Peter Zeihan, Author at Zeihan on Geopolitics

The Future of Drone Tech: Ukraine’s Innovation

Camo clad man flying a drone outdoors | License by Envato Elements

The U.S. has finally secured its first contract to manufacture Ukrainian-designed drones, but don’t go celebrating quite yet.

The F10 drone that will be produced is a small FPV quadcopter built entirely from non-Chinese components. This is a big step for the U.S., but it’s not nearly the crème de la crème of Ukrainian tech.

The facility where these drones will be made is yet to be built, so even this initial order of 2,000 drones will take several years to complete. Regardless, this is a step in the right direction that will hopefully lead to further cooperation down the road.

Hey all. Peter Zeihan here. Coming to you from Colorado. Today is the 1st of July and the news is good news. We have our first contract granted by the Department of Defense to have a US manufacturer produce Ukrainian drones under license. There’s not a lot of information out at this point. It’s all super secret, but I’ll share what I know and give you a couple of guesses based on what we know what that means.

So step one, the American company involved is called Ukrainian Defense Drones. Catchy name. And the Ukrainian company on the other side is called F drones. F drones is one of the big boys in Ukraine for producing ever more innovative policies and doctrines and designs and getting them to the front their F7 drone from last year, 2025, yeah, was basically voted the drone of the year for how good it was against emplacements and vehicles.

The new drone that the United States is going to be producing is called the F10. We know it’s 100% non-Chinese parts, and aside from that, we just know that the ten means it’s ten inches across, which means it’s a quadcopter and it is a first person drone. So you’re going to have a dude with a controller relatively close to the front line that suggests from its size that it has some range limitations, probably only 25 to 40km, and it probably can only carry a warhead that’s 3 or 4 kilos.

That’s probably not enough to take out a tank, but more than enough to wreck the day of, say, an artillery crew and go after personnel or trucks. That’s the good news. The bad news is there’s no sign at the moment that the F10 is one of the drones that has the terminal guidance that the Ukrainians have been starting to introduce across the front and across the entire drone fleet this past year. Those are the things that load a decision into the drone, so that when it gets over its target area, it can actually look around and pick a target for itself. And once it does that, it can’t be jammed. Now, this is just a contract. It’s part of the American program to try to get 200,000 drones in active service before the end of 2027, just next year.

But this is going to be a late bloomer in that, because the facility that has been tagged to build these drones in Ohio hasn’t begun construction yet. We only got go ahead for the construction last week, and they’re not expecting to finish construction until December of 2029. So three and a half years from now, and then they’ll start building out the first packet of drones.

And they’ve only ordered 2000 of them and at a rate of, say, 650 to $700. You know, these just aren’t particularly sophisticated drones, which is fine. The key thing is that for the first time, we have a direct contract from DoD for Ukrainian equipment, which is something we’ve been desperately to get in this country. I would argue, even though all of our Western allies and Middle Eastern allies are way ahead of us on this front, because they know they can’t rely on American hardware, there’s a lot of things can still go wrong.

For example, the reason we don’t have a contract until now is that Donald Trump personally despises President Zelensky of Ukraine. And it’s entirely possible at this moment that Trump is unaware that this contract even exists. And as soon as he finds out, he may well squash it. But hopefully it is the first of several thousand contracts to come that it would allow the United States to take advantage of the war zone in Ukraine, to help test an entirely new set of weapon systems and take advantage of the Ukrainian skill sets, which were by far the most advanced in the world when it comes to the designing and the use and the development of doctrine for these new types of hardware. Early days. Once this facility is constructed, it’s supposed to be producing a wide variety of defense equipment, of which Ukrainian drones are just one tiny little piece. So it’s a step in the right direction regardless. And I just hope that’s a small step all around a very long path of tighter partnership.

That’s probably just wishful thinking from me, but at least we have the first step.

Why Nobody Came to Help the U.S. in Iran

Toy Tank Atop Iranian Currency and Flag | Licensed by Envato Elements: https://app.envato.com/search/photos/3abc94ac-73db-4912-ae0d-3e507dd11191?itemType=photos&term=iran+war

Despite the large rolodex of U.S. allies, nobody has pulled up to the Persian Gulf to support the U.S. There are several reasons for this, though.

Part of the post-WWII deal was that the U.S. would provide global maritime protection, so nobody else had to; as a result, few powers could help out, even if they wanted to (like Japan, the UK, and France). It doesn’t help that the U.S. launched this operation without consulting anybody, but even if they had, most allies wouldn’t touch a Persian Gulf conflict with a ten-foot pole.

