“Russia and Ukraine are inventing the future of war”: former Google CEO Eric Schmidt | The Economist

Eric Schmidt, welcome to Inside Defense. I'm  glad to be here. I am delighted to be having. this conversation with you, particularly here  in Kiev, Ukraine. Um, you will be known to most. of our viewers as one of the fathers of the  modern Silicon Valley. You're a former CEO. of Google. You're now a mentor and investor in  some of the leading lights of the AI revolution, but you've also long been a leader in innovation  to national security, and you've played a very. outsized role here in Ukraine. You've built and  scaled a drone company. You've gone frequently to.

the front lines. On this trip, I went uh to visit  the command headquarters of Nemesis, which is one. of the drone brigades uh in Ukraine. It's the  subject of another insider show we've done. And. I have to say, you see, you get a glimpse of the  future of war and it's pretty dystopian. Um war is. really bad. And now I've seen it, it's much worse  than you think it is. If you've been watching war. movies, to watch people really be killed, really  struggling, the death and destruction of a city,

little old ladies being killed by the Russians,  it's just horrible. The goal should be to stop. it. The only way I know of to stop an aggressor  is to fight back. And these new technologies have. both offensive and defensive versions of each  others. Um, Russia and Ukraine are together in. this unfortunate pairing inventing that future.  And I had always thought that until recently.

Ukraine had the advantage in innovation, but  you wrote recently in the Washington Post, it was very sobering, that you were more worried  than at any time since the earliest days of this. invasion. You said Russia was going towards  a strategy of quote total war and that that. was blunting Ukraine's innovative edge. Can you  explain what you meant by that? Well, I've been. doing this for more than three years. Um, and I've  watched the Ukrainians um, work really, really. hard to innovate and they've held the line largely  well at great cost to themselves. Um, it's always.

been presumed that Ukraine was the innovator and  Russia was big and slow and something changed. 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. Um, we have no effective you uh way.

of handling the ballistic missiles that they're  using. And indeed, the anti-ballistic missiles, al generally known as Patriots, uh, in the West  are in such short supply that there's not enough. to go around. And I understand that. If you look  at jet shaheds, Ukraine sorry Russia invented two. things and put them together which I can describe  separately which has made jet shahads that are. roving around the country the major killers of  things that are not on the front line um there's. a talk of a large mobilization which will be more  uh human fighters on the Russian side against.

Ukraine very hard to fight against there's going  to be a new satellite network in the air that's. similar to Starlink it's called Rusevet sometime  next year. And finally, the Russians are building. these very powerful so-called glide bombs, uh,  which are independently targeted and are keeping. the front line from moving and really destroying a  lot of people. It's any one of those Ukraine could. overcome. The five is going to be, in my view,  almost impossible without Western help. And the.

Western help, to be very precise, is they need  money. Russians have now shut down all of their. commerce, all of their ports. They need money.  Literally money. You're watching an interview from. The Economist. To get early access to our upcoming  interviews and watch others from our archive, subscribe to The Economist by clicking the link  above. Now, back to the interview. And second, they need help on scaling. They have the courage  to win that is or hold the fight, but they don't.

have the capability of scaling. Yeah, I I I hear  that loud and clear, but let's just dive down into. some of those specifically. So jet shahads,  you know, the Russians took the shahed drone, Iranian drone that they now make in huge numbers  and added jet propulsion, which as I understand it. means they go faster and higher and much harder to  intercept. How close is Ukraine to a solution to. that? There are at least five companies in Ukraine  that have come up with solutions that are in test.

now. It should be soon. But this was a major  event in the war and I didn't fully foresee it. which I hold myself responsible. We knew that the  Russians were going to take their shades, make the. back stronger, add these small jet engines which  you can get from China. We thought they were going. to use about 10% of the supply and we thought that  that was overcomeable. Russia accelerated the use. of these to more than half of the shahads. But  they did one other thing. They don't have access.

to the equivalent of Starlink for Russian use  in Ukraine, thank goodness. So they built a mesh. network out of Chinese parts and they typically  have two shahads that are sitting in a going. around in a circle between Bellarusia and Ke for  example and those are relays and those relays. allow them to see literally 8K video of whatever  their target is. So right next door they managed.

