Or we could do what the Chinese did and steal the technology.
13
Why should the federal government help you if you refuse defense department projects?
China’s biggest tech companies support their military. Why won’t you?
8
Most of the reports in the media are
about China stealing American technology. Mr. Schmidt doesn't say
how Chinese can surpass USA if they
can't steal the technology.
3
Actually by purchasing-power-parity standards, China already is the bigger economy.
The fraction of federal spending on R&D in the US has been dropping for 50 years; in China it has been rising. We now are reaping the disadvantage of this stupid policy.
Politicians don’t know where future progress in science will arise. They are mesmerized by the joining of two words they misunderstand (quantum and computing) and are pouring funds into quantum computing is unlikely to become practical for decades. Instead, the US government should triple its funding of all areas of basic and applied science.
One advantage China has is the respect every Chinese person has for learning and education, due perhaps to its Confucian tradition. China also has gun control, knife control, better subways, and better food. I felt safer there during my sabbatical at Fudan University in 2011-2012 than I do here (covid-19 aside).
14
Nah Americans are too busy arguing about abortions, religion, and guns to do any of this. Plus, science is just a lot of hooey anyway!
20
Eric, you all can't have it both ways out there...
Over the past 10-20 years, financial coven of The Valley foisted every renewable-energy scheme that'd come up way short in the private side, onto our federal/state governments...
Now have governors all over this country falling over each other to be "carbon neutral" by 20XX...
Having twice spent offset fees and climate-change-slowing taxes that’ll never be more than gleams in their eyes…
Worse, we've built so many economically nonsensical take-or-pay agreements into the core of so many electric utilities – they're going to take down customers and bondholders alike, when the tide goes out...
As in so many things, CA leading the way…
If energy were the only place you folks pulled this stunt – bad enough…
But you’re running the same play again, for AI and QC…
Everyone – even without any high-school physics – knows how real game console HW and game SW is…
They’ve seen and touched it…
Show a single as-accessible HW or SW counterpart in AI or QC…
That includes truly exposing intermediate layers, and letting the reality of each be scrutinized…
I could go into any game console – and its associated developer SW stack – and do this…
AI? QC??
PS
The seminal driver for both AI HW and SW is 3D solid image recognition…
e.g. analyzing CT scans of COVID-19-infected lungs…
The seminal (AMS) driver for post-Moore electronics will be the stuff ERI has been scraping together…
With what’s – relatively – loose sofa change, vs QC…
1
So the capitalist system can't beat the socialist system without the governments help?
18
Halt immigration from China. We already have enough Chinese spies at American tech firms working to undermine our country.
6
The tech billionaires are just as delusional as the guy in the White House.
"Ask not what your country can do for you..."
5
i had to read this article twice because i couldn't believe someone would have the gall to write such a thing. it is such a slap in the face as an average earning tax payer
i've already been thinking of migrating out of gmail to a more private means of email. now those plans will certainly accelerate
eric, your Oliver Twist bit isn't working. your greed is absolutely appalling
4
To Chinese graduate students on American campuses, especially in STEM fields: you will never be trusted in USA. Yellow peril paranoid has returned to America. The only thing that democrat and republican politicians can agree on is China-bashing. American media has successfully fanned hatred against China and Chinese. If you stay in USA your life will be ruined any minute by groundless accusation by NSA, CIA, FBI. Ask those ethnic Chinese American scientists who had gone through the wringers in the last few years. Trump did not start it. The Obama administration intensified it and it is getting worse everyday. The bottom-line is: finish your thesis and dissertation and go back to work in China and innovate there.
But perhaps you should consider coming to Canada. We are not as bad as USA towards China, yet. Although we did kidnapped the Huawei executive for Uncle Sam. Let's hope we work something out soon.
6
In terms of privacy, we should make any personally identifiable data the personal property of the person that the data identifies.
This would automatically make it a crime to posses such data without the person's explicit permission.
See http://solutionsny.nyc/privacy.html,
5
what a joke. Anybody who believes people like Schmidt from Google is falling for a snow job.
Perhaps Schmidt would also like the laws changed so that secret agreements not to hire from rival companies is legal; this would keep salary costs down, allowing them to be "more competitive" against low-cost countries. Far fetched you say? Actually, Google & Apple and others did this as reported in the NYT https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/15/technology/silicon-valley-antitrust-case-settlement-poaching-engineers.html and eventually coughing up a few hundred million in penalties (chump change compared to their earning).
6
Dear Google, and your ilk, like facebook:
You want the help of the elected government of your home country, against the unelected government of a foreign country?
please start by :
* Paying your taxes to the Federal government fairly
* Do everything to ensure fair elections to that elected government from which you seek help
* delete disinformation, disallow ads that spread chaos in the country of the elected government that you seek help from.
Dont be evil, remember, or at least dont bite the hand that once fed you.
18
Google doesn't pay taxes so should tax payer money go to the future Googles that won't pay any taxes? The people deserve a return on that investment.
Someone should tell this guy to relay the message back to silicon valley that they're a bunch of overpaid hypocrites.
8
Eric, you may have to rethink your position judging by the readers' comments to your article.
6
The only real way to progress is to be progressive. That means getting rid of old ideologies that are hindering progress, such as religion, and in general, republicanism. Want to lead the world? Then start using hydrogen fuel source, get rid of our existent highways and reinvent the way we travel, stop yielding to these religious nut jobs that keeps holding medical science and breakthroughs back.
8
Eric,
Can the hoi polloi go to a Dr. or for a check up or get basic dental care under your competitive recommendations?
We're told we cannot afford it. We are also told taxing billionaires (looking at you. and your Wall Street buddies) will destroy the economy. Some even compare it to a Nazi invasion of Poland (Blackstone founder Steve Schwarzman).
Meanwhile Blankfein rails against taxes, but Goldman got 1 trillion interest free in 2008, and conversion to bank status overnight.
Please write about your peers and maybe they can cough up the money to protect your wealth.
We'll be a the free clinic waiting to see a volunteer Dr.
6
It is mind boggling to me why Americans can be such fawning ally with Saudi Arabia (an absolute monarchy where women can't even drive!) but hating China to such extent just because they invest in R&D and has a different kind of government. Last time I checked, no one in China wants to start a war! Most young people there want to study in America! Xi Jinping song his only daughter to study in America! They are all learning English! They want to participate in the world economy, is that a crime?
7
Earlier this week, I heard some moron from the Trump Administration claiming that security controls on U.S. R&D were needed because “China was trying to steal its way up the intellectual property ladder”.
We should be grateful to Eric Schmidt for pointing out that China has made its own significant investments in science and technology, and now competes directly with the United States.
We may differ on the R&D most needed in the U.S., and on the best means of funding it, but let’s be clear on the basic facts. The Republican strategy of delay and denial is harmful to the United States, and not just in the long term.
1
Put billions where your mouth is.
Then I will believe you.
2
Self-fulfilling cold war
If China has democracy, will you still be so afraid? Why one must use China to convince the government to invest in tech? While we are close ally with Saudi Arabia, China and all its people are enemy now because they invest in R&D and they have a different government ? (at least it its not an absolute monarchy! and women can drive!) America faces competitions from South Korea (very advanced in AI), Japan and Germany...but why everyone singles out China? Are we trying to start a Cold War? China is a developing country just starting to poke their head in tech since about twenty years ago. Last time I checked, China has no plan in staring a war. They are just like any other countries and like all of us, trying their best and wanting to be successful. Please don't make a Cold War a self-fulfilling prophecy. Are we planning to bomb or intimidate China into changing government? Never have I seen the American people working in such unison on anything except in bringing down and belittling China. Be careful what we wish for, last time I checked, the Cold War wasn't much fun.
