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Today “a masterpiece that will go down in history” arrives on Netflix, thanks to an original approach to a unique science fiction story

July 6, 2026 by usatoday24

Netflix just released ‘Glimpses of tomorrow’the first series that Kyoto Animation produces exclusively for the platform, and it does so with a certainly tragic background: almost eight years have passed since the studio confirmed the adaptation. A year after the announcement, a man entered the studio offices with gasoline and set the building on fire. 36 people died and another 32 were injured. The author was sentenced to death in 2024, and the attack destroyed much of the studio’s materials and equipment, and with them, any progress that existed on the project. In any case, the series has survived the tragedy, and it imagines a Kyoto of 1907 where electricity was never developed and steam became the dominant technology, leaving the city permanently covered in smoke. As a child, the protagonist invented projects that he captured in a notebook called the Electrical Catalog of the 20th Century, together with his older brother. He took that notebook to the war and never returned. The protagonist, now an adult and in the company of a young woman who is trying to escape an arranged marriage, will embark on a search for the treasure of his childhood. Minoru Ōta directs the series in his first project as a director. He had previously worked as a key animator on ‘Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions!’ and ‘Liz and the Blue Bird’, and as episode director on ‘Kobayashi-san’s Dragon Maid’. It is he himself who said that “‘Flashes of Tomorrow’ is a work that will remain engraved in the history of anime“. An unusual statement coming from someone directing his first project. But the truth is that the series is raising expectations: before reaching Netflix, a tour of cinema screenings was held in Japan, the United Kingdom, Thailand and North America that started on June 14, in addition to a screening at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival. All of this is part of the effort that Netflix is making to include more anime in its programming: it has announced eight series and three movies for 2026 in Japan. In Xataka | Today the best science fiction series of the moment returns, with a twist in its story that has given it a perfect score

Tomorrow the best science fiction series of the moment returns, with a twist in its story that has given it a perfect score

July 2, 2026 by usatoday24

This July 3 comes to AppleTV the third season of ‘Silo‘. And this marks the halfway point of the series: in December 2024, Apple confirmed the simultaneous renewal of a third and fourth season, and stated that the latter was conceived as the definitive closure of the story. We are halfway through this exciting series, and everything seems to indicate that we are once again facing an event: the third season boasts 100% from critics on Rotten Tomatoesthe best so far. ‘Silo’ is set in a toxic and uninhabitable future in which 10,000 people live locked in a gigantic 144-story underground silo, with no memory of how or why they got there, and firmly believing that going outside means certain death. The series follows Juliette (Rebecca Ferguson), a low-level engineer who, after the suspicious death of the sheriff, begins to unravel the thread of lies that sustain the social order of the underground complex. In this new season, Juliette has become mayor of Silo 18, but with memory gaps about what she has experienced outside, with the community trying to rebuild itself after the rebellion of the previous season and facing a new threat. In parallel, the season opens a second timeline set centuries agocentered on a congressman and a journalist who begin to uncover the conspiracy that would end up leading to the construction of the silos. This half “from the past” largely adapts ‘Shift’, the second book of Hugh Howey’s trilogy on which the series is inspired and which Minotauro has published in Spanish, and is the main novelty of this season compared to the previous two, focused almost exclusively on Juliette’s present. The praise for this new season has not stopped appearing in the last week, and the originality of the time jump stands out above all. The setting, interpretations and, as always on Apple TV+, ambition of the series, make it an absolutely essential event for science fiction lovers. In Xataka | Today one of the most acclaimed Marvel superhero series of all time returns to Disney+

