For the time being,
before AI invents completely new and unimagined ways for us all to kill each other,
#drones are perhaps the biggest practical application of AI in warfare.
There’s a healthy swarm of drone manufacturers at this year’s Stockholm summit,
sharing their hopes and fears about “defence innovation”.
Hovering alongside Eric Schmidt there’s the chairman of Thales
– “a leader in the fast growing market of unmanned aircraft systems”.
Buzzing nearby is Gundbert Scherf,
co-founder of German drone and AI company Helsing.
One of the early investors in Helsing is also present:
the CEO of Spotify, Daniel Ek,
which presumably means that the Helsing drones will have the best playlists, booming out suggested songs as they swoop down to attack.
The investment interlinking of Bilderberg participants is particularly intense around #autonomous drone tech.
Saab is an investor in Helsing.
Helsing is collaborating with leading AI company Mistral,
whose CEO is attending the conference.
Mistral was funded by Schmidt, who’s a huge fan of military UAVs.
Schmidt’s recent AI/drone expo, which took place last month in Washington,
was co-sponsored by Palantir, which was set up by Bilderberg insider Peter Thiel,
who is a major funder of Anduril,
whose CEO, Brian Schimpf, is also in Stockholm.
Schimpf is a former employee of Palantir,
whose CEO, Alex Karp, is also on board of Bilderberg,
having been ushered on to it by Thiel.
And so it goes.
Thiel’s fingers can be found wriggling around in an awful lot of pies,
not least the juiciest pie of all:
the White House.
The two senior White House officials at the Stockholm conference,
Kevin Harrington and Michael Kratsios,
both used to work for Thiel Capital.
And Thiel’s famously long list of influential acolytes includes none other than Vance.