Historian Roel Konijnendijk reviews ancient warfare scenes and battle tactics in movies and TV shows.
He looks at the naval battle and gladiator fights depicted in "Gladiator II," starring Paul Mescal, Pedro Pascal, and Denzel Washington. He talks about how armies would signal attacks in season two of "House of the Dragon," starring Matt Smith, Emma D'Arcy, and Olivia Cooke. He breaks down the many siege warfare methods in "Prince of Persia," starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Ben Kingsley, and Gemma Arterton; and season two of "The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power." He discusses the purposes behind cavalry charges in "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King," starring Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, and Viggo Mortensen; and "Kingdom of Heaven," starring Orlando Bloom, Liam Neeson, and Edward Norton. He explains the ancient Greek shock tactics in "300: Rise of an Empire," starring Eva Green and Lena Headey. He points out how line formations operate in "Rome," starring Tobias Menzies and Kerry Condon. Finally, he examines the strengths and weaknesses of Kublai Khan's army in "Marco Polo," starring Benedict Wong.
Roel Konijnendijk is a historian of ancient warfare at Lincoln College, University of Oxford. He specializes in classical Greek warfare.
You can find Roel on social media here on Bluesky or X (formerly Twitter).
Ukrainian soldiers fire D-30 artillery in the direction of Toretsk.
Diego Herrera Carcedo/Anadolu via Getty Images
A top analyst said Ukraine's decision to create new brigades instead of bolstering existing ones isn't working.
Many of the new units are now being divided up and sent to existing brigades that need replenishment.
It's turning out to be "one of the more puzzling force management choices" Kyiv has made, the analyst said.
Ukraine's 2024 strategy for solving a shortage of soldiers β its biggest challenge thus far β by forming new brigades instead of reinforcing old ones is performing poorly, said a top analyst on the war.
Michael Kofman, a senior fellow for the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote in a social media thread on Saturday that Kyiv's decision was "one of the more puzzling force management choices" it has made.
"Expanding the force with new brigades, when men are desperately needed to replace losses among experienced formations deployed on the front lines, had visible tradeoffs," Kofman wrote.
With little experience, the new units have been "generally combat ineffective," he added.
'"As was seen in 2023, new formations perform poorly in offensive and defensive roles. Requiring considerable time to gain experience, cohesion, confidence, etc.," Kofman wrote.
The result is that the strategy has at least partially disintegrated, with battalions from the new brigades eventually sent to shore up losses in units that were already fighting, Kofman wrote.
Ukrainian leadership said in May that it aimed to create 10 new brigades, each of which typically consists of several thousand men. In doing so, its leaders hoped to provide fresh units that could rotate into combat or fill gaps on the front line.
"There is simply no other effective way to counteract the overwhelming enemy," a spokesperson for Ukraine's armed forces said in November. "After all, today we have a 1,300 km-long front with active combat clashes."
Some elements of these brigades were aided by training from Western forces, such as the 155th Mechanized Brigade. About half of its recruits drilled in France.
But the 155th's debut late last year created a crisis for Ukraine as reports emerged that it suffered from high rates of desertion and was being picked apart to siphon resources to other brigades.
Local journalist Yuriy Butusov reported just before the New Year that the new brigade, often finding itself whittled down, had to juggle specialists such as drone jamming operators into infantry roles. The backlash to the news was severe, with Ukrainian figures voicing questions about the new strategy as a whole.
"Perhaps it's sheer idiocy to create new brigades and equip them with new technology while existing ones are undermanned," wrote Lt. Col. Bohdan Krotevych, who serves as chief of staff in the Azov Brigade. The 155th is supplied with dozens of French-made armored vehicles, howitzers, and personnel carriers.
Kofman wrote that the 155th's scandal was "just the most egregious case" of Ukraine's force management problems.
Divvying up new units has led to a "steady fragmentation of the defensive effort and loss of cohesion," he said.
"This patchwork groupings of forces must hold the front," he added.
Ukraine has, over the last year, faced a slow but persistent Russian assault in the eastern regions of the Donbas, where Moscow has been throwing a steady supply of men and equipment at Kyiv's outnumbered and exhausted defensive lines. Russia's gains have been incremental and its reported losses are staggering, but it is advancing nonetheless.
