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Mia Jankowicz

Versatile and curious journalist with extensive experience across multiple beats, including defence, tech, culture, and business.

The i Paper •

I tried the VR ​used to prep new Ukrainian army recruits – it was brutal

First Fight aims to expose trainee soldiers to the stresses of the battlefield before they get there I’m standing in a trench on the Ukrainian front line, a rifle in my hands. Gunshots and blasts pierce the air. To my right, slumped against the wooden trench walls, is a soldier, his face covered in blood. I reach down to shake him by the shoulder, and he slides lifelessly sideways. Just yards away, a missile strikes, sending a plume of debris into the air.


Thankfully I’m n...
Business Insider •

This tech CEO quit to redesign the 155mm shell — and upend how the West buys its weapons

A few weeks ago, a new defense tech startup stepped out of the shadows with a bold claim: it had built a radically advanced 155mm artillery shell called Sceptre.

The ammo quickly grabbed attention for its promised combination of unprecedented range and precision.

But its creator, tech entrepreneur Chad Steelberg, believes the real innovation isn't necessarily what Sceptre does — it's how it's made and sold.

Speaking to Business Insider, Steelberg described Sceptre as an open weapons platform:...
Business Insider •

The West's drone tech risks becoming irrelevant if it's not tested daily on the Ukrainian battlefield, defense exec says

The dizzying pace of drone development is now part and parcel of the war in Ukraine, where the fastest-moving companies are battle-testing their products in real-world combat.

Increasingly, Western militaries understand that their drone tech will be functionally obsolete unless the technology they import or develop is field-tested in conflicts like Ukraine.

"If your system is not in day-to-day use on the frontline of Ukraine, it becomes very quickly out of date," Justin Hedges, a former Royal...
Business Insider •

The UK defense industry's biggest problem isn't just cash — it's also companies like Amazon

When Calvin Bailey — a member of the UK parliament — was a squadron commander in the country's Royal Air Force, he saw a shift in how his engineering-heavy workforce changed careers.

In the early 2010s, people would leave the service "like for like," he told Business Insider — meaning they were leaving the military for complementary roles in the defense and aerospace industry.

However, by around 2017, he said, a new sprawl of high-tech companies and major infrastructure projects created a dema...
Business Insider •

The US and South Korea just rewrote the rulebook on salvaging a downed F-35

An F-35A stealth fighter jet that crash-landed on its belly in 2022 has been given a new lease of life thanks to a dramatic operation to remove and then reattach its wings.

The South Korean air force aircraft made headlines three years ago after a catastrophic mid-flight bird strike caused an F-35 pilot to make a "belly landing," or gear-up landing, at Seosan Air Base, near the country's eastern coast.

The South Korean pilot walked away from the high-risk maneuver unharmed, but the damage left...
Business Insider •

BAE Systems says it's nailed a way to meet the UK's need for a lot of ammunition — and fast

BAE Systems says it's about to radically increase its production of 155 mm shells, leaning on advances in how it produces munitions.

The UK defense contractor says its new production methods are a "major breakthrough" that will allow it to reach a sixteenfold increase in 155 mm shell manufacturing by the summer.

As a result, it says, it will not only be able to meet the UK's demand but will also begin to supply for export by the end of 2026.

The announcement has come amid ongoing anxiety abou...
Business Insider •

I import steel parts from China. Trump's tariffs won't stop me — it's still cheaper and easier.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Mike King, who runs a suite of vending machines as well as Moneta Market, a full-service micro-market company based in Salt Lake City. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I started out with gumball machines. I was in college serving tables, when I read an e-book online, and started buying them for about $50 a pop.

Then I met a guy who was selling full-size snack and soda machines and he was kind of laughing at me: "Why are...
Business Insider •

While the US and China compete for AI dominance, Russia's leading model lags behind

Russian President Vladimir Putin wants his country to compete in the global race to build AI, besting models coming out of China and the US. But its flagship large language model, or LLM, isn't even the best at speaking Russian.

On the Russian-language version of LLM Arena — where users go to compare and rank the answers of different LLMs — GigaChat MAX comes joint-eighth at the time of writing, behind various versions of Claude, DeepSeek, and ChatGPT.

