The drone whisperer

Summary

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Podcast Summary: "The Drone Whisperer" – Click Here (Recorded Future News)

Episode Date: July 28, 2026
Host: Karen Duffin (with Dena Temple)
Guest: Damian Spleeters, Weapons Investigator, Conflict Armament Research

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Episode Overview

In this episode, the Click Here team takes listeners into the world of arms investigation during the Ukraine war. The spotlight is on Damian Spleeters, a "tech detective" who analyzes the wreckage of drones and missiles to track supply chains, expose sanction evasion, and parse the truth behind claims of Russia's military might. Through forensics, component tracing, and patient sleuthing, Spleeters and his colleagues impact the front lines of conflict—not by pulling triggers, but by slowing down the machinery of war.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Unusual Job of a Weapons Investigator (Starts ~04:21)

• Introduction to Damian Spleeters:
  Karen Duffin explains that while most think of war as destruction, the wreckage also contains crucial evidence.

  “Inside that wreckage, there's often something else. There's evidence. And that's where our tech detective works.” – Karen Duffin (04:21)

• Damian’s Path:
  Damian began as a journalist interested in arms trafficking, leading him to Conflict Armament Research (CAR), a group specializing in tracing weapon origins.

  “I started as a journalist, actually getting interested in weapons and how they are used and how they get into conflict areas.” – Damian Spleeters (05:30)

2. The Forensic Process: Piecing Together a Downed Drone (~06:26–08:50)

• On-Site Investigation:
  Spleeters describes how he and his team analyze recovered drones, noting even small fragments are revealing.

  “We are walking in this room, and in front of us is a Shahed 131 that was recovered by Ukrainian forces.” – Damian Spleeters (06:26)

• Component as Evidence:
  The team photographs and catalogs every part, seeking manufacturing marks, especially on electronics.

  “The way it usually works with the semiconductor industry is that the type of marking you'll have on some chips denotes the week and year of manufacture.” – Damian Spleeters (08:11)

3. Supply Chains: The Hidden Battlefield (~08:50–12:08)

• Tracing Components:
  Much of what Spleeters finds isn’t military-grade, but commercial tech used in everyday devices.

  “99.9% of the components we found in Russian, Iranian and North Korean missiles are commercial… you cannot really expect a manufacturer to control the billions of little chips they make...” – Damian Spleeters (10:10)

• Supply Chain Interventions:
  By identifying diversion points—like companies unwittingly supplying intermediaries—he can alert manufacturers and disrupt weapons production.

  “We can say, look, it looks like this customer of yours, we found them repeatedly and you may want to look into it.” – Damian Spleeters (09:34)

• Impactful Cases:
  Tracing a navigation system to a Hong Kong company stopped an order “before they could actually accept that order for 10,000 items.” Forcing Russians to “find a new network to get it.”

  “Now they have to find another navigation system. They have to find new companies to set up a new network to get it.” – Damian Spleeters (11:33)

• The Broader Significance:
  Supply chain delays translate to lives saved and buildings spared from attack.

  “That gap doesn't just show up on a spreadsheet. It shows up in buildings that never get bombed and people who never get attacked.” – Karen Duffin (12:08)

4. Challenging the “Stockpiling” Claim (~14:30–16:41)

• The Political Context:
  In response to Trump administration claims that Russia was building up a stockpile of weapons, Spleeters sought hard evidence.

• Serial Numbers & Dates Tell All:
  Serial numbers and manufacturing dates show most drones/missiles are produced just months (or weeks) before use, not stockpiled.