5
Schmidt has a good and important point, only severely hampered by his own views on taxation, and the fact that the government very much does subsidise technological innovation in the form of grants to institutions, which then privatize the profits those innovations generate. Much of Apple and Google’s highly profitable products and services are the direct result of government grants (see below link from the Harvard Business Review). Neither company has done remotely enough to support any of the noble democratic ideas Schmidt is appealing to, outside of the production of the useful products they sell, and that we essentially pay to develop, and then to use.
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/hbr.org/amp/2013/03/taxpayers-helped-apple-but-app
We can’t have it both ways: if we want government to fund innovation, then there has to be a fair distribution back to the public sector (not least into education).
"I am very proud of the structure that we set up. We did it based on the incentives that the governments offered us to operate .... The company isn’t about to turn down big savings in taxes .... It’s called capitalism. We are proudly capitalistic. I’m not confused about this." - Schmidt
Sounds like either you are confused, or you’re expecting us to be.
9
SV wants 'free markets' and deregulation when it comes to exploiting its users and gig workers, but wants government handouts when their profits are threatened. Privatized profits, socialized costs it's the American way!
4
Eric,
I grew up in Silicon Valley, and worked in early companies like Alten Solar and ROLM. In those days, people had ideals, and our innovations were not limited to computer screens.
The technology war is trivial, since it's a big world, and in the end it doesn't matter who "wins" (translation: market share and money).
Before it's too late, you zillionaires from Google, Facebook, and the rest (let's skip Oracle) need to address real world problems. Most houses in Silicon Valley are built from lumber, which causes deforestation, deaths in fires, and terrible illnesses from bad IAQ, including after the Camp Fire (50+ deaths from inhaling plywood based formaldehyde).
This would be a no brainer for you, and you and your friends could fund it via change you find on the floor. Steel framing works (I've built 700 houses and apartments with it), but wood framing costs 3% less, so builders are too lazy to switch. We are about to get much cheaper fire insurance rates for steel and all noncombustible construction. We need help from you to make it work, starting in Paradise. [email protected]
2
I've lived in San Francisco my whole life. Companies like Google, Apple, Twitter, etc., have ruined the landscape and livability of the entire Bay Area. China can have the tech crown, please.
2
Put on your watch-out-for-the-new-rising hegemon boots! I pass the baton of worrying about this to the new generation. I spent the entire 1980s worrying about Japan's rise to world domination.
1
If facebook and the political cancer it represents is the result of "winning" we'd be well-served by losing a few.
2
Perhaps Google should stop AI initiatives with Chines institutions that directly support the Chinese military while Google at the same time avoids US military-related contracts?
Just a thought.
2
It’s hard to know where to start with this self-serving drivel. This is the man who wants to suppress wages of Americans by giving away green cards to a million foreign students, or at the very least vastly increase the H1B quota. His answer for beating China is to educate and hire more Chinese nationals who will displace US citizens from jobs and universities. That he sits on any board even remotely connected to national security would be laughable, if it were not so scary.
5
"We should incentivize the emergence of a competitive alternative to Huawei, the Chinese company that leads in 5G network technology, by expanding the bandwidth the government makes available to private companies."
Whoa, buster. The FCC is hopelessly in the pocket of industry now, so how about they do some additional analysis of the risks as well as possible benefits to the public (not meaning corporations) when handing out spectrum.
The US Navy, NOAA and NASA all warn about FCC spectrum auctions for 5G near the frequencies we get readings of atmospheric moisture from. You know, accurate weather reporting and other benefits?
https://www.cantwell.senate.gov/download/05132019-navy-memo
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/05/5g-networks-will-likely-interfere-with-us-weather-satellites-navy-warns/
But FCC auctioned and announced a lower protection of signal crossover risk than any other nation.
Let's NOT just hand money over to existing companies. You were right to observe that the bigs in your industry (and telecom) do a lousy job of self-regulation.
Robust R&D funding and robust privacy regulations and robust anti-trust enforcements - that sounds better.
And design an internet that's secure by design, to stop government intrusions, but also the wholesale hoovering up of everyone's data by software companies and apps.
2
Schmidt's mention of DARPA is interesting, since search engines such as Google are direct descendants of ARPAnet.
Reading these comments, as I hope Mr. Schmidt is, I wonder if he suspected the responses he would receive.
3
the outsourcing happened when fed money dried up - and ROI was privatized by the markets/VCs -- and we could no longer compete in manufacturing (no subsidies). time for a replay. we have advantages - the critical mass of our research universities (advanced degree programs) and - until recently - better "weather" (= institutions, infrastructure, education, health care, citizenship, communities, values, democracy, privacy, and our "way of life"/lifestyle, and oh yeah the weather itself - folks from all over wanted to live the [their] dream in the Golden State. no longer true. no answer, POTUS, to pull up the drawbridge.....
1
Agree with Mr. Schmidt. And remember that whenever you buy "made in China" you disadvantage us and advantage them. Whenever you have a choice, do not buy Chinese.
1
Maddening.
If Google is at risk, it sould focus less on lobbyist against their own customs privacy rights....less on making 3 males execs among the world's richest people....less on compromised vanity project like Google Glass and YouTube's pushing of conspiracy theories....and more on r d and the businesses' long-term health?
No sympathy, trillionaires.
I would like to know how much wealth Silicon Valley billionaires have shielded from taxes by putting their pre ipo stock in Roth IRAs - it’s never enough for you people - you want it all and you don’t want to share with the hand that feeds you. What Chutzpah!
3
China is not our enemy. Russia is not our enemy. We are all part of a world, and the military aspirations of Schmidt, the toxic love of power in google and the Defense Innovation Board, the drumming of racism and hate, suggest to me that he and oligarchs like him are the enemy.
4
Eric, please put aside AI and 5G and intrusive surveillance systems for a short while and just give me a home wifi network that can keep itself running without rebooting.
3
Came for the comments. Eric is absolutely the poster boy of what is wrong with American Tech and it's outsized compensation plans for those at the top. But keep telling people your "ideas" Eric. Novell called they wonder where they went.
3
The H1-B visa program is just but one example of the many problems with The Valley.
Here's my top H1-B hit list:
1. Most H1-B visa holders bring a spouse, those spouses have degrees and they piggy back the original H1-B visa holder to take away a job that could have been held by a U.S. citizen.
2. The biggest complaint that I heard from H1-B visa holders was that the company had a required medical insurance plan. As one Asian employee told me, he would rather use Medi-Cal - the California version of Medicaid - for his spouse and 4.5 children than pay the $250/ paycheck minimum for the company insurance.
3. I found that, in the case of software engineering, it took 1 American engineer for every 5 H1-B holders to meet our set upgrade deadlines - the Americans didn't write any original code, they just fixed obvious errors made by the visa holders.
4. As the SOX guy in my group, I had at least 5 illegal deviations from the Engineering Change Order per release.
5. As a run on from above, the H1-B holders never accepted responsibility for their errors. Like a bunch of kindergarten kids responding to a problem, they always took the "Not Me" defense.
6. They are clannish, in a group interview NASA engineer, I got almost a 100% no votes review - this for a Cal-Tech graduate with two PhD's. Making the obvious choice, I was challenged for being prejudiced - the guy was an U.S. born person of Indian heritage.
