diff --git a/sdk_container/src/third_party/coreos-overlay/profiles/coreos/targets/sdk/make.defaults b/sdk_container/src/third_party/coreos-overlay/profiles/coreos/targets/sdk/make.defaults
index 3fb2f4e9a7..a73848f361 100644
--- a/sdk_container/src/third_party/coreos-overlay/profiles/coreos/targets/sdk/make.defaults
+++ b/sdk_container/src/third_party/coreos-overlay/profiles/coreos/targets/sdk/make.defaults
@@ -2,6 +2,11 @@ FLATCAR_TYPE=sdk
 
 USE="cros_host expat man -pam"
 
+# We don't include -g in the SDK CFLAGS, so don't waste time and space on
+# splitdebug. Other compilers like Rust still generate debug symbols, but we
+# don't need these either.
+FEATURES="-splitdebug"
+
 # Enable CPU architectures needed by Rust builds
 LLVM_TARGETS="X86 AArch64"