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Eric Schmidt

Chief Executive Officer, Relativity Space

Search every verified Eric Schmidt interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Eric Schmidt, CEO and chair of Relativity Space and former CEO of Google, has recently discussed his views on AI, warfare, and business strategy across multiple public appearances. In an October 2026 interview, he reflected on lessons from Steve Jobs and his time on Apple's board, advocating for rapid decision-making and prioritizing user growth over traditional profit maximization. In a late September appearance on Inside Blackstone, he described the arrival of "long reasoning" AI systems capable of eight hours of continuous thought as the most significant development of the past year, and argued that AI companies' revenues are now tied to data center infrastructure, comparing the current environment to a gold rush for hardware. Schmidt has also been active on defense and geopolitical topics. In September 2026, he participated in a Yalta European Strategy panel in Kyiv alongside former U.S. Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll, where he discussed AI's role in modern warfare and Ukraine's military needs. In a separate interview, he expressed concern that Russia has caught up with Ukraine in drone warfare innovation, describing the use of automated swarms as an "ominous development" and calling for increased Western funding and technological support for Ukraine. He also stated that Ukraine has the technical talent and organization to win the war, but lacks sufficient financial resources. In a 2024 clip that resurfaced, Schmidt warned about China's investments in science and technology, and discussed hypothetical scenarios involving data centers as military targets, though the clip's framing was noted as potentially misleading.

Recent appearances

Verified interview transcripts

Notable quotes

“I'll give you a simple rule in large companies: large companies can always be beaten by a small company that's focused and moving faster. Let's look at Anthropic and OpenAI, both of which I'm quite familiar with. OpenAI had a team that split out from it to create Anthropic. How is it that the two are equal now? OpenAI of course had much more revenue, many more people, much more hardware. Anthropic chose a slightly di”

“So, I've been advising Ukraine for years on trying to modernize their military and so forth. They started off with just an army, no navy, no air force. It's hard to describe what modern war is like. We all have an idea of what war is because we've all seen it in the movies. Real war is much, much, much worse. Here's a note from my friend, a woman who was on the train that I was not on yesterday coming out of Ukraine ”

“So let's imagine I'm an evil dictator and I wake up one day and I have a perfect AI system and I say, 'Attack this country. Tell me when you're done.' Right? That's my command. Notice I didn't say anything else. The system would be then free to do whatever it thought was appropriate, which could include massive war crimes, right? All sorts of terrible things. It could destroy civilians. It could destroy infrastructur”

“Russia is now on an innovation path at a slope, if you will, of improvement that's similar to that of Ukraine, but with much more resources. Here are my data points. We have no effective way of handling the ballistic missiles that they're using. And indeed, the anti-ballistic missiles, generally known as Patriots, in the West are in such short supply that there's not enough to go around. If you look at jet Shaheds, R”

“If you're running one of these AI companies, your revenue is completely determined by your data centers. So, this is a massive change in what I do. It used to be that software was pretty high gross margin, you could sort of sell it, didn't have a lot of capital. Because you need the hardware, that's what's changed the economics. So, in the short term, it's the same thing as in the gold rush, the people who made all t”

“Ukraine after four and a half years of the war knows what they're doing. They have the technical talent. If they didn't have it, they've now trained them. The country is organized to win this. What's missing? Money, right? Literally funds from the west, which is needed for all sorts of reasons, including the fact that exports markets are largely been affected. And the second is the scaling point. Now, what does scali”

Other executives at Relativity Space

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