...and BTW Eric, I wasn't to impressed with your work at Novell
3
The Chinese are educated in first-rate American universities and further trained in first-rate Silicon Valley companies. Then they return to China to compete against the US. Of course we will lose to China--unless they collectively commit suicide first using these "novel" viruses.
Well said. Put a moratorium on Chinese students in academia and industry. Block the Thousand talent and Confucius initiatives more intellectual property deft.
1
Dear Mr Schmidt
There are millions of qualified workers aged fifty plus who can’t even get an interview thanks to your algorithms. Why not tweak them and open the flood gates to experienced people who really want to work and can’t get an interview?
127
One topic not mentioned in this piece is Open Source. China no longer has to steal IP. All they need to do is wait for the Open Source code to be finished and "fork" it. Much of that code comes from Google projects by the way...So that's a self-inflicted way to lose against China. If you can name one open source project that is led by a chinese company, please let me know.
43
I cant even bring myself to read such pieces from people who talk of ‘no govt involvement’ until they want more money. Use your outrageous [and tax evaded] earnings to prop yourselves up, Do not offshore [or even H1B] work that will later come back to bite you. Protect your workers and cities where you have operations. Create housing for ALL your workers ie add as many housing units as workers number increases. [at about 1/2 unit per new worker] BEHAVE as RESPONSIBLE ‘citizen’ when you have the ‘rights’ of ‘people’.
70
The slide in American innovation is more likely a result of nonchalance and complacence and less a result of the lack of government funding. And the slide has almost nothing to do with hiring foreign workers or outsourcing or anything like that.
In the late 70s and early 80s the Detroit automakers forgot to look in their rear view mirror and became complacent allowing the Japanese to play catch up. That was not the result of lack of government funding, it was more due to lack of business savvy and caution.
It is often said that staying at the top is a lot harder than it takes to get there. Why ? Because the competition now has a blueprint to copy the trendsetter, while the trendsetter has only 2 places to go : Plateau out or trend down.
American supply chain is not nimble, we have become too bureaucratic as we have grown, we have let social experiments in our companies become more important than business success, we have let equal opportunity hiring become a proxy for building diversity at the expense of merit.
Our colleges might be the best in the world but our high schools are among the worst. The learning curve from high school to college is often so severe that kids drop out of college or switch majors to non-technical fields. The colleges are increasingly filled with Asian students who can not only afford the tuition but are also adequately prepared for college success.
Don't blame H-1B's or lack of government funding for this debacle. Look within.
48
"My graduate work in computer science in the 1970s and ’80s was funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency."
Why should any US citizen be interested in graduate work in computer science? Silicon Valley continues to abuse the H-1B visa to bring in foreign computer science workers (75% from India) at below market wages. Mr. Schmidt's company, Google, is the number eight company in the US with H-1B workers, employing 6,656 with an average salary of $139,472 (https://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2019-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx). Most H-1B visa holders offer no skills that Americans do not already possess -- a prerequisite for bringing in a foreign worker. Sure, Google hired a few super-stars and paid them handsomely, but most H-1B visa holders make the legal minimum ($60K), and the US company gets three programmers for the price of one American programmer.
Not to be outdone, Boeing gleefully outsourced programming work to India for $8/hour, eliminating American jobs and cutting labor costs. Sadly, Boeing and its hapless customers got what they paid for.
Apply for a position at any IT shop in America today (Home Depot, Freddie Mac, etc.), and you will be vetted by a gauntlet of H-1B visa holders, primarily Indians.
So, Mr. Schmidt, who is being short-sighted? Stop abusing the H-1B visa. Hire Americans.
258
@NorthernVirginia You will be positively delighted to know that other avionics companies also use overseas developers. Some in those companies openly lament that someday they will be responsible for killing someone. How much is a life worth? Depends.
I worked for one of those companies.
Oh, China has a billion more people than the US, and India has about 88M more, too. They both have excellent low-cost or free engineering programs, and plenty of gifted students to enroll. That's a tough one.
17
@NorthernVirginia I wish I could like your comment ten zillion times. I was a librarian in an elementary school in Alpharetta Georgia that was mostly populated by children of H1B tech sector workers, and while they were precious kids, their dominance in the school kept American citizens in the district from having a decent shot at the pre-K lottery.
While I believe that immigration is a good thing, it’s not entirely a good thing when we it encroaches on a school’s ability to provide services to citizens. Not only did the pre-K lottery get skewed to the kids of H1B workers, we had to make accommodations for them leaving during the month of January for their holiday season. Do you know how hard it is to catch kids up when they miss an entire month of school?
Then of course there’s the question of, why can’t we hire American citizens to do these tech jobs? I know plenty of people who are working minimum wage jobs who could have been trained to do these jobs if American schools and businesses would work together to create school-to-work Career Tech pathways for them. But of course, it boils down to salary. Foreign workers will do the same work for cheaper rates, won’t they?
35
@NorthernVirginia The legal minimum for H-1B is not $60K. The minimum is the prevailing wage for position+seniority and location. If an American programmer costs a company $X, an H-1B programmer costs the same company $X + ~$5,000 (administrative and legal costs for applying for the visa).
I personally had my salaries raised by ~20K for two previous jobs in order to meet the prevailing wage criterion for the H-1B visas.
H-1B workers are often more expensive, not less, to a company.
19
Lenin was reported to have said "I can sell just enough rope to the capitalists so that they can hang themselves. This accurately describes the relationship of US high tech companies with China. Mr. Schmidt has some good ideas and a clear sense of what is at stake, but are the leading US technology giants willing to take those necessary steps that will affect their bottom line. Without this willingness, not enough can be done. Why doesn't Google fire the anti-union [really anti-free speech and anti-democracy] firm they hired to intimidate their employees? Interestingly, there is no mention of improving US education, or of providing high tech workers with the wages and working hours that will encourage US workers to enter these fields -- surely part of the national security component of Mr. Schmidt's concerns.
1
Eric Schmidt should look to clean up his own backyard in Silicon Valley before he pushes the view that more government support is needed for technology. The first place to start would be to get rid of the tech monopolists like Google and Facebook, which do more to stifle innovation than anything the government does or does not do, and that have enriched themselves at the public expense. I would suggest that he start there and not assume that the model that he helped to create is something that is worth emulating.
2
You highlight number of installed 5G base stations and supercomputers as leading indicators of lost U.S. lead. I suppose it is rather mean to point out that our privately owned for-profit wireless companies probably are the richest in the world and charge the highest developed country prices by being effective monopolies and adopting new technology so slowly that the bottom line profit isn't hurt. I would guess that if the government took actions leading to more competition in the wireless communications industry it would be more effective than if the government paid for more R&D. I would guess the arguments lead to a different conclusion for supercomputers.
2
As a taxpayer, not anywhere near the upper 1 or 5 percent, I would like to see a return on my taxes that fund research.
I would like to see better negotiations on the returns from government funded research that yields financial rewards to licensees.
The government has been loath to assert its rights in many instances, and entrepreneurs and investors have gotten away with great profits building upon research we the people have funded.
And of course another approach, not in place of the one above, is to raise taxes on the wealthier, rather than lower it as trumplicans have done.
5
I wrote a book on this very topic – “Winning the Race Among Nations for Economic Superiority”.
Probably the most important chapter in the book was on the role that the government played in creating the entire computer industry. In that chapter, I traced the development of the computer industry from before WWII until the beginnings of the 1980s. What you see is that the American military establishment, through DAPRA, essentially created the underpinnings of the entire computer industry, whose benefits we enjoy today. They didn’t have their fingers in it. They had their hands, arms, legs, and torso in it. It was Industrial Policy at its finest. The reality is that without the Federal Government’s involvement, many Americans companies that are dominate today would never have come into existence.
