Private Assets Face New State-Level Risks from Low-Cost Drone Strikes

The shift in warfare dynamics became evident during the summer of 2026. Between July 18 and August 4, drone strikes hit sixteen facilities belonging to Wildberries, the retailer responsible for nearly 45 percent of Russia’s online commerce. The attacks destroyed 2.0 million square meters of floor space, a footprint roughly 4 percent the size of Amazon's North American portfolio. While nuclear deterrence between states remains functional, the economic reality for commercial entities has changed. Passive defense measures are failing to provide adequate protection, as defenders typically face costs 20 to 600 times higher than the price of the attacking hardware.

For investors, the critical issue is how these physical losses propagate through credit chains. When the Wildberries strikes occurred, the platform had already updated its terms to disclaim liability for force majeure events, effectively offloading the financial burden onto thousands of small-scale merchants. Insurance providers absorbed only a portion of the damages, leaving the remainder to ripple through lenders and supply chains that were never directly targeted. Egan-Jones suggests that the primary risk indicator for any business is whether its catalog or operations could be construed as supporting a military effort—notably, the Wildberries strikes followed the platform’s listing of drone components. Investors are now urged to scrutinize site concentration, war-act exclusions, and contractual loss allocation to identify hidden exposures in asset-heavy positions.