Episode Notes:

Sudan’s civil war has become a proving ground for a new kind of drone warfare — and a close U.S. and E.U. security partner is helping fuel it. Grace talks with Yasir Zaidan about his article “How Sudan Became a Laboratory for Drone Warfare, Thanks to Abu Dhabi.” Zaidan, who returned to his hometown of Khartoum in June 2026 for the first time since the war began, explains how the Rapid Support Forces and the Sudanese Armed Forces turned the country into a testing ground for competing Chinese and Turkish systems, why the United Arab Emirates’ role in arming the Rapid Support Forces has gone unchecked despite being well-documented, and how the drone expertise built in Sudan could spread across the Sahel to groups like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State.

Image: Yasir Zaidan