YandexGPT 4 Pro, an LLM developed by the...
Business Insider •

What fueled the LA wildfires now tearing through some of America's most expensive homes

All was well in Los Angeles at around 10 a.m. on Tuesday.

Less than 24 hours later, 2,925 acres of the Pacific Palisades were ablaze in what is being called the worst wildfire in Southern California since 2011. It has grown by orders of magnitude since.

Several more blazes have ignited in the area, with one, the Eaton Fire, engulfing another 13,690 acres.

Firefighters had not contained the fires as of early Thursday morning, the Los Angeles Fire Department said. At least 10 people have died....
Business Insider •

'My small business is failing': How entrepreneurs on TikTok are embracing their worst business days — and seeing results

In the last couple of years, small businesses have littered TikTok with confessionals.

"My small business is failing," is how they often begin.

"If you've been following me for the last couple of months, you may think that it's not," craftsperson Laura Craine said in a post last year. "But in reality, I haven't received an order in weeks."

Another TikToker said: "On the outside, it might look like everything is going well and I'm making lots of orders, but I'm just not."

Ranging from straigh...
Business Insider •

A European nation cut ties with Gazprom, saying it won't be 'blackmailed' by Russia

A European gas supplier ended a decades-long contract with Gazprom, the Russian state-owned energy juggernaut.

Analysts are hailing the decision as a sign of Europe moving to be more resilient in its energy supplies.

The Austrian gas conglomerate OMV announced on Wednesday that it was cutting ties with Gazprom over a protracted contract dispute, ending its dealings with Russia.

OMV was one of the last large, long-term buyers of Russian gas.

"Huge, positive development. Russia is in trouble,"...
Business Insider •

Elon Musk says human-piloted fighter jets like the F-35 are obsolete. Drone tech can't yet fill the gap.

Drones are changing war in ways we never thought possible, but are we to the point where uncrewed systems can replace top-dollar weapons like the F-35 stealth fighter?

Prominent tech-industry figures say yes. Analysts and former warfighters say that we aren't there yet and that replacement might not be the right call, regardless.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has targeted the Pentagon's prized fifth-generation stealth jet, the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter. In a series of social-media posts on...
Business Insider •

Russia lost access to CERN, a sign its war in Ukraine is causing a scientific brain drain

CERN is about to revoke access for about 500 scientists affiliated with Russian institutions, cutting Russia's researchers off from its state-of-the-art facilities.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN — home to the world's only Large Hadron Collider — announced the number of affected scientists on Monday, Reuters reported, finalizing a pledge first made after the outbreak of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The move is a major break for the institution in Gene...
Business Insider •

The Black Sea has a deadly naval mine problem that will long outlast the Ukraine war

Against all odds, Ukraine has gained the initiative in the Black Sea.

But a silent threat under the waves is poised to long outlast Russia's aggression: an unknown number of naval mines likely laid by both sides.

Even their locations — classified information to each of the warring parties — have become an open question as multiple incidents indicate that some have been drifting.

The issue is underscored by recent joint exercises between the US and NATO partners off the coast of Bulgaria, wher...
Business Insider •

Drone-on-drone clashes in Ukraine are like WWI dogfights — and tactics are evolving fast

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The sheer scale of drone use in Ukraine has given rise to an increasing battle for the skies, and the rise of drone-on-drone dogfights.

Thousands of uncrewed aerial vehicles take to the skies over Ukraine, serving a wide range of tasks such as directing artillery fire, surveillance, and acting as loitering munitions.

It's a set of tasks so integral to the fighting that earlier this month Ukraine's military launched the world's first stand-alone...
Business Insider •

Elon Musk's X has embraced porn. Now what?

Elon Musk's X overhauled its sensitive media policy this week, signaling an increasing coziness with the world of adult content.

While the platform has never formally forbidden porn, the new update is much clearer. It also includes a forthright ideological statement on the issue of smut.

"Sexual expression, whether visual or written, can be a legitimate form of artistic expression," the policy states.

It adds: "We believe in the autonomy of adults to engage with and create content that reflec...
Business Insider •

British mathematicians say they've figured out how to guarantee a lottery win by buying 27 tickets

Mathematicians in the UK said in a paper published in July that they had figured out how many tickets you would have to buy to guarantee winning in the country's National Lottery — 27.