  “The indication of stockpiling is based on the serial number of the missile. So we can say that based on that, we can confirm it by the date on the components.” – Damian Spleeters (15:20)
  “The shahed we see are produced a month or two before they are being used. It's very, very rapid.” – Damian Spleeters (16:33)

• Dependence, Not Self-Sufficiency:
  “Those weapons are not from Russia. They're from Iran and North Korea.” – Karen Duffin (15:39)

  “I don't think you can in the same breath say that your war economy is doing great and rely on North Korea for weapons. You know, it doesn't really make sense.” – Damian Spleeters (16:15)

5. Insights on Truth, Innovation, and War (~17:17–18:08)

• The Role of Innovation:

  “Our adversaries are very crafty, very creative. They don't have to play by the rules and therefore we need to out innovate them. We need to be more creative than them in order to be a step ahead of them and not them being a step ahead of us. Whether you want to be the hunter or the prey, it's up to you.” – Damian Spleeters (17:17)

• The Importance of Facts in War:

  “One of the first things that dies in conflict is like the truth. These artifacts have and they hold in them a piece of truth that can be extracted if you look at it, you know long enough and well enough.” – Damian Spleeters (17:51)

• The Patient Detective:
  For Spleeters, truth isn’t hidden, it’s “just scattered, waiting for someone like him, someone patient enough to collect it.” – Karen Duffin (18:08)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Weapon diversion is much more mundane than that.” – Damian Spleeters (06:08)
• “It's the difference between Russia being able to make 10,000 drones right now and launching waves and Russia being able to do that, you know, in a year. And it makes a difference.” – Damian Spleeters (11:53)

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Important Segment Timestamps

• Introduction & War Forensics: 04:21–06:26
• Drone Investigation in Ukraine: 06:26–08:50
• Component Tracing and Supply Chain Disruption: 08:50–12:08
• Stockpiling Claims and Serial Number Evidence: 14:30–16:41
• Closing Reflections on Innovation and Truth: 17:17–18:08

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Conclusion

This episode of Click Here sheds light on the behind-the-scenes struggle to trace, slow, and expose the realities of modern warfare through the lens of a patient and methodical forensic investigator. Through dogged supply chain work and a careful reading of the artifacts of war, Damian Spleeters and his colleagues expose the truths hidden in missile debris—and, sometimes, manage to stop violence before it starts. The story underscores that in the digital age, facts can be as powerful as firepower, and that the truth, though scattered, is always there for those who know where and how to look.

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Transcript

[Dena Temple]

From recorded future news and prx, this is click here. One of the things I love about reporting is that every once in a while you meet someone whose job you didn't even know existed. Not because their job is secret exactly, just because it never occurred to you that someone had to do it. Earlier this year, the Trump administration suggested that Russia was stockpiling weapons. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. Most of us wouldn't even know where to start to check that out. But a while back, we met someone whose job is to do exactly that. He doesn't work from satellite photos. He doesn't recruit spies. His specialty is wreckage, specifically scraps from a missile strike. And somehow those scraps can tell him whether Russia is actually getting stronger or just getting better at looking like it is. I'm Dena Temple and this is Click Here. We tell true stories about the people making and breaking our digital world, and today we're revisiting one of our favorite shows. Karen Duffin introduces us to a man who reads the history of war from the pieces everyone else leaves. We'll be right back with that story. Support for Click Here comes from Decagon. Decagon helps companies create personalized concierge style customer experiences with AI agents across chat, email, voice and SMS. They're available 24, 7, feel natural to talk to, and can resolve customer requests on their own so businesses can keep up with requests without losing their personal touch. Workflows can be updated using natural language so teams can make changes themselves without long engineering cycles. That means less time spent managing workflows, more time focused on customers and ROI in weeks. Once they're live, agents can pull up to date information, take action on requests, and understand the context behind any conversation. Also, Decagon gives your team full visibility into why agents make decisions and what's happening across every conversation so it's easy to spot trends and improve the experience over time. Decagon helps power millions of conversations every day for brands you know and love, including Avis, Affirm Fanatics and Oura. Ready to transform your customer support? Go to decagonaickheare to get a personalized demo and see what Decagon can do for your team. Check decagon out at Decagon AI Clickhere. That's Decagon AI Clickhere. Support for Click Here comes from Nord Security. Here's the IT teams need to see what's happening in browsers, but they can't slow anyone down or disrupt their workflow. Nord layer browser solves this IT gives IT teams Full visibility and control over browser activity while keeping everything familiar and fast. For employees, two products work together. Nord Layer provides the secured network Foundation. Then Nord Layer browser extends that into the workflow, managing web apps, sessions and data. The payoff? Every browser session becomes visible, controlled and secure. Company data stays protected. Access to sensitive resources is managed. Accidental data leaks are prevented. And it works for all kinds of teams, remote workers, contractors, people using their own devices, all secured without the complex setup or device management. Go to nordlayer.com Browser clickhere and unlock your 10% discount on Nordlayer browser with coupon code clickhere10. That's nordlayer.com Browser Clickhere and enter coupon code clickhere10 at checkout.

