joselync
09-13-2022, 11:21 PM
Ukraine has been a very effective proving ground for the use of contemporary information technology in war, from satellite dishes to smartphone apps, Eric Schmidt, the former Google chief executive, said Monday.
Schmidt, now a US government consultant on artificial intelligence, told reporters after a 36-hour visit to the country that the civilian tech sector has been crucial to Kyiv's defense.
The proof came the day after Russian troops invaded on February 24.
After a long stall, Ukraine's legislature came together to agree on a crucial step to protect all the government's data from Russian hackers and strikes.
"In one day, they had a meeting of the parliament and changed that law... they moved all their data from government servers in Kyiv to the cloud," Schmidt said.
"The war gave everybody a political excuse to do the right thing," he said.
The second crucial move came with US tech billionaire Elon Musk's donation of access to his Starlink satellite-based broadband system, effectively insulating both the public and Ukrainian military from a Russian assault on telecommunications.
Musk and donors sent in some 20,000 ground terminals with small dish antennas that allowed everyday transmissions as well as helping fighters with targeting data. That stymied a key goal of the Russian attackers.
"Elon Musk is genuinely a hero here," said Schmidt. "This allowed the strategy of shutting down the internet by the opposition to fail."
Schmidt, now a US government consultant on artificial intelligence, told reporters after a 36-hour visit to the country that the civilian tech sector has been crucial to Kyiv's defense.
The proof came the day after Russian troops invaded on February 24.
After a long stall, Ukraine's legislature came together to agree on a crucial step to protect all the government's data from Russian hackers and strikes.
"In one day, they had a meeting of the parliament and changed that law... they moved all their data from government servers in Kyiv to the cloud," Schmidt said.
"The war gave everybody a political excuse to do the right thing," he said.
The second crucial move came with US tech billionaire Elon Musk's donation of access to his Starlink satellite-based broadband system, effectively insulating both the public and Ukrainian military from a Russian assault on telecommunications.
Musk and donors sent in some 20,000 ground terminals with small dish antennas that allowed everyday transmissions as well as helping fighters with targeting data. That stymied a key goal of the Russian attackers.
"Elon Musk is genuinely a hero here," said Schmidt. "This allowed the strategy of shutting down the internet by the opposition to fail."