Unfortunately, that doesn't mean you're guaranteed to win enough to cover the cost of the tickets, the mathematicians said.

The UK's National Lottery's main game, the Lotto, is held twice weekly, with six numbers from one to 59 randomly drawn. In December, the lottery organizers announced that its latest jackpot...
Business Insider •

How Ukraine lost Bakhmut and Russia won a hollow victory

When Yuriy Stetskiv pulled into Bakhmut at the end of April, the mission was to cling on for as long as possible.

Stetskiv, a deputy chief of staff of Ukraine's 135th Separate Territorial Defense Battalion, had orders to establish a command post on the western edge of the city and defend the last few blocks still in Ukrainian hands.

Artillery fire crashed around him as he approached the city. Inside his armored vehicle — an eight-seater, overstuffed with 12 soldiers — his men quietly prayed in...
Business Insider •

The Storm Shadow missile is 'absolutely critical' to Ukraine's counter-offensive, say experts. But Ukraine needs to use it carefully.

Storm Shadow missiles provided by the UK to Ukraine are proving "absolutely critical" to its counter-offensive — but they must be effectively used to maximize its limited arsenal, experts told Insider.

Since the British government provided an undisclosed number of the air-launched missiles to Ukraine earlier this year they have been striking Russian targets "almost without fault," UK Defence Minister Ben Wallace said late last month.

The missiles, which are fired from a plane and have a range...
Business Insider •

The maker of the lost Titan submersible previously complained about strict regulations, saying the industry was 'obscenely safe'

The founder of the company behind the Titan submersible previously described his industry as "obscenely safe" and complained that passenger-vessel regulations held back innovation.

OceanGate Expeditions CEO Stockton Rush is understood to be aboard the Titan, the submersible that lost contact with the surface Sunday, prompting fears for his safety.

The vessel, which set out with four other passengers to view the wreck of the Titanic, was believed as of early Tuesday to have between 70 and 96 ho...
Business Insider •

Military tech is racing towards a dangerous AI future, and Russia's war in Ukraine is paving the way, drone experts say

Russia's war in Ukraine provides an unprecedented testing ground for lethal drone technology. But experts are voicing their concerns over the creep of artificial intelligence over human decision-making in warfare.

Unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs — more commonly known as drones — have come to the fore in Ukraine more than in any other past conflict.

They're not the "decisive factor," Ingvild Bode, at the University of Southern Denmark (SDU), told Insider. Tanks, trench warfare and artillery s...
Business Insider •

California court rules that bees are a type of fish in order to protect them under the state's endangered-species act

A trio of judges in California said on Tuesday that bees could be legally classified as a type of fish as part of a ruling that gave added conservation protections to the endangered species.

"The issue presented here is whether the bumble bee, a terrestrial invertebrate, falls within the definition of fish," the judges wrote in their ruling. And, they concluded, it does.

Formerly, the problem for bee lovers — and lovers of all Californian terrestrial invertebrates — was down to the way protect...
Business Insider •

A bright, talented Ukrainian journalist signed up to help Fox News cover the war. Two months later she was dead.

The Ukrainian news producer Oleksandra Kuvshynova — Sasha to all who knew her — always surprised her parents with her quiet independence.

In February 2014, she disappeared from home in Kyiv as it was gripped by the Euromaidan revolution which ousted the government and changed Ukraine forever. It almost got her killed, her father, Andrey Kuvshinov told Insider.

"Twenty-four hours later, we found out that our daughter — who was still a schoolgirl at the time — was at the media center, helping wi...
Business Insider •

How a prolific anti-vax doctor, known for endorsing claims that COVID-19 shots could make you magnetic, oversees a lucrative empire of junk science

Dr. Sherri Tenpenny had just returned from the Ohio Statehouse late on June 9, 2021.

She told lawmakers there — who were considering a bill against vaccine mandates — that the COVID-19 vaccine could potentially make people both magnetic and connective to 5G mobile data networks.

The testimony — which was demonstrably false — garnered global headlines and its own PolitiFact fact check.

It inspired a nurse at the same hearing to make a comical failed attempt at proving she was now magnetic.

Th...
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