Another pain point has been a lack of Western military aid to go around. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in September that Kyiv had sought to arm 14 of its brigades with Western weapons, but that arms packages in 2024 couldn't even supply four of them.
It's turned to domestic production to fill some of its needs, and Zelenskyy said on New Year's Eve that 30% of the weapons Ukraine used in 2024 were created locally.
Amid the manpower and equipment shortages, Ukrainian units have also been developing new drones at breakneck speed, often cobbled together from commercial parts.
Kofman said these drones have proven to be "force multipliers," letting troops lay mines safely and harassing Russian units before they can reach the front.
"However, tech innovation, tactical adaptation, and better integration are insufficient to compensate for failure to address the fundamentals," Kofman added. "Russian gains may appear unimpressive, but UA needs to address manpower, training, and force management issues to sustain this fight."
Kofman and the Ukrainian Defense Ministry did not respond to requests for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.
The last year has increasingly turned the war into a conflict of attrition, not just in manpower but also in resources. Russia is now entering a third year of sustaining its economy in the face of the West's sweeping sanctions, relying heavily on defense manufacturing and offering large bonuses to new recruits.
Some in Ukraine hope that if it can solve its manpower issues and maintain its defensive lines, it will eventually exhaust Russia's ability to funnel money and men into the war.
What happens when a chemical engineer, whoβs previously built a hydrogen-powered drone, becomes a venture capitalist? Energy Revolution Ventures (ERV), thatβs what. The VC has now closed an $18 million seed and Series A fund to invest in deep tech, such as energy storage, carbon capture, and, yes, hydrogen technologies.Β Marcus Clover, co-founder and partner [β¦]
The No. 1 nuisance with smartphones and smartwatches is that we need to charge them every day. As warm-blooded creatures, however, we generate heat all the time, and that heat can be converted into electricity for some of the electronic gadgetry we carry.
Flexible thermoelectric devices, or F-TEDs, can convert thermal energy into electric power. The problem is that F-TEDs werenβt actually flexible enough to comfortably wear or efficient enough to power even a smartwatch. They were also very expensive to make.
But now, a team of Australian researchers thinks they finally achieved a breakthrough that might take F-TEDs off the ground.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said he will not lower the conscription age.
Viktor Kovalchuk/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images
Zelenskyy rejected US pressure to lower the draft age from 25 to 18.
The US had suggested the reduction to address manpower shortages in the conflict.
Zelenskyy emphasized the need for military aid instead.
Ukraine's President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has rejected US calls to lower its military recruitment age to 18 to help increase the number of soldiers fighting against Russia.
"We must not compensate the lack of equipment and training with the youth of soldiers," Zelenskyy said in a post on X on Monday.
"The priority should be providing missiles and lowering Russia's military potential, not Ukraine's draft age," continued the post.
"The goal should be to preserve as many lives as possible, not to preserve weapons in storages."
The post was in response to US State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller's comment on Monday that the US was ready to train and arm new soldiers if Ukraine changed its conscription policy. The current minimum conscription age is 25.
"What we have made clear is that if they produce additional forces to join the fight, we and our allies will be ready to equip those forces and train those forces to enter battle," said Miller in a press briefing.
Zelenskyy previously resisted the idea in November when an anonymous US administration official told reporters that reducing the draft age would help Ukraine keep up with Russia's military.
"The simple truth is that Ukraine is not currently mobilizing or training enough soldiers to replace their battlefield losses while keeping pace with Russia's growing military," the senior official had said, according to The Financial Times.
In a speech to the parliament, Zelenskyy said: "Let there be no speculation β our state is not preparing to lower the mobilization age."
However, manpower shortages on the battlefield remain a key problem for the Ukrainians.
War analyst Michael Kofman told BI earlier this year that Ukraine's "manning situation is the kind of thing that's probably going to get worse before it gets better."
Earlier this year, a Ukrainian service member told The Washington Post that the companies in his battalion were staffed at 35% of normal levels.
Meta is looking for nuclear energy developers to power its AI ambitions.
Fabrice COFFRINI/AFP/Getty Images
Meta is seeking nuclear energy developers to power its AI and sustainability goals.
The company said in a blog post it's targeting delivery of the project in the early 2030s.