[Karen Duffin]

Karen I'm Karen Duffin, and you're listening to Click here. When you think about war, you think of total destruction, things getting obliterated, erased. But inside that wreckage, there's often something else. There's evidence. And that's where our tech detective works. Inside the rubble of the war in

[Dena Temple]

Ukraine, air raid alerts rang across the country as Ukraine came under a wave of drones and missiles.

[Karen Duffin]

Let's start with this morning's drone attack on Kyiv.

[Damian Spleeters]

What can you tell us?

[Narrator/Announcer]

Well, lots of loud bangs in the skies above.

[Karen Duffin]

Watching the attacks night after night, Damian Spleeters began to wonder if he could do something to slow down the attacks using, well, bureaucracy, international sanctions. He wondered if he could shut off the supply of weapons, not at the end of the line, but component by component. And this was not a fanciful aspiration because. Because Damien is a weapons investigator, though that's not where he started.

[Damian Spleeters]

I started as a journalist, actually getting interested in weapons and how they are used and how they get into conflict areas.

[Karen Duffin]

That reporting led him to arms dealers and then to supply chains and eventually to conflict armament research, which is where he works now alongside other tech detectives, people who governments call when they're trying to separate battlefield reality from battlefield theater. When movies tell stories about the global arms trade, it usually involves glamorous weapons dealers, shadowy brokers, deals in dim hotel bars.

[Damian Spleeters]

I supplied every army but the Salvation Army. This is the Hollywood vision, you know, of how it works. Weapon diversion is much more mundane than that.

[Karen Duffin]

Instead, weapons investigation, well, it looks something a bit more like this.

[Damian Spleeters]

Okay, so we are walking in this room, and in front of US is a Shahed 131 that was recovered by Ukrainian forces.

[Karen Duffin]

Damian and his team had collected pieces of a downed drone. It had landed beside a building in Kharkiv, largely intact. And we asked him to record the team as they investigated. It's this kind of thing that weapons inspectors actually do. They pull fragments like these out of the wreckage of an attack and piece them together to reveal what actually happened, not just on the battlefield, but leading up to it.

[Damian Spleeters]

So we see only a little substrate of what is being used, but it's a good example of what's going on.

[Karen Duffin]

What he's looking at here is the Shahid 131 drone. You can picture a paper plane made of fiberglass, no bigger than a kayak. And this one is missing a wing.

[Damian Spleeters]

We can see the carcass right there.

[Karen Duffin]

Its engine is small, like lawnmower sized. So it's pretty slow moving and it's easy to hear coming. So a lot of them, like this one, end up getting shot down.

[Damian Spleeters]

All right, that's good. It's well aligned. All right, so let's take a few shots here.

[Karen Duffin]

Damian photographs each of its components individually. It's a meticulous almost forensic process, something he's been doing in Ukraine since 2018. Each component carries clues. If you understand them well enough, they can tell you where the pieces came from, almost like fingerprints. Take semiconductors.

[Damian Spleeters]

The way it usually works with the semiconductor industry is that the type of marking you'll have on some chips denotes the weak and year of manufacture. And through that information, usually they can find records of, you know, a list of distributors that got the parts from there.