that’s why it’s back to science fiction

June 12, 2026 by usatoday24

Steven Spielberg has been using science fiction for almost fifty years as a reflection of the concerns of American fears (that is, planetary, because pop culture works the way it does). In 1977 he captured the post-Vietnam spiritual void with aliens coming in peace. In 2005, he processed 9/11 with aggressive invaders. ‘The Day of Revelation’ has some ingredients similar to all of them, although perhaps for the first time in his career, reality has gotten ahead of him. The constant. Of the 37 films Steven Spielberg has directed, about a quarter are fantasy or, more specifically, science fiction. And of them, six include aliens in their plots. Let’s review some of the most relevant ones: Encounters in the third phase (1977): Two years after the end of the Vietnam War. The United States saw the moral authority of its institutions plummet. Spielberg gave the public some hope with a film in which contact with the unknown did not end in war but in amazement: the aliens came in peace and the protagonist followed them into space. Decades later, the Library of Congress included the film in its archives as being “culturally, historically and aesthetically significant.” ET the exterrestrial (1982): In the midst of the Reagan era, political discourse insisted on rebuilding the nuclear family as a central value of society. Spielberg put a broken family at the center of his film, with a mother raising her children alone after a divorce, and offered as reparation for domestic trauma the most unlikely friendship: a child and an alien. ‘ET’ claimed that solutions had to be found to heal a fractured society. As Spielberg himself has said, “My favorite science fiction is based on terrestrial problems”. ‘War of the worlds’ (2005): Spielberg once said of the 9/11 attacks that “the image that I can’t get out of my head It is that of all the people of Manhattan fleeing over the George Washington Bridge.” It is perfectly perceived in a film that is pure panic, nothing rooted in a specific policy, since as screenwriter David Koepp said in his day, it also functioned as an allegory of Iraqi fear of an American invasion. Koepp also signed ‘Jurassic Park’, the film that showed us the only good billionaire, and now he returns with ‘The Day of Revelation’. And even if it is outside the topic of invasions and dealing with social aspects that are not so clearly politicized, it is inevitable to remember science fiction films like ‘AI, Artificial Intelligence’where many first discovered the fashion acronym; ‘Minority Reportas a bridge between the paranoia of the fifties and the era of hypervigilance we live in now; and in a more (sadly) banal tone, ‘Ready Player One’about The Video Game and its implications. The secrets are over. In December 2017, The New York Times published a report about AATIP, the Pentagon’s secret program to investigate anomalous aerial phenomena with a budget of 22 million dollars. The report described objects that moved in ways that defied known engineering. That journalistic piece, according to Spielberg, restored his interest in the alien topic. In the summer of 2023 he spent two months writing a 50-60 page synopsis of what would happen the day that information became public. The project was officially announced in April 2024. The year when reality did not waitOn May 8, 2026, five weeks before the premiere of ‘Revelation Day’, the Trump administration ordered the publication of the first 162 declassified files on UAPsincluding diplomatic cables, FBI reports, NASA transcripts and graphic material, all accessible without prior authorization on the war.gov/UFO portal. On May 22, a second delivery arrived with six PDF files, seven audios and 51 videos. The portal intends to continue expanding. When NASA was worried. Spielberg himself has acknowledged that those congressional hearings “changed everything” for him and that “this stopped being sensationalism and became something that the mainstream media took very seriously.” In this way, ‘The Day of Revelation’ continues to be a social thermometer, although now it does so perhaps at the opposite pole to ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’, once the debate has been institutionalized. In fact, while preparing ‘Close Encounters…’ in the 1970s, Spielberg received a letter from NASA asking him not to make the film. “When I found out that the government was opposed to the film, I found my faith”declared in 1978: “If NASA took the time to write me a twenty-page letter, something was up.” It cannot be said that the Spielberg of today raises the same suspicions as the one from then, and perhaps his new film should be read under that code. In Xataka | When Spielberg heard one of the best soundtracks in history, he didn’t get it: “I thought it was a joke”

Smart glasses for police seemed like science fiction. Some Chinese agents have already started using them