Meta is not alone in turning to nuclear power, with Microsoft and Google making investments.
Meta is looking for nuclear energy developers to power its AI ambitions.
On Tuesday, Meta said in a blog post that it's targeting 1 to 4 gigawatts of new nuclear generation capacity to be delivered starting in the early 2030s.
The move is the latest push from Big Tech to use nuclear power to meet the rapidly growing energy demands from the AI boom.
Meta said it's releasing a request for proposals to identify nuclear energy developers with skills in permitting and community engagement who could help the company meet its AI and sustainability objectives.
The company added that it was planning for its data center energy needs while "simultaneously contributing to a reliable grid and advancing our sustainability commitments."
"As new innovations bring impactful technological advancements across sectors and support economic growth, we believe that nuclear energy can help provide firm, baseload power to support the growth needs of the electric grids that power both our data centers," the company said in the blog post shared on its website.
Nuclear energy provides clean, constant power to fuel data centers, the infrastructure that supports the training and running of AI models.
In September, energy supplier Constellation Energy struck a deal with Microsoft to provide the tech giant with nuclear power for the next two decades by resurrecting part of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania.
Google announced in Ocotber it was purchasing nuclear energy from Kairos Power, a California-based company developing small modular reactors.
Representatives for Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider, made outside normal working hours.
The Department of Energy (DOE) is on a loan-approval spree in the lead-up to President-elect Donald Trumpβs inauguration, and the winners are all companies manufacturing clean energy solutions on U.S. soil. Companies like Stellantis and Samsung, Rivian, and most recently, EVgo. Trump has promised to cancel any unspent federal dollars under President Joe Bidenβs Inflation [β¦]
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been spending a lot of time with Donald Trump following his election win.
Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC
Maye Musk commented on her son's friendship with Donald Trump in a Fox Business interview.
Elon Musk and the president-elect are having "a lot of fun," she said.
Maye Musk called her son "the genius of the world" and backed him to slash government waste.
Elon Musk and Donald Trump are two of the world's wealthiest and most powerful men. Musk helped Trump regain the White House and now wants to shake up the federal government.
Musk's mother, Maye, commented on their budding bromance in an interview on Fox Business this week: "They just seem to be having fun, a lot of fun, and that's nice for both of them to have fun."
Elon Musk, 53, is the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and the richest man on the planet with a net worth close to $350 billion, per the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Trump, 78, is the president-elect of the world's biggest economy, a real-estate tycoon, reality TV star β and a convicted felon.
Elon "really respects him a lot and is really happy that there's a future for America now," Maye said.
The model and dietitian said she's only briefly seen the two men together as she lives in New York. The pair have been hanging out at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida where Musk has joined calls with other world leaders and weighed in on cabinet picks. They also attended a SpaceX launch in Texas this month.
So proud of @elonmusk Being appreciated for his contribution to the USA. His goal is to prevent American bankruptcy. Vote! β€οΈπΊπΈ
By the way, I posted this on Instagram and expected an avalanche of hate. Instead, I only got 20% hate. However, the negative comments are very⦠pic.twitter.com/lWLiG1mqfs
Many mothers champion their children and sing their praises, and Maye is no exception. She echoed her son's scathing criticism of the "dishonest Democrat media," and said they would be "trying to break up the relationship" between him and the incoming president.
Maye said that calling Elon "wealthy" or a "billionaire" was "degrading," and she thinks of him as "the genius of the world."
She also predicted that, as the co-chief of a new Department of Government Efficiency, he would easily eliminate government waste. Just as he did at Twitter, now X, he would mandate workers return to the office and fire employees who fail to point out anything worthwhile they've done in the past week, May added.
Elon is clearly close to his mother. He's posted pictures of them, sent her heart emojis on X, taken her to several high-profile events, and brought her on during his opening monologue when hosting "Saturday Night Live" in 2021.
Similarly, Maye has shared childhood photos of Musk and repeatedly said how proud she is of him.
Billionaire Gautam Adani and several executives at his company, the Indian conglomerate Adani Group, have been indicted over an alleged scheme to pay more than $250 million in bribes to Indian officials in exchange for contracts to a 12 gigawatt solar power project. The indictment, unsealed Wednesday in federal court in Brooklyn, charges Adani, his [β¦]
