Kyiv – Former Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll, making his first public appearance since departing the Trump administration, warned that warfare has reached “an inflection point.” He said the world’s most powerful militaries “have not adopted the speed and the innovation that they need.”
Wearing a tie featuring a traditional Ukrainian design, Driscoll appeared with Eric Schmidt, the former Google chief executive who now leads Perennial Autonomy, a U.S. defense company working in Ukraine. CNN host Fareed Zakaria moderated the conversation on the second day of the Yalta European Strategy forum, an annual Victor Pinchuk Foundation conference focused on Ukraine’s future within the West’s security architecture.
Driscoll and Schmidt highlighted Ukraine’s wartime advances, especially “DELTA,” a Ukrainian software platform that gives military commanders a fuller view of the battlefield by integrating data from radars, sensors and troops. Driscoll said the system is more advanced than any comparable technology currently operated by the U.S. military.
As Ukraine gains greater computing power and expands its artificial intelligence capabilities, Driscoll said, the country will have “an amazing opportunity for your nation to outrun the Russians, and out-innovate them, and out-partner so that you can crush them.”
Yalta European Strategy Forum/Victor Pinchuk Foundation
An Iraq War veteran and former venture capitalist, Driscoll has been a longtime friend of Vice President JD Vance, whom he met while both attended Yale Law School. As Army secretary, Driscoll also participated in the administration’s attempts to negotiate an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine.
His resignation was announced on Aug. 31 following reported clashes with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over the dismissal of senior officers and the Army’s modernization agenda. The White House did not provide a reason for his departure.
During his 18 months in office, Driscoll pressed the U.S. military to apply lessons from the war in Ukraine. In January, the Army started implementing procurement changes designed to move new weapons from development to soldiers more rapidly.
The war with Iran has highlighted the urgency of that effort. After Driscoll determined that the United States lacked sufficient defenses against Iranian Shahed drones, assistance came not from the country’s largest defense contractors but from Schmidt’s Perennial Autonomy. The company quickly delivered 13,000 “Merops” interceptor drones and 10,000 “Bumblebee” reconnaissance and strike drones, both of which are widely used in Ukraine.
“He literally called me and I said, of course, yes,” Schmidt said. “The question is, could the government have had a multi-year plan to anticipate this?”
Driscoll said answering that question will require the military to “internalize these lessons” and embrace the “scrappy, fast, iterative nature” of the work being carried out in Ukraine.
The message resonated with Ukrainian, European and American ministers, generals and lawmakers attending the forum. When Zakaria pointed out that the United States is expected to purchase 300,000 drones this year, compared with Ukraine’s projected production of 7 million, former CIA Director David Petraeus called out from the audience that Ukraine’s figure is closer to 10 million drones.
Yet in recent months, the United States has appeared to move away from the people and programs focused on drawing lessons from the war in Ukraine. In August, the U.S. Army phased out a drone battalion assigned to study Ukraine’s drone warfare. Two prominent supporters of the unit — former Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George and former commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa Gen. Christopher Donahue — were fired or pushed into early retirement earlier this year.
Driscoll did not address those departures. He defended the administration’s commitment to Ukraine, while acknowledging that its support had fallen short of Kyiv’s expectations.
“I believe the relationship that the U.S. has had with your country throughout this, has remained, not perhaps, as strong as you wanted, but from my position, it’s been unflinching in the desire for you to be successful,” he said.
But Driscoll had decided his own contribution would be greater outside government.
“My highest and best use to make the world a little bit safer at this very scary time was to do it on the outside,” he said.
