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Neuralink, the Elon Musk-founded brain implant startup, on Monday officially announced a $650 million Series E funding round, confirming earlier reports that the Fremont, California-based company was set to close on a massive raise.

The raise, which reportedly values Neuralink at $9 billion, is by far the largest for a startup working on brain-computer interface technology, but comes as funding to neuroscience startups overall is set to rise sharply this year. All told, funding to the broader category of neuroscience startups totaled $896 million last year and is on track to reach $1.4 billion in 2025, Crunchbase data shows.

Neuralink has now raised a total of $1.3 billion since its founding in 2016, Crunchbase data shows. It received its latest backing from Ark Investment Management, DFJ Growth, Founders Fund, G42, Human Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Qatar Investment Authority, Sequoia Capital, Thrive Capital, Valor Equity Partners and Vy Capital, among others.

Its brain implants are designed to treat neurological disorders such as paralysis and blindness. The company said five people with “severe paralysis” are now using Neuralink technology “to control digital and physical devices with their thoughts, marking a profound step toward helping restore independence.”

The company’s brain implant device, which has a chip that processes neural signals that can be transmitted to computers or phones, is entering clinical trials.

While Neuralink is the most well-funded of the group, other companies working on computer-brain interfaces have also raised significant venture backing, a review of Crunchbase data shows.

To illustrate, we put together a curated list of some of the most well-funded companies in the space.

They include Science Corp., which says it’s developing devices “aimed at restoring vision, cognition, and mobility to patients who have lost it.” The Alameda, California-based company announced in April that it had raised $104 million in a round led by Khosla Ventures. (The financing was in the form of a convertible note, according to Crunchbase data). The company has raised a total of $177.3 million since its 2021 inception. Besides Khosla, investors include Artis Ventures, Serafund and Unbound Ventures, among others.

Another example is China’s Stairway Medical, a Neuralink competitor that raised a $48 million Series B funding round in February, reportedly the largest-ever funding round for a startup in the field in that country. It’s unclear how much the company raised in previous venture rounds.

Meanwhile, another Neuralink competitor, Austin, Texas-based Paradromics, announced on June 1 that it had performed its first human surgery using its Connexus Brain-Computer Interface. Paradromics has raised a total of $108.4 million in funding since its 2015 inception, according to Crunchbase data. Investors include Fusion Fund, FJ Labs, 15th Rock, Alpha Edison and DARPA.

Defense tech startup Anduril Industries has raised $2.5 billion in a Series G round of funding, more than doubling its valuation to $30.5 billion post-money, the company’s chairman, Trae Stephens, told Bloomberg TV on Thursday.

Founders Fund, a venture firm where Stephens is also a partner, led the financing.

Stephens told Bloomberg TV that as Anduril continued to grow, it was “really important to shore up the balance sheet and make sure” it had “the ability to deploy capital into these manufacturing and production problem sets that we’re working on.”

Since its 2017 inception, Costa Mesa, California-based Anduril has raised more than $6 billion in funding, per Crunchbase data. Other investors include General Catalyst, Andreessen Horowitz, Valor Equity Partners, BlackRock and Lightspeed Venture Partners.

Founders Fund, which co-led Anduril’s $1.5 billion Series F in July 2024, contributed $1 billion to the latest financing, according to Stephens. He noted that it was the largest check the firm had ever written.

Palmer Luckey co-founded Anduril after being fired from Meta, the company to whom he’d sold his previous startup, Oculus. The two companies have since buried the hatchet, it seems, with Anduril announcing on May 29 that they are working together to build extended reality devices for the U.S. military.

Funding to VC-backed startups in defense — defined here as the industries of military, national security and law enforcement — hit $3 billion in 102 deals last year, per Crunchbase data. That’s only an 11% uptick from 2023, which saw $2.7 billion raised in 100 announced rounds.

With this latest Anduril round alone totaling almost all of last year’s funding to the sector, expect this year to see a significant bump.

Levi’s bought the brand in 2021 and is finally ready to unveil more of its future with a new door in Greenwich, Conn.

