• Rep. Jennifer Wexton became the first to use a text-to-voice app for a speech on the House floor.
• Wexton has a disease referred to as "Parkinson's on steroids."
• She will retire at the end of this term, opening up a competitive seat in the House.

An early-career Virginia Democrat is leaving office following her diagnosis with a disease known as "Parkinson's on steroids," but she's breaking new ground on her way out of the Capitol.

Rep. Jennifer Wexton, who beat a Republican incumbent in 2018 to represent Virginia's 10th congressional district, announced a year ago that she had been diagnosed with Parkinson's but insisted she would remain in Congress, Business Insider previously reported.

About six months later, she changed course and announced she would retire at the end of the term.

"I wasn't making the progress to manage my symptoms that I had hoped," Wexton said in a statement in September, noting that her doctors "modified my diagnosis to Progressive Supra-nuclear Palsy — a kind of 'Parkinson's on steroids.'"

Since then, she became the first member of Congress to address the House floor using an Augmentative and Alternative Communication device that translates text to speech, according to The 19th.

"I hope I can show that even as debilitating a diagnosis as this doesn't have to mean you are powerless," Wexton told CNN, using the device. "Whatever your politics, when it comes to illness, 'progressive' is not a good thing to be."

Virginia primaries are set for later this month to determine VA-10's candidates for the November election, and they are shaping up to be highly competitive. One expert told WAMU, DC's NPR affiliate, that it could be one of the "most expensive Democratic congressional primaries in the history of Virginia."

It comes as the state, which Biden won easily in 2020, is turning purple, alarming Democrats and giving hope to supporters of former President Donald Trump.

• The United Nations will add Israel to its global list for violating children's rights.
• The decision precedes the UN's annual report submission to the Security Council this week.
• Israel's ambassador to the UN said the UN Secretary-General António Guterres should be "blacklisted."

The United Nations is set to include Israel and Hamas on its global list of entities accused of violating children's rights and protections.

A UN spokesperson confirmed to AP News that Israeli authorities have been notified of this decision.

The announcement comes ahead of the UN's annual report submission to the Security Council next week when the UN Secretary-General António Guterres will add Israel and Hamas the annual global list of countries and groups violating children's rights in armed conflicts.

Other countries on the list include Russia, Syria, Yemen, Myanmar and Iraq.

Thousands of Palestinian children have been killed during Israel's invasion of Gaza that began after the October 7 terrorist attacks by Hamas and other militants on Israel, though estimates of the precise number vary.

The decision has further strained relations between the UN and Israel, which have been deteriorating since Israel's military campaign in Gaza commenced after the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7.

Gilad Erdan, Israel's ambassador to the UN, took to X to express his fury at the secretary-general's decision to add Israel to the "blacklist."

Erdan condemned the decision on X, saying, "The only one who is blacklisted today is the secretary-general whose decisions since the war started and even before are rewarding terrorists and incentivizing them to use children for terror acts."

In May, Erdan stoked controversy during a General Assembly emergency special session when he pulled out a portable shredder and symbolically destroyed the UN Charter.

• Feral cats have long been a part of the landscape in the historic areas of Old San Juan.
• But the National Park Service is forging ahead with a plan to remove the cats.
• The advocacy organization Alley Cat Allies in March sued the park service over the plan.

For generations, feral cats have wandered the historic Old San Juan neighborhood in San Juan, Puerto Rico — attracting their share of local fans.

The US National Park Service, however, is not one of them.

The federal agency is moving forward with a plan to remove the cats from the San Juan National Historic Site — which includes the imposing Castillo San Felipe del Morro and Castillo San Cristóbal — despite protests from many longtime residents.

The reason? The agency said in 20222 that the cats inhabiting the area were "not ideal," especially at the touristy Paseo del Morro, and that their living situation is "inconsistent with National Park Service policies regarding the feeding of animals and invasive species."

The agency also said it sought to address the issue of animal abandonment. However, the roughly 200 cats have become a beloved part of the neighborhood by tourists and natives alike, and many locals say their displacement is reminiscent of broader and more ominous changes in Old San Juan.

Once home to artists, Old San Juan — with its colorful colonial architecture and cobblestone streets — has been invaded by short-term rentals and vacation homes, according to The New York Times.

Many natives say they, too, could be displaced, joining friends who've had to leave Old San Juan due to rising costs, the newspaper reported.

For some residents, the possibility that Old San Juan will lose its feral cats only adds to the feeling that the neighborhood is losing its way of life.

