Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt has developed a vast network of strategic investments and political relationships that's allowed the tech billionaire to wield significant influence over artificial intelligence and public policy in Washington, D.C., according to an explosive new report. The Bull Moose Project, a nonprofit advocacy group committed to developing "the next generation of America First leaders and policies," has spent months investigating Schmidt's financial disclosures, tax records, business documents and other publicly available information. On Thursday, the group released a report outlining its findings, first obtained by Fox News Digital. "Americans don't want to believe that they live under'the rule of the few,' rather than a democracy's'rule of the many' – but this sobering report is a wake-up call that our elected representatives can't ignore," said Aiden Buzzetti, president of the Bull Moose Project. "What we've put together reinforces the puppet-master role that big tech's leaders play in the public's lives. All items in this database and report are backed by reputable, verifiable sources, and we plan to update this it regularly so that the public has access to Schmidt's dealings, even if government refuses to disclose them. Get ready for your mind to be blown."

Eric Schmidt has prodded the Pentagon for years to hurry along its software-buying process. Today the AI tech investor and former Google CEO is more determined than ever to urge government decision-makers to pick up the pace, but not just when it comes to buying more software for the Defense Department. Schmidt wants the government to implement his sweeping blueprint to fight what he considers an existential threat to democracy posed by China's AI plans, an effort that could also bolster his own commercial AI interests. He says the U.S.'s national security and economic leadership are dependent upon spending billions to procure smarter software, bolster AI research, and build the country's computer science talent pool. And he says he knows better than the Pentagon itself how to remove the bureaucratic blockades preventing more agile use of AI by the government. But at the same time, Schmidt's venture capital firm Innovation Endeavors has invested in companies that have received multimillion-dollar contracts from federal agencies. Some of those investments and contracts -- reported here for the first time -- were granted between 2016 and 2021 while Schmidt chaired two influential government initiatives, the Pentagon's Defense Innovation Board and the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence.

Schmidt Futures, a philanthropic initiative co-founded by former Google CEO and Chairman Eric ... [ ] Schmidt and his wife Wendy, is expanding its investment in artificial intelligence research. Schmidt Futures announced today that it was investing $148 million to fund the Eric and Wendy Schmidt AI in Science Postdoctoral Fellowship, a program of Schmidt Futures. With this newest funding, Schmidt Futures, a philanthropic initiative co-founded by former Google CEO and Chairman Eric Schmidt and his wife Wendy, has now committed a total of $400 million to support the development of artificial intelligence (AI) for scientific discovery for other advances in technology and engineering fields. According to the announcement, the new funding will initially support about 160 postdoctoral fellows at nine universities around the world to learn and apply AI methods to their research. The fellowship is expected to expand to more institutions and countries in the future.

President Biden came into office promising to restore the role of science in government after the Trump administration's rocky relationship with scientific advice. A key tool for the White House to implement its ambitious science-related agenda is the Office of Science and Technology Policy, or OSTP--a relatively small outfit that oversees policies about science, including budget requests for agencies that conduct science and the coordination of major scientific endeavors across the federal government. Since Biden took office, OSTP has taken on a variety of sorely needed priorities, including reinvigorating government processes for scientific integrity, future pandemic preparedness, and exploring what artificial intelligence means for human rights. But these good causes have been overshadowed by controversies over OSTP's leadership. Politico recently broke a story about billionaire and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt's close ties to the Biden administration's OSTP.

Have you ever watched any of the "Terminator" movies with Arnold Schwarzenegger? If you have, you will be familiar with the evil villain "Skynet," which is a fictional artificial, neural network-based, conscious group-mind and artificial general superintelligence system that decided to terminate all human life in the late 2020s. It has become palpably obvious that the company that most closely resembles Skynet today is Google. You may recall that Google purchased the leading artificial intelligence company Deep Mind a little over eight years ago for the paltry sum of $500 million. This was likely the most important purchase Google made to jumpstart them to Skynet status, with their already massive surveillance capacity corralling data collected from its search engine, which controls 93% of the searches in the world.

Last fall, Politico reporter Alex Thompson wrote a short news story about President Biden's then-science adviser, Eric Lander, and how he was driving everyone in the White House crazy. Then, after writing that article, Thompson got an anonymous tip about Lander's mistreatment of his staff, which included lawyer Rachel Wallace. Wallace alleged that Lander bullied her and retaliated against her for raising ethical red flags about his behavior. One of those red flags was about Eric Lander's closeness with another Eric, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, and Lander's desire for Schmidt's foundation, Schmidt Futures, to help fund the White House science office. After Thompson wrote about the bullying allegations, Lander resigned from the administration under pressure.

Schmidt Futures, the philanthropic foundation set up by billionaires Eric and Wendy Schmidt, is funding a new program at the University of Cambridge that's designed to equip young researchers with machine learning and artificial intelligence skills that have the potential to accelerate their research. The initiative -- known as the Accelerate Program for Scientific Discovery -- will initially be aimed at researchers in science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine. However, it will eventually be available for those studying arts, humanities and social science. Some 32 PhD students will receive machine-learning training through the program in the first year, the university said, adding that the number will rise to 160 over five years. The aim is to build a network of machine-learning experts across the university.