Back then, we used that approach because of the threat that the Russians posed to us militarily. However, we could use that same to win economically today.
Marianna Mazzucato is an economist that has been preaching this gospel for a long time. I believe that it is likely she will one day win the Nobel prize for economics with her innovative ideas.
I have also penned another book that will hopefully be in print this year that articulates that our only hope in the future is take a ‘team’ approach in battling the Chinese. Individualism won’t be any match for their state capitalism.
2
My question is: Do we need to turn China into a to-be enemy to convince the U.S. government to support AI and other technological advancements? As a country with near bankrupt Amtrak and the Post office, rampant homelessness, We don't have hardware problems, we have software problems. Failed Education reforms and the poor getting more poor, our enemy is not China, is ourselves. Technology is great, but not the most important thing to secure America's future and to compete with others, China or not.
1
The annual US deficit is over $1TN and growing. How should we fund corporate welfare? More debt?
2
Mr. Schmidt, the single most effective thing you can do to further the policies you favor is to contribute to electing a Democratic president this November, along with obtaining a Democratic Senate majority and retaining the House majority.
We currently have no one in power who is competent even to understand your argument, much less build and execute policy that would support it. If Trump wins in November, America will lose another four years of potential progress. In the arenas you discuss, four years may as well be four hundred years. We will never recover.
Your first decision is whether America is worth your investing time and money to defeat Trump and the Republican party, or not. Really, nothing else matters.
5
We need a leader who first and foremost vacates the populist echo chamber and listens to people who know what's what about science and technology; listens to people who are studying global warming and its remedies; a leader who doesn't ridicule wind and solar power while promoting more coal burning; who stops hiring people to lead government agencies instead of subverting them; a leader who actually cares about children and the future instead of the next election. Four more years of know-nothingism and America can pack it in.
2
This is great but must be accompanied by breaking up the major tech monopolies to make room for more entrepreneurs. I speak from experience. Google announced a product that competed directly with a similar product our start-up company just delivered and had our first order for 100 copies. Of course Google was going to give it away and never delivered but that as enough to kill our start-up. No product with similar features wasn’t available for two years, enough time to grow a successful business.
4
Yeah, they're throwing everything they've got into developing A.I. and quantum computers first, including industrial espionage to steal whatever advances that we make (and they've been very successful at the later).
Especially given the incompetence of the current administration, my money is on China.
2
Great! Eric has pointed the direction US must follow. Indeed too big government is not good but in the area of science and technology, we do need US Government support. We have the talent, we have ingenuity, we work hard and we can do it.
1
Great thoughts and ideas.
Agree with much said.
Sustainability with muscular authority to sustain is fine.
Empire stuff at this juncture is also PhD stuff. Still.
Oh boy.
The government does get involved. The US government owns and operates 5 of the 10 biggest and fastest standalone computers on the planet. Two of those are used for open source science. Arguably the government invented the internet, the backbone by which these high powered computers operate. The government should get more involved Mr Schmidt, but not or reasons you mention.
Private industry has exploited the internet and has built the cloud, which depending on how the notion of a computer is defined, may be even bigger. Private industry has built a surveillance state, all perfectly legal, to spy on you, use your location, store your images, monitor your electronic communications all to get you to buy some product or service you may, or likely do not. need. In other words they have exploited government funding of computer and communications sciences and have turned the USA into a consumer Gulag. And now Mr Schmidt want to double down on that and do more of the same under the guise "national security!"
I would be more receptive to Mr Schmidts message if he also included in this the following: eliminate the H1B visa requests and the use of offshore computer scientists; have industry acknowledge a global opt-in policy for use of personal information from any source; acknowledge that the internet is a public utility and must be used and managed by state and national utility commissions.
6
I agree with Mr. Schmidt and suggest we fund these programs with the repatriated funds that companies like Apple and Google hold offshore.
3
All very good ideas, but we cannot accomplish any of this without serious funding of our education system. The present model of funding education with local property taxes produces an uneven focus and outcome. Teachers need to be trained and rewarded and put into schools with small class sizes and adequate resources 12 months a year. This is an emergency as surely as Sptnick was in 1957 when the government mobilized to train engineers and scientists to confront the Soviet threat.
3
China is very good at building stuff and at stealing intellectual property, but not good at innovation. The country has been very badly hurt by Marx, Mao, etc.
I do think Mr. Schmidt is correct, though: China could overtake us be sheer investment and scale. Doubling US government investment in emerging technologies should be a minimum.
A bigger problem is that the US has been very badly hurt, too, by Trump. The man injects politics into everything and simply doesn't care about anything but himself and his own glory.
I believe it is up to the US Congress to be more explicit about boundaries around Trump's corrosive influence. Then, we can move forward.
2
@Astrochimp
"China is very good at building stuff and at stealing intellectual property, but not good at innovation."
That's the same thing US use to say about Japan. Yet, the Japanese came within a hair of running US automotive industry out of business. Japan crushed US electronic and steel industries.
The United States that brought China into WTO. Keep thinking the success of China has been solely by stealing intellectual property. You can't steal anything that's US corporations gave up for cheap labor and profits in the first place. Hubris is a very dangerous thing.
5
What’s the end game? Are we just going to fund more and more research forever and forever so that we can maintain number one status? Is that what it’s all about? How about instead of more money, we figure out how to collaborate with the Chinese?
Growth growth growth. Compete compete compete. Proliferate population. Churn through resources faster faster faster. All a big race to what? Doom.
Pull the plug on this nasty cycle. If we stop population growth, we don’t need more more food. We don’t need more more money. We don’t need growth. We can actually finally just chill and enjoy.
2
@Tough Call Because there is only one way to cooperate with an authoritarian bully: agree not to demand any democratic uses for the shared technology.
The 'nasty cycle' might have enough blame to go around, but any U.S. blame for it would rest on our devotion to profits and competition, a far less dangerous brand of blame than the suffocating dedication to non-freedom that informs everything the government of China does and stands for.
Cooperation sounds great on paper, but there are dogs you just never lie down with, because the fleas carry the plague, not just the skin rash. China is far more dangerous than the USSR ever was (if you believe the USSR was ever really dangerous at all.) China has cash, expanding muscle, and a weaker U.S. global influence that does not offer much confidence to smaller nations who have been feeling the weight of China's economic and territorial bullying. We should be competing, at all costs, to outpace the extremely dangerous and dishonest threat that is China.
1
We’re still riding the coattails of FDR and Eisenhower and Kennedy and the coattails of the generations that won WW2 and the space race. We’re so used to being the best that we’ve been coasting since 1980. We need to learn what it means to pull together again.
2
Schmidt is right to point to the close connections between how technology is designed and deployed and the possibilities for a just and open society. But the US is developing all kinds of surveillance technologies, in the service of capitalism more than government control (as in China). Investing in STEM research isn’t going to address this, unless disciplines from the social sciences and humanities are drawn collaboration as peers, not afterthoughts.
Our American Government no longer will be able to lead as Dr. Scmidt stated it must until we, its people, decide to fundamentally change how we choose, empower, and hold accountable those who are charged with leading us.
Our national election process has descended into a chaotic free-for-all. Witness the 2016 Republican primaries and the 2020 Democratic primaries. These are what did produce and threaten to reproduce our national nightmare embodied currently in Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, and the Republican Party. The Democrats are doing an efficient job of mimicking the Republicans this year in terms of allowing their individual egos to overrule our collective national good.