Beyond Yoga is stepping out, cutting the ribbon on a bigger store concept in Greenwich, Conn., on Friday and preparing an assortment that really lives up to its name.

It’s Beyond Yoga’s first brick-and-mortar store on the East Coast and a big moment for the brand, which Levi Strauss & Co. bought in 2021 and which is now being prepped for a growth spurt that would put it into direct competition with Lululemon and Athleta at scale.

Leading the way is Nancy Green, who oversaw Athleta as it grew from 39 to 175 stores and has been putting that experience to work since becoming Beyond Yoga’s chief executive officer last year.

Green has been using her own particular blend of art and science to set the brand up for its next step. The arrival in Greenwich, for instance, is no accident. The company knows from its e-commerce business that the greater New York area is its largest market and used that data to guide it to the wealthy enclave.

“There’s a big intuitive piece to this too,” Green told WWD. “There’s the data on where the bulk of our customer fans are currently, and then there’s intuition. Does that make sense? Does that feel right? Because you can go into a market and there’s multiple places you could open. We’re opening in Boston [this year] and we can see where that customer bubble is in the Boston area. And there’s multiple choices where we could go. We’re going to Seaport because we stand there, we watch, we see our customer walking the streets.

“The other piece that’s important is, Does the space feel right? That’s also intuitive,” she said. “Maybe it’s not the right location or you need to wait for the right location. We’re not going to go in just because the data shows us that that’s probably where we should be.”

Both sides of Green’s brain aligned on the Greenwich store, a 2,760-foot-space that also has room to hold events and tap into that “wellness-forward lifestyle” customer the brand targets.

“It’s gorgeous,” Green said. “Light oak floors, very natural elements and a lot of wood, a lot of very organic shapes, curves. The main reason for the larger format is that the line is expanding quite a bit. We needed a larger space to showcase the breadth of the assortment and to really just show the best expression of the brand. We’re also [planning to use] these new spaces as community hubs, whether it’s fitness events that we do in the store, community events, whatever is right for that store. We create very strong local partnerships with various studios.”

The store comes with a new logo and is at the vanguard of a bigger rollout — both in retail and in terms of Beyond Yoga’s assortment, which all includes or ties back to its signature Spacedye fabric.

While the 20-year-old business has long had workout-ready gear and dresses, the collection has been growing rapidly lately. Puffer jackets were added last year. In August, the assortment reaches out more with wide-leg bottoms, vegan leather, sweaters, cashmere wool blends, varsity-inspired prep looks, styles for the trail and more.

Beyond Yoga is done tiptoeing and is going even further beyond yoga with more looks that work from the studio to work to the street to the airport and everywhere else.

“First and foremost, we are a lifestyle brand that serves an active woman and man’s lifestyle,” Green said. “So we think about what are the things that they do? What do they need? Well, it starts with the activities that they do.”

With the Greenwich opening, Beyond Yoga has eight doors and is expanding to 14 by the end of the year. Earlier this year Green said the brand could have “at least 200 stores” over time.

“This is our 2.0 in stores,” Green said of the Greenwich location. “This is a new concept. We are going to test it and we are going to nail it. We have to iterate and tweak some things as we learn and then we nail it and then we scale it. So test, iterate, nail it and scale it.”

Tehran wants to bolster military capacity amid contentious nuclear talks with U.S.

Key Points

Iran has ordered thousands of tons of ballistic-missile ingredients from China, people familiar with the transaction said, seeking to rebuild its military prowess as it discusses the future of its nuclear program with the U.S.

Shipments of ammonium perchlorate are expected to reach Iran in coming months and could fuel hundreds of ballistic missiles, the people said. Some of the material would likely be sent to militias in the region aligned with Iran, including Houthis in Yemen, one of the people said.

Iran wants to bolster regional allies and rebuild its arsenal while it pushes deeper into contentious talks with the Trump administration over its nuclear program. Iran has continued to expand its stockpiles of uranium enriched to just below weapons grade and ruled out negotiating limits on its missile program.