[Karen Duffin]

Damien identifies who bought those components and who bought them after that. Eventually taking this whole chain of evidence and tracing from the battlefield where the bomb dropped all the way back to its origin. Almost like a crime scene investigator, except he's not trying to solve the murder case. He's trying to slow a war.

[Damian Spleeters]

My main interest in looking at weapons is that it functions to me as a physical document, its whole chain of custody and, you know, all the hands it went through and where it was made and how it arrived there and how it was used and all that. And I think through that, you can then tell a story about. About the conflict you are looking at, about the war you're looking at.

[Karen Duffin]

And the way Damian works to slow the war he's looking at is by investigating the supply chain. Supply chains are the big guns in his line of work. Because of sanctions, Russia might not care about sanctions, but the companies who make these components, they often do because they can face heavy fines, blacklists, even criminal charges.

[Damian Spleeters]

We can say, look, it looks like this customer of yours, we found them repeatedly and you may want to look into it. We don't provide any legal or business advice. We're not doing that. We provide information, information the government can't

[Karen Duffin]

always provide because it could be considered a military secret. But the thing is, a lot of the components Damien is finding, they aren't military grade. They're commercial parts, like those semiconductors. They find their way into not just weapons, but also phones, computers, TVs.

[Damian Spleeters]

99.9% of the components we found in Russian, Iranian and North Korean missiles are commercial. And in nature, they're not even up to military standard. So, you know, you cannot really expect a manufacturer to control the, you know, billions of little chips they make that are not even uniquely marked to know exactly where it's going to end up.

[Karen Duffin]

So until Damien shows them, we know

[Damian Spleeters]

for a fact that we've avoided a lot of headaches to some of those companies because some of their customers were just like bad people and they didn't know about it.

[Karen Duffin]

For Damien, the goal isn't to catch anyone out after the fact. It's to try to intervene while the system is still moving.

[Damian Spleeters]

I remember a case where we found a new navigation system in one new variation of the Shahed, and we had

[Karen Duffin]

number four, and that meant Russia was still testing it before it went into mass production.

[Damian Spleeters]

So right at the beginning, and we could identify the Hong Kong company that was the end user and certainly the diversion party, we caught it before they could actually accept that order for 10,000 items.

[Karen Duffin]

And that one interruption forced not just a pause, but a total reset.

[Damian Spleeters]

Now they have to find another navigation system. They have to find new companies to set up a new network to get it.

[Karen Duffin]

This is the quiet power of supply chain investigations, because to interrupt a supply chain is to throw sand in the gears of the war machine, to basically hit pause on the war.

[Damian Spleeters]

It's the difference between Russia being able to make 10,000 drones right now and launching waves and Russia being able to do that, you know, in a year. And it makes a difference.

[Karen Duffin]

That gap doesn't just show up on a spreadsheet. It shows up in buildings that never get bombed and people who never get attacked. But interrupting a supply chain is only half the story, because soon Damian would find himself looking at a different kind of evidence entirely. Evidence that could answer a much bigger question about this war. We'll get into that right after this break.

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[Karen Duffin]

This is Ira Glass at this American Life.

[Damian Spleeters]

Do you know our show? Okay, well either way, I'm going to tell you about it. We make stories, old fashioned stories that

[Karen Duffin]

hopefully pull you into the beginning with funny moments and feelings and people in surprising situations. And then you just want to find

[Damian Spleeters]

out what is going to happen and cannot stop listening. That's right. I'm talking about stories that make you miss appointments and ignore your loved ones.

[Karen Duffin]

This is American Life every week, wherever

[Damian Spleeters]

you get your podcasts.

[Karen Duffin]

Late last year, Damian's investigations took a turn when the Trump administration made an alarming claim. They said that Russia isn't just firing weapons, it's stockpiling them. And this was shocking because with a stockpile of weapons, Russia could threaten not just Ukraine, but Europe and even beyond. Some people did not buy this claim. Instead they figured the US Was just bluffing, trying to pressure Ukraine to accept the peace deal. Damien suddenly he had in his hands not just evidence that could thwart a supply chain, but evidence that could prove or disprove this alarming claim. A claim that could impact the potential end of this war. So he started looking for clues right away, this time in serial numbers.

