New Delhi, June 6 -- Vladimir Putin stood before the assembled dignitaries of Russia's premier economic forum on Friday and said something that no Kremlin statement on drone warfare had quite said so plainly before: Russia is working on artificial intelligence applications for drones, and so are the United States and the European Union.

a single sentence offered in response to a question - but its implications extend well beyond the forum hall on the banks of the Neva.

For years, Western governments and defense analysts have framed AI-enabled drone warfare primarily as a domain where NATO countries hold a decisive edge. Putin's comment inverts that framing. It is not a boast of Russian superiority; it is something more unsettling - an a...