to go right through the central central window  of the SBU headquarters which is like the CIA. and that's a good warning of the power of these  things. There are reports that there are plans to. use up to 80,000 such jet shahads against Keev  and the other towns between now and the end of. December. This is a major point. Um the government  here is extremely focused on this. Um I know of a. number of efforts that are likely to work. You  mentioned that the Russians, and this would be. even worse, are close to or potentially close  to building their version of Starink Rasat. Um,

how close are they? Because it seems to me,  and I'm no technician on this, but it seems. that that would be a real gamecher. Um, there's  evidence that they are have started launching. There's evidence that it doesn't work yet. Uh, my  own opinion is it's probably a year away because. these networks are hard. Once that network  is in place, it is more or less unblockable, which means the Russians will be able to again  hunt anywhere inside of Ukraine. Ukraine today.

does not have the ability to use Starlink to hunt  inside of Russia. So you can imagine a situation. if both countries had that capability, the level  of damage that they could do to each other. In the. case of Ukraine, one of their highest priorities  is hitting the oil deriffs and so forth and so on. They do that without really being able to see what  they're doing. Imagine how much more deadly the. Ukrainians could be against Russian oil if this  if this happen. Well, it this begs a question.

which many of the Ukrainian commanders I've spoken  to mention. Why can't we use Starlink in Russian. territory? And it's usually come up in the context  of ballistic missiles because the other, and you. mentioned it, the other thing that is terrorizing  Ukraine is Russian launches of ballistic missiles, which are, you know, dramatically more powerful,  huge damage, terrorizing the cities. And they say, if you can't hit the arrow, why can't we go after  the archer? And why can't someone persuade Elon. Musk to let us for that purpose use Starink in  Russia? Do you think that would be a good idea?

Um, I'm in favor of giving Ukraine the tools to  allow them to end the war by force, literally to. stop the Russian aggression. Um, the question  you're asking is really a political decision. It's really a government decision. And the US  government needs to grapple with this question. The most important thing right now is to  get the innovation cycle in Ukraine equal. or better than the innovation cycle now present  in Russia and also have the scale. Ukraine does.

not have effective anti-bballistic missiles.  It has one effective ballistic missile which. is the firepoint of so-called flamingo missile  which has done well. They can't make that many. of them for various scaling reasons. In the case  of jet shahads, there's no Ukrainian equivalent. of a jet shahad. So again the same problem  people are working on this just I mean that's. interesting you say it's a political decision  so this is not that something that is up to Mr.

Musk himself. It would be a political decision  in the US. Again, I'm speculating. I can answer. the question precisely. There's no technical  restriction that prevents the use of any of. these satellite services over any country. That's  interesting. It's it's it's a it's a question. It's not it's not like the satellites stop working  over Russia because of some geographic nature. You. can get the same outcome if you choose to fly  the satellites over Russia and you enable them. As I understand it, it is a policy of SpaceX that  it does not do that. How you would change that is.

a political question. Yeah. So either SpaceX could  or the it could be asked to do that were there the. political decision or it could be ordered to  do so. In the American system, the president. can order a national security action on a private  company and the private company pretty much has to. obey. And you would advocate that? Uh in general,  let's talk about what's coming next. I mean that's. all pretty pretty alarming and that's these are  the challenges Ukraine faces now but coming down.

the road is you know even greater technical  innovation and particularly AI and you know. in most contexts you and I have conversations  about what is happening in Silicon Valley not. what is happening in Ukraine and I wanted to sort  of stand back because I think there's a bit of. misunderstanding about what's going on with AI and  this war right now people talk about is AI being. used but as I understand it what's really being  used is quite well-known technology of machine.

vision for final targeting. Could you explain that  because I think it's an important thing to make. clear. So in the progression of war you start with  the the person with the soldier with the bullet. with the gun and the bullet and they aim. Um, at  some point it should be relatively straightforward. to have the gun be able to see the subject with  a laser or what have you, identify it, and then. the human pulls the button and it always hits.  That analogy scales up in terms of autonomy. So,

it's reasonable to expect that every weapon has a  final autonomous seg segment where basically it's. close enough, it's near the target, it's going  to roughly hit the target. You press a button. and it hits it precisely. All of these are not  AI. They're just good computer science, good. computer engineering. Um, artificial intelligence  is systems that learn. And artificial intelligence. learn like we do. You know, we sort of learn,  you get smarter and smarter and smarter. You're.