2
Guess what we need is to take money from commoners and give that money to big corporations in the form of federal partnership, who can then pass those to the rich in the form of increased stock price. Or in other words business as usual.
1
Mr. Schmidt makes many sensible recommendations, but none will be realized under President Trump. The first priority thus must be to elect a Democrat as President in November. Only a Democrat can restore our technological advantage. I hope Mr. Schmidt will dedicate some of his immense personal resources to that end.
6
I suppose the money for government investment in A.I. technology will primarily be derived from federal taxes paid by Silicon Valley tech behemoths and their offshore tax shelters? Dream on.
9
We also might want to make colleges a lot more affordable. And schools from kindergarten all the way up competitive and better funded like they are in China. Education is a vital part of the advancement of any society. Maybe someone should explain that to Trump and the Republicans.
7
We should also treat China as a formidable competitor, but not as an enemy. China wants to develop on its own path and does not aim to interfere with how the US is run. And we should not keep lecturing them on how to run their country and treat China as an enemy when they ignore our advice. The way we openly sabotage Huawei's business worldwide is shameful and will surely backfire if China surpasses us technologically in the future.
11
@Nomad "It does not aim to interfere with how the US is run."
How do you propose to know what the communist part of China wants?
Or is it naked wishful thinking ?
@Nomad
Agree. It is mind boggling to me why America can be such fawning ally with Saudi Arabia (an absolute monarchy where women can't even drive!) but hating China to such extent just because they invest in R&D and has a different kind of government. Last time I checked, no one in China wants to start a war! They all want to study in America! They are all learning English! They want to participate in the world economy, is that a crime?
If we want to maintain dominance, it's probably time we put a halt to the offshore manufacturing of our tech (and the software that sits atop it). All of the innovation we do in the name of staying ahead and national security is pointless if in doing so, we share the schematics and firmware with those we are trying to out-innovate.
We've essentially bootstrapped China and India in tech by sending our schematics abroad to be manufactured, and asking their software engineers to code the firmware. While I deeply respect the engineers from both countries, my guess is that the Chinese government for one has not played fair, and every chip that China has manufactured for us has been studied and replicated, putting them in their current position.
We should bootstrap the impoverished areas of our nation in the same way we bootstrapped the economies of India and China, by building the infrastructure here, in the USA, which is needed to pull back to our shores the manufacture our tech, and the code we write.
Yeah, I'll pay more for my iPhone and yes, I'll be proud it was made 100% in the USA. And as a benefit I won't be worrying that someone is taking our intellectual property and building a better AI (or whatever).
14
I would be able to take this more seriously were it not for the fact that companies in the U.S., like Google, and Apple, have continuously, and successfully, lobbied for a lower tax burden. Now, thanks to those efforts, the U.S. government is crippled with a shortfall in revenues resulting in a one trillion dollar deficit, despite a fairly good economy. It is traitorous. These companies owe their success in part to the fact they are in the U.S. No other country offers the combination of strong economy, infrastructure, social and political stability, available financing, educated work force, and research and development capabilities. But they feel no responsibility in helping contribute to this. Apple and other companies have been guilty of sheltering their profits off shore, to avoid paying taxes to the U.S. And now they want the U.S. government to fund research and development projects? Exactly where do they think this money is going to come from? And why exactly do they think this money should come from others, and not them, even though they would benefit from it most.
40
Well, would be nice to do this but there is no money anymore because taxes keep getting cut. Moreover, the problem that will take precedence over this is there wont be enough money for entitlement programs because of all the tax cuts over the decade. Finally, we are running huge deficits in a good economy. When that blows up it will be even harder to do. But, that's what people want apparently, so be it.
4
I support more and more strategic government investment in technology and medicine and all the areas that can improve our security and public health. But this time, let's make this a really American model: let the American taxpayers get a return on their investment. If we the taxpayers fund innovation, let we the taxpayers benefit more broadly through royalty payments or licensing fees or another form of income stream back to the government coffers for that initial investment. I am sick of the current American model that socializes risk and privatizes profits. Meanwhile, more and more jobs are lost to technology without adequate long-term planning for worker training or income replacement.
Right now there are technology and pharmaceutical companies who are getting rich on technology that the US government researched and developed. On top of that, they avoid paying their fair share of taxes. If Mr. Schmidt truly cares about the status of Americans in the future, he should step up and make sure everyone benefits from the research and collaboration he is proposing.
14
Thank you for this article!
I’ve walked millions of square feet at research universities. as a consultant for research and education space.
The reality is that our research infrastructure and grant funding needs major investment. We are coasting on the investment of the Manhattan project, Cold War and 20th century monopolies like Bell Labs.
We stand to lose our technological edge across all fields from biotech to high tech. We badly need engineers and scientists more involved in government. Think about the fact that most senators are lawyers who went to school before science was a part of the curriculum. There is a fundamental gap in understanding what it takes to innovate and invent.
6
I would suggest IRS is funded to invest in best in class AI technology to locate every offshore account where uber rich hide their wealth and avoid paying taxes. That should generate enough revenue to fund the kind of government research that Mr. Schmidt is advocating and then some.
10
The US Government's priority through the leadership of both the Republican and Democratic parties is to protect an unfettered financial sector focused on private equity and hedge funds doing leverage buyouts, crippling companies long term with high debt, looting the middle class, draining billions into their accounts and taking talent away from the productive work including high tech, to the benefit of very few, to the loss of the country.
4
When America was/is the leader (still is due to residual effects which are slowly fading) in innovation, there is strong grant support for academic research - even though there are some wasted projects, overall it's a small investment initially for a large payoff (i.e., during the Clinton years especially). The rate of funding grants needs to be around 33% (which was the best period IMO - I was a student then) and in bad economic times, around 25% (so 1/4). Right now it is about 1/10 or worse which makes it hard to judge applications since the top two or 3 are likely equally good.
1
This is a fantastic article and dead on accurate. I'm so glad Mr. Schmidt has taken the time to so thoughtfully cover this serious issue. We have lots of serious issues like climate change, health care, economic equality, etc., but we tend to not think of things like this with the same level of urgency. That is a big mistake. A future technology landscape that is controlled by the CCP is a dystopia none of us should have to live through. I hope Mr. Schmidt continues to speak out on this, and I also hope that once the Democratic field thins out that he works with the eventual nominee on policies such as is described here.
2
If corporate America wanted government help in pursuing innovation they should not have lobbied so hard for the Trump Trillion Dollar tax cuts. There is no money to help corporate America other than the billions they are saving in taxes.
5
Brilliant idea Mr. Schmidt, a government - academic - private partnership to rev up American creativity. I'm happy for you that you benefited from such an arrangement. But where does responsibility lie for corporations that use public money? In my opinion Mr. Schmidt, corporations may not have both sides of the equation - public funding to develop technolgy and billionaire producing profits from monetizing personal data. Work out a contract for corporate responsibility that doesn't prey on the consumer and I could support your idea.
5
"My graduate work in computer science in the 1970s and ’80s was funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency."
But I thought it was capitalism and individualism and risk-taking entrepreneurs that powered the US economy. That's the argument they use to avoid paying anything meaningful in the way of taxes. Eric Schmidt and his buddies benefited from government funding for their research, which he "used" to make $Billions! But increase his taxes, or that of the big monopoly corporations he and his ilk created while the US government and regulators sat on their hands? No way. Corporate socialism and tax breaks/low rates for the wealthy have been bought from the politicians. In the end, the middle class will pay through their teeth, and it won't only be with our money, but with our livelihood.