President Trump said he discussed the negotiations in a call with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. “Time is running out on Iran’s decision pertaining to nuclear weapons,” Trump wrote Wednesday in a social-media post.

An Iranian entity called Pishgaman Tejarat Rafi Novin Co. ordered the missile ingredients in the past few months from Hong Kong-based Lion Commodities Holdings Ltd., people familiar with the order said.

Lion Commodities director Nelson Barba didn’t respond to a request for comment. Pishgaman couldn’t be reached for comment.

Iran’s mission to the United Nations didn’t respond to a request for comment. A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said China wasn’t aware of the contract.

“The Chinese side has always exercised strict control over dual-use items in accordance with China’s export control laws and regulations and its international obligations,” the spokesperson said.

Iran has been looking for ways to rebuild its so-called Axis of Resistance network of militias after Israel pummeled Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza and the Assad regime fell in Syria. U.S. and Israeli strikes on the Houthis damaged the group’s capabilities, though they still threaten Israel.

Iran recently transferred ballistic missiles to Shia militia groups in Iraq, who could target Israel and U.S. forces in the region they have previously attacked, the people confirmed. The missile transfers were previously reported by the Times of London.

After the U.S. in 2020 killed Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, Iraqi Shia groups fired at least a dozen ballistic missiles at the U.S. Al Asad air base in the country.

Iran has one of the biggest ballistic missile programs in the region, U.S. officials have said. Ammonium perchlorate, an oxidizer used in fireworks, is essential to the solid propellant used in Iran’s most effective ballistic missiles.

Earlier this year, two Iranian ships docked in China were loaded with more than 1,000 tons of sodium perchlorate, a precursor for producing ammonium perchlorate. The material was delivered to Iranian ports in mid-February and late March, according to shipping trackers. The sodium perchlorate was enough to fuel around 260 short-range missiles, officials said.

The new, larger contract for ammonium perchlorate could be enough for Iran to produce 800 missiles, one official said. The contract was signed months ago, likely before Trump said he had proposed nuclear talks to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in early March.

The U.S. Treasury on April 29 sanctioned six people and six entities based in Iran and China for their role in “procuring ballistic missile propellant ingredients,” including sodium perchlorate, for Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Two weeks later, it added sanctions on Chinese and Hong Kong entities and people for aiding Iran’s ballistic missile industry.

Treasury in May added sodium perchlorate to the list of materials it says are being used for Iran’s military, nuclear or ballistic missile programs. “Chinese entities and individuals have provided support to Iran’s ballistic missile program, as well as to the Houthis’ missile and UAV production efforts, which is why we continue to identify and sanction them,” a State Department official said.

In November 2022, U.S. naval forces said they intercepted a vessel in the Gulf of Oman carrying over 70 tons of ammonium perchlorate on a route commonly used by Iran to send weapons to the Houthis in Yemen.

srael severely damaged Iran’s ability to produce new solid propellant missiles in October by taking out around a dozen so-called planetary mixers, used to blend components for the missiles.

Iran has started to repair the mixers, one official said. That means much of the material imported from China could remain in Iran but some is expected to be sent to militia including the Houthis, the official said.

Iran likely needs material from abroad to avoid bottlenecks in its domestic production capabilities, said Fabian Hinz, a military analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Storing the combustible material creates risks. An April explosion at the Shahid Rajaee port, which handles most of Iran’s container trade, killed dozens of people, state media said. The explosion was the result of mishandling of explosive material by a unit of the IRGC’s Quds Force. At least some of the sodium perchlorate imported from China earlier this year was lost in the explosion, one official said.

“These substances are a major fire and explosive hazard,” Hinz said. “Iran’s defense industrial complex does not have a strong track record in ensuring safety standards.”

Last month, Iran’s customs authorities issued an order to accelerate the clearing of “hazardous materials” through customs.

Plan would allocate billions in funding toward major space exploration effort and the International Space Station

Senate Republicans are working on a plan that would shield some NASA programs from large cuts proposed by the White House.