May 29, 2026 by usatoday24

The image is powerful because it is easy to visualize: a police officer walks down a street in Tianjin, looks around, and connected glasses return useful information in real time. What until not so long ago could have sounded like science fiction is beginning to have much more earthly applications, from ordering traffic to helping locate a lost person. In this city in northern China, according to China Dailytechnology is already part of some police tasks. And that’s the interesting thing: we are not just talking about a futuristic promise, but about a use that is beginning to hit the streets. Smart glasses for police. The key is that we are not just talking about glasses placed on an agent’s face, but about a system designed to be integrated into police routine. They are officially presented as a development of the local public security system, with national software and hardware, and places them in three areas of use: traffic, patrols and urban management. It is a very immediate effectiveness-oriented approach. An invisible screen for the agent. The device works as a layer of information added to police work. It can recognize text, interpret voice commands and provide responses from a connected platform, with the camera as an entry point to identify elements of the environment. In practice, this allows identity checks to be carried out or information associated with a person to be searched without leaving the scene. The source presents it as a responsive improvement, although such a tool also opens up obvious questions about surveillance and privacy. The glasses on the ground. Zhao Baoxin, an officer at the Jiefang Road police station in Heping district, told the aforementioned media that during a patrol they found an elderly man at an intersection who could not express himself clearly or indicate his name or address. According to his version, the glasses made it possible to quickly identify him and, in about 20 minutes, contact his family so he could return home. Traffic as a daily test. Another of the uses described brings the technology down to a very recognizable scene: the entrance and exit of a school. In that case, parents can pre-register their license plates through a mini-program developed with the participation of the public security system, and that information is linked to the platform consulted by the glasses. Thus, agents identify authorized vehicles, order short stops and divert other cars during peak congestion hours. It is efficient on paper, but it also normalizes automated license plate reading. What the numbers say. Sun Yinghua, agent in the science, technology and IT area of the Municipal Public Security Bureau, places the recognition accuracy above 95% and speaks of results in milliseconds. They also explain that the design also seeks comfort: they weigh about 40 grams and offer a first-person perspective that avoids the framing changes typical of a body camera when the agent leans or turns. The autonomy, however, is 1.5 or 2 hours of continuous use. It hasn’t come out of nowhere. Police glasses with facial recognition had already appeared in China years ago. In 2018, SCMP counted that were being used at Zhengzhou East station during Chunyun, the huge Lunar New Year travel period, to locate fugitives and detect cases of identity fraud. What we see now seems less like a one-off test and more like a piece within an ecosystem: China Daily cites uses in different areas of the country, coordination with drones in large operations and plans to connect the glasses with robotic dogs, intelligent police vehicles, humanoid robots and other terminals. Efficiency gains ground, but so do questions about surveillance. Images | Xataka with Nano Banana In Xataka | The metaverse wasn’t dead, it was on a spree. And Meta wants it to flood Instagram and Facebook

One of the best science fiction series in history is animated, and today it returns to HBO Max with new episodes

May 25, 2026 by usatoday24

In 2013, Adult Swim premiered a series about an alcoholic scientist and his teenage grandson traveling the multiverse. ‘Rick and Morty‘ seemed like another hooligan animated series, but it became, for reasons that have a lot to do with being in the right place at the right time, into one of the most relevant television phenomena of the last two decades. The ninth season has just arrived HBO Maxand everything indicates that they are going to give us more of the same. Which in the case of ‘Rick and Morty’ is always excellent news. Season 7, released in 2023, was the first without Justin Roiland, one of the series’ co-creators. Adult Swim cut ties with him in January of that year following criminal domestic violence charges (ultimately dismissed) and the ‘Rick and Morty’ characters, voiced by him, were reassigned to other actors (and if you didn’t know it, it would be impossible for you to detect it). The public reaction was cold, and it ended up having the lowest score in the series’ history on Rotten Tomatoes. The eighth season, broadcast in 2025, was proof that the series could survive trauma. It started with 100% among critics and its public score reached 93%, which finally stabilized at 79%. A considerable improvement over the previous year and more in line with the series average. Now comes the time to confirm that, indeed, the series has overcome past traumas. And he does it in a big way: with the return of Evil Morty and with the introduction of a new cosmic entitythe Collective. Furthermore, this return is accompanied by other news: Warner Bros. is in the first stages of development of a feature film. Its possible director, Jacob Hair, has helmed several episodes since 2019 and is the current supervising director of the series. According to the co-creator of the series, Dan Harmon, the intention is to invest more money and make a 90-minute episode, no more, no less. It may not seem too ambitious, but let’s not forget that we are facing one of the best science fiction series of all time. In Xataka | Five years later, there is a Netflix series so well made that psychologists recommend it to understand mental health