6
No more public money for tech. It's a business. Time to pretend it's the capitalist it keeps throwing in the consumers' faces. Nothing free.
1
So socialism has worked for tech students, tech entrepreneurs, and tech companies and should be expanded in the future? Hmm I wonder if it could work for lower and middle class student and workers.
7
In all truth, American tech companies deserve to lose out to China. That's what they get for outsourcing materials, trade secrets, labor, and talent to a third-worlds and dictatorships for decades. That's what happens when these disordered (yet driven) men let greed guide their thinking and actions; that's what we (the government that is supposed to represent taxpayers) get for letting our representatives help corporations and billionaires pursue their short-sighted quest for wealth and power -- instead of making those corporations pay taxes and operate ethically and responsibly. Who didn't see this coming decades ago? Of course, silicon valley billionaires have made their money so they don't care what they've done to America. Talk about deplorable...
8
As long as the federal government invests in American owned companies with employees (not contractors) that are American citizens.
4
The government of China subsidizes many industries and gives them artificial advantages. Seems like they've made the new rules, if I read this correctly. Mr. Schmidt benefited from academic research grants. But he proposes increasing those, and making large grants to large corporations. This seems to make sense from a competitive standpoint. But if we look at all the money poured into defense and medical (especially pharmaceutical research) by the Federal Government, who has benefited? Chinese industry, for one. The US military can't easily win a war with a major power, but lots of people have gotten very wealthy and there have been well-paying jobs for the well-educated, and many other jobs (some people even have three!) for the proletariat. Also, won't this increase the wealth gap, gentrification and homelessness?
1
One endeavor that Silicon Valley undertake on their own is to lead on AI, data ethics and bias. They can set standards for how they’ll use data and contribute to providing bias-free training datasets for AI. They should also open up their datasets for review by an industry expert panel.
Without Silicon Valley holding their end of the bargain and show that they genuinely care for the welfare of their consumers and societies they operate in, citizens won’t trust them with their hard-earned tax dollars.
1
The slope of progress favors China. It favors China because the United States views higher education as unnecessary and will not adopt policies that make it accessible and affordable for every student with the skill set to benefit from it unless they are ready, willing, and able to incur the risk of significant future financial burdens. The numbers of Chinese young people who are getting quality higher education dwarf the numbers of American born students who can afford to take the risk. America's notion that no student should get free anything will cost the country dearly as China and other developing countries continue to invest in their young people. Denying American students the right to tuition-free education at the university level will cost America its leadership role within a generation.
13
If poor children, children from broken homes or from abusive parents are suposed to pick themselves up by their bootstraps and compete with millionairs' children attending elite schools, certainly Silicon Valley executives and PhDs can do the same thing. Free college education might be another solution to get the brightest minds working on the biggest challenges. Please, no corporate socialism without equal opportunity for all Americans first.
4
The Chinese government is competing to lead technology by stealing IP from other places. I rarely agree with a word that passes Trump’s lips, but protecting American technology is vital.
And we should not be hiring Chinese citizens for US tech jobs. Naturalized US citizens from any country of course have the same rights of all citizens to be free of discrimination in employment, but even highly qualified non-citizens should not have automatic opportunity to remain in the US without proving that they are no threat to US security and to American workers.
5
Mr. Schmidt proposes a lot of new spending without any discussion of how to pay for it. Is it only Democrats who have to answer that question?
I'm also curious if he supported the Trump tax cuts.
1
Before I started reading, I already knew he would call for more immigration.
As an immigrant who majored in CS and worked in tech since the early 90s, I have seen increasing abuse of the H1b and OPT by companies that use them to lower wages rather than recruit genuine talent. The majority of these visas are now used by Indian outsourcing firms like Infosys, TCS, Wipro, Cognizant etc. to bring in large numbers of low-skilled Indian college grads to take over low level tech jobs in the US. This must end. We need to require these companies to hire and train the >4 million new young US grads entering the workforce each year.
Why is it that cities that have the largest tech employers tend to have the largest homeless population? Our employers need to start a program to help these people clean up and get back to work. They can take over low level retail and service jobs while those who are currently in those jobs, many are college grads, can be trained to take over the low level tech jobs, while those in low level tech jobs can be trained to take over higher level tech jobs.
America needs a 40 year moratorium on immigration to absorb and assimilate the >50 million who came in and became citizens since 1965. Our corporations need to start thinking about how they can best help their fellow countrymen, rather than focusing on their own insatiable greed for more profit while tossing aside their own countrymen. They are the reason why Bernie Sanders is so popular.
11
In China, over the last decade, I have witnessed the massive buildup of tech companies' real estate - buildings the size of city block to house 10x size of the R&D tech populations.
In China, over the last decade, I have worked with my Chinese colleagues, and witnessed the evolution of thinking 'by rote' to agile applications of knowledge, mind and experience.
China has a drive, technologies, manufacturing capabilities and expertise in tech that are no longer existent elsewhere (even if I only cite the semiconductor foundries).
China has will to drive their tech force much harder than any other country - descoping the old lore that Americans work harder than any other nation.
What else do you need ot get pulled out of your denial that this is coming. And when it comes, what will happen to all aging techies? We will be handing out bananas in Walmart because our retirements and pensions will tank.
We sorely need a jump into the 21st century in infrastrucgture that includes a 5G or maybe a 6G. And AI. And we need it such that it will benefit all of us - otherwise the rich will abandon us - just like they did exporting our jobs to China.
How's this for the gloom and doom?
5
AI will open frontiers in banking if banking is an industry based on logic. I do not believe that it is and the cyclical history of banking panics throughout history supports my view and not yours.
2
Not surprised by the narrowness of the focus.
2
a great and salient opinion.
I truly believe that Congress, the Senate and other State governments with the exception of IT departments in all of them and that number is vast, do not comprehend how much data, data management, the tools of data management, plays to create stability in our lives.
My desire is for a Federal Agency for consumers to make complaints and receive information regarding their use, lack of ability to use, the internet in their lives. There is way too much screwiness in the internet that most people encounter and are repelled by and fell the potential to be violated, seriously.
That China has data on most of the citizens, residents, and guests of the United States concerns me as much as the fact that they have developed leaps and bounds beyond the US's basic technical state.
People DO NOT like people criticizing China. But they don't get what a threat China is to the entire world.
Trump's view is that China stole our technology. They did. They admit to being thieves. But pursuing their wrong doing is not going to correct the imbalance of technical wherewithal between the nations. I agree with Mr. Schmidt's recommendations.
@RR
" I truly believe that Congress, the Senate and other State governments.......do not comprehend how much data, data management, the tools of data management, plays to create stability in our lives. "
What percentage of them are STEM graduates?
The more private enterprise takes over the development of technology, the more money they make and the more privacy we lose. If we have more government involvement with laws protecting our privacy, it would be better than the billionaires who sell our data to data brokers. Hopefully.
2
"Many of Silicon Valley’s leaders got their start with grants from the federal government — including me. My graduate work in computer science in the 1970s and ’80s was funded in part by the National Science Foundation & the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency."
I just googled "Eric Schmidt net worth". The response: $15.7 billion.
When the framers established a Constitution, authorized by "We the People" and specifying "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion" (and which, btw, in the Preamble says our government aims to promote "a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity"), it in effect prohibited any practices the enshrinement of any invented moral doctrines that would make one group of people gods over any other group of people. "Justice," "general Welfare," domestic Tranquility," "common Defense," "more perfect Union," & "Blessings of Liberty to ourselves & our Posterity" are the aims of our government, & they target for these blessings the general population, not one group within it.
