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Foreign It's Wednesday, May 20, 2026. I'm Albert Moeller, and this is the Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview. When we talk about how changes come in something as basic and as big as war, one of the things we need to recognize is that the biggest revolutions in warfare take place in the context of warfare. Now, when you look at the question of how that plays out in human history, just think of the 20th century. And so if you look in the beginning of the 20th century and then you think of World War I coming so early in that century, such a dark, horrifying event. One of the things we need to recognize is that between 1914 and 1918, a great deal of the technology of war was redefined. And so, for example, naval forces were basically absolutely redesigned. And there's continuity, but there's also radical discontinuity. And by the time you come to the end of World War I, it is really clear that, for example, U boats, the German U boats, undersea boats, what we would call submarines, were going to be a major factor going forward. You also had the development of other forms and innovations in land warfare. And you had the emergence of what during the 20th century would become in the Second World War, absolutely crucial. And that is the development of the tank, of armored divisions, in terms of tanks as these massive mobile vehicles. And so when you look at World War I, the tank is kind of a new innovation. It's something that that is. Is being developed by the time you come to World War II. It is a massive fact. And by the way, the tanks themselves grew massive. World War II coming in the middle of the century just accentuates this further. In the beginning of the war, of course, you have these vast navies facing off against one another. And one of the biggest changes that took place then is that in the beginning of World War II, in naval terms, you had a critical role fulfilled by battleships. Less than perhaps in World War I, but still very much the battleship was central to the naval organization. By the time you come to the end of World War II, the age of the battleship is already over. And that's because it is the aircraft carrier that has become so much the harboringer of the future. And so you just look at these kinds of developments, and then you remember that World War II was brought to an end in the Pacific theater, not with any of those technologies, but was actually ended by the advent of the atomic bomb. And so military history is going to record Hiroshima, Nagasaki, as those two cities that indicate that cataclysmic change in terms of how war is conducted. So even though those are the only two atomic weapons used in the context of war, those the development of even more horrifying atomic weapons, including now thermonuclear weapons, and you're now talking about hypersonic delivery of those weapons, all that has transformed warfare. It's always, at least in the background. So even when you're talking about the war in Ukraine, you're talking about the fact that Russia has nuclear weapons. And Ukraine, by the way, does not have nuclear weapons. And that's part of a political decision in which the United States was very much involved. And so as you're looking at Russia, you're seeing a nation that invaded Ukraine. It is now involved in a war that is not going well for Russia. The political pressure is now building in Russia. But Vladimir Putin himself has always said, well, you know, we always have nuclear weapons. That doesn't mean that he has threatened directly to use them. It does mean that he at least wants to make certain people remember that Russia is a great power because it is a nuclear power. And of course, we're also looking at President Putin's visit to Chinese President Xi Jinping. That's going to have headlines of its own. But I want to come back to Ukraine for a moment. One of the things that has happened just in terms of the last several years is that Ukraine has been in a very brave, rather solitary way, rewriting the rules of war. And this is something that a lot of Americans have not paid a great deal of attention to, but it really is a fascinating story. So in Ukraine, you have a nation that it doesn't have nuclear weapons. It did not have a massive army ready to meet the Russian onslaught. But that's exactly what it had to become quickly. And even though at first Russia thought it was going to simply march to victory in a matter of days, it turned out that was not going to be the case. But even in the intervening years, there's been a back and forth. But right now, Ukraine is in a rather strong, unexpectedly strong position. And a part of it is because Ukraine's been redefining war. And from a worldview perspective, some of this is really interesting because one of the big issues right now that everyone's watching in Ukraine is how much weaponry is becoming autonomous or it is becoming weaponry that is not humanly controlled from within the weapon itself. And so you have drones, you have all these autonomous weapons. You also have, by the way, the drone development on both sides, on the Russian side and on the Ukrainian side, that are absolutely astounding, well beyond anything the United States has heretofore encountered in warfare. But it's rewriting the way warfare is done. And I just want us to think about this for a moment. So, for example, you have a headline in the Wall Street Journal in recent days, in Ukraine, Snipers Give Way to Drones. Okay, this is a huge issue of historical