self-improving. The technical term is recursive  self-improvement. And we're just beginning to see. the use of AI in war. There's a lengthy study on  Russian use of the Chinese models to do some of. their decision-making. Um, these are all from  leaked memos, so I don't know what the truth. is. In Ukraine, there's relatively little use of  that. There is a project which has been discussed. by the MOD to try to help automate the planning  of of war and planning of where people go. Again,

it's just at the beginning. So, speaking as a  computer scientist, it's pretty obvious what. it should look like. Take all the information that  you have all the open source, all the proprietary, all the super secret stuff, feed it into one large  computer and say what's going on and have these. large language models use tools to do reasoning.  To me, it's it's fantastic. They can think at this. level. They don't think like humans, by the way.  They're reasoning around an objective. It makes.

sense to me that eventually you'll say, "How can  I best position my assets to achieve my objective. such as winning the war, defending this city, so  forth?" But the more interesting questions are, why am I losing? Why is this group not as  good as the other group? You want the system. to anticipate that and you want the system to  say, "General, you have a problem. Here is our. recommended solution. Can we help you?" That's I  think the future. That's where we're going. Ju I. I wanted to delve into that but just before one  more question on this sort of what's it called.

last mile machine vision which is that in another  in an earlier show this year uh with my colleague. Shashank Jooshi Jack um Watling from Russi said  that and it was interesting he that many many. um soldiers in Ukraine were turning this  capability off because it actually wasn't. as good as having a a human operator kind of why  is that that's called a bug um so I fly my own jet. And uh there's a general rule that you should  fly the last segment of your jet in coupled mode,

which means the airplane is flying all the way  down to the landing point. But I prefer to turn. it off because it's more entertaining for me  to fly my jet, but I'm not in I'm not in a But. you're not in a foxhole in Ukraine. I'm not in a  war. Yeah. Right. So in a war, you'd want to use. a guaranteed solution. So any situation where the  terminal guidance as it's called is not as good as. a human is a bug. And now why? So I'll give you  an example. I was in a operation center a while.

ago in um very near the nuclear reactor and there  was a military target that the Ukrainians decided. to hit. They used a American product called a  Switchblade 600. We watched it. We saw target. lock and it missed. And I go, "Wow." And they  said, "Well, we have one high Mars we can try.

per day." And I said, "Okay." So they launch the  high Mars and you wait and then they said, "Lock, hit," and it missed. Why? Because of jamming. So  it may very well be that the anecdotal example. that you're using is because the human could  see the target quite well, but the jamming. confus and with jamming the confus, right?  Okay. And we know how to fix that now. So, so the important point is that terminal guidance,  which sort of think of it as the last mile, is crucial for having a precision attack. One  of the things that's interesting about this new.

form of war is there's almost no civilian damage  that's because the weapons are so accurate. And. another horrifying fact is that there's almost no  survivable injuries. The drones are so dangerous. that the the soldiers that are being killed are  being attacked are in fact killed. So let's talk. about what the consequences will be when you have  real AI when you have this ability to reason to. infer to learn that that we talk about constantly  in Silicon Valley coming here. Firstly, what does.

it mean for how autonomous warfare becomes? Um  because now you can have this last mile guidance, but then presumably you can have the AI not only  giving the general some lessons but providing a. battle plan and and down the road, you know,  executing them autonomously. 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 infrastructure. It  might attack another country that was uninvolved. in order to annoy the first country. It it  could have all sorts of reasoning that is not. appropriate. It's really important we establish  some basic rules about AI and war. And the most.

important one is that there's a human involved in  every military decision. So in other words, attack. this country, call me when you're done. That's not  an appropriate command. The appropriate command is. here as a military target defined by the laws of  war in a time bounded time and space where I have. approval to do that. Any other solution in my view  becomes scalably unimaginably difficult because. once you start letting the computer make the  targeting decisions on its own, you have no real.

