00:00 Here's your Forbes Daily Briefing for Thursday, February 1st.
00:05 Today on Forbes, Eric Schmidt's secret military project revealed.
00:10 Attack drones.
00:13 Today we have a follow-up to a story we brought you last month.
00:17 Billionaire technologist Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, has been quietly building
00:22 a new drone startup in the US and Ukraine within a nesting doll of LLCs that have helped
00:28 to conceal its operations and team members.
00:32 Forbes first reported the project's existence in January and has since learned that it is
00:36 called "White Stork," a reference to the national bird and sacred totem of Ukraine, where Schmidt
00:42 has assumed the role of defense tech advisor and financier.
00:47 White Stork was formally established last August, according to business and corporation
00:51 records and two sources with knowledge of the startup.
00:54 The company has been developing a mass-producible drone that uses artificial intelligence for
00:59 visual targeting and can function in zero-coms environments created by GPS jamming.
01:06 Though it hasn't emerged from stealth, White Stork has become an open secret in the drone
01:10 community, six people familiar with its activities told Forbes.
01:14 In Ukraine, Schmidt has toured factories and testing ranges and has reached out to numerous
01:19 other startups in his capacity as a prolific military tech investor, three of these individuals
01:24 said.
01:26 Delaware business filings show that White Stork previously operated as an LLC called
01:31 SwiftBeat Holdings but amended its name to White Stork Group LLC last September.
01:37 A holding company for SwiftBeat called Volja Robotics OU identifies the former Google CEO
01:45 as its sole beneficial owner.
01:47 Meanwhile, business filings show Volja Robotics was incorporated in Estonia last December
01:54 and lists the legal director at Schmidt's family office, Hill Spire, as a board member.
01:59 Estonia is a popular incorporation vehicle for Ukrainian companies.
02:03 Forbes is reporting the names connected to Schmidt's drone venture here for the first
02:07 time.
02:08 Schmidt could not be reached for comment through a spokesperson.
02:12 In January, SwiftBeat registered the website AurelianIndustries.us, according to Internet
02:18 Domain data.
02:20 The email address affiliated with the site is support@whitestork.com.
02:24 It lists the phone number of a Hill Spire IT manager as its contact information, and
02:28 the street address provided for SwiftBeat matches that of the Schmidt Family Foundation,
02:33 a private grant-making organization run by Eric and Wendy Schmidt.
02:37 Forbes was unable to determine the nature of Aurelian Industries, which shares its name
02:41 with a Delaware LLC incorporated in January, but it appears to be affiliated with the drone
02:46 project.
02:47 None of these entities have publicly launched.
02:50 The website for Aurelian Industries remains unpopulated, for example, and the name Whitestork
02:56 is currently used by a seemingly unrelated U.S. charity that delivers first aid to Ukrainian
03:00 fighters.
03:02 Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Schmidt has been a vocal proponent of drones
03:07 as a means of combating Kremlin forces, which far outnumber Ukraine's own.
03:12 In a Wall Street Journal op-ed last July, he wrote, "Perhaps the most important is the
03:18 kamikaze drone."
03:20 Also known as so-called "suicide drones," these cheap aircraft can loiter on the battlefield
03:25 before being dispatched to disable or destroy their targets.
03:29 Schmidt added, "In the hands of a skilled operator with several months of training, these drones
03:34 fly so fast they are nearly impossible to shoot down."
03:39 Schmidt underscored this argument again in an op-ed for Foreign Affairs last month, declaring
03:43 that "Russia's superior electronic warfare capabilities allow it to jam and spoof the
03:49 signals between Ukrainian drones and their pilots.
03:52 If Ukraine is to neutralize Russian drones, its forces will need the same capabilities."
03:58 He added that so far, against such tactics, most weaponry supplied by Western allies has
04:02 "fared poorly."
04:05 What Schmidt didn't disclose in these op-eds were his own efforts to address this need
04:10 with White Stork.
04:12 For full coverage, check out Sarah Emerson and Richard Nieves' piece on Forbes.com.
04:19 This is Kieran Meadows from Forbes.
04:21 Thanks for tuning in.
04:22 [MUSIC]
Comments