President Trump is floating providing U.S. pilots and war planes as part of security guarantees for post-war Ukraine as he pushes for an end to Russia’s war against the country.

Trump has said the U.S. will help Europe craft security guarantees for Ukraine to backstop any peace deal reached with Russia, in lieu of Ukraine joining NATO, a red line for Russia.

“When it comes to security, they are willing to put people on the ground,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News aired Monday evening, referring to Europe. “We’re willing to help them with things, especially, probably, if you talk about by air because nobody has stuff we have.”

White House Spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday that Trump has tasked his national security team to “come up with a framework for these security guarantees that can be acceptable to help ensure a lasting peace and end this war.”

“I won’t, certainly, rule out anything as far as military options that the president has at his disposal, I’ll let him do that,” she said, but added that the president has “definitively” ruled out boots on the ground. 

NATO chief Mark Rutte on Monday said Trump’s willingness to involve the U.S. in security gaurantees for Ukraine was a “breakthrough” in the peace process, though details on America’s potential role remain scarce.

Trump’s floating the possibility for air support could mean American pilots engaged in defensive operations, guarding against Russian missiles, or simply providing support for other aircraft – such as air-to-air refueling or for transportation of military equipment. 

Defensive operations could risk a confrontation between the U.S. and Russia, a scenario that both Trump and former President Biden before him have been anxious to avoid.

Biden turned down Ukraine’s requests for no-fly zone following Russia’s invasion, over concerns it could escalate the conflict and lead to a direct confrontation between nuclear powers.

The Wall Street Journal reports that several of “Silicon Valley’s elite” believe the artificial intelligence boom will generate massive wealth even as it displaces millions of workers, leaving them unemployed. Their solution to this unemployment crisis is to use the newly generated wealth from AI to provide a universal basic income for everyone.  

It’s a terrible idea for several reasons. But it could be tweaked to address a huge public policy problem: funding Social Security.

The idea of a universal basic income has been around for decades. While proposals vary, the basic plan is a taxpayer-funded redistribution scheme: providing everyone with a designated amount of money — usually between $500 to $1,000 per month — with no strings or work attached. 

Wall Street Journal reporter Josh Reich notes that Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey and Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes have used their own money to set up limited universal basic income, or UBI, pilot programs to see if they work. And they aren’t alone. Stanford University’s Basic Income Lab tracks UBI programs around the world. While most are in the U.S. and created at the state or local level, there are several in other countries. Some are funded by donations; others are taxpayer funded. 

Reich says OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is a UBI proponent and funded an experiment in 2016 that gave $1,000 a month to low-income individuals for three years. Elon Musk has talked about “universal high income,” and boasted that AI “will automate most production and the public can share in the revenue.” And tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang proposed a $1,000 a month UBI program as part of his failed Democratic presidential campaign in 2020. 

What’s different now is that some tech titans “see a future flush with wealth generated by artificial intelligence.” And “that revenue can be shared under a massive wealth-redistribution system.”  

It’s not clear how AI-created wealth could be redistributed. Wealth is usually created by a company or an individual, who owns the wealth. To redistribute that wealth, the owner has to voluntarily donate it or the government must take it. Even if AI were to dramatically boost federal revenues, the federal government currently has a $37 trillion debt and a $1.9 trillion 2025 budget deficit that need to be reduced. 

And there are other problems. UBI programs have a dubious record, as a recent National Bureau of Economic Research paper demonstrates. The funds aren’t enough to reduce income inequality, especially since participants tend to work fewer hours. Even many center-left organizations oppose them.

Finland tried a pilot UBI project for two years. About 2,000 unemployed Finns received the equivalent of $634 per month. The hope was the money would encourage the unemployed to find a job. The BBC asks, “Did it help unemployed people in Finland find jobs, as the centre-right Finnish government had hoped? No, not really.”  

However, if untold riches flow from AI advancements — and that’s a very big “if” — as some tech titans seem to think, there is a way that money could help both individuals and the country. 

Instead of handing people a monthly check, establish something like a special individual retirement account for everyone. The individual could not take out any funds until retirement age — say 60 or 65. Individuals would have limited, broad-based investment options to prevent speculation.

Workers would continue to pay their current payroll taxes to Social Security. They wouldn’t be funding this new type of IRA because the money would come instead from the tech titans’ predicted AI revenue.  

At retirement, an individual could then choose between standard Social Security and their AI-funded retirement accounts. If enough money has been deposited and appreciated in these accounts over the years, retirees might choose it over standard Social Security. Plus, they would have ownership rights, meaning any money left over would be passed on in their estate.