quality control on how it makes its decisions.  You're watching an interview from The Economist. If you want to watch our other interviews,  including with Steve Bannon and Benjamin. Netanyahu, subscribe to The Economist by clicking  the link above. Now, back to the interview. There. was a recent example um that alarmed our industry  where an open AI essentially a large set of bots. that were doing something involving testing  took their instructions a bit too literally and.

they started to actually attack the system that  they were supposed to help and they manipulated. it by lying, cheating and stealing. And everyone  studied this as a good example as a good sort of. marker of how AI systems can fail. So, another  way to say this is if I were an evil dictator, which I hopefully am not, and I said, "Attack this  country. Let me know what you've done." I'd also. then have to add, "Follow all the laws of war.  Don't hit any civilians, use appropriate caution,

and all the things that human judgment require.  Without the human, the AI is not going to have. that judgment." So, you you make that point  very powerfully. You made it very powerfully. on a panel at the conference you and I are both  at this morning and you said if we go down here. we'll end up in a Doctor Strange love situation.  However, we are in a country that is at war with. a country with a dictator who does seem to show no  respect for any rules of law, any law at all. And. so I I wonder whether in the real world of this  war it is possible to say we're going to follow.

the rules of war because I I was speaking to a  couple of the commanders earlier this week and. I asked them about this and they're all really  worried about what very powerful AI will mean. They're worried about completely complete autonomy  but they basically say if the enemy is doing this. we can't not. So evidence is that that's not true.  evidence in historical context are that there are.

some restraints on behavior in war and you can  only look up the history of the Nuremberg trials. to understand what the limits are. There are  people held accountable. Those people were hanged. um after a long trial and so forth and so on.  I would assume that that principle will survive. our lives and our really yes I really do. There's  this simple logic which says that and people say. it all the time. If if the two are fighting in  a death grip, there will be no constraints on.

either. Historically, that has not been true.  Historically, there has been justice afterwards. and the people who are participating it are at  least aware of their personal liability and so. forth. There are so obviously sociopaths, but in  general, people are subject to the law even in. war. But there are, let's do it in the context of  Vladimir Putin in Ukraine. Look at what happened. in BHA at the beginning. Look at the way he is  targeting civilians in cities across Ukraine. Yes.

But they're not stopping him. Well, that's because  he hasn't been arrested yet. But but I guess my. my point is about the logic of this escalation  because presumably the more autonomy you allow. an AI as we go up from where we are right now  up this scale, the more effective you will be. there is a first mover advantage because AI thinks  faster. It's able to come up with a better quicker. solution. So if the Russians have fewer limits and  go faster up that escalatory ladder, Ukraine may. have, you know, international law on its side, but  it will be in the here and now less able to defeat.

them. The solution will not be to commit war  crimes. The solution will be is to help Ukraine. I I'm not going to yield on my core point that  there is a boundary to what humans can do. So, let's use a thought experiment. Let's imagine that  Ukraine had some secret biological weapon, which I. don't think they do, but let's say they did. I'm  making that up. And furthermore, they were forced. to use it against some Russian attack. Would they  be prosecuted? Absolutely. And I'm sure they are.

aware of it. Yeah. I I'm not I'm not um I'm not  asking you to yield on a principle. I'm just I am. very struck particularly on this trip at the pace  of innovation escalation and so I think there is. a risk that this develops a logic of its own. So  so that's why it's important that humans debate. this stuff. We you and I agree very strongly that  the rate of innovation in this war is faster than. has ever occurred. It's faster than the rate of  innovation that I have seen in my many decades.

in tech. And the reason is because lives are at  stake. And it turns out it's true on both sides. The other side is frankly more evil and better  funded and has more resources and they're willing. to accept more death than the Ukrainian side.  But it's still a fight. And it's very important, I'll say again, that we help Ukraine fight this  war. What they need is money and help in scaling. and technology. They can fight the war. We don't  need to invade. We don't need to send a lot of.

troops and all that kind of stuff people, but they  need some help. They won't make it without some. level of help, at least economic. Yeah. So, the  innovations in drone warfare have gone beyond the. theater of this war. I mean, just in the last few  days, we've seen, you know, we've seen the Houthis. effectively shut down uh another exit route for  oil products in the Gulf. Um, do you think that. the US military recognizes the degree to which  the nature of war has shifted and is acting fast.

