Opinion

Ukraine showed Trump how easily an enemy could cripple an AI powerhouse

Three Russian AI computing facilities were disrupted in four days, raising questions about America's data center defenses

By Lt. Col. Robert Maginnis, (ret.) Fox News

Published October 14, 2026 5:00am EDT

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An adversary can interrupt an artificial intelligence system without defeating its software. It need only strike the infrastructure that keeps the system running. Ukraine proved the point inside Russia this past week.

President Trump and his national security team should take note before an enemy tries the same thing here. On October 8, a Ukrainian drone attack forced Yandex, the technology company often called "Russia’s Google," to suspend operations at its Sasovo data center. The next day, another strike knocked out several modules at its Kaluga facility, which Yandex had called its most powerful data center in Russia. On October 11, the company announced that its Vladimir-region data center had shut down completely after a drone attack. Ukraine disrupted three major Yandex computing facilities in four days.

The Sasovo facility housed two of Yandex’s three supercomputers used to train its AI models, including YandexGPT. Yandex said it could not yet determine whether the equipment could be restored. Whatever the final damage assessment, Russia’s leading AI developer lost a major computing hub in a single night.

AMERICA MUST DEFEND OUR DIGITAL INFRASTRUCTURE, HERE AND OVERSEAS, TO WIN THE NEXT WAR

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That standard should govern our........

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