KYIV — “Really cheap stuff is killing really expensive stuff,” Deborah Fairlamb tells me. Fairlamb is co-founder of Green Flag Ventures, a venture capital firm based here and in Los Angeles. It invests in early-stage Ukrainian companies pioneering artificial intelligence and cyber products that are dual-use, meaning with both military and civilian applications.

We’re chatting in the lobby of the Intercontinental Kyiv hotel, which is hosting the Defense Tech Innovations Forum, a conference on defense industry technologies. It looks like a Silicon Valley tech-bro gathering, except it’s full of middle-aged Ukrainians in Steve Jobs-style black turtlenecks and men in military fatigues, with a handful of women in attendance, too. The lobby has become an upscale version of Rick’s Café in “Casablanca” — sit there long enough, and you’ll see former CIA director and retired Army Gen. David Petraeus being hailed like a returning hero, or a group of German soldiers headed to a meeting in the restaurant.

The topics discussed at the forum cover a wide array of technology developments, including encryption and electronic countermeasures, but the buzz is focused on drones. A rep from Brave1, the Ukrainian government-run coordinating platform for the rapidly growing drone sector, told me that sometimes a new development goes from a........

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