enough to transform itself to prevail? Well, I  worked for the US military for eight years in. various under various presidents and there are  plenty of people who understand it and they can. articulate it. They understand this conversation  and they're worried about it. The system is almost. unchangeable. I was talking to one president  about it and he said not even the president. can fix the system and I said well that's a very  bad answer and the reason is that the military is.

not run by a single person not even the president  although you think they are it's run by the way. the congress works the way the special interest  works the way the lobbying works so my conclusion. is the only way to address this problem in the US  military is to allow the US military to continue. to spend money on the things that have been  organized in the various politically correct. states and uh and so forth and just let that  happen while a relatively small amount of money.

um is allocated to this new stuff. The new stuff  is far more effective, far less expensive and. I think will work and that over time even the  kerogens on the old side will say look I really. want that new thing because they are sincerely all  of them sincerely want to protect America. There's. no one who want who who's a a traitor in the  military. They just disagree on the tactics. And. what I've learned about militaries is that they're  incredibly uh change resistant, riskresistant. And.

the most one possibility is they didn't grow up  in an innovative environment, which is possible. A there's a long paper that analyzed this that  I read and it basically said at the end of the. day people in the military are more conservative  because their loss aversion is greater because. people die. So if you think about it, if you  have a pretty certain model of an expensive way. to do something and Eric shows up with a cheaper  way to do the same thing, you would never adopt. it because you're certain the more expensive one  works and you can't take the risk. I think that's.

the best way to understand what's going on in  addition to the political maybe it takes and maybe. the lesson of Ukraine is you know first of all it  happened in after an invasion here but secondly it. takes people from outside the military I mean the  striking thing all of these drone brigades are led. by people who in a former life were civilians tech  you know tech leaders business leaders they took. all the traditional Soviet generals and they all  retired them for the same reason so that because. it it it I mean you've given a very good answer  about the United states. I'm wondering what you.

think about Europe's recognition of the scale  of which war change because in some ways Europe. is more vulnerable. I mean it's right here on  our doorstep. So the Europeans I've spoken with. all have the same problem that the US people do.  They're very smart. They understand the problem. but the system is not organized around change. In  most European countries, the militaries operate as. jobs programs. And those are important jobs. I'm  not taking away. But they're building the wrong. thing. So here's my deal. You can keep the exact  budget that you have. In fact, you can increase.

it. Just build more effective things because  you're going to need them. For example, in Europe, there's a huge problem with missile defense. And  for all sorts of reasons, the Patriot missiles, which they rely on, are not available enough.  We now understand looking at missile stocks and. so forth on the Western side, we don't have  enough of them. Now, since we don't have a. lot more money to spend because these economies  are struggling with debt and so forth and so on, you have to come up with new solutions. I show  up with an argument that I have cheaper, better,

faster, just use my architecture with all the  companies that represent new war and spend the. same amount of money. The only reason that doesn't  occur is because the incumbents don't want to make. the change. I think that's one powerful reason. I  think the other reason is that you're, you know, we're now a bit skeptical of American companies.  We're a bit worried about that. I understand. And. um it doesn't employ many people. Um I can assure  you that if you were to take all the people in the.

militaries in Germany, the UK, and so forth, and  you simply reassign them to an architecture that. was AI, automatic targeting, missiles and drones,  and some ships to move them around, you'd have. full employment. Every job would change, but every  job would still exist. And European labor laws. don't allow you to lay off people anyway. So trust  me, those people will still have jobs. What about. the idea that at least for Europe, Ukraine becomes  the vehicle through this which this happens? I.

mean, that struck me so much on this trip that we  have the solution for Europe sitting here staring. us in the face. I have said that publicly and  I've said that to my Ukrainian friends because. I want to encourage them to sell to Europe. Every  European government I talk to says, "Your ideas. are great. it needs to be built here. So the  most likely scenario in that scenario is Ukraine. will license their technology to the European  countries, which they should. They'll get a nice. fee and the Europeans will build them at twice  the price of eur of Ukrainians. And that's okay.