Officials have discussed directing $10 billion toward programs facing funding reductions, lawmakers said Thursday, confirming an earlier report from The Wall Street Journal. The reductions were proposed in the White House’s recent budget request, which would reduce the agency’s annual funding by about 25%.

One program is designed to build a rocket, called the Space Launch System, that would start missions for NASA’s flagship Artemis exploration effort. That program seeks to return American astronauts to the lunar surface as soon as 2027.

The funding would also support the International Space Station, the more than two decade-old facility where U.S. astronauts conduct scientific research.

NASA is rudderless at the moment, caught between President Trump and Elon Musk’s fraying relationship—and competing priorities between the White House and some Republican lawmakers about the agency’s direction.

It isn’t clear who will lead NASA after Trump abruptly withdrew support for his previous nominee, Jared Isaacman, the entrepreneur who twice flew to orbit with Musk’s SpaceX. Trump has said he plans to name a new nominee soon.

Janet Petro, NASA’s acting administrator since January, in an internal message sent Monday encouraged staff to stay focused on the agency’s mission, according to a copy viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Many NASA employees were stunned by Isaacman’s dismissal. Others are apprehensive about a White House budget proposal that would allocate about $19 billion for NASA for the government’s next fiscal year, down from nearly $25 billion currently.

If passed by Congress, the budget would prompt layoffs at the agency and reduce funding for the space station. It looks to impose big cuts to science programs and unwind the current setup of Artemis.

Artemis is underpinned by a slate of rockets and spacecraft that contractors are building for NASA. Those include the Boeing-developed Space Launch System rocket, and Orion, a crew ship built by Lockheed Martin.

In a budget document released in May, the White House called for phasing out the “grossly expensive and delayed Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion capsule after three flights” and moving to use commercially available vehicles.

NASA conducted the first Artemis flight, an uncrewed test mission, using SLS and Orion in 2022, and wants to mount a mission with astronauts early next year.

Congressional lawmakers have said the SLS rocket is essential for returning NASA astronauts to the lunar surface before China does so. Others have worried about upending work that has been under way for years at NASA.

SpaceX’s Starship is part of NASA’s Artemis program, but the company has been largely emphasizing its own plan to try to mount missions to Mars.

Musk has for decades wanted to send humans to the red planet, and brought that dream to the president. He had told Trump that sending people to Mars would distinguish the president’s legacy, The Wall Street Journal has reported.

Trump mentioned the idea of a crewed mission to Mars in his inaugural address, and his budget proposal for the next government fiscal year proposes new funding to try to make that a reality.

On Thursday, Trump said in a post on Truth Social that the government could save money by terminating contracts with Musk’s businesses. SpaceX is a major contractor at NASA, and frequently launches payloads for the Pentagon.

“Go ahead, make my day,” Musk said about Trump’s post. SpaceX is currently the only U.S. company regularly transporting astronauts to and from the International Space Station.

An advocacy organization called Giant Leap for America on Thursday debuted television commercials for the Washington metropolitan area portraying the U.S. in a race to return astronauts to the moon before China. The ads encouraged viewers to urge senators to fund the Artemis program.

What Musk and Trump Risk Losing in Their High-Stakes Breakup

The billionaires’ battle royal could exact steep costs to their empires

Key Points

The aftermath of Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s showstopping breakup raises the question: Who has the most to lose?

In one of the most consequential moments, Trump threatened to pull billions of dollars in federal contracts from Musk’s companies. If that happened, it would ripple across Musk’s business empire, including SpaceX, which launches astronauts for NASA and satellites for the Pentagon.

Underneath the drama is genuine political and financial risk for both billionaires.

Tesla, the electric-vehicle company that Musk helms as CEO, lost $152.4 billion of market value Thursday—the biggest one-day decline in its capitalization in the company’s history. Trump can’t lose more than three votes from Republican House members or his “big, beautiful bill” will be derailed. Members of the House Freedom Caucus have already been difficult to corral, airing concerns about the bill’s contributions to the deficit, the same argument Musk has made against it.