[Damian Spleeters]

The indication of stockpiling is based on the serial number of the missile. So we can say that based on that, we can confirm it by the date on the components. If I were to see, you know, missiles that are made using Russian components almost exclusively, I would think it's a, it's a good sign.

[Karen Duffin]

If he saw that a lot of the missiles were being made inside Russia, it would be a sign that the claim was true. A sign that the country is self sufficient enough to produce its own weapons and thus strong enough to start stockpiling. But that is not what he's seeing. There is basically no change to the weapons coming through Damien's warehouse, just as he's seen for the past few years. Those weapons are not from Russia. They're from Iran and North Korea.

[Damian Spleeters]

I don't think you can in the same breath say that your war economy is doing great and rely on North Korea for weapons. You know, it doesn't really make sense.

[Karen Duffin]

And they're weapons that have clearly not been pulled out of a large stockpile.

[Damian Spleeters]

No, I mean the shahed we see are produced a month or two before they are being used. It's very, very rapid.

[Karen Duffin]

It will take time to know for sure, even a few years, damian said. But for now, you can count him skeptical about those stockpiling claims. More likely, they're just a bluff. President Trump initially promised to end the war in just 24 hours, so he is likely looking for leverage wherever he can get it. And this is the beauty of a scrappy tech detective like Damien. They can find powerful evidence in the most mundane of places, in serial numbers and supply chains, in components and scraps.

[Damian Spleeters]

Our adversaries are very crafty, very creative. They don't have to play by the rules and therefore we need to out innovate them. We need to be more creative than them in order to be a step ahead of them and not them being a step ahead of us. Whether you want to be the hunter or the prey, it's up to you.

[Karen Duffin]

And in conflict, it isn't just the missiles that make the victor, it's the facts. Something that can be hard to decipher in the fog of war.

[Damian Spleeters]

One of the first thing that dies in conflict is like the truth. These artifacts have and they hold in them a piece of truth that can be extracted if you look at it, you know long enough and well enough.

[Karen Duffin]

And for Damian Spleeters, that truth isn't hidden. It's just scattered, waiting for someone like him, someone patient enough to collect it.

[Dena Temple]

That was Karen Duffin. This is Click Here.

[Narrator/Announcer]

Looking for more of the cybersecurity and intelligence coverage you get on Click Here. Then check out our sister publication, the Record. From Recorded Future News, you'll get breaking cyber news from reporters in New York, Washington, London and Kyiv, among others, and you'll see for yourself why it attracts hundreds of thousands of page views every month. Just go to the Record Media.

[Dena Temple]

Click Here is a production of Recorded Future News and pra. Today's show was written and produced by Megan Dietre, Sean Powers, Erica Guida, Zach Hirsch and Maya Fawaz. It was edited by Karen Duffin and Sarah Cavedo and Fact Checked by Darren Ancrum. Original music is by Ben Levington with additional music from Blue Dot Sessions. Our staff writer is Lucas Riley, our illustrator is Megan Gough, and our sound designers and engineers are Jake Cook and Jesse Nice Walker. I'm Dena Tumble Raston, and we'll see you next week.

[Sponsor/Advertisement Voice]

Support for this program comes from Recorded Future. In cybersecurity, the biggest risk isn't what can be seen, it's what gets missed. Recorded Future analyzes billions of signals to help organizations stay ahead of threats. Recorded Future Know what matters? Act first.

[Narrator/Announcer]

Looking for more of the cybersecurity and intelligence coverage you get on? Click here, then check out our sister publication the Record from Recorded Future News. You'll get breaking cyber news from reporters in New York, Washington, London, and Kyiv, among others, and you'll see for yourself why it attracts hundreds of thousands of page views every month. Just go to the Record Media.