in a rich democracy, which we can debate whether  it's rich or not. But the part of the reason the. Ukrainian stuff is so effective is the people who  work so hard. When you go to the companies here, so and I've invested and worked with them  pretty closely. There are it looks like China, you have and I mean that in the work ethic sense.  You have these long pe long buildings which are. often underground now of people in white jackets  sitting shoulders shoulder. They work for 12. hours a day, six or seven days a week, which is  a Chinese. That's more than China. China's 966,

right? So it's the work ethic is extraordinary.  And they're all men. And do you know why they're. all men? because if you work in such a factory,  you get an exemption from the draft. I I didn't. know they were all men. Um there are a lot  of women involved in in elements of this too, but but what's noticeable is I said  there why and they're all, you know, men of military age. And the answer is why do they  work so hard? If they get fired, they go to the go. to the front. Interesting. You mentioned China  and I wanted to to ask you about how what you've.

seen happen here in terms of techled innovations  in warfare has changed your view of how the US. and China should or how this race technological  race would will will develop. I mean you've been. you played a huge role in this thinking through  how to ensure that the US stays ahead in AI. Does. what you've seen here change your perception of  where that will go, what China will end up doing,

and who will be ahead? And my general belief is  that we're extremely fortunate that China has. been copying what we're doing because what we're  doing needs to change and therefore they'll have. hysteresis in terms of changing. Um, if you  think about it for a while, China already has. the world's largest drone manufacturer, which is  DJI, which America has just recently banned. Um, there's every reason to think, and I don't know  this, that they have a military equivalent, or maybe there's a military sub subdivision. The  reason to think that we are better off than we.

think is that China's not fought a war in 50  years. There's no reason to believe that they. understand the very subtle tactics. When you met  with the commanders and when I talked to them, when you actually ask them what are they actually  doing, their reasoning is worldclass subtle. thinking. I want to do this, this, this, this will  happen and so forth and so on. You learn that by. doing. There's every reason to think that China  has no experience with that. There's no doctrine.

There's no books. You can't study it. So, we may  be okay. Um, with respect to the uh the Pacific, the Pacific area and so forth, there's a publicly  discussed plan to protect the Taiwan Strait and. so forth. I don't know, but I'm assuming that  that will ultimately be a drone war and not a. ship war. If you think about it, you don't really  want to put a ship that close to China. You want. to put a drone ship with drones in it because  you don't want the people to be killed. So,

it makes sense to me that all the arguments  that we see here are also applicable to the. Pacific. Big ships, big aircraft carriers are  easy to hit, easy to blow up, and so forth. Um, drone ships are are harder. Drones are  are harder to detect. You see this in Iran. um with the problems we're having keeping the  straight open. Um I think that uh my understanding. again this is public information that China has  a very large set of missiles that are land to. sea. We would need to have anti-missiles. I don't  know if we do or not that could that could deal.

deal with that threat. So if you it maps pretty  well to the current belief in the China fight. What about could could the military area be an  area where you might between China and the United. States be able to reach some agreement over norms  to go back to where you were earlier? I wonder. because there's a lot of talk now given the pace  at which AI capabilities are increasing very real. fears of you know 100% recursive self-improvement  and outofc control AI and people are debating.

whether you know the US should pause whether or  companies should pause whether there should be. some regulation and there are many who say we  can't do that because China will be ahead well. first place we're not going to do a pause because  the entire incentive system in America is not to. pause and furthermore if you do a pause you do  really open it up to competitive either local, you know, a local competitor violates the rules  or the global. So there's not going to be a pause.

The right thing to do is to invent this future  while also invent the solutions to the problems. that you're creating. It's just occurring quickly.  Um so an example here is there's some evidence. that you can take a new model that you um shows  up and use the previous one which is typically. four months older to supervise the new model. It  looks like that works. People are trying that. We'll see if that's technically true at scale.  Um, if you look at China, there is no question we.

are in an an AI race that is profound between the  Chinese approach and the American approach. You're. watching an interview from The Economist. If you  want to watch our other interviews, including. with Mark Carney and Dario Amade, subscribe to  The Economist by clicking the link above. Now, back to the interview. And the easiest way to  understand that is would you prefer to have. your day-to-day life intermediated by an American  model or a Chinese model? I think as westerners we.

prefer an American or American and British model.  So that to me is the interesting fight. There's a. series of uh track two and track one dialogues.  I'm participated in one track two. There was a. big meeting in Vienna where both sides are now  talking this through. The simplest thing that we. need to do is to avoid surprises. Henry Kissinger,  our mutual friend, who we miss dearly, was very. concerned that a single event would spiral in the  same way that World War I did from the killing of.