Here’s what’s at stake:

Musk, the CEO of Tesla, SpaceX and xAI, has billions of dollars in government contracts and is pushing for changes to federal regulations to deliver on his promise to investors that he will transform Tesla into an AI and robotics giant worth trillions of dollars.

Trump threatened to terminate government contracts with Musk’s companies on Thursday—an idea the president’s allies have been pushing since the SpaceX CEO started attacking Trump’s cornerstone legislative bill earlier this week, according to a person close to the president.

Musk’s SpaceX has worked closely with the government for years, building close connections with the Pentagon, the intelligence community and NASA. The company frequently blasts off military payloads, and NASA is largely beholden to SpaceX for some of its most high-profile missions.

An administration official said Musk will find it extremely difficult to find a sympathetic voice in the Trump administration now.

To roll out a nationwide fleet of self-driving cars, Tesla needs regulatory changes at the federal level, which he has been pushing for. Currently, states control whether self-driving vehicles operate on public roads.

In April, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy visited Tesla’s headquarters in Austin. “We’re here in Austin, Texas, at the Tesla factory with Elon Musk, the great,” Duffy said in a video posted on X. “Obviously, it would be wonderful for the United States to have a national set of rules for autonomous driving,” Musk said in the video.

Tesla is expected to roll out its first taxi service powered by self-driving cars in Austin later this month, as it gears up to compete with Waymo.

Musk has long blamed regulatory hurdles for the company’s inability to roll out autonomous driving features. Many of Tesla’s investments in self-driving cars and humanoid robots are fueled by Tesla sales, which have fallen sharply in the U.S. and across Europe in recent months as Musk and Trump’s relationship grew closer.

A bigger blow to Tesla could come from White House efforts to weaken fuel economy and emissions rules. Tesla earns hundreds of millions of dollars every quarter from regulatory credit sales to rival carmakers who need to buy them to avoid fines for exceeding tailpipe emissions caps. Last month, Congress voted to eliminate California’s ability to set its own limits on tailpipe emissions, effectively killing one of the biggest drivers of EV investment in the U.S.

SpaceX works hand-in-glove with the U.S. government across multiple contracts worth billions and billions of dollars. Several government agencies use its Falcon rockets, in-orbit space vehicles and Starlink, a network of more than 7,500 internet satellites that has also drawn attention for its role supporting Ukraine’s battle against Russia.

SpaceX needs air-safety regulators to review its flight plans and environmental agencies help regulate company plans for launch sites. In April, it landed a $5.9 billion contract to launch national-security payloads for the military.

Musk’s company is the only U.S. space firm regularly transporting astronauts to and from the International Space Station. In 2022, NASA awarded SpaceX five more crewed space-station flights, bringing the company’s total contract for such operations to nearly $5 billion.

SpaceX is also a big part of NASA’s flagship human-exploration program, with about $4 billion in contracts to develop its Starship vehicle for future astronaut visits to the moon. NASA picked SpaceX to work on a spacecraft that would allow it to safely deorbit the space station in 2030—a deal worth up to $843 million.

SpaceX has struck agreements with U.S. spy agencies, too, including a $1.8 billion classified deal with the National Reconnaissance Office, an agency that operates surveillance satellites.

Musk had looked likely to win more significant deals under the Trump administration. SpaceX, working with two others, wants in on the president’s missile-defense program called Golden Dome for America.

Trump has pushed his entire legislative agenda into one massive bill, a mix of tax cuts, funding for the border and cuts to programs such as Medicaid and food stamps. The bill narrowly passed the house by a vote of 215-214 and is now working its way through the Senate before it will be voted on again by the House. Musk’s opposition to the legislation could derail it.

Musk said the bill would add $2.5 trillion to the federal deficit, calling it a “disgusting abomination” and threatening to fire politicians “who betrayed the American people.” His arguments could resonate with deficit-minded lawmakers.

The billionaire could also tap the massive war chest he used to support Trump in last year’s election, funding primaries against lawmakers who support the bill, or putting his money to work in more subtle ways to sway Republicans to vote against the bill. Musk donated more than $250 million toward re-electing Trump, and said Thursday that Trump would have lost the election without his support. “Such ingratitude,” he posted on X, the social-media platform he owns.

