It’s been a couple of years since I posted on the topic of “drone ontology,” in a piece that was intended to be followed up soon after (“Drone ontology, part 1“). The Russo-Ukrainian war has since taken my thoughts on drones in a somewhat different direction. “Part 2,” therefore, focuses on what drones are doing in that part of the world — and on how it is affecting what we all think, read, and imagine in the rest of the world.
Specifically, the targeting of Yandex, Russia’s main internet provider (some call it “Russia’s Google”), alongside the targeting of oil and military infrastructure in Russia, is a way of trying to bring down not only Russian imperialism but also the multipolar, multi-modal kind of imperialism that unites Putinist Russia, Trumpist America, and other fossil-fuel extractivist empires with the misinformation-fueled techno-extractivism of the global far right.
Or so I argue. You can read the full piece at Terrestri(e)alism (or in its original version at UKR-TAZ).