Meritocracy, as both Mr. Schmidt's own words, and Yale Law Prof. D. Markovitz (& Robert Frank) show, is a LIE: a made-up dogma to justify obscenely imbalanced distributions of wealth & privilege, purporting to be based on talent & effort, but proving to be less about those than *sacralizing* a rigged...
5
Maybe if I could write more efficiently, could make this case in the constraints of the character limit; but basically our so-called "meritocratic" wealth distribution system is based on lies, and amounts to an ersatz religion claiming wealth and the social order are the product of talent combined with effort. Everybody from the toilet-scubber to Mr. Schmidt to Jeff Bezos (in comparison to whom Schmidt at $15.7 billion is a pauper, or more like a microbe) uses language of "earning" (talent + effort) to account for their respective fortunes, but "merit" and "earning" language suppresses the roles of luck, community, government, and others' help and generosity. For each Schmidt or Bezos, their are likely 10,000 of equal talent (certainly effort) who didn't have the other factors lined up.
It's only an ersatz religion that authorizes suppression of this basic truth to authorize the language of "earning" despite it's obvious falsity. By calling such fortunes "earned" and "meritocratic," society takes a religious stance sanctioning wealth arrangements based on phony faith commitments and lies, a willfully chosen moral scheme (call it "religious darwinism" perhaps, but "meritocracy" means the same) repudiating not only normal moral intuitions & traditions, but common sense and empirical evidence. These make the scheme a religion, violating the Constitution if the gov't enforces it.
Government must re-assert its proper political role, demand the money back, rein in the greed.
3
Please excuse my typos ("scrubbing," "there," "its" etc.); I'm a sloppy typist, but no ignoramus lashing out from sour grapes. Our culture too easily dismisses these kinds of challenges as some kind of resentment or "sour grapes" (faulting the complainer).
Part of why we need to elect Sanders is we need to totally scrub the insane myths that permit these obscene fortunes to be accumulated. Only Sanders (and to an extent Warren) is willing to level the same attack on these spurious, bad faith doctrines that is already commonplace with the ranks of "behavioral economics" & in the scholarship of Yale Law's Daniel Markovits (who opens his magnum opus with "Merit is a sham?) & Robert Frank, amid virtually all scholars & at least halfway rational people.
Our institutions have been so enthralled by, so captive to, neoliberalism (Milton Friedman business-worshiping hogwash), "human capital," "neoclassical economics" for so long that people don't realize they amount to a de facto religion, directly responsible for these obscene wealth patterns.
We need our politics to address this through a 1st Amendment lens (prohibition of state-sponsored religion), realizing these patterns could only have occurred precisely because a religion created them with the government's support. If it posits a comprehensive moral scheme & social order based on pure faith commitments (human capital/neoliberalism money worship), it's a religion. Only by attacking it can you dislodge its social effects.
2
"Silicon Valley Needs the Federal Government"
Yes, and how nice it would be if we had one that wasn't totally politically motivated and actually addressed the needs of Americans and not those only of Trump.
There is no hope here because Trump is too narcissistic, too ignorant and too arrogant to accept any intelligent input - and HE KNOWS NOTHING. A perfect formula for Putin's success!
3
Sure, yoU have a point Mr.Schmidt. Now, what about paying taxes in accordance to your income?
5
Gee. I thought we had solved all that stuff when Congress funded In-Q-Tel as a place where start-up companies could get government-assisted funding for new technological ideas. It's been around for well over 20 years. Has a website too. Ever hear about it? Oh yeah, it's successes are probably too secret to talk about. Or maybe it got caught up in governmental-ese. Remember one time a young man working to support In-Q-Tel wrote the word confidential at the top of a draft. Next day 4 In-Q-Tel people were there to interrogate and scold about false 'classification'.
@Dennis Maxwell “Confidential” is a term of art in federal jobs and contracts, as are “secret” and “top secret”. It limits who may have access, how it must be stored and disposed of. Every federal employee and contractor should be apprised of correct use of these terms.
Let them eat pastry. This enormous Monopolies have developed unhealthy dependence on the Pentagon. That's a sure way to lose the war. Pentagon money has to go to a new mean lean firms that give a unfair advantage in case of a war.
As a tax-payer I have no problem paying for the research, but I would like to get paid back when the likes of Sun Microsystems and Google (both Schmidt companies) monetize that research and turn a small number of lucky recipients into billionaires.
11
A refreshing take on the relationship between innovative entreprises and Governmental intervention and support for scientific and technological research – to the extent of an explicit public-funded "development plan" comparable to the one that propulsed Japan's private industry to the forefront of world trade from the 60s to 80s. This is the way China is going, and the exact opposite of what Trump's rather nebulous industrial strategy looks like.
1
Of course Silicon Valley needs the Federal Government. The area would not be what it is today without it, in particular the Department of Defense and WW2.
That defense spending as well as the genius of Manifest Destiny and the Mexican-American War built the California we have today. Those benefiting (which includes most of the US) from the area's prosperity owe a debt of gratitude to those actions and should be thankful they occurred.
Or you could refuse take part - boycott its prosperity and return the land!
BTW, there is less and less research and development occurring that is related to silicon and its device fabrication. Perhaps it should be renamed "Open Source Valley" or "Madison Avenue V4.0".
4
Americans can do better with their own money than the government. Americans vote to shrink government so small you could drown it in a bath tub. Americans do not want any of those things. Americans want corporations to take over and do our thinking for us. These are the policies Google has pursued for decades.
3
You neglect to mention a huge industry linked to our national security. Green energy and tech to combat global warming: this is an area that requires engineers and scientists and government investment. China is already ahead of us on this. If you think climate change has nothing to do with national security, just ask our military leaders. Scarce resources, huge movements of people from areas newly uninhabitable, political unrest caused by natural disasters and shortages.... We need the technological innovation to deal with this AND to compete with China.
1
American oligarchs making China a bogeyman is a ruse. What's being talked about here is socialism for the wealthy- big government and big tech in bed with each other, being a beast with two backs that can scratch both at the same time, glad handing with the left and palm greasing with the right. It's truly an amazing maneuver to behold, the enrichment and empowerment of the 0.1% at the expense of everyone else doing the real work in our society. This is how democracy dies, in plain sight like a frog in a slowly heating pot, that nice warm fuzzy feeling stupefies.
Today's factoids- we are a society awash in guns, we are the worlds greatest jailer, with tens of millions of unemployable citizens because of their criminal records, disproportionately brown and black, and you want to import more tech people from abroad, poaching other country's smart people for your benefit. We have kids in cages at our border and public executions of the unarmed on our streets, our school kids subject to active shooter drills while learning. How is this better than fallout shelters and ducking under a desk in 1963?
We have a militarized public and police and live in a trigger happy society, oh, the absurdity of being overly armed during peace time, or during a time of perpetual warfare, the media propaganda can be disorienting. This all spells GREED.
The Russians are amateurs at this compared to our seasoned elites in the US of A, government should regulate, time to trust bust like Roosevelt.
13
Eric,
Simple question. Why are we allowing China's TikTok to grow big in the United States while China blocks all of our competing apps?
China blocks Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Whatsapp, etc...
But we let them get tons of users and take over the United States and the World with network effects.
It makes no sense.
TikTok needs to blocked in the United States until China opens their markets to our apps.