consequence because if you go back to World War II in particular, and you go back to Ukraine and. And for that matter, also Russia, and you look at, for instance, the defense of Stalingrad on the Russian side, the USSR during World War II, the use of snipers was absolutely essential. And we're talking about snipers who were able to kill at a vast distance. And that became a major issue, for instance, in the history of the struggle over Stalingrad. Snipers at that point weren't entirely new, but this was a new chapter, a big new chapter in this development. And after Stalingrad, you had all major powers recognized. We're going to have to have these very highly trained sharpshooters, going to have to have guns. And in some cases, by the way, you have these snipers using guns that have barrels that are up to 10 to 12ft long, and they're these incredibly cumbersome weapons, but their sophistication was in the targeting over a great distance. And in some cases, we're talking about even multiple miles. Okay, so the big story in the Wall Street Journal is not about a sniper. Let's just say sniping. It's not about a sniper and that sniper's effectiveness. No. Instead, the opening of the article says this quote. A Ukrainian Special Forces sniper claimed a world record in late 2023 with a shot that hit a Russian officer almost 2 1/2 miles away. These days, I'm not going to mention the man's name has a new job supporting drone pilots. He hasn't been out to shoot in more than a year and a half. Okay? Now that just tells you, in a few words, a transformation of warfare. It's a transformation of an entire arena of human violence into in which the scene is now changing. You don't have a sniper with a gun. You now have drones which are under the control of humans, which may be miles and miles away from the drone, and in most cases are indeed humans miles and miles away from the drone. But you also have a distinction here between those that are still under human control and those that are defined as autonomous. Okay, so this is where in worldview, things get really interesting when you look at the fundamental rules of war, the ethical principles of wars. Christians have thought about this through the centuries. What's known as just war theory. There really has been no allowance for anything like autonomous weapons, weapons under the weapons own control or with artificial intelligence, weapons that are making decisions. Okay, so right now we do not have the full deployment of fully autonomous weaponry in that sense. And that's because this is a fast unfolding technology. But it is unfolding fast enough that on both sides, on multiple sides, nations are paying very close attention because this is going to change warfare. Now one of the ways the Wall Street Journal makes this future of warfare clear, the New York Times, other newspapers, British newspapers, German newspapers, others have been giving a lot of attention to this, is the fact that you have to define what an autonomous weapon is. And autonomous in this sense, basically speaking of autonomous, artificial intelligence means it is making decisions, even on targeting, independent of a human mind. And the claims being made for this autonomous technology is that it is more accurate and that it can respond faster. Now of course, everyone understands there could be the capacity for vast autonomous mistakes in this sense. The other thing that's so interesting is that you have Ukraine's current Defense minister who's only 35 years old. I think that's probably of importance here. He's a very young man to be in that kind of role in the midst of a war for his nation's existence. So the nations now turn to a 35 year old defense Minister who by the way, is a bit controversial and he is a big proponent of the use of these autonomous weapons. And he sees as one of his missions to shift the lethality of war away from human beings being sent on these missions to machines and technologies being sent on these missions. You'll notice the conflict is not just autonomous technology versus autonomous technology. There are real human lives still very much at stake. The Defense Minister there in Ukraine, Mikhailo Fedorov, said, quote, the world needs security and only autonomous weapons can ensure it. He was interviewed by the New York Times at his office at the Ministry of Defense. He went on to say, quote, autonomous weapons are the new nuclear weapons. Countries that possess them will be protected. End quote. Okay, so if you were listening and he's right, this is a massive strategic game changer all across the globe. He's saying that these autonomous weapons are going to be on the scale of nuclear weapons, absolute game changers. And the big issue is who has these weapons and who does not. Alright, so this turns out to be really, really interesting. And in a worldview perspective, one of the Things we need to recognize is that in a fallen world, violence is going to happen and war is going to happen. There will be wars and rumors of wars. The scripture is just very, very clear that when you have nation against nation, it is just an evidence of the impact of human sinfulness. And it also becomes clear that there are situations in which a nation has no choice but to fight. And so it is fascinating to see some of the arguments being made right now. There are some who are still making the argument that for instance, this war is not necessary. That's an interesting argument. Might be true, but in terms of eliminating war and just eliminating violence. Very interesting comments in