“Slaughterbots” are no longer science fiction in Ukraine. Russians wear masks to avoid the drone that aims at their heads

May 22, 2026 by usatoday24

A few years before the start of the war in Ukraine, a Berkeley computer science professor presented at the UN a short called “Slaughterbots”a piece where small drones with facial recognition chased people autonomously. Many saw it then as another technological exaggeration in the style of the Black Mirror series. A few years later the short… has fallen short. Drones that search for tanks, search for people. For much of the Ukrainian war, drones were seen as a support weapon intended to destroy armor, correct artillery fire or monitor enemy movements. That phase has gone disappearing quickly. What is now emerging is something much more disturbing: cheap drones, produced by the millions, designed specifically to hunt down and kill soldiers. individually. They counted in Forbes that the Russian military channels themselves they are warning of Ukrainian FPVs equipped with thermal vision, reconnaissance systems and munitions capable of firing explosive projectiles at a distance directly against a human body. The detail that is generating the most fear is not the weapon itself, but the possibility that these drones are already learning to identify Where to hit to maximize lethality. The idea of small autonomous devices “hunting” specific people no longer belongs to technological dystopias or viral YouTube videos: it is beginning to form part of the front line’s routine. A gigantic aerial hunting area. The most profound consequence of this revolution is that huge parts of the front have been transformed in “kill zones”those corridors where any human movement can be detected and destroyed from the air in a matter of minutes. Ukraine has especially perfected this model around cities like Kostyantynivka or Chasiv Yarwhere small Russian groups are identified long before approaching the defensive lines. The result has been devastating for classical Russian doctrines: large armored columns and mechanized assaults have become too visible and vulnerable. In response, Moscow is trying to create their own “drone racers”infiltrating small teams of operators hiding in basements, destroyed buildings or tree lines to build temporary bubbles of local air dominance. In other words, war is no longer just about controlling the terrain, it is about controlling the sky just a few meters above each soldier’s head. The true technological leap. The most important thing about these new systems is not the size of the explosive charge, but intelligence that begins to guide them. Many Ukrainian FPVs already integrate autonomy modules capable of continuing the attack even when the operator loses signal due to electronic interference. Western companies and civilian developers have created relatively inexpensive kits that turn commercial drones into smart munitions capable of automatically locking on and pursuing targets. Until recently, that autonomy was mainly used against vehicles; now the focus shifts to the infantry. Some models use EFP loadsformed explosive projectiles that do not need to hit directly to penetrate protection and kill the target from a distance. That eliminates many of the defenses improvised measures that had proliferated on the front, from metal nets even the famous Russian “turtle tanks”. The problem for soldiers is that hiding no longer guarantees survival: the drone can continue observing, wait for the exact moment and attack when it detects vulnerability. “Slaughterbots” stopped seeming over the top. We said it at the beginning, in 2017 Professor Stuart Russell launched the short film “Slaughterbots” as a warning about autonomous drones with facial recognition capable of murdering specific people. At the time it seemed like a futuristic hype designed to open ethical debates about military artificial intelligence. Nine years later, the parallels are beginning to be uncomfortable even for those fighting on the ground. Russian soldiers develop countermeasures that seem straight out of a science fiction movie: using masks to confuse recognition systems, throwing helmets as decoys, hiding their heads behind obstacles or remaining completely still to avoid thermal tracking. Obsession reflects a huge psychological change. For centuries, a soldier could attempt to protect himself from enemy fire using cover, armor, or distance. Many fighters now feel that there is a camera constantly watching them from above, capable of deciding when to attack and possibly where to do it to ensure death. The industrial and algorithmic battle. The great Russian fear is that Ukraine will manage to combine mass production, autonomy and precision on an unprecedented scale. kyiv aims to manufacture millions of FPVs a year, and that completely changes the mathematics of combat. Whether a relatively cheap drone can chase soldiers with hit rates close to 80%human wear and tear begins to take on industrial dimensions. That is why Russia is desperately trying to build its own drone racersdeploy interceptors and saturate local airspace before moving larger troops. However, Ukraine maintains an advantage in both quantity and technological sophistication, especially in optics, autonomous navigation and aerial interception. What is being seen in the Donbas is not simply a tactical evolution of drone warfare: it is rather the birth of a new form of combat where thousands of semi-autonomous machines continually compete to detect, pursue and eliminate individual human beings. And the most disturbing thing is that this transformation is just beginning. Image | Defense Ukraine In Xataka | Satellite images reveal how much Russia fears Ukraine’s drones. 7,000 km away they are covering their nuclear missiles In Xataka | Ukraine has resurrected one of the oldest tactics of warfare. And he is isolating Russian cities without the need for soldiers