That said, not every resident loves the cats.

After the park service announced its plan, one Old San Juan resident said: "The cats create areas where they accumulate their excretions and it becomes unsanitary and unsafe for one's health."

According to the Times, the nonprofit organization Save a Gato — which has neutered and spayed the Old San Juan cats for almost two decades — was tasked with finding homes for about 170 of them or the park service would hire a company to remove them.

Parties opposed to the park service's plan are not backing down, worried the cats could be euthanized.

The Maryland-based advocacy organization Alley Cat Allies in March filed a lawsuit in federal court to block the park service's plan, arguing that it violates both the National Environmental Protection Act and the Administrative Procedure Act.

According to the Times, Save a Gato has secured 50 cats since last November, and roughly half of them have been placed in homes or are in the process of being placed in a home.

The park service last week moved forward with its plan to hire contractors to remove the remaining cats.

Business Insider reached out to the National Park Service for comment.

• Norway's sovereign wealth fund will oppose Elon Musk's $56 billion pay package at Tesla.
• Tesla shareholders will vote on the deal on Thursday.
• Two major proxy advisor firms have also opposed it.

Norway's sovereign wealth fund, operated by Norges Bank Investment Management, has said it will vote against Tesla CEO Elon Musk's $56 billion pay package at Tesla's annual meeting on Thursday.

In a statement, Norges Bank Investment Management said, "While we appreciate the significant value generated under Mr. Musk's leadership since the grant date in 2018, we remain concerned about the total size of the award, the structure given performance triggers, dilution, and lack of mitigation of key person risk."

Norway's sovereign wealth fund is valued at $1.7 trillion and is the eighth largest Tesla shareholder, per Reuters.

Robyn Denholm, chairperson of the Tesla Board of Directors, wrote in a letter to shareholders earlier this week, calling for "reciprocal respect.

Musk has no "shortage of ideas and other places he can make an incredible difference in the world," she wrote.

Nicolai Tangen, the the Norwegian wealth fund's chief executive, told the Financial Times in 2022: "We are seeing corporate greed reaching a level that we haven't seen before and it's really becoming very costly for shareholders in terms of dilution."

Tesla shareholders will vote on Musk's pay package on Thursday.

Investors approved Musk's pay deal in 2018, but a judge in Delaware struck down the sum in January, calling it "an unfathomable sum" and forcing the board to reapprove it.

Last month, two large proxy advisor firms, Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) and Glass Lewis, recommended voting against the package.

Referring to Musk's fortune, Denholm said: "This is obviously not about the money. We all know Elon is one of the wealthiest people on the planet, and he would remain so even if Tesla were to renege on the commitment we made in 2018."

Musk is the third richest person in the world, worth $203 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Although Tesla delivered record sales of more than 1.8 million electric vehicles worldwide in 2023, the EV maker has faced increased scrutiny in recent months.

According to emails obtained by CNBC earlier this week, Musk has been diverting important resources to his other businesses: social media platform X and his AI startup xAI.

Earlier this year, investors accused Musk of "blackmailing" them by tweeting that he was "uncomfortable growing Tesla to be a leader in AI and robotics without having 25 percent voting control."

In April, Musk sacked Tesla's entire Supercharger team, including senior director of EV charging Rebecca Tinucci, a move that was criticized by Tesla's investors and partners.

• OpenAI released a statement Friday on its safety efforts for Voice Engine, its text-to-speech model.
• Voice Engine generates natural-sounding speech that some fear could be used for deepfakes.
• The technology has raised concerns among lawmakers.

For the second time in a matter of months, OpenAI has found itself explaining its text-to-audio tool, reminding everyone that it is not, and may never be, widely available.

"It's important that people around the world understand where this technology is headed, whether we ultimately deploy it widely ourselves or not," the company said in a statement posted to its website on Friday. "Which is why we want to explain how the model works, how we use it for research and education, and how we are implementing our safety measures around it.

Late last year, OpenAI shared its Voice Engine, which relies on text inputs and 15-second audio clips of human voices to "generate natural-sounding speech that closely resembles the original speaker," with a small group of users outside the company. The tool can create voices that sound convincingly human in several languages.

At the time, the company said it was choosing to preview the technology but not widely release it to "bolster societal resilience" against the threat of "ever more convincing generative models."

