Late this spring, I was led into a car in Kyiv, blindfolded, and driven to a secret factory in western Ukraine. The facility belongs to TAF Drones, founded three years ago by Oleksandr Yakovenko, a young Ukrainian businessman who wanted to help fend off the Russian invasion. When the war started, Yakovenko was busy running a logistics company in Odesa, but his country needed all the help it could get. Ukraine was overmatched--fighting a larger, wealthier adversary with a bigger army and more sophisticated weapons. "The government said to me, 'We need you to make drones,' " Yakovenko told me.

Nikolai Yakovenko takes a peek at his hand, his facial expression paused, posture slightly slouched. With $30,000 on the table, the flop is revealed – ten of hearts, seven of spades, six of hearts. An $80,000 bet is placed. Yakovenko begins to crunch the numbers in his head, conjuring up the hand's possible outcomes and their likelihoods. Moments later, he has his answer – 42%, his chance of victory.