Hey everybody. Peter Zeihan here coming to you from Colorado. Today we’re taking a question from the Patreon crowd, specifically considering how dependent countries like to Pan and the countries of Europe are upon energy imports, specifically from the Persian Gulf. How come they haven’t been helping out with the conflict? Well, let’s look at it. First of all, not a lot of countries maintain naval forces that are capable of rapid projection.

You basically have them on a degree of standby until something big happens and then everything has to be spun up. So, for example, unless you’re the United States very special case, everybody’s navies are pretty much limited to coastal patrol. So if you do have a long range ship, it’s probably just sitting in dock until it’s needed. And then it’s going to take a few weeks to a few months to get it ready to go.

That’s one. Number two. The deal that we struck with everybody at the end of World War two was that we will patrol the global oceans and keep the ceilings open for everyone. If in exchange, you allow us to control your security policies. And part of us controlling your security policies is we don’t want you to have any long range power projection, because if you have a long range power projection, you’re going to use your long range power projection.

You might use it in ways that we don’t want. So with the exception of Japan, which is an island nation and has the second largest navy in the world, and the United Kingdom, which has a bit of an imperial hangover, the only other country in the world that maintains really any long range capability that’s independent is France, and that specifically.

So it has an independent capacity. So really we’re talking here about three countries. No one else could have even helped if they had wanted to. Which brings us to number three a burden sharing intelligence, sharing whatever you want to call it on February 11th. Netanyahu, Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, came to the white House, made a pitch to Trump for the United States and Israel to jointly attack Iran.

He said the war would be over in four days. We can kill the leadership because you know where they are. There will be a revolution. They’ll probably rename the capital to Trump Obelisk, and you will go down as the bravest and most capable American president in history, and you will do something that all the cowards before you refused to do.

And Trump looked around the room and everyone who knew something about foreign policy, for example, Secretary of State Rubio and the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dean Cain said, Mr. President, this is an horrible idea. We’ve been hearing some version of this for 30 years, specifically from Netanyahu, who has tried to convince multiple American presidents to fight his war.

For him, the math never checks out. The Strait of Hormuz will be wrecked. But, Mr. President, it’s your call. And then the people who knew nothing about foreign policy, notably Pete Hegseth at defense, said, do it.

The carrier sailed later that day. So normally when the United States goes to war, we compare intelligence with our allies. That never happened this time. And we now know, even from within the white House four months later, that there wasn’t any intelligence. This was just a pitch deck from Netanyahu, who has been chomping at the bit to get the United States to fight his war for a long time.

So normally we’d like consult with NATO, especially with the Japanese and the Brits, and we’d arrange for a coalition to put at least a veneer of internationalism on top of whatever it was that we felt we needed to do. None of that happened. So the war began a couple of weeks later. Just just the amount of time that it took to sail to get there.

And then about in week four of the war, when the Trump administration realized it wasn’t going well, which was difficult because DoD was only showing him like strike footage, because any time they tried to give him an accurate assessment of how this was not going well, he’d kick him out of the room. Well, by four weeks on, it was starting to come at him from all angles that it wasn’t going well.

And that is when he started yelling at the allies to send forces. But as I’ve mentioned, no one else has forces to send, and the few that might certainly in a hot situation are not going to be sending things through Suez. So even if like, say, the French and the Brits had snapped to at that instant, unlikely they would have needed a month or two to get their forces ready to deploy, and it would have been over another month before they would have actually arrived.

And in the meantime, you know, Iran went the way Iran did. And we’re now in a situation where we get final point is that nobody outside of Trump and Netanyahu wanted this war in the first place. We now know unequivocally that Iran’s drones are more than capable of taking out every piece of physical infrastructure throughout the Persian Gulf, which can trigger a global energy induced depression.

We now know that their monitoring of the entirety of the Strait of Hormuz is strong enough that they can even take occasional shots at ships that are hugging Omani waters on the southern side of the strait. And really, even with the US Navy concentrated on the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf, there’s not a lot it can do, because if those ships stay still, then they become targets to.

So we’re in this never ending negotiation where negotiations aren’t actually happening. Because this is just horrible. Normally when you’re having a real negotiation, you have your headliners who do the real talks and what are called technical folks do the technical talks so that when the headliners show up, there are only real things to discuss.

Well, Trump has shut the Department of State to the side and refuses to deal with that at all. Even that’s where most of the policy experts are.