The day Spain wanted to be Spielberg doing science fiction. It was such nonsense that Tarantino ended up claiming the film

May 16, 2026 by usatoday24

In 1982, during the filming of Fitzcarraldo In the Amazon jungle, Werner Herzog heard a completely real proposal from several local indigenous people: they offered to kill Klaus Kinski to put an end to the problems he was causing on set. The German director rejected the idea, but years later he would admit that for a few seconds he seriously considered accepting the offer. The impossible movie. In the mid-80s, Spanish cinema was still very far from Hollywood. Science fiction blockbusters seemed to be the exclusive territory of Spielberg, George Lucas or Ridley Scott, while comedies and much more modest films in terms of media predominated here. Then the director Fernando Colomo appeared and decided do exactly the opposite of what seemed sensible: raising a medieval science fiction epic with aliens, castles, special effects, international stars and the largest budget in the history of Spanish cinema up to that point. The result was so enormous, chaotic and Martian that it ended up becoming a symbol first of absolute failure…and decades later in a cult film claimed even by Quentin Tarantino himself. movie poster Spain in Hollywood style. The dragon knight was born as a completely improbable idea: mixing the myth of Sant Jordi with Encounters in the third phasemedieval fantasy, absurd humor and romantic science fiction. The story began with a spaceship mistaken for a dragon in the middle of medieval Europe and a silent alien (played by Miguel Bosé) falling in love with a princess after accidentally kidnapping her. Colomo came from triumph with the comedies of the Madrid Movida, but decided to launch into a gigantic project by Spanish standards. The budget is over exceeding 300 million of pesetas, a crazy figure for the time. Huge sets were built, models and storyboards that were unusual in Spain were designed, and some of them were experimented with. the first digital effects of national cinema. The problem is that Spanish cinema in 1985 simply did not yet have the necessary industrial infrastructure to build something like that without everything exploding into the air. Martian Bosé, Keitel sunk and Kinski unleashed. The casting seemed like an international frenzy. Harvey Keitel accepted the project at one of the lowest moments of his career after working with Scorsese. Miguel Bosé finished turned into an alien because Imanol Arias “did not have the face of an alien,” according to Colomo himself. And then there was Klaus Kinski. The German actor arrived at the filming as a ticking bomb human. He constantly insulted the team, shouted “What a shitty movie!” During the days, he demanded more money, disappeared when he wanted and turned any technical delay into an attack of fury. Apparently, he only respected Miguel Bosé (and for being Picasso’s godson) and the gypsy animal caretakers on the set. To give us an idea, Keitel even offered to pay out of pocket to settle one of Kinski’s contractual tantrums. The atmosphere was so unbearable that Colomo tried to film all the German scenes before meals so I can have a quiet lunch without him. History left the moment when Kinski finally finished his sequences and left the shoot, when the team celebrated his departure. opening bottles of champagne All wrong. The film was shot amidst constant rain, delays, cost overruns and situations almost surreal. An extra was about to drown during a sequence on a lake because the armor was too heavy and he couldn’t stay afloat. An electrician managed to rescue him at the last moment and then used that anecdote for years to demand work in new Colomo films. Not only that. The castle where they were filming was so poorly located that the crew had to upload loading material on exhausting days every morning. Miguel Bose I could barely breathe inside his spacesuit and diving suit it continually fogged up. Meanwhile, money was disappearing at breakneck speed. What had started as an ambitious fantasy ended up becoming something of a kind. suicide expedition where every day seemed to bring a new logistical disaster. The final failure. When The dragon knight It hit theaters in 1985, the reaction was brutal. Part of the criticism destroyed her describing it as a botched, absurd and inoperative fantasy. Although the film was relatively seen and became the seventh highest-grossing Spanish production of the year, that it wasn’t enough to recover such a crazy budget. To make matters worse, the American distributor broke agreements due to delays in the delivery of the material and Colomo lost a trial in Hollywood that left him without international rights. The director finished in debt with 50 million of the old pesetas and, according to would count Years later, he only kept “a Renault 5.” The experience was so traumatic that he thought he was going to have a heart attack. In fact, to survive financially he wrote almost as an emergency The joyful lifewhose subsequent success allowed him to pay off the debts accumulated by that medieval space madness. From disaster to cult movie. For decades, The Dragon Knight was remembered as one of the big hits of Spanish cinema. But over time something began to happen that has been repeated in many other celluloid productions: many people began to see it with fascination. Its impossible mix of genres, its naive tone, its disproportionate ambitions and the chaos that each scene gives off transformed it into a unique rarity. Festivals like CutreCon They claimed it as a cult work and the film ended being restored in 4K forty years after its premiere. The definitive turn came when Colomo remembered a conversation in Sitges with Quentin Tarantino. The American director, always obsessed with strange and failed films, immediately recognized Star Knight (his international title) even before Colomo himself remembered what it was called in English. It turned out that that martian medieval that almost ruined half the world ended up surviving in the most improbable way: converted into a delirious relic of a moment in which Spanish cinema believed, … Read more