As part of those efforts, OpenAI said it was actively working on phasing out voice-based authentication for accessing bank accounts, exploring policies to protect the use of individual's voices in AI, educating the public on the risks of AI, and accelerating development on tracking audiovisual content so users know whether they're interacting with real or synthetic content.

But despite such efforts, fear of the technology persists.

President Joe Biden's AI chief, Bruce Reed, once said that voice cloning is the one thing that keeps him up at night. And The Federal Trade Commission said in March that scammers were using AI to elevate their work, using voice cloning tools that make it harder to distinguish between AI-generated voices and human ones.

In its updated statement on Friday, OpenAI sought to assuage those worries.

"We continue to engage with US and international partners from across government, media, entertainment, education, civil society, and beyond to ensure we are incorporating their feedback as we build," the company said.

It also noted that once Voice Engine is equipped with its latest model, GPT4o, it'll also pose new threats. Internally, the company said it's "actively red-teaming GPT-4o to identify and address both known and unforeseen risks across various fields such as social psychology, bias and fairness, and misinformation."

The bigger question, of course, is what will happen when the technology is widely released. And it looks like OpenAI might be bracing itself, too.

OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

• Bliss Caribbean Restaurant opened in Missouri in May.
• Women must be 30 and men 35 to dine at the restaurant.
• The owners said the age policy helps "maintain a sophisticated environment."

A Missouri restaurant has a strict age policy that excludes anyone under 30 to "ensure a grown and sexy atmosphere."

Bliss Caribbean Restaurant opened its doors to diners in St. Louis County in May. The restaurant announced that month on its social media that it had an age requirement for customers.

"As a Black-owned business, Bliss Caribbean Restaurant is dedicated to providing North County with an upscale dining experience," a Facebook post read. "To ensure a grown and sexy atmosphere, we require all guests to be 30 or older for women and 35 or older for men. This policy helps us maintain a sophisticated environment, uphold our standards, and support the sustainability of our unique ambiance."

The announcement sparked conversation on social media, prompting the staff to discuss the policy with local news outlet KSDK. Erica Rhodes, the assistant manager, said the restaurant is meant to be a haven for customers looking for a relaxed, mature experience.

"The restaurant is just something for the older people to come do, have a happy hour, come get some good food, and not have to worry about some of the young folks who bring some of that drama," Rhodes said.

She added: 'I would tell those younger ones to come patronize the business once you turn 30 or 35 because we're going to be here for a while."

Marvin Pate, who owns Bliss Caribbean Restaurant with his wife, acknowledged that the policy has generated some criticism.

"Of course, we have been getting a little backlash because of our policy, but that's OK, we're sticking to our code," Pate told the outlet.

Pate said the response to the policy has been mostly positive, which the restaurant mentioned in a June 3 Facebook post.

"We're proud to keep our space grown and sexy, creating a vibe that's both sophisticated and safe," the post read. "Big thanks for the love and support that got us here!"

Representatives for Bliss Caribbean Restaurant did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

• Narendra Modi begins third term as India's prime minister after election victory.
• Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party won 240 seats, forming a coalition for a parliamentary majority.
• The swearing-in was held at Rashtrapati Bhavan with regional leaders and high security in New Delhi.

Narendra Modi has been sworn in for a third term as India's prime minister after winning the election but losing a parliamentary majority on Friday.

Modi's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won 240 seats, well short of the 272 required for a majority and far fewer than the record 303 it won in the 2019 election.

Modi, 73, has been forced to form a coalition government as leader of the BJP-led National Democratic Coalition, which together controls 293 seats. The coalition includes several smaller regional parties.

The swearing-in ceremony took place at Rashtrapati Bhavan, the official residence of the Indian president in New Delhi. It was attended by thousands of guests, including the heads of neighboring Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives. Two of India's richest industrialists, Gautam Adani and Mukesh Ambani, were present, as was the Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan.

Tight security was in place in New Delhi with more than 2,500 police officers deployed around the venue and a no-fly zone declared.

Analysts predict that dependence on coalition parties will likely curtail some of the authoritarian leanings of Modi's previous governance, forcing the prime minister to engage in consensus politics.

Gautam Nair, an assistant professor of public policy at Harvard, said that Modi's nationalist message had stopped resonating with voters.

"This election, even if Prime Minister Modi retains power, shows the power of India's democracy," said Rossow.

Here are some of the best pictures from India's historic weekend.

