Google's old motto, "Don't be evil," was retired for very good reasons about eight years ago.

Former CEO Eric Schmidt has found a new obsession and is linked to a covert drone production pipeline that has supplied hundreds of FPV drones to Ukrainian front-line units, reinforcing his warning in a new Financial Times op-ed that "Ukraine's no man's land is the future of war."

"Future wars are going to be defined by unmanned weapons," Schmidt wrote in the op-ed.

He said, "The winner of those drone battles will then be able to advance with unmanned ground and maritime vehicles, which move slowly but can carry heavier payloads."

Schmidt described a stretch on the first line as "no man's land."

He explained:

Ukraine is ready for the next stage of warfare, with swarms of drones operated remotely and increasingly automated with AI targeting.

No man's land has expanded as each side pulls its most valuable personnel back from the front while new generations of drones achieve longer ranges and increased lethality through better batteries, sensors and aerodynamics. Automating operations so personnel can operate safely behind the lines has become an urgent Ukrainian priority, with plans to move drone pilots even farther from the front in 2026.

The combination of unblockable satellite communications, cheap spectrum networks and accurate GPS targeting means the only way to fight will be through drone vs drone combat. Drones share data in real time, meaning that many inexpensive platforms can act as a single weapon. They will carry air-to-air missiles to defeat attackers, just like a fighter jet does, but will be cheaper and more abundant.

Within this kill zone, reportedly extending for miles - and in some assessments, approximately 15 miles or more wide - FPV drones and ground robots dominate, with AI kill chains that, in some cases, reduce or remove direct human-in-the-loop to kill.

Schmidt continued:

When the war in Ukraine is eventually settled, the result may be a tense peace that offers as many lessons for western nations as the conflict itself. In the future, a "drone wall" could be established along the division between Russia and Ukraine, where omnipresent automated drones monitor the border like an intelligent electric fence. Because these drones are valuable enemy targets, they will need to be armed to repel attackers, creating a hard border that is miles high and miles wide.

Numerous publications have documented the rise of Schmidt's secretive military drone company, White Stork, including a 2025 Forbes report.

A separate report from Aviation Weekly said that Schmidt's drone company "will expand production to deliver hundreds of thousands of drones to Ukraine this year and more in 2026."

And while humans are still embedded in the kill chain, we must share the gamification of war story that Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces have been using since last year, even keeping an online "killboard" that lets anyone track confirmed Russian losses from Ukrainian drone strikes in near real time.

Related:

And what's happening in the US to prepare for the emerging FPV drone threat:

Our assessment of what appears to be driving Schmidt from his "Don't be evil" days at Google to his current status as a war profiteer is that he has left his Silicon Valley bubble and realized the world is becoming extraordinarily dangerous as America's unipolarity fractures into a bipolar system.

His time in Ukraine has given him an early look at 2030s warfare; it is therefore plausible he will try to apply his lessons from Ukraine and return to the US to sell a border "drone wall," although Anduril Industries is already well-positioned in that mission set.