Retirees who choose their special private retirement account would forfeit their claim on traditional Social Security, leaving fewer retirees relying on Social Security’s underfunded financial position. Those who choose traditional Social Security would forfeit their special account. 

Unlike a universal basic income, the special account would be more like a universal basic retirement program. Because people would not have access to their universal basic retirement funds until retirement, there would be no economic incentive to reduce work. And it wouldn’t be a new entitlement, because retirees would choose between traditional Social Security or their private retirement option.  

Although AI will surely make a lot of money for some people, it is unlikely to produce the flood of revenue some tech billionaires anticipate. That said, if AI does produce massive wealth, using it to improve retirement and save Social Security is a much better and more workable option than a universal basic income. 

Merrill Matthews is a co-author of “On the Edge: America Faces the Entitlements Cliff.”

President Trump has long promised to deliver better deals — ones that put American interests, industry and strength first. Coming on the heels of his Alaska meeting with Vladimir Putin, a historic drone megadeal between the U.S. and Ukraine — reportedly valued between $10 billion and $30 billion — offers Trump the chance to pressure Moscow while securing a deal that advances U.S. strategic interests.

This deal isn’t just a defense contract. It is a strategic bridge between America’s current industrial limitations and the wartime production capacity the we need to deter future conflict. It is also a warning shot to China that the U.S. is getting serious about scaling military drone innovation at speed and cost.

America’s unmanned drone arsenal is not ready for a prolonged fight in the Indo-Pacific. Despite advances in AI and autonomous systems, we face a dangerous gap — we lack the industrial base to produce the volume of smart, expendable and networked uncrewed systems required for high-intensity, multi-domain conflict.

That’s where this deal comes in. America’s industrial base needs time to build factories, establish supply chains that are compliant with Pentagon rules and iterate on product designs to deliver the necessary unmanned systems needed for a fight in the Indo-Pacific. 

Ukraine, out of sheer necessity, has become the world’s most advanced proving ground and manufacturer for uncrewed military systems. In 2024 alone, it produced over 1.7 million drones — fielded, iterated and improved in combat conditions that mirror the future of warfare far more closely than American test ranges in Hawaii or Arizona ever could. From low-cost first-person vehicles to strategic sea drones and long-range deep-strike capabilities, Ukrainian engineers have led the charge for uncrewed systems and what Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth rightly called “the biggest battlefield innovation in a generation.”

The U.S. shouldn’t try to reinvent the wheel. Instead, we should springboard off Ukraine’s hard-earned experience to accelerate our own industrial and technological transformation. (Full disclosure: My firm does consulting work in Ukraine, but I have no financial ties to Ukrainian drone companies.)

This deal offers three critical advantages.

First, it is a strategic bridge to reindustrialization. Building a new defense industrial base in America will take years, if not decades. The Ukrainian drone deal buys us time, capability and breathing room. It delivers operationally relevant drones at scale today, while we rebuild factories, train workers and realign acquisition models to fit a 21st-century fight. It’s not a handout — it’s a hedge against our current vulnerabilities.

Second, the operational gains generated by this deal will have applicability in a potential war in the Pacific. Ukraine’s drones, as successful as they have been in trench warfare, won’t map one-to-one to a theater characterized by vast maritime distances and denied environments. But Ukraine’s deep-strike and naval drone programs — already disrupting Russia’s dominance in the Black Sea — have direct applications for U.S. Indo-Pacific Command.

Integrating these capabilities into U.S. doctrine will enhance our lethality, expand the kill chain and signal to Beijing that American deterrence is not theoretical.

Third, this deal gives us access to the world’s best combat-proven drone engineers. And this is where the real opportunity lies. Through long-term partnerships, American companies — from major defense contractors to venture-backed disruptors — can tap into Ukraine’s top-tier talent. These are engineers who have lived through a decade’s worth of research-and-development cycles over the last two years. Given the multi-year scope of the deal, this isn’t a one-off purchase — it’s a pipeline of talent, innovation and battlefield iteration aligned to U.S. warfighting priorities.

If the U.S. partners deeply with Ukraine on drone innovation, it also denies Beijing access to a combat-proven technology base. It ensures that battlefield-proven AI, swarming tactics and electronic warfare capabilities stay in U.S.-aligned hands. And it turns Ukraine into an asset to help anchor American technological and industrial advantage in a world increasingly defined by great-power competition.

Some will argue this is just another foreign entanglement. That is a misread. This is not about subsidizing a foreign war — it’s about integrating battlefield-tested systems into American force design, doctrine and war-fighting functions. It’s about readiness. And it’s about building the industrial muscle to back up our strategy with actual mass.

