Ukrainians are being killed by US tech in Russian weapons, experts tell senators

Advanced weapons components of U.S. origin are being recovered from Russian bombs, drones, vehicles and munitions, experts told senators during a committee hearing Tuesday. 

These components, which James Byrne, director of open-source intelligence and analysis at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), calls the “brains” of the advanced weapons, are slipping through export controls and killing Ukrainians. 

Failures by both the U.S. and its allies to monitor and control the export of specialized weapon components are enabling adversarial nations, Damien Spleeters, deputy director of operations for Conflict Armament Research, told a Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs subcommittee.

“What is commonly known now could not have been imagined two years ago — Russian, Iranian and North Korean weapons bear the marks of U.S. and European nations,” Spleeters said. 

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations chair, organized the hearing after traveling with Senate leaders to Ukraine last week. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky provided the visiting senators with a folder detailing 211 American-manufactured, high-technology products used to kill Ukrainians on the battlefield, Blumenthal said.

“The folder that he handed me was a powerful indictment of our export control system,” he said. “I am appalled that American technology breakthroughs are sustaining Russian belligerence,” he said. 

Analysts on the battlefield have discovered Western components, especially U.S. components, compose the majority of weapons “across a huge range of platforms,” Byrne said. Those components are “things that Russia cannot just replace, things that modern technology platforms cannot work without,” Byrne said.

At the beginning of the war, U.S. components recovered from Russian weapons were date marked for 2022, suggesting that Russia had stockpiled them in anticipation of the invasion. RUSI now finds components on the battlefield dated more recently, Byrne said.

Ninety-five percent of Russian weapons with these specialized components source them from the United States and its allies, Elina Ribakova, vice president for foreign policy at the Kyiv School of Economics, said

But despite an initial blow to its military complex from sanctions, Russia’s access to critical weapons components has resurged, Ribakova said in an op-ed.

The witnesses agreed that Russian dependence gives the West the opportunity to meaningfully weaken its battlefield capabilities by tightening up its export control. 

A recent report from the Kyiv School of Economics found that major U.S. companies like Intel, Analog Devices, Texas Instruments and IBM “continue to trade with Russia through third-country intermediaries.” Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) was also named at the hearing. 

Intel and Nvidia — also named in the report — have reached out to RUSI, Byrne said. Analog Devices, AMD and Texas Instruments have thus far not corresponded with the Kyiv School of Economics, and “very little” with RUSI, despite the discovery their products are used to assemble Russian weapons, according to Ribakova and Byrne.

The witnesses recommended imposing steeper penalties on U.S. companies whose wares end up in the hands of the Russian military, demanding better record-keeping at point of sale, stricter enforcement of trade regulations along shipping routes and using government resources to vet potential buyers. 

The U.S. “has been historically good” at preventing and punishing abuses of its export controls, but “we’ve taken our foot off the gas,” Byrne said. “We need to put our foot back on the gas and get after them.”