To locate the pilot lost in Iran, the US used two tools. One was given by Boeing, the other is science fiction

April 8, 2026 by usatoday24

The call quantum magnetometry has promised to measure magnetic fields so weak that they border on detectability, using microscopic defects in synthetic diamonds capable of registering imperceptible variations. In the laboratory, these techniques already allow biological signals to be observed at surprising scales, but always in environments controlled and at very short distances. Outside of these ideal conditions, between noise, interference and distance, the great unknown remains the same: how far that sensitivity really goes. The United States claims to have the answer, and it is very difficult to believe. Two tools to find a missing person. Washington has counted that the operation to rescue to the airman shot down in Iran was based on a very specific combination of technologies that, together, made the difference between finding a man or losing him in an immense terrain. On the one hand, the pilot had a standard and well-known system available as Boeing’s CSELa communications device that allows send encrypted signals via satellite and guide rescue teams with relative precision. This type of tool, widely distributed in the armed forces, was key to confirming that he was still alive and limiting his initial position in an extremely hostile environment. The other tool that borders on the implausible. The second element of the rescue is the one that has generated the most interest (and doubts), since different information supported by a exclusive to the New York Post point to the use of a system called “Ghost Murmur” capable of detecting the human heartbeat at long distance using quantum magnetometry combined with artificial intelligence. On paper, the idea is extraordinary in a movie, but apparently also in the real world: identify the electromagnetic signature of a living body in the middle of the desert, isolate it from noise and convert it into an operational coordinate. It happens that the unknowns also begin here, because these types of signals are extremely weak and, until now, they could only be measured at a very short distance in controlled environments, which raises serious doubts about its real range in combat conditions. Between the plausible and the inflated. The context of the rescue itself suggests that, rather than replacing the classic system, this technology would have acted as a complement under very specific conditions: an environment with low electromagnetic interference, few human signatures or signals, and a target forced to briefly expose itself to activate its beacon. That is, not so much an omniscient tool as a very limited capacityuseful in ideal scenarios but difficult to extrapolate to more complex situations. The narrative of “finding someone by their heartbeat from miles away” fits well as a concept or in a Nolan film, but until now it clashed with known physical limitations. The “Venezuelan” precedent. Many skeptical analysts have gone for the jugular of these claims, speaking reverse engineering of another futuristic weapon to achieve the “Ghost Murmur”. Because skepticism does not arise in a vacuum, but in a recent context where technologies wrapped in an almost fantastic halo have already been presented, such as the supposed “discombobulator” mentioned by Trump in the operation against Nicolás Maduro. In that case, experts pointed out that it was probably a mix of capabilities real (electronic warfare, acoustic weapons or directed energy systems) presented as a single almost magical device. The pattern is recognizable: existing technologies reinterpreted or exaggerated in the public narrative. The war is also fought in the technological story. If you also want, as a whole, the rescue reveals something deeper than a simple military operation: the growing importance of technological narrative in modern conflicts. The United States used a tangible tooleffective and proven to locate the pilot, no more no less than a GPSbut he also hinted at another capacity that, real or not in the terms described, projects a image of superiority almost total. And possibly there, between what is technically possible and what is communicated, there is a space where perception matters as much as reality, and where sometimes the border between advanced technology and science fiction becomes deliberately blurred. The rescue movie, of course, has already been practically written. Image | US Air Force In Xataka | The rescue of a fallen US pilot in Iran seems like a science fiction story. And there are elements to think that it is In Xataka | Iran has found a hole in Israel’s shield: turning a missile into an explosive “storm” in full descent

