Eric Schmidt’s “White Stork”: Is Drone Warfare the Answer or the Beginning of the End.

George J. Chanos
3 min readJan 24, 2024

Billionaire technologist Eric Schmidt of Google has been quietly building a new drone startup in Ukraine called White Stork, a reference to the national bird and symbol of Ukraine. Schmidt has assumed the role of a defense tech advisor and global financier in support of the war in Ukraine.

“Schmidt has become one of the leading voices in Silicon Valley promoting drones as the future of war,” says Forbes senior writer Sarah Emerson. “Scores of drone startups have begun developing aircraft for the Ukrainian battlefield, which has proven a viable testing ground for new tech.”

Drones are undoubtedly “the future of war”. And this “viable testing ground” concept is at the heart of why the U.S. is in Ukraine. It allows U.S. forces to “test” new drone weapons systems in a live combat setting, without obvious and immediate U.S. casualties.

There will eventually be U.S. casualties. Newton’s third law states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The “action” and “reaction” refer to forces; if Object A exerts a force on Object B, then Object B exerts an equal amount of force on Object A in the opposite direction.

Here, object B, is Russia. And it is inevitable that Russia, initially through it’s proxies, will…

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George J. Chanos
George J. Chanos

Written by George J. Chanos

George J. Chanos, Esq. served as Nevada’s 31st Attorney General. His books, “Seize Your Destiny” and “Millennial Samurai” are available on Amazon.com

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