Trump has a unique opportunity to redefine American defense procurement — not as a bureaucratic bottleneck, but as a competitive advantage. This deal embodies his “Peace Through Strength” doctrine: hard power, smart economics and global signaling all in one move.

If Trump leans in, he won’t just be supporting Ukraine. He’ll lay the groundwork for America’s reindustrialization, reshaping deterrence in the Pacific and putting the U.S. back in command of the battlefield technologies of tomorrow.

The deal is on the table. The question is, will he seize it?

Sam Scanlon, a former Army explosive ordnance disposal officer, is the co-founder of Vyryn Technologies.

Let us be blunt: The Trump-Putin meeting in Alaska was an embarrassment and very likely will prove to be a disaster.

The hype proceeding the summit stressed that the first step in ending the Ukraine war was a cease-fire. President Trump probably anticipated more than gaining only some agreement on Ukraine.

Otherwise, the Treasury secretary and U.S. business leaders would not have been present anticipating deals with Russian counterparts.

The optimism was palpable. Stage managed from the beginning, at least according to Fox News, the president ordered F-35 Lightning fighters lined up on the runway, and a B-2 flyover escorted by F-22’s to impress his counterpart.  

Much of this advice probably came from his envoy, Steve Witkoff, who met Putin in Moscow and was in frequent contact with key Russians. Witkoff’s business was real estate. As the Economist notes, he was a foreign policy neophyte who misread or was misled by what he heard in Moscow. 

Not only did the flyover fail to impress Putin, but the Russians cleverly one-upped the Americans.

Word quickly spread to the U.S. press that chicken Kyiv had been served to the Russian press before they landed in Alaska for the summit. And Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov arrived wearing a sweater with the Cyrillic letters “CCCP” emblazoned on it, Russian for the Soviet Union.

A close friend in Moscow told me privately that CCCP had not been the first choice for the sweater. Putin or Lavrov favored a term that is essentially the Russian equivalent to the middle finger salute. But it was decided that since no one in the official U.S. senior delegation spoke Russian, the jab would be missed.  

Comedian Bill Maher quipped that had lunch been served, the chef was preparing a carved up Ukraine.

Despite the great expectations, Trump folded, abandoning the cease-fire he had proposed as the first step. Instead, he rapidly reversed course, conceding to Putin that a peace agreement took priority. 

In his posting on Truth Social, Trump bragged that it was “A great and very successful day in Alaska!” and that the meeting with Putin and calls with Zelensky, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte and other European leaders “went very well.” 

“It was determined by all that the best way to end the horrific war between Russia and Ukraine is to go directly to a Peace Agreement, which would end the war, and not a mere Ceasefire Agreement, which often times do not hold up,” he continued.

At the abbreviated press conference following the three hour meeting, it was Putin who carried the day. His lecture — not statement — recognized the great friendship between the U.S. and Soviet Union during the war and memorials in Alaska and Russia marking fallen aviators.

Russia is a close neighbor, he pointed out: Two islands in the Barents Sea belonging to the U.S. and Russia are only four kilometers apart.

Putin restated his aims in purposely shrouded but unmistakable language. Ukraine was part of Russia and Russia will end the war — but only on Putin’s terms, he clearly inferred.

NATO and Europe were cautioned to stay clear. And Putin flattered and then again recognized his great friendship with Trump.

Trump will be criticized for his deferential treatment of Putin, under warrant for war crimes, particularly riding alone with him in the presidential limo, “the Beast.”

Few could have missed the smirk on Putin’s face as the Beast drove off. But Trump did not comprehend that flattery or persona would not have any effect on Putin.

During Putin’s lecture, Trump appeared old, tired and deflated. Given his often theatrical and dynamic presentations at press conferences, Trump displayed traces of Joe Biden’s hapless performance at the presidential debate ending his candidacy.  

Trump mumbled about Russia Gate and how it disrupted relations with Putin. He finally concluded by thanking his good friend Vladimir for a very successful meeting.

What next? With the absence of any real agreement, tragically, Ukraine’s fate probably has been sealed, despite yesterday’s White House meeting with President Zelensky and several European leaders. Trump has cleverly shifted all military aid and support for Ukraine to Europe. 

Having made considerable effort to end the war, Trump is likely to conclude it is now up to Putin and Zelensky to work out a deal with or without the U.S. as he, Trump, has done enough.  

That then will leave Chef Putin to carve up Ukraine.

Harlan Ullman, Ph.D., is UPI’s Arnaud deBorchgrave Distinguished Columnist, a senior advisor at the Atlantic Council, the chairman of two private companies and the principal author of the doctrine of shock and awe. He and former United Kingdom Defense Chief David Richards are the authors of a forthcoming book on preventing strategic catastrophe.