Thousands of people gathered in front of the Presidential Palace

Modi took the oath of office as the country's Prime Minister

Modi signs after taking the oath of office

Modi bowed to the crowd after being sworn in

Fans helped to cool down the onlookers in the Delhi heat

Foreign leaders of neighboring states came to congratulate Modi

Fans of Modi drew pictures of the prime minister to celebrate his third term

Celebrations took place across India over the weekend

• A personality hire is someone who succeeds because of their soft skills.
• AI is thriving on hype (and fear) — and people who are good at creating hype are succeeding.
• Hype men and women and personality hires aren't bad things. In fact, they're necessary.

Of all the world-altering things possible in our new AI era, one decidedly old-fashioned thing is not going anywhere: the personality hire.

A "personality hire" is someone who contributes to a team with soft skills like their dazzling charm. There's a connotation that personality hires might not actually be good at their jobs, that they're just fun to have around the office. But they arguably serve an incredibly important function in the health of an organization.

In the field of AI, it's useful to lightly stretch the definition of "personality hire" to include someone who is really, really good at selling themselves, a product, or simply the idea of AI as this all-powerful entity that will completely change everything about life as we know it, for better or worse (hopefully, for the better if you heed their advice).

They're hype men (or women), you might say. This is because a lot of what's going on with AI right now is hype.

ChatGPT's chief knows how to get his way

The greatest of all these, of course, is Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. This week, Bloomberg Businessweek reported on Altman's rise within Silicon Valley, starting from founding a mediocre social networking app at age 19 to becoming the head of the most exciting company in tech.

Altman founded Loopt, a pre-smartphone social location app in 2007. He charmed and networked with important tech and venture-capital power players, and was personally tapped to be Paul Graham's successor at Y Combinator at age 29. He was a savvy and successful investor (even still, he has personal investments in more than 400 companies, some of which do business with OpenAI, according to The Wall Street Journal, which has raised some eyebrows about conflict of interest) and convinced deep-pocketed friends Reid Hoffman, Peter Thiel, and Elon Musk (now a frenemy) to fund OpenAI as a nonprofit.

By many accounts, Altman is charismatic, good with people, and even better at getting his way. "Altman's biggest strength is figuring out who can help him the most, then dazzling them," someone who worked with Altman told Bloomberg on the Foundering podcast.

Altman is perhaps the most successful personality hire of all time.

This isn't totally groundbreaking (or even insulting to him). Being a successful CEO or a tech founder requires a certain personality type. This doesn't necessarily mean being fun at cocktail parties: Mark Zuckerberg is a ruthless businessperson but, until recently, seemed to have the charisma of a shingles outbreak. It takes Big Personality Hire Energy to muster the straight-faced ambition to say that you need to raise $7 trillion (yes, trillion) dollars.

Altman's talents as an operator also nearly cost him his job. This past November, when Altman was temporarily fired by the board of OpenAI, it was because some board members found him too smooth an operator and distrusted him. That Altman returned as CEO with a new board speaks to his ability to rally powerful allies like Satya Nadella of Microsoft, although he still has rough waters ahead internally.

Sam Altman isn't AI's only 'personality hire'

And then there's Leopold Aschenbrenner, a newly emerged hypeman of AI doomerism. Aschenbrenner, a former OpenAI employee who was reportedly fired for leaking a memo he wrote to the board about safety concerns, published a 165-page manifesto warning about the dangers of unchecked AI. It contains some questionable charts, comparisons to the building of the atomic bomb, and links to a Minecraft video on YouTube.

I don't know if AI will lead to the extinction of the human race or if he's full of smoke. (I sure hope it's not the end of the human race!) Aschenbrenner's warnings have been taken both credulously and skeptically, and I am not in a position to guess how likely it is that we'll soon be in a nuclear war with China over data centers, as he suggests. But there's something about his verbose proclamations that ring to me as hype.

Max Read on Substack has a very astute assessment of the manifesto and how the hyperbole of AI doomerism might be, in some cases, self-serving hype:

What I do know is that the Silicon Valley investor class has become quite contemptuous of Effective Altruism (the school of thought that drove the Future Fund), and highly skeptical and suspicious of the associated focus on existential risk or "x-risk" now that it seems to be a retardant on their ambitions. On the other hand, that same class is quite hawkish on China and bullish on national security businesses and the military-industrial complex. If I were a young and ambitious person whose career so far was largely in "A.I. safety" and other E.A.-associated fields, I might attempt to re-frame my experience and interests as more national-security oriented. And if I were really trying to suck up to reactionary venture capitalists I might also imply that I was unjustly fired over unfair charges of racism by a devious H.R. drone.

