Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who served as chairman of the US Defense Innovation Board, discusses the changing economics of warfare and drone technology at the All-In Summit.
“Things like tanks of which we're now building a whole bunch more, even stronger tanks here in America, don't make any sense in a world where a two kilogram payload from a well-armed drone can destroy the tank. It's called the kill ratio, and that drone costs retail 5000 dollars, 4000 dollars. The tank, the American tank, cost thirty million dollars.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading:
filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard
(the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Eric Schmidt
AssertionNot checkable as stated
Eric Schmidt: Google prioritized work-life balance over winning
“Google decided that work-life balance and going home early and working from home was more important than winning.”
Eric SchmidtAug 16, 2024▶ 45:52Break up Google, Starbucks CEO out, Kamala’s price controls, Boeing disaster, Kursk offensive
PredictionNot checkable as stated
Schmidt: Most of the world will use Chinese open-weight AI models
“China is competing with open weights and open training data, and the U.S. Is largely and majority focused on closed weights, closed data. That means that the majority of the world, think of it as the Belt and Road Initiative, are going to use Chinese models an…”
Eric SchmidtSep 24, 2025▶ 5:44Eric Schmidt on AI, the Battle with China, and the Future of America
AssertionPartly supported
Schmidt: Chinese tech companies rely on illegal 996 work schedules
“The Chinese work-life balance consists of nine, nine, six, which is nine a.m. To nine p.m. Six days a week. By the way, the Chinese have clarified that this is illegal. However, they all do it.”
Eric SchmidtSep 24, 2025▶ 3:22Eric Schmidt on AI, the Battle with China, and the Future of America
AssertionNot checkable as stated
Schmidt: Chinese AI firms lack capital markets to fund $100M+ AGI data centers
“They're not pursuing crazy AGI strategies. Partly because of the hardware limitations that you've put in place, but partly because the depth of their capital markets don't exist. They can't raise, based on a wing and a prey, or a hundred million dollars, or a …”
Eric SchmidtSep 24, 2025▶ 4:25Eric Schmidt on AI, the Battle with China, and the Future of America
PredictionNot checkable as stated
Eric Schmidt predicts domain-specific AI superintelligence in 6 to 7 years
“I don't agree with the three years, but I do agree that it'll be maybe six or seven years.”
Eric SchmidtSep 24, 2025▶ 24:32Eric Schmidt on AI, the Battle with China, and the Future of America
PredictionNot checkable as stated
Schmidt: AI recursive self-improvement is 5 to 10 years away
“Not yet. I'm, I've funded a number of startups which claim to be close to it, but of course these are startups and you never know, which tells me it's five, 10 years.”
Eric SchmidtSep 24, 2025▶ 27:39Eric Schmidt on AI, the Battle with China, and the Future of America
Made with StarZero
Turn any episode into a week of clips.
This entire site, over 460 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable,
runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the
moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.
We use essential cookies to make the site work. With your permission we
also use analytics cookies (Google Analytics and Mixpanel) to understand
usage and improve StarZero. See our Cookie Policy.