Ispend a lot of time watching people die. Not in an abstract or academic sense. I mean in drone footage—kill videos, four‑K streams of a human being’s last moments. I watch them because it keeps my research honest, and because I used to be the man behind that feed—a drone operator in Ukraine. That job leaves a mark. The longer you do it, the more the lines between analysis and grief blur.

This week, I watched a woman die.

There was nothing cinematic about it. A Ukrainian ISR drone—probably a Mavic—hovered above a muddy strip of no‑man’s‑land. The woman had been hit hard . One leg shredded . Shrapnel in her upper chest. She coughed blood onto the mud, twitching in short spasms. There was no medic coming. No cover. No rescue. Just a pool of blood spreading in front of her a

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