One of Ukraine's “cards” in negotiations: A system to provide allies with data of “extraordinary value”

Ukraine's new defense minister, Mihailo Fedorov, has announced that a system will be established to allow allies to train their artificial intelligence models based on combat data that Kiev has collected during its nearly four-year war with Russia, Reuters reports.

Fedorov, a former digitization minister who last week took over the defense portfolio to lead reform in the sector, described Kiev's database as one of his “books” in negotiations with other nations.

“Frontline data has tremendous value”

Since Russia launched its war against Ukraine in February 2022, the Ukrainians have gathered extensive information from the battlefield, including systematically recorded combat statistics and millions of hours of drone footage.

Such data is important for training artificial intelligence models, which require large volumes of real-world information to identify patterns and predict how people or objects might act in various situations.

“Today, frontline data has tremendous value,” Fedorov told reporters in comments approved for publication Tuesday, adding that there is a demand for data from allies. “We're going to build a system that they can train their software using our data,” the official explained.

Fedorov had previously stated that Ukraine uses artificial intelligence from US data analytics firm Palantir for both military and civilian applications.

Outlining his plans after being appointed to the Ministry of Defence, he said he wanted to “more actively” integrate allies into projects.

The minister said his team was receiving advice from the Center for Strategic and International Studies and RAND in the US, as well as Britain's Royal United Services Institute.