpassing analysts' estimates.

Suleyman said his mission is to make Microsoft "self-sufficient" in developing its frontier models and to build "an absolutely world-class superintelligence team."

"We're absolutely pushing for the frontier," Suleyman said. "We want to build the best superintelligence and the safest superintelligence models in the world."

Suleyman said last month that his team is "trying to build a humanist superintelligence" — one that is aligned with human interest.

With the high cost required to keep up with AI, Suleyman said on the podcast that "it's hard to say" if startups could compete with Big Tech.

"The ambiguity is what's driving the frothiness of the valuations," he said. "If suddenly we do have an intelligence explosion, then lots of people can get there simultaneously."

The high cost of AI

Microsoft is one of several tech giants chasing artificial general intelligence, or superintelligence, and executives across the industry have been blunt about how expensive that pursuit will be.

Artificial general intelligence, or AGI, refers to AI systems that can match human intelligence across most tasks. Superintelligence goes a step further — systems that surpass human abilities.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in September he'd rather risk "misspending a couple of hundred billion" than fall behind in superintelligence.

If superintelligence arrives earlier than expected and a company moves too slowly, it'll be "out of position on what I think is going to be the most important technology that enables the most new products and innovation and value creation and history," Zuckerberg said.

Billions of dollars have also been poured into AI data centers. In recent months, Big Tech firms like Microsoft, Meta, Google, and Amazon have ramped up spending on cloud and compute infrastructure to train and run frontier models.