the major media, even in the last few days in which you've had people saying, look, we just need to give peace a chance. And I understand the sentiment, but you'll understand that that's a very difficult argument to make after someone has attacked innocent people. All right, so as we're watching this, we're going to understand that in a sinful world, technology is a game changer. Technology doesn't change. And here's the big Christian fact. Technology doesn't change the reality of sin, but it can provide a new opportunity. And I really appreciate how even you have images in the scripture about this. And of course the Apostle Paul says, sin seizing the opportunity. And that's what sin will do, will seize the opportunity. And that's just where realism and a Christian perspective, biblical realism, tells us that if indeed this is the big change in warfare and for the very sake of the security, the United States and our allied nations, we're going to be up against these kinds of autonomous weapons. I can guarantee you right now the good guys and the bad guys worldwide are trying to develop these weapons because to get behind is basically these days to ensure a loss. And in this case, I want to talk about a boy in Ukraine. He was at the time this happened, just two weeks ago, 12 years old. I'm not going to mention his name. I'm simply going to say that on one day, just a matter of a month ago. So we're not talking about something in the distant past. We're Talking about a 12 year old boy in Ukraine last month. At that time he was up in a pear tree. Sounds like a parable, but that's where he was. He was up in a pear tree. He was helping a neighbor by cutting off a damaged branch. So you have a 12 year old helping a neighbor. He's up on a tree, able to pare back this particular branch in a pear tree. And Then he heard the buzz of a drone. And reporters Konstantin Kudov and Steve Hendricks for the Washington Post tell us this story. He heard the buzz of a drone. Quote, that sound often means death in Ukraine and not just for soldiers on the front lines. Increasingly, civilians are tracked, chased and attacked by small commercially available drones equipped with cameras, rigged with explosives and steered by fingers on joysticks a dozen miles away. End quote. So now you're Talking about a 12 year old boy up in a pear tree helping out a neighbor when he hears a drone. Okay, here's the interesting thing. He realizes the drone is, is passing under him. Russia now darkly refers to the hunting down of civilians as a human safari. Just think about how dark that is. It's a killing, an intentional killing of civilians in order to spread terror. We are told, quote, in recent months it has evolved with new technology and spread to border areas around the country. This 12 year old boy knew that this warfare was ongoing. And one of the ways it was known is because of the filaments that were the connection miles and miles away of those running the drones and the drones lethal attack systems. The drone was trailed by a very thin line and that line was what was controlling the deadly drone. And so the boy knew that. And there had been a drone attack days and weeks before in which the boy and his father had with a neighbor, talking with a soldier. Come to understand how the line worked in this control. The boy up in the pear tree again, 12 years old, he said it, saw the children and started gaining altitude. That's children in the yard, including his own siblings. That's when I realized something was about to happen. The Post then reports, quote, what the boy did next, something he had rehearsed, something few civilians in Ukraine have been taught might have saved the lives of those children. His mother changing a diaper inside her, other neighbors on the block. His story I'm reading here from the Post, and the fact that a 12 year old in a pear tree knows how to fight back against a Russian drone illustrates how deeply a tactic that the United nations calls a war crime has dissolved the line between soldier and civilian in the fifth year of Russia's war. These drone attacks against civilians, against families, against children and others demonstrate the extremity of this war and frankly the extent to which Russia is willing to target civilians in Ukraine. In this case, we're talking about children and mother changing a diaper, et cetera. Russia had the innovation of equipping drones with fiber optic filament is defined as, quote, a hair thin tether that unspools in flight like a spider web for 12 miles. And they're using payloads that are very deadly. And in order to overcome Ukraine's efforts at jamming the controls, they're using these filaments in order to maintain control to deadly effect. This boy and his father had noticed these glinting gossamer threads in their neighborhood and they were trying to figure out what to do about them. They came across a soldier. And the soldier, who was an explosive specialist, explained how the fiber optic material, like a fishing line, was almost impossible to pull apart without slicing the skin. Then he demonstrated three techniques the soldiers had found to break it. A combination of loops and pinches. Best to count to 15 after a drone passes before trying it. This specialist said, so you're out of the drone's view and don't become the target. Okay, so the boy and his father heard this. The boy received it with what we are told was curiosity. The drones kept coming. And on this day, the boy is up in a pear tree and the drone passes by underneath and it passes by with obvious