How Ukraine’s futuristic war could get ‘much worse,’ according to ex-Google CEO

Ukrainian soldiers patrol beneath anti-drone nets in the eastern front-line city of Kramatorsk on Friday. Anatolii Stepanov / Reuters Add NBC News to Google Sept. 14, 2026, PM EDT ’s battlefield “kill zones,” where leaving your bunker can mean death , look set to grow swiftly as the war drives breathtaking technological advancements, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt has warned. Schmidt, now CEO and executive chairman of rocket maker Relativity Space, is helping Ukraine fight a technological battle with the Kremlin that moves so quickly that weapons can lose their advantage within months. “The rate of innovation is faster than I’ve ever seen, and I work in tech,” Schmidt told Richard Engel, NBC News’ chief foreign correspondent. Schmidt previously chaired the U. National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence and has advised the Pentagon. As Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine stretches into its fifth year, Schmidt said Moscow is becoming better at developing and deploying new weapons, eroding an advantage Ukraine had relied on. Russian drone strike hits Ukraine near Polish border 00:0000:00 “Historically, Ukraine was this small, really smart, really fast innovator, and the Russians were, if you will, big, slow, not very capable. That’s changed,” he said in an interview for the weekly global affairs podcast “The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim.” The conflict has become a testing ground for drone warfare and thus the place for some of the technology’s latest advancements. From the Ukrainian towns now covered in anti-drone netting to the sites deep inside Russia vulnerable to attack from Kyiv, drones have become the war’s defining weapon. President Donald Trump, who during his election campaign promised to resolve the conflict in 24 hours, has repeatedly pressured Ukraine to cede key territory and favored Moscow’s hard-line demands. Winning would depend on how quickly either side could get its latest inventions into widespread use, Schmidt argued. “Whoever plays the game of fastest innovation to scale will win this war,” he said. Ukraine appears to agree with Schmidt’s assessment. The country’s new top general, Mykhailo Drapatyi, put innovation on a list of priorities he published after taking the position, saying Ukraine must learn faster than the enemy on the battlefield. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has also recently noted the jet-powered Shahed drones problem, saying the Defense Ministry and the military must work on capabilities to intercept them. Schmidt expects artificial intelligence eventually to help computers direct drone swarms, using the results of attacks to improve how they fight.