He made Secretary of State Rubio be in charge of all that because he doesn’t like Rubio either. So all you Rubio fans who think that he might be the successor to MAGA, think again. He also doesn’t like the National Security Council. That does kind of have all the deep thinking as opposed to the diplomacy.

Not so it could be more efficient in the way that Kissinger did it, but to shove it all to the side. So there were no negotiations with the allies on the front end, and there’s no technical talks happening with the Iranians on the back end. So the last time that Trump’s preferred negotiators, Jared Kushner and Steve Whitcomb, went to Doha this past week, they got to Doha and the Iranians like, yeah, not this week.

We have technical talks to do. And so there’s still nothing happening. There have been no technical talks since this whole thing started in February. Anyway. If you’re an ally and you’re looking at this, you’re like, why would I develop a military capability that the United States has until now, said I should not have in order to use it to prosecute a war that hurts my economy.

And then we are at the mercy of a diplomatic situation that doesn’t have diplomats. So, yeah, no, the allies haven’t done anything here that is untoward. We’re just in a bit of a trap caused by a man who refuses to surround himself with anyone but sycophants and is very, very easy to manipulate so long as you’re willing to lie to him, which is not what a good ally does.

All right, that’s it for me. Until next time.

A Canadian Pipe(line) Dream

The Canadians are fed up with being dependent on U.S. markets for their oil exports. So, they’re looking to diversify their export options.

The Canadian government has backed a pipeline project that would allow Alberta’s oil to reach overseas markets. With global demand rising, this project makes a lot of sense, but there are a few problems. No export terminal has been selected since all the potential sites face significant logistical challenges, and even on the most optimistic timelines, construction wouldn’t be completed until 2034.

Hey everybody. Peter Zeihan here, coming to you from Colorado. And today we’re going to talk about energy in Canada. Most of the energy production in Canada comes from the province of Alberta. And most of that is heavy, sour crude that has a limited market in the wider world. At the moment, most of it is transported by a combination of pipe and rail to the United States, specifically to refineries in the American mid-continent and down into Texas that were designed to run on heavy sludge.

Most advanced refineries in the world, some of the worst crude in the world. However, Canada has always been frustrated. Alberta has always been frustrated with the price that they get because when you sell primarily via pipeline into a closed market, you’re kind of a price taker. And so there have been a number of times where while Burton Crude has sold it not just a discount, but sometimes like $25 a barrel.

That’s before we have the diplomatic falling out between the Canadians and the Trump administration. And now Canadian-American relationships are at the worst since the arguably the War of 1812. So the Canadians are desperate to find any other outlet. The problem is, is that Alberta is landlocked, and not anybody else really wants Albertan crude, because they would have to retool the refineries.

But there’s there’s a definitely beggars can’t be choosers situation going on in the world right now because with the Persian Gulf still majority offline and Russian crude and danger in Venezuelan crude questionable, any fresh crude source, no matter what it is or where it is, we’ll find a buyer if you can get the crude to them. So. Just last week, Prime Minister Kearney of Canada has dusted off a plan and says that there is now state backing for a 35 to $45 billion pipeline that will export crude from Alberta to the west coast of Canada in British Columbia, and then allow it to be sold wherever it happens to be.

Now, there is already one of those pipelines in place, the Trans Mountain. It’s less than a million barrels a day. This new one is intended to be even bigger. But aspirations do not make policy, even though it has been announced by the Prime Minister. At the moment there is not a route. They have tried six different ports where this might technically be done.

None of them worked out, so they just have a placeholder of a place called Delta, which is just to the south southeast of Vancouver. So if you were to export the Delta, you’d have to actually run the pipeline through the most densely populated part of British Columbia, including Vancouver proper, which is not exactly a conservative bastion. All that to get to a port that is not deep enough to handle a fully loaded supertanker.

So at the moment they don’t have a port, they don’t have a destination. What they do have a state backing. And since you’ve got a prime minister who used to be a central bank chief who’s pretty good at the math, this is going to move a lot faster than previous projects, but they still have to worry about all the niggling details about how to get it to wherever they’re going to get it.

This is still early stages. Best case scenario, they hope to begin construction in 2027. Best case scenario, they hope to finish construction by 2034. So if everything goes perfectly, this is an issue for the middle of next decade. Until then, Albertan crude stays mostly trapped within North America with all the negatives that come from that. And now I think you might be seeing why the Albertans keep talking about independence, because if they can get a different relationship with the United States, then all of a sudden a lot of that mechanical stuff just disappears.

Anyway, that’s it for now. Take care.

The U.S. and Ukraine Make a Drone Deal