As legislators tried to parse the vitriolic rhetoric Thursday, most Republicans still appeared to be galvanized behind the president. But Musk only needs to pull away a handful of dissenters.

White House aides said they feel Musk’s broadsides against Trump would weaken those Republicans who had initially viewed the billionaire’s comments about the bill as helpful to their cause. The thinking is that Trump voters will, as they have time and again, rally to the side of the president.

Musk has received public support from only three House Republicans, including Reps. Thomas Massie (R., Ky.) and Warren Davidson (R., Ohio), who previously voted against the bill. Rep. David Schweikert, an Arizona Republican who missed the first vote, told The Wall Street Journal on Thursday that he wants “multiple changes” to the bill before he will support it.

“Is this the moment where Republicans and everyone in the country start to understand the threat and the scale of financing this debt?” said Schweikert, who is seen as vulnerable in the midterm elections next year. On the debt, he said: “Musk is absolutely right.”

A senior Republican member of the House Financial Services Committee said that Musk’s comments aren’t helpful in trying to pass Trump’s bill. He added the argument with the president will likely have negative residual effects on Musk’s relationship with Republican lawmakers.

Longer term, a permanent split between Musk and Trump could hurt Republicans’ chance at maintaining their razor-thin majority in the House in the 2026 midterm elections given the importance of having the support of the businessman’s massive following on X for the GOP to pick up wins in the midterms.

On Thursday, Musk mused about starting a new political party, asking his 220.5 million followers on X if they would support creating one. By Thursday night, more than 81% of the roughly 3.5 million respondents were in favor.

Technological advances give threadbare militaries and rebel fighters the ability to strike stunning blows against stronger forces

Key Points

What's This?

Ukraine’s drone attack on Russia highlights the growing threat of low-cost, high-tech strikes in modern warfare.

Cheap commercial drones enable smaller militaries to achieve significant returns, as demonstrated by Ukraine’s successful attacks.

The conflict underscores the need for rapid innovation and adaptation in military technology and tactics among Western powers.

Ukraine’s audacious drone attack wounded and embarrassed Moscow, but it also exposed a threat to Kyiv’s Western allies: Low-cost, high-tech strikes can deliver an increasingly potent punch to even the most heavily defended world powers.

Inexpensive drones such as those Kyiv used to attack dozens of Russian warplanes parked at airfields far from Ukraine on Sunday have become a cornerstone of what strategists call asymmetric warfare, where two sides square off with mismatched military power, resources or approaches. For years, the U.S. and its partners in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization prevailed in that imbalance thanks to their wealth and advanced technologies.

Now, a combination of technological advances and innovation-spawning armed conflicts has flipped the equation, leaving Washington and its allies behind on developments. For military commanders, the pace of change has meant an upheaval on a scale unseen since World War II.

“We’re going to have to be more agile. Drones are going to constantly change,” U.S. Army chief of staff Gen. Randy George told a conference on Monday. Ukraine’s attack was “a really good example of just how quickly technology is changing the battlefield,” he said.

Thanks to cheap commercial drones and other digital devices, rebels, terrorist organizations and threadbare militaries like Ukraine’s can achieve returns on military investments of a scale almost unimaginable a few years ago.

Ukraine said it launched 117 small drones in Sunday’s attacks on four Russian bases. The drones it employed sell for about $2,000 apiece. Even including the operation’s other expenses, Kyiv still probably spent well under $1 million to destroy aircraft that would cost well over $1 billion to replace—something Russia has little ability to do in the near future.

Kyiv amplified the impact through propaganda, releasing video images of the attack hours after it was carried out. The ease with which information spreads online now gives covert operations a potentially destabilizing element of psychological warfare previously impossible on a global scale.

Widespread deployment of dual-use technologies—including commercial drones and networking software similar to that used by ride-sharing services—has played a big role in allowing Ukraine to thwart Russia’s initial large-scale invasion in 2022 and hold on against a much larger military power.