While the specifics of this C.V. are credibility-building among Aschenbrenner's target audience (investors and founders in whose companies he'd like to invest, as well as dupes on Twitter who will boost his profile), just as important is the image he fits: Young, prodigious, confident, fast-talking, able to speak fluidly on a range of subjects from geopolitics to epidemiology to chip design. If Aschenbrenner weren't a Zoomer I'd call him a millennial ambition psycho; certainly, he shares with the Ivy League sociopaths of my generation a cloying, manic self-assurance that somehow scans as "genius" to the credulous and the powerful and as "extremely annoying bullshit" to literally anyone else.

And then, tragically, there is the sad tale of the Humane AI Pin. Humane's founders were former Apple employees, incredibly stylish dressers, and produced incredibly cool demo videos that made the product seem amazing. They raised $240 million from investors, including Sam Altman.

When it first started taking preorders, I wrote about how I thought the AI Pin looked awesome and I wanted one — even if I could see how it might be slightly impractical. It was futuristic, fun, and made by really cool and edgy people — the ultimate AI hypesters.

Even with the hype, the AI Pin has flopped

Of course, the AI Pin has been a failure so far. Early reviews were dreadful, sales were far lower than projections, and the company was criticized for launching a half-baked product. This week, they announced a recall on the chargers because there was a danger they could catch on fire. I don't want to laugh (I will not suggest that you just squeeze the AI out of it like Juicero) because I think it's genuinely a huge bummer. I'd love for an ambitious new kind of hardware device to be successful; I'm rooting for that to happen out there in the world because I love cool new gadgets. But this clearly just wasn't it.

At this moment, in June of 2024, everyone knows AI is a "big deal," but most people don't know exactly what that will really mean or look like. This leaves the door wide open for hype purveyors to sell people on its magic and power — or play to their worst fears.

This isn't necessarily bad — hype can be useful just like personality hires in a workplace are useful. And the most beautiful part of all of this? A personality hire is the most human thing — something AI could never replace.

• A study found that implementing a global universal basic income could boost global GDP by 130%.
• Funding a global UBI with a carbon tax would also promote sustainability, the study's authors say.
• Basic income programs gained traction post-pandemic to address high unemployment.

Some might say a universal basic income is wishful thinking, but one study suggests it could have staggering impacts on the global economy.

Researchers behind the newly published study, called "Utilizing basic income to create a sustainable, poverty-free tomorrow," outlined how universal basic income could provide a "two-pronged solution to both environmental sustainability and social resilience" that could grow the global GDP from 39% up to 130%.

Basic income pilots gained popularity after the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused record-high unemployment — nearly 15% — in the United States in early 2020.

Most American programs are guaranteed basic income pilots, which provide a specific demographic of people with a set amount of cash with no strings attached for a predetermined time period. A universal basic income program, or UBI, would provide regular cash payments to everyone.

Rashid Sumaila, the study's primary author at the University of British Columbia, found that a UBI funded by carbon taxes on a global scale would be costly upfront but pay off in spades.

The study said that it could cost a third of global GDP to operate, but would result in an overall increase of the global GDP by as much as 130%.

"I must concede that the US may be the last place to engage with our proposal for all sorts of reasons," Sumaila told Business Insider. "But the situation may not persist forever as there are indications that Gen Z and millennials seem to care relatively more about tackling both climate change and inequality than older Americans."

Basic income pilots in America have met with opposition from conservative lawmakers. One representative in Iowa, which moved to ban such programs, called it "socialism on steroids." In other parts of the world, however, the idea enjoys wide political support. South Africa is on track to be the first country to adopt a universal basic income.

Sumaila and the study's other co-authors focused on funding this global UBI plan through a carbon tax "because of the global push to reduce carbon emissions to reach sustainability goals," the study says. They found that a carbon tax could generate trillions annually, depending on the scale of the flat tax.

"In theory, it is a beautiful idea to use basic income to help people, sustain nature, and boost the economy. It also seems possible to raise a big chunk of the funds needed to do this by taxing C02 emitters, degraders of biodiversity, overfishers, deforesters, plastic polluters, oil spillers, and the agricultural sector," Sumaila told Business Insider.

• Recent photos appeared online showing a US-provided Abrams tank with cages to protect against drones.
• Both sides of the war in Ukraine have been welding cages onto their battle tanks.
• With drones reshaping modern warfare, tanks will need to adapt to survive on future battlefields.

