The DoD has a surprisingly positive history with having outsiders on influential boards like this. I say this from experience: I've served on a few. The DoD

The DoD has a surprisingly positive history with having outsiders on influential boards like this. I say this from experience: I've served on a few. The DoD knows that it needs ideas that come from outside, and so it runs a variety of external advisory boards. Some of this helps, e.g., DARPA explore very-early-stage research options. And in my experience, they tend to listen. Schmidt knows what he's doing in this context. He already serves as one of the members of PCAST https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_President%27s_Council_of_Advisors_on_Science_and_Technology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_President%27s_Co... , which exists to advise the President in a non-partisan way on matters of science and technology. The members of PCAST have serious chops, and serve a very useful function in helping get sane science and technology policies formulated. (And I use the phrase "serves" very carefully: This is not a path to fame and power; chairing PCAST working groups is a pretty non-trivial amount of work, for no real reward. Most of the people I know who've been involved in the process do it because they feel like it's a way to have a positive impact in the U.S. and in their fields.)