96 drones with a science fiction launch

March 26, 2026 by usatoday24

In recent years, the cost of many drones has dropped to the point that many military models are infinitely cheaper than the missile that tries to shoot them down. At the same time, advances in artificial intelligence have allowed relatively simple machines execute tasks that previously required entire human teams. In China they have taken an unprecedented step towards the war of the future. The next step. Yes, Beijing just taught in a video something that goes far beyond the individual drone: a coordinated swarm of up to 96 units which works like a single system intelligent at a devilish speed. This is not about launching devices, but about orchestrating a distributed air force where each drone has a role and all act as a single organism, marking a clear leap towards a dominated war by software, algorithms and autonomy. The demonstration also leaves a clear idea: the future will not be a more advanced drone, but rather many drones working together as if they were one. The “kill chain” converted into a single system. As can be seen, the Atlas system integrates a single sequence the entire combat process, from detection to attack, eliminating traditional intermediate steps along the way. In the test, the swarm identified a target among several similar ones, made decisions autonomously and executed a precise attack in mid-flight, displaying a chain of destruction continuous and automated. There is no doubt, this approach completely transforms war, because it is no longer a question of isolated platforms, but of complete systems capable of to perceive, decide and act without interruptions. Science fiction. The heart of the system is its deployability: we are talking about a vehicle that can launch drones at a rate of one every three secondsquickly generating a critical mass in the air. This technical detail is key, because it allows one to be built in a matter of minutes. dense and coordinated formationone capable of saturating defenses or executing complex attacks. It is, therefore, not just speed, it is the ability to turn a launch into a controlled avalanche of perfectly synchronized units. A swarm that thinks and reorganizes itself. As we said, each drone is equipped with algorithms that allow you to communicateshare information and adapt in real time, avoiding collisions and adjusting your position within the group. Besides, can be reassigned during the mission, changing functions as the combat evolves, which introduces unprecedented flexibility in conflicts. In other words, this kind of “collective brain” turns the swarm into something closer to a distributed intelligence than to a set of independent machines. Algorithmic control. They had something in the PLA that already we had seen beforethat one of the most profound changes has to do with the fact that a single operator can control the entire system, delegating complex tasks such as target recognition, mission assignment or route planning to artificial intelligence. This reduces human burden and accelerates decision times to levels that are difficult to match by traditional systems. War thus goes from depending on operators to depending on previously trained algorithms. Attack and defend in another way. Plus: the system allows combine different types of drones in the same mission, from reconnaissance to electronic warfare and attack, creating staggered waves capable of overcoming defenses or penetrating in depth. That is to say, for either side, progress blurs the line. between front and rear and forces us to completely rethink anti-aircraft defenses, which no longer face just one missile or drone, but dozens of them acting in a coordinated manner. A new and disturbing scenario where the real weapon is no longer the drone itself, but the system that connects them. Image | CCTV In Xataka | Ukraine is close to achieving a milestone that no one has achieved: building the largest drone industry without China’s help In Xataka | 200 drones in the hands of a single soldier: China is advancing very quickly in a type of war that seemed like science fiction

If Ukraine promoted the use of drones, Iran has triggered the Terminator algorithm. And that was already a problem in science fiction