lethal intent. Listen to what happened. As the drone moved towards his family, the 12 year old boy dropped to the ground. He ran 20 yards and got his fingers around a hair like umbilical running all the way to Russia. He made a loop, pulled it slightly and remembered the soldier's instruction. Count to 15. He said, quote, I didn't have time, so I counted to 10 and I broke it. The post then reports, quote, the line snapped. The drone abruptly veered upward, banked away from the children in the houses and spiraled into a section of wild ground next to the neighborhood. The boy said, I waited for an explosion, but there was nothing. It turned out that crashing into the swamp meant that basically the swamp just absorbed the drone and its deadly effect. The very weapons specialist who had explained the technology to the boy, including how to break the line. Sometime back, he was one of the first persons to respond to the boy's action, asking the question, quote, how can a civilian person, especially a child, do something like that? He went on to say, not every soldier would have been able to react in a split second like, like that. You know, this is one of those stories of heroism in which we are reminded that God created us as moral creatures. He put us in a moral universe. He put us in a universe in which we right now, even as I speak, are drawing attention to the heroism of a 12 year old boy who, without really thinking much about it, armed with knowledge he'd received in a conversation with his father jumped out of the tree to save his brothers and sisters, his mother and the baby and others simply by grabbing the line. He said he didn't have time to count to 15, so he counted to 10 and he broke it. And in all likelihood, as the Washington Post makes clear, he saved their lives. I'm not mentioning the boy's name. It is mentioned, at least a name is provided in the news sources. But it is also said that the Russians are now determined to kill him and his family. So the Ukrainian authorities have moved them many miles away. I just find this one of the developments, one of the things that could pass under our radar that should be very much on our moral screen. As Christians, we need to be the kind of people, by the way, who would produce 12 year olds to do something like this. In a second, shifting gears, we want to go to Oakland, California, where the big lawsuit in which you had Elon Musk suing Sam Altman and OpenAI and suing over control of the company and all the rest, accusing OpenAI of basically defrauding by turning a not for profit entity into a for profit entity. By the way, we are talking about billions upon billions of dollars here. The case was basically thrown out. So even as the judge made the ruling, the ruling was not on the substance of the claims made by Elon Musk. The ruling was that he had waited too long in order to file these particular charges or claims, and so the court just threw them out. Elon Musk is claiming victory because he says the truth was aired in terms of the testimony you have. OpenAI has its own claims. Of course. The bottom line is that it was at least, at the very least a wake up call for Americans about the reality of the culture that is producing this new technology that's revolutionizing America. So in other words, it's a reminder that there is no such thing as a morality free zone in which technology is developed. It is developed in ways that have a very clear moral and worldview context. And that context matters. And the context matters in the development and in the use of the technology. That's just something we have to know. Let me just say that in that lawsuit, without going into specifics, there was nothing particularly attractive revealed about anyone. It was a very sad story, a dark story in many ways. And that's one of the issues that is going to be germane to the future of the economy of the United States, given the fact that artificial intelligence entities, these digital entities, are taking over so much of the capitalization in the United States and that includes much of the growth taking place in our economy, at least as it is defined. So we're going to be following that. But it's also important to recognize headlines such as this that appeared in USA Today, and that's just this week. Here's the headline ChatGPT told Teen this is a teenage boy how to use illicit drugs. The subhead is family files suit against OpenAI over son's death okay, so it's just a very sad story. So here you're talking about another boy, in this case an older teenager who was actually asking for advice on abusing drugs and then once he was in trouble, asking for advice how to resolve the issue. Let's just say it ended up with the boy dead and there's almost no question that these technologies were a part of how that happened. And he was actually asking ChatGPT for advice. The parents are now suing and as USA Today tells us, quote, the complaint was filed in California on May 12 by lawyers for the Tech Justice Law Project, Social Media Victim Victims Law center, and the Tech Accountability and Competition Project, which is part of Yale Law School's Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic. Okay, here is what the allegations are, and that was that the young man, the teenage boy, began using the AI agent in 2023, quote, for tasks one would expect of a teenager, including homework help and troubleshooting computer issues. But the story tells this, quote, when he moved on to asking about experimentation with recreational drugs, the chatbot resisted at