Former Google CEO-turned-“licensed arms dealer” Eric Schmidt believes Taiwan could take a page from the ongoing Ukraine war.
At the Milken Institute Global Conference on Tuesday, Schmidt said the Ukraine-Russia war has fundamentally changed how wars are fought, as countries rely more on remote-controlled drones to fight their battles.
Schmidt, who now leads Relativity Space, a rocket startup, said the recent conflict should push the US to rethink its assumptions around how Taiwan will defend itself against a potential invasion by China.
“Do you really think that we’re going to defend Taiwan with all of our aircraft carriers?” Schmidt said. “Let me remind you that we have no particularly good defenses against hypersonic missiles. Nobody has. It’s a very hard problem. And those aircraft carriers used to be hard to find, but now they’re easy to find because everybody has these LEO constellations for surveillance,” he added, referring to low-earth orbit satellites.
Schmidt said one way to deter China’s option of leading a land invasion against the neighboring country is to use exploding sea drones similar to the ones Ukraine has been using against Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.
Ukraine has been using homemade, uncrewed multi-purpose surface vessels called Magura to stifle Russia’s naval fleet, a major accomplishment considering Ukraine doesn’t operate any warships in its navy.
The Magura sea drones have multiple functions, including surveillance and reconnaissance, but they’ve also been used to take out a helicopter and slam into a Russian military speedboat.
Schmidt said that a company could build similar boats that could “sink even a few feet below the water and then serve as the equivalent of torpedoes.”
“I don’t run a company in this space, but I would build those boats, get the military to purchase them, and then stage them such that it would not allow for a land invasion by China of Taiwan,” he said. “Take away one of their options. Easy.”
Schmidt has previously said that drones are the future of warfare.
Forbes reported last year that the tech investor has been secretly testing AI-guided military drones on the front lines in Ukraine.
“For thousands of years, we’ve had the notion of, stereotypically, a man and a gun fighting another man and a gun, with a horse or what have you,” he said at the Milken panel. “We’re now breaking that connection forever, because the war will be prosecuted over the internet in one form or another.”
Schmidt’s representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
