Eric Schmidt, Inc.
Unprecedented Report on Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s Self-Serving Manipulation of U.S. Government Exposes Incestuous Web of Power and Influence
Schmidt’s myriad conflicts of interest while operating a shadow government in America scream for U.S. policymakers to implement transparency safeguards and limits on the related financial interests of government advisors.
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See the full report here.
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The most comprehensive investigation to-date of ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s financial disclosures, tax records, business documents, and other publicly available information reveals the oligarch-style empire built by the billionaire to influence U.S. public policy in a way that allows him to further concentrate his own wealth and power.
This report unveils a many-months-in-the-making report on Schmidt’s vast network of carefully cultivated political relationships and strategic investments that have been inflated by government policy that he has designed and directed.
We have created a comprehensive interactive map to help Americans visualize Schmidt’s political tentacles, as he grasps people in power and positions of influence to feed upon our country.
BMP’s interactive map includes 523 dots and 713 connecting lines representing Schmidt’s connections to decisionmakers, businesses, charities, academia, government boards and more, all of which benefit—both directly and indirectly—his investments related to communications networks, semi-conductors, biotechnology and artificial intelligence (AI), to name a few.
Of note, at least 50 former government employees work for Schmidt.
A small sampling of Schmidt’s unscrupulous dealings, outlined and sourced in the report, include:
Eric Schmidt and Innovation Endeavors, just one of the venture capital funds that he founded, made at least 57 investments in AI companies while Schmidt was running the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI).
Through Innovation Endeavors, Schmidt invested in rocket launch startup Astra that provides satellite delivery and launch services. Astra went public in 2012, and in October 2020, the company was selected by the U.S. Air Force AFWERX program to pursue development of its Rocket 5.0 program. Schmidt was a vocal proponent of AFWERX’s creation in 2018, and he has continued to promote the AFWERX program through public testimony to Congress and as Chair of the Defense Innovation Board.
Schmidt is an investor in Radical Ventures, a venture capital fund that invested in AI robotics startup Covariant’s Series B (2020) and Series C (2021) funding rounds. Covariant was favorably cited in the final report released by the Schmidt-chaired NSCAI as one of the robotics companies poised to “win the market for the software platforms that power the next wave of industrialization.”
Since 2012, Schmidt has served on the Broad Institute, a joint biomedicine initiative between MIT and Harvard. After President Joe Biden nominated Eric Lander, who served as the founding director and president of the Broad Institute, to head the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), Schmidt contributed $150 million to the bioscience initiative. Soon after joining OSTP, Lander hired several OSTP officials whose salaries were paid by Schmidt Futures, despite the concerns of OSTP’s general counsel that the moves raised “significant ethical concerns.”
Schmidt serves as a founder of First Spark Ventures, a fund that counts at least four biotech/biomedicine investments (that have been made public) as part of its investment portfolio. Despite conflict-of-interest questions, Schmidt was tapped to serve on the National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology in January 2023, a move that Walter Schaub, the former director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, described as a “potential horror show” given Schmidt’s ability to shape biotech policy in ways that would potentially benefit his own personal financial interests.
Not only does he use Schmidt Futures, created in 2017, to fund fellowships and salaries for strategically-placed government staff, the “philanthropic venture” released a report on “infrastructure needs to support the U.S. bioeconomy” that immediately became a new White House initiative and was referenced numerous times in a President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology report in 2022.