March 13, 2026 by usatoday24

In the gulf war 1991, the international coalition took more than a month to launch some 100,000 airstrikes after weeks of planning. Three decades later, the ability to process military information has changed radically: satellites, sensors and drones generate amounts of data that no human team could analyze alone. In this new technological environment, the true battlefield is no longer just the air or the land, but the speed at which information is interpreted. From the drone to the algorithm. Recent wars had already anticipated a profound transformation of modern combat, but the conflict with Iran seems to have crossed a different technological frontier. If the war in ukraine popularized the massive use of drones as a dominant tool from the battlefield, the campaign against Iran has introduced a logical even more radical: integration artificial intelligence at the very heart of military decisions. In fact, the initial attacks showed an intensity difficult to imagine just a few years ago, with hundreds of targets hit in a matter of hours and thousands in a few days. That speed was not only the result of greater firepower, but also of the use of capable systems of analyzing enormous volumes of data and transforming that information into almost instantaneous attack plans. Understanding the “kill chain”. I remembered this morning the financial times that traditional war, the so-called chain of destruction (from identifying a target to launching the attack) was a long and bureaucratic process. Intelligence officers analyzed information, wrote reports, commanders evaluated options and finally the coup was authorized. A process that could take hours or even days. The incorporation of AI is reducing that cycle drastically. We are talking about platforms that integrate data from satellites, drones, sensors and intercepted communications that are capable of generating lists of targets, prioritizing them and suggesting the appropriate weapon in a matter of seconds. The result is extreme and disturbing compression of the kill chain: What once required prolonged deliberation now becomes an almost instantaneous sequence. The digital brain of the battlefield. Behind this acceleration are data analysis systems that act as a true operational “brain.” These platforms combine geospatial intelligence, machine learning and advanced language models to interpret information and propose military actions. Its most disruptive capacity is that it no longer only summarizes data, but can reason step by stepevaluate alternatives and generate tactical recommendations. This allows military commanders to process volumes of information that are impossible to handle manually and multiply the number of operational decisions made in the same period of time. In practice, algorithms are allowing select and execute objectives at a scale and speed that were previously unthinkable. Bomb faster than thought. The result of this transformation is a war that begins to move at a rapid speed. higher than human pace. Artificial intelligence can now analyze information, detect patterns and propose attacks faster than a team of analysts could even formulate the right questions. Some experts describe This phenomenon as a form of “compressed decision,” in which planning is reduced to such short windows of time that human managers can barely review what the machine has already processed. In this context, another disturbing idea: that destruction can precede the human reflection process itself, that is, first comes the recommendation generated by the algorithm and then the formal approval of the person who must execute it. And there, there is no doubt, we can have a problem of colossal dimensions. The human dilemma in algorithmic warfare. Because this technological acceleration is generating a growing debate about the real role of humans in military decision-making. Although the armed forces they insist As final control remains in the hands of people, the time available to evaluate system recommendations is increasingly reduced. Some analysts fear that this will lead to a form of “cognitive download”one in which military leaders end up automatically trusting the decisions generated by algorithms. Other countries like China itself observe this evolution with concern and warn of the risk that automated systems end up directly influencing life or death decisions on the battlefield, associating the scenario with the closest thing to the “Terminator algorithm” due to the unequivocal way in which all paths approach James Cameron’s fantastic proposal. A new accelerated war. If you will also, what is emerging is not just a new military technology, but rather a new time of the war. AI makes it possible to process information on a massive scale, identify targets more quickly, and execute attacks with unprecedented simultaneity. This means that military campaigns can develop at a pace that overflows the models traditional planning. From this perspective, war no longer advances solely at the pace of logistics or firepower, but at the pace of algorithms capable of interpreting the battlefield in real time. And in this unprecedented scenario, strategic advantage could increasingly depend on who is able to think (or calculate) faster than the adversary. Although neither of them be human. Image | Ministry of Defense of Ukraine In Xataka | China has just found a hole in the US’s quietest weapon: an algorithm has hacked its B-2s in Iran In Xataka | The great paradox of war: the US ignored Ukraine’s pleas to Russia and now needs it in Iran

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