The heavily armored M1 Abrams tank is widely regarded as one of the best and toughest tanks in Ukraine today, but even it can't ride out without cages to shield it from drones.

The overwhelming presence of drones, including ones that fly into military vehicles and explode or burst into flames, has become a defining element of the war in Ukraine, and both sides are working quickly to adapt to this growing threat.

Battle tanks and other armored vehicles, including US-provided Abrams and Bradleys, other Western tanks like the German Leopard, and top Russian tanks like the T-90M, have at times fallen prey to one-way attack drones. In many cases, elite weapons worth millions are being taken out by systems worth only a few hundred dollars.

What started as unusual has become commonplace. Main battle tanks often sport large, welded "cope cages" to stop exploding drones from taking them out. Some have looked crude and ineffective, but more recent models have appeared sturdier, more refined.

The growing consensus is that these cages and defenses like them aren't going anywhere because unmanned systems like those seen in Ukraine are the future of warfare.

"It's absolutely here to stay," Mark Cancian, a retired Marine Corps colonel and a senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said.

"The idea has been around for a little while," he said, calling attention to the US employing cages around its Strykers in Iraq and Afghanistan to protect against enemy rocket-propelled grenades. And now," with the ubiquity of drones, it has gained momentum, and I think is now a permanent part of armored vehicles," he added.

Photos shared online last month showed a US-supplied M1A1 Abrams tank with improvised cages.

Like previously documented examples, the cages look to be built around the sides and top of the turret, giving the tank an exterior defense to protect it from exploding unmanned aerial vehicles, particularly small first-person-view drones.

The recent pictures suggest that even the Abrams, considered the best tank Ukraine's received from its Western allies, needs some extra help to stop drones and other anti-tank weapons, but that's not necessarily a shocking development.

Mick Ryan, a retired Australian major general and strategist following trends in warfare, said that "it shouldn't be surprising that we see a drone cage on an Abrams, just like we see a drone cage on every other tank at this point." He added that when he saw the pictures, he thought, "Well, of course that would happen."

The "Ukrainians," Ryan said, "are smart, they're adaptive, and they're coming up with better ways to protect themselves and maintain combat power." The Ukrainians, notably, aren't the only ones that are adapting, though. The Russians are as well, fielding things like the so-called "turtle tank."

Images of Ukrainian and Russian tanks and armored vehicles with cages have been seen more frequently as first-person-view drone attacks have become more prevalent. Some pictures online back in June 2023 showed a Russian MT-LB and a T-72B tank with a large counter-UAV screen. A video from July captured a Ukrainian M109L SPH with extensive anti-drone cage armor.

And as exploding drones continue to threaten just about anything that moves on the battlefield, the world has seen T-64s, additional T-72s, T-80s, T-90s rocking cages, as well as some Western tanks. In some cases, both sides have also employed electronic warfare devices to jam or disrupt incoming drones. That, too, has come to be considered an important part of the counter-drone fight.

Some cages have appeared more sophisticated than others and proven more effective in combat. Early models looked to only cover specific areas of the vehicles — the top, for example, while the sides and rears were exposed. These cages have also been seen in other conflicts, such as Israel's war in Gaza.

Ukraine's new Abrams tank cage looks like it could be more purposefully designed to add another layer of protection and potentially increase the survivability of the crew.

It's unsurprising to see the designs get better, as both sides seek to innovate and keep their vehicles and crews in battle. "It's been happening throughout the war, they've been responding," Ryan said. "I look at these kind of adaptations, and they're interim steps as we figure out different ways to counter the drone threat."

The netting-like cages that Ukraine and Russia are putting on their tanks and armor appear to be a last-ditch effort against anti-tank missiles and artillery as well. Russia, notably, employed cages before the widespread use of drones to stop US-provided Javelin weapons.

But right now, the drones are by far the greatest threat, and the effects on the battlefield in Ukraine are changing the way many militaries are thinking about warfare.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, the US military was able to adapt to the threat of improvised explosive devices that ravaged the underbellies of vehicles. Now, learning from drone usage in Ukraine to improve the coming Abrams and future Bradley replacement is vital.

Cancian explained that because drones, as well as anti-tank weapons, are going to be a growing and enduring presence in war, cages or protective features similar to them are going to become a permanent part of a vehicle's equipment.

"In the future," he explained, "you'll see either tanks will have it already incorporated, or there will be a standard kit you put on."