Posted originally on Jul 2, 2026 by Martin Armstrong |
War has now entered the video game stage. Ukraine has placed a literal price tag on Russian lives, paying soldiers roughly $2,200 for capturing an enemy combatant and around $330 for killing one in close combat when confirmed by video. This is the monetization of death.
What better way to entice the youth than to turn war into a video game? Call of Duty-aligned missions are provided, as the Ukrainian government is providing incentives for death and destruction. The new bonuses are part of Ukraine’s broader transformation of its military into a contract-based force with higher pay, clearer service terms, and direct rewards for battlefield results. Frontline monthly pay reportedly averages about $6,700 and can exceed $10,000 depending on mission risk and performance. A captured Russian soldier brings 100,000 hryvnias, roughly $2,200, while killing an enemy soldier can bring 15,000 hryvnias, roughly $330. If multiple soldiers participate in a capture, the reward is divided among them.
The mathematics of war explains why a living Russian soldier is worth more than a dead one. A prisoner can be exchanged for Ukrainian POWs, providing Kyiv with leverage in future negotiations while allowing families to see loved ones return home. Captured soldiers also become intelligence assets, revealing information about troop movements, logistics, morale, and battlefield tactics. From a purely military perspective, one prisoner can produce far greater strategic value than one casualty. That is precisely why Ukraine’s incentive system pays substantially more for captures than kills. Modern warfare has become an exercise in cost-benefit analysis where even human lives are assigned a financial value based on their perceived utility to the state.
Ukraine has built a unique military incentive system: E-Points. Units receive points for verified destruction of enemy equipment, personnel, and other combat actions. Those points can then be exchanged for drones, EW systems, and robotic ground platforms. Every successful strike… pic.twitter.com/mY5f1Am8UI
This is what happens when war becomes permanent. Governments begin reducing human life to accounting entries. A prisoner has value because he can be exchanged. A dead man has value because he removes one more body from the battlefield. The military bureaucracy then assigns a number to each outcome, and suddenly killing becomes an incentive structure. The same people who lecture the world about morality are now openly creating pay scales for death.
Ukraine has already gamified drone warfare through its e-Points system, where units earn points for confirmed destruction of enemy personnel or equipment and use those points to buy more drones, ground robots, and electronic warfare gear through the Brave1 marketplace. Business Insider reported that more than 181,000 pieces of equipment have already been delivered through that system this year. The battlefield has become a marketplace. Kill, confirm, collect, upgrade, repeat.
“E-Points have already changed the approach to warfare. This is about clear incentives, fair rewards, and the rapid scaling of effective solutions. Military units receive resources based on results: the more targets they destroy, the more points they earn. This is a direct incentive that enables units to strengthen their capabilities with new technologies,” said Ukraine’s Minister of Defence, Mykhailo Fedorov.
This is the future of war. The drone operator earns points. The infantryman earns cash. The commander receives measurable performance data. The government gets propaganda footage. The dead become statistics on a dashboard. This is why drone warfare is so dangerous. It removes the final psychological barrier between the man pulling the trigger and the human being dying on the screen. Once killing becomes remote, verified, rewarded, and gamified, war no longer resembles anything the old generals understood.
The West created this nightmare by refusing to negotiate. They have thrown hundreds of billions into Ukraine while pretending this is about defending democracy. Now the war has produced bounty systems, drone leaderboards, prisoner incentives, and video-confirmed kills. This is not civilization. This is barbarism with software.
Posted originally on Jul 2, 2026 by Martin Armstrong |
People keep asking when World War III will begin. They are asking the wrong question. Europe is already behaving as though it is at war. I have warned for years that the politicians in Brussels would never allow peace because the sovereign debt crisis requires an external enemy. Every week, another European government announces more military spending, another mobilization plan, another emergency measure, another speech warning the public to prepare for conflict. This is no longer speculation. It is policy.
Now Poland’s foreign intelligence chief, Col. Paweł Szota, has made one of the clearest admissions yet. He warned, “The level of Russian aggression is very high, and the risk of military confrontation is real.” He added that Poland “must operate as if war with Russia is inevitable“ because waiting until conflict begins would be too late. Those are extraordinary statements from the head of a NATO intelligence service. Governments do not talk this way unless they are already planning for the next stage.
Szota explained that Russia “is systematically pushing red lines, testing NATO’s responses,” and argued that the Kremlin views Poland and NATO’s eastern flank as “an obstacle to achieving its imperial ambitions.” He also warned that Moscow could continue the war in Ukraine for years, sacrifice its own economy, and expand hybrid operations against NATO members, including provocations in the Baltic region. Europe is no longer speaking about diplomacy. It is openly discussing escalation scenarios and military contingencies.
This is precisely what our computer has been forecasting. The 2026 Panic Cycle was never simply about financial markets. It marked the acceleration of geopolitical instability. Governments always require a crisis when they cannot solve the debt problem. Europe is entering an economic depression while military budgets are exploding. Germany is debating conscription once again. Poland is rapidly expanding one of the largest armies in Europe. NATO members are increasing defense spending toward 5% of GDP. Civil defense campaigns are appearing across the continent. These are not the actions of governments expecting peace. They are the actions of governments preparing their populations psychologically and financially for war.
Once governments convince themselves war is inevitable, they begin making decisions that ensure it becomes inevitable. Every mobilization by one side is interpreted as aggression by the other. Every sanctions package invites retaliation. Every troop deployment produces another deployment in response. History shows that wars often become unavoidable long before the first shots are fired because political leaders eliminate every possible path back to diplomacy.
I have repeatedly stated that the sovereign debt crisis and the War Cycle are converging. Europe cannot finance its welfare state, its Green agenda, and endless military expansion simultaneously. Something has to give. Throughout history, governments buried under debt have repeatedly turned toward external conflict because war postpones domestic political reckoning. It creates an excuse for deficits, emergency powers, censorship, and capital controls while redirecting public anger toward a foreign adversary.
Ukraine has become the catalyst, not the destination. The computer has consistently warned that 2026 marks the beginning of the Panic Cycle, 2027 carries the highest risk of broader international war, and the economic consequences will intensify into 2028 as recession and civil unrest spread. Europe is no longer preparing to avoid war. Its own intelligence chiefs are now publicly telling their citizens to prepare because they increasingly believe war is coming. That should concern every investor far more than the daily fluctuations in the stock market.
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