Some of what the Ukrainians have learned was on display in the recent attack. Kyiv’s spy agency was able to execute the covert operation largely thanks to their grasp of the latest developments in military uses of civilian technologies, such as apparently using public cellphone networks to guide drones.

During the war, both Russia and Ukraine have made leaps in drone design, defenses against them and electronic warfare. That face-off has presented other countries with a case study in the intensity—technological and military—of future conflicts.

“We are trying to learn every single lesson that can possibly be learned about modern warfighting and how quickly it can evolve and how we must innovate and be technologically nimble to address those threats that evolve over time,” said U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker on Wednesday.

The Army plans a massive increase in its use of drones, part of a broader shift in the Pentagon from large, expensive systems. The U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan deployed with great effect sophisticated uncrewed aircraft including the RQ-4 Global Hawk—which has a wingspan similar to a Boeing 737 passenger jet—and the MQ-9 Reaper, which can launch rockets designed for use by jet fighters. Both cost millions of dollars per aircraft. Now the U.S. is rolling out a fast-changing array of smaller, expendable units and applying lessons from attacks like Ukraine’s.

“It’s another example of how warfighting technology continues to advance and evolve, allowing armies to reach deeper with offensive capabilities, reducing an adversary’s critical assets, and reducing the cost curve of deterrence,” said Army Gen. Christopher Donahue, commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa, who is helping lead the change.

Similar efforts are under way across NATO countries, including Germany, Europe’s largest economy but long home to one of the alliance’s slowest-changing armed forces. German Chief of Defense Carsten Breuer, the country’s highest-ranking military officer, said that a pivotal lesson of the war in Ukraine is the need to speed up and shorten the innovation cycle.

“In Ukraine they have a direct link between industry and the front line,” he said in an interview. “We have to do this without having a front line.” He said that in late March the German military decided to acquire a type of drone, and that the so-called loitering munitions should be deployed with troops by year-end, marking a dramatic acceleration.

But procurement and distribution are only a start. Ukraine’s attack also showed advances in operations and military tactics.

Irregular warfare is hardly new. Though the Ukraine war is highlighting how armies can use technological advances and covert operations to get a leg up on more powerful opponents, terrorists and other rebel groups have for years employed such tactics against their enemies.

The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were the most extreme example of irregular, asymmetric warfare: They had historic repercussions at minimal financial cost for the organizers. Even so, they required suicidal assailants. Drones and other new technologies allow potentially massive impact for attackers who remain anonymous and out of danger.

“What it comes down to is, how can we remove the human and let a piece of technology do it instead?” said Mike Monnik, chief executive of DroneSec, a threat-intelligence company tracking drone attacks worldwide. Ukraine’s strikes are part of a worldwide trend, said Monnik.

Among the first fighters to turn commercial drones into weapons were Islamic State forces in Iraq, roughly a decade ago. Early in its attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas sent slow, inexpensive drones to neutralize Israel’s sophisticated automated guard towers along its border with Gaza. Houthi rebels in Yemen have used relatively simple uncrewed systems to inflict costly damage on world shipping and Western navies.

Many more drone attacks go unnoticed. In Myanmar, rebels modified a $600 agricultural drone bought on Alibaba with unguided rockets, making it “almost a miniature attack helicopter,” and a criminal gang in Israel exploded a drone packed with explosives outside the 13th-floor window of a rival gang leader in an assassination attempt, Monnik said.

Ukraine used comparable innovation with the added twist of quickly posting videos as evidence of success for maximum international impact.

“It really is that psychological element,” said Monnik of the videos. The goal is to rally support for Ukraine’s cause and to scare Russia into thinking, “now we need to search every truck or protect every air base” because no target is out of the small systems’ reach, he said.

Advanced wireless technology doesn’t only benefit underdogs. Israel last year carried out hugely sophisticated covert attacks on Hezbollah militants in Lebanon by detonating explosives hidden in their walkie-talkies and pagers. It triggered the explosions remotely.