first. Quote, Initially the chatbot told the 19 year old it couldn't advise him on which drugs to take or how much, as program guardrails prevented it from enabling illegal or dangerous behaviors. Quote, when a 2024 software update ushered in ChatGPT4.0, however, it began advising Nelson not only of which illicit drugs were safe, that's put in quotation marks to use, but how to get them and which dosage he should opt for to achieve the desired effect, end quote. Now again, that's according to the legal complaint. The complaint filed by the parents goes on as USA Today tells us to say that the chat bot had become, quote, an illicit drug coach, end quote, that basically advised a teenager on how to abuse illicit drugs. It went on from that. Listen to this quote, the model inserted emojis in its responses to Sam, asked whether it could create playlists for him to set his mood, and began pushing increasingly dangerous amounts and combinations of drugs. This according to the lawsuit, quote, no trained professional would have obliged Sam's request. This again according to the complaint, quote, But Chatgpt did end quote. In this particular filing, the young man's mother said, quote, if ChatGPT had been a person, it would be behind bars today. She went on to say, quote, Sam trusted ChatGPT, but it not only gave him false information, it ignored the increasing risk he faced and did not actively encourage him to seek help. At the very same time, the same newspaper reported on the same day. Here's the headline. High Court that Means the Supreme Court Won't Hear Social Media case. Listen to this quote, the Supreme Court passed up a chance to review liability protections for social media sites, declining to take a case about whether X Corp can be sued over the distribution of sexually explicit videos of minors. Okay, the Supreme Court decided not to take this case. Doesn't mean they won't take a similar case. It might be on a fundamental question of facts that the courts decided to wait for another case, but this is a huge issue. Listen to this quote. The latest rejected appeal concerned two teenage boys who thought they were interacting on Snapchat with a girl at their school. In reality, they say they were being tricked by sex traffickers who blackmailed them into recording sexually graphic videos of themselves. The article then goes on to say that one of the causes of the lawsuit is that three years later, quote, the videos began circulating on Twitter Now X, the company rejected requests by the miners to remove the posts, doing so only after the Department for Homeland Security got involved, according to the filings. One of the issues here, by the way, is the inclusion of social media sites and what is known as the protections of Section 230. That's a law to protect certain communication platforms and technologies. I just think this is really clear as a problem. So I'm not going to stand in the place of the Supreme Court about the applicability or the urgency of this case or on its facts. I'm simply going to say to Christian parents, are you listening to this? To Christian leaders, are you listening to this? Do you understand in both of these cases that we are talking about grave moral issues and we're talking about technologies that are causing real harm in the lives of young people? And of course, they're causing harm among older people as well. But it is particularly clear that there are vulnerabilities to teenagers and to children that are just now undeniable and across multiple fronts. And I am shocked to the extent that even many Christian parents seem not to be aware of these dangers. Okay, we're going to bring this to a close for today. We're going to be looking at primary results and the new political leaders layout of the land as of this week as we come together tomorrow. But I do want to speak to Christian parents and to Christians in general, but to Christian parents specifically to say there's been a lot here for us to consider. But as you tuck your children in at night or check on them at night and as they and your home are being put to bed and you love them and you pray for them and you are raising them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, let's thank God that those of us in the United States are not facing the kind of danger faced by the families in Ukraine faced by that 12 year old boy up in a pear tree. And I know that many of you listening right now, you have a 12 year old son or a 12 year old grandson and those you love and you're very thankful they're not engaged in this kind of war, they're not seeing this kind of thing happen. But let's hope and pray that even as we pray for peace to continue, we pray for the protection of the vulnerable everywhere and we pray for the righteous to be upheld and protected everywhere. And we pray for the unrighteous to be exposed everywhere. And we also pray that if the time did come when something like this would happen, that we are indeed raising our children, our sons, in such a way that they would jump out of the pear tree and know what to do in a split second every once in a while. A story like that is such that it doesn't just reach our minds, it reaches our hearts. And it should. Thanks for listening to the briefing. For more information go to my website@albertmuller.com youm can follow me at X or Twitter by going to x.comalbertmohler for information on the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to spts.edu for information on Boyce College, just go to boycecollege.com I'll meet you again tomorrow for the briefing.