the Arch Duke into a total conflration that that  once the process started because of nationalism. and tensions and lack of communications,  you can end up in a horrible, horrible war. A war with China would be just terrible, right?  It would destroy so much of our modern lives in. and all of those kinds of But should there be I  mean I obviously completely agree with you that.

a war with China would be horrific, possibly  existential, but do you think there is room. for some kind of limitations, mutually agreed  limitations on AI between China and the United. States? I mean, we have the meeting coming up  between President Xi and President Trump. And A, do you think it's sensible? And B, do you think  that the military area in a sort of modern-day. equivalent of nuclear arms agreements would be  an area to start? So, we all believe that there.

needs to be a set of treaties in this area. The  first treaty needs to be one about no surprises. So imagine a situation where an agent bot manages  to get out of its testing range by accident. um and but ultimately triggers a nuclear response  because it signals that there's one coming and. then the nuclear response happens automatically.  There there are plenty of such scenarios that. analysts have come up with. So the single  most important thing is a no surprises rule,

right? And the next one would be to attack the  question of cyber. Neither side has been willing. to limit its use of cyber attack, offensive or  defensive capability. If you can't agree to that, it's going to be hard to agree to much more. And  so, and you don't think even in principle a mutual. agreement on pausing would make sense? I think  it's the problem with pausing is first place um. it's counter to the incentives of all the players  of course. The second is how do you verify? Okay.

So, for purposes of argument, the UN will in will  administer the pause. So, that that's now you're. really condemning it to failure. No, but we have  an international body and they're supposed to be. helping and both are on the security council.  Okay. So, now how do they verify it? So, then. they have to go to the secret labs which includes  the military secret labs and they have to read all. the code. Well, first you can't read all the code  because it's all written by computers. So now you. have to take your computer system from the UN and  you have to apply it to the Chinese system. Well,

the UN's system is not as fast or modern if you  will than the Chinese or the US one by definition. because they don't have all the resources. So you  see how um I wrote a paper a while ago which said. there is a solution to this and the solution is to  have what we called mutual AI destruction. And the. idea was that as we go up and up this competition  list, you have to give the other side a chance to.

say you've gone too far. So we proposed that  rather than bombing each other's data centers, we would just have a computer that would shut  down the power to the data center in such a way. it couldn't be restored for a while. So when when  the other side got farther along, you could shut. off its and and they could obviously do the same  thing to you. This was intended as a serious point. and but it's also sort of far sounds like a modern  day Doctor Strange level. But but the important. point is that it in this particular formulation it  would allow when somebody got well ahead of you,

you could shut them down and then they could shut  you down and then you restart. That's another way. of addressing this pause issue. I mean, we  need a solution that's implementable for a. pause and I don't see it. We we do. That's the  alarming thing you just said. We need a solution. that's implementable and you don't see it. And  I and to conclude I I as you know I'm we know I. know we know each other reasonably well. I'm  basically an optimist and I'm always looking. on the upside. But I have to say in the last few  weeks my general optimism has been a bit knocked.

firstly by what's been happening in Silicon Valley  and the the fact that there are growing numbers of. researchers in these companies themselves alarmed  about the dynamic of not being able to pause as. you say and secondly by what I've seen here which  is even we're well we're nowhere near the frontier. of AI that we could be at in a few years and  yet you see this escalation of innovation that. seems to me to be ever more lethal. So so the  counterargument is to be optimistic. Give me.

some reasons for optimism. You're building  a kind of intelligence that's nonhuman but. under our control. Can we keep it under control?  I believe we can. Partly because we at some level. can pull the plug. Uh you always have the issue of  a terrorist group. Let's assume terrorists don't. have access to this because they can't get enough  data centers to do it. Then diplomacy between the. countries should allow us to keep effective human  control on these systems. They will move quickly,

but fundamentally they'll be under human control.  I honestly believe that as long as AI is under. human control and under human alignment,  it will be okay. That is my opinion. Well, I have to say I really, really hope you're right.  Eric Schmidt, thank you very much. Thank you, Zan.