Nvidia chip guided a Russian drone that killed three Ukrainian civilians, investigators say
A New York Times investigation found a Russian Molniya drone carrying an unencrypted Nvidia $NVDA Jetson Orin chip chose its own target and killed three civilians at a Zaporizhzhia gas station. Per The New York Times, Tom's Hardware and DroneXL.
A Russian Molniya attack drone that selected its own target killed three civilians at a gas station in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, on July 6, 2026: Tetiana Bubynets, a 19-year-old accounting student, and two men, Oleksiy Svirin, 41, and Roman Karpiy, 48. Ukrainian air defense commanders and a forensic team told The New York Times the drone flew without a human pilot for its final approach; operators sent it toward the gas station, and onboard software chose the exact target, most likely propane tanks it had been trained to recognize, before the aircraft failed to clear an apartment building and detonated near people sheltering below. Investigators recovered an unencrypted Nvidia $NVDA Jetson Orin module, a consumer computing board with variants starting at $249 that is not subject to U.S. export controls. Nvidia confirmed the module to the Times and said it is a consumer-grade product not sold in Russia and not designed for military use, available through resellers. Ukrainian investigators have now linked the same Jetson Orin board to four Russian weapon families: the V2U loitering munition, an upgraded Shahed MS001, the S-71M Monochrome cruise missile, and now the Molniya. Zaporizhzhia's air defense commander, Col. Serhiy Minaiev, told the Times machines are making the decisions to strike and warned that in a few years, people will be living in a Terminator movie. Sources: The New York Times (via Tom's Hardware and DroneXL reporting).