Seriously.
Why are we allowing this?
7
WE the people who are not allowing it are awake. The GOP and Mercer’s are allowing it as it aids their surveillance of American citizens whom these American oligarchs wish to continue to maintain control and manipulation over to steal votes : machines registered to Ivanka in China, through the spying on social media
5
For those who criticize Bernie Sanders for being a socialist, have a look at this op-ed. Nothing more to say.
12
@Just Thinkin’ You nailed it.
Nothing more socialist than a trillion dollar deficit.
So the former chairman and C.E.O. of Google is looking for sustained government handouts. That's a knee slapper. Yeah, no. Fund your own research. Make it freely and publicly available. Then we can talk.
14
Mr. Schmidt,
Doubling and redoubling the public research funding should come from reinvestment of gigantic profits resulting from those vital prior public investments. We need to treat the public research investment as seed funding and grant the public agency stock and/or options on the same favorable terms as private seed and first round investors. That simple and fair capitalist solution would pass Congress and easily redouble the supply of research funding.
1.
3
The economic rise of China has been amazing. An authoritarian government can move its levers at will and quickly, and knows that economic power is just as important as the military. In 2017, 8M students graduated from Chinese universities. That was nearly ten times higher than 1997, and more than double the US graduation. That level of STEM knowledge, coupled with Chinese theft of US IP, plus the Chinese long drive for world econ/military domination, will present a major challenge to the US in coming decades. To use a Mesozoic analogy, the US can’t be a huge, but lumbering, brontosaurus, that’s taken down by a few quick and very agile Chinese velociraptors. Eric Schmidt is exactly right, and it better happen soon.
2
Dear Eric,
Thanks for ruining the world with your work at Google. I agree that more money is needed for research and innovation, but I disagree with how it should be spent. We need more botanists and less bots. We need more scientists with intelligence about the ocean and less artificial intelligence. We need more soil, bird, fish, reptile, scientist we need more geologists and climatologist. We need more system biologists. The way we win is by reconnecting to the world, not by making our networks faster.
12
First we had h1b visa workers taking our best jobs, then we outsourced, what I thought was the undesirable work, but it turns out cloud was outsourced to India back in 2010 at least. When Indian firms topped many billion of dollars they came onshore and bought up a lot of the competition while taking a good portion of H1B Visa applicants.
Meanwhile, we have tens of thousands (if not more) of American IT workers who haven't been given the opportunity - at the same time wages dropped or stagnated.
Your billions are not seeing the picture at the ground level - come down to Earth.
10
H-1B's didn’t steal anything. Our employers stole those jobs and gave them to H-1B's here or sent them offshore.
It's nice to see somebody who Knows speak up about the role of governments in funding innovation. The politicians who proclaim on social media that "Government is the problem" need to remember that the internet was created by DARPA using defense dollars, and Berners-Lee was working a government job at CERN when he invented the WWWeb. BUt it's not just tech.
From NASA to medical research to the Department of Agriculture to the weather service to the census, massive amounts of innovation flows from federal dollars. Do not forget that from Harvard to Cal and Stanford to MIT massive amounts of federal and state funding supports university research in both private and public universities. The tax cutters need to pull their heads out of their phones and see where the meds we take and the apps we use and the public trans we use around campuses come from, what really drives American innovation.
The government needs to be leading innovation, not pretending it has no role.
5
Back in the 1980s American business was worried about Japan. There were many books like "Japan as Number One", "The MITI Miracle", and "Trading Places" that said Japan had beaten the United States in the innovation game. Japanese government policy was given all the credit.
Nobody worries about Japan any more. The Japanese government turned out to not be as prescient as advertised. Japanese companies lost their edge and tumbled to the ice. Japanese innovation has not disappeared, but it has shrunk to a shadow of what it was.
China may do better. No one can know. But to pose this as a competition with China misses the mark. We should try to improve innovation no matter what other countries do. Japan. China. Does it really matter who is number one?
4
Eric - great ideas, but... there is some (or a lot) of hypocrisy here. You and your Silicon Valley colleagues running the tech companies spent a lot of money lobbying (or in simple terms - buying) politicians for not paying tax. How much did any of the big tech companies pay in tax in the past few years? Almost nothing! And personally, what was your tax rate in the past few years?
So, if you think government investment is important (and certainly is), you and your colleagues should first showing an example of paying your fare share.
18
I agree with Schmidt but note what he left out:
Too often, successful garage start-up risk-takers become billionaires by moving fast, breaking things, selling defective products, and violating others’ privacy. Those practices must end.
With our without more federal funding, here’s what we need:
An end to locking up patents derived from federally funded research.
An increase in -effective- corporate and personal tax rates, and an end to deferred compensation.
End multi-page, unreadable legalese that you must "Accept", immunizing companies from legal liability and preventing users from suing in court.
Like food and drugs, lawyers and teachers, software and hardware must meet standards. We need an SHA (Software and Hardware Administration). Before products go to market, they get vetted to meet safety, confidentiality, reliability, and other relevant standards.
Once on the market, an SHA should also conduct regular software and hardware audits. More Cambridge Analytics scandals, or unencrypted passwords scandals, will subject companies to hefty fines and lawsuits, enough to put them out of business.
End the use of Social Security numbers as the private sector’s de facto national id.
Require consumers to opt in to advertising, not opt out.
Use antitrust to break up the biggies - Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple - and to prevent both horizontal and vertical integration.
Treat social media platforms as publishers and hold them liable for false and defamatory statements.
3
"The American government must lead."
Really? How? The American government can't predict the future any more than business can. It can't lead when it doesn't know where we need to go.
That said, the American government can make our industries more fertile fields for innovation. The key is not to invest more money. That means picking winners and losers, and the government is not good at that.
The key is not to break up big companies. Big companies are good. We need them. The more big companies, the better. They use economies of scale to drive down cost and drive up quality.
The key is to lower barriers to entry for new, young companies and help them to grow fast. These companies are the innovators. They experiment and often fail, and in so doing they learn and progress. Big companies are too big to fail, and thus don't often innovate.
How can the government do that? By shaping the market, for one thing. The government shouldn't break up big companies, but it should break up markets. Policies to fragment markets will lower barriers to entry and reduce the competitive power of corporate bigness.
Of course doing that is not easy. But it can be done. And it will work a lot better than throwing money at research labs or educating more scientists. Those are ideas that sound good in theory (and in columns like this) but never work in practice.
1
I am inherently suspicious of any policy based on an ultimate goal of “winning.” I just don’t think that leads to peace and the much more productive context of cooperation.
6
Demonstrate how and why any expenditure of federal money is more important than cutting taxes. Convince major political donors there is anything positive about spending and investing compared to the ultimate virtues of keeping more money and not being told what to do.
And you thought AI was easy?
1
What? Government should enable Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon in their relentless pursuit to tease out every detail of our lives? If these mega-firms cannot devote some of their seemingly endless resources to compete with China, then capitalist initiative will suffer as a state-driven economy emerges. And the United States becomes a clone of China.
3
How de we ensure this isn’t just a race on dollars, but a race on values? If we merely commodify an investment in technology based on grants or number of dollars, but fail to consider the importance of what American values mean (side note: surveillance, ethical AI, misinformation, etc), and the role of those values in the technology we seek to sustain and manifest, we’re the proverbial dog chasing its tail.
3
Who should be the beneficiaries in “industry” of these investments?
How do we ensure that the investments by the federal government are not co-opted or monopolized by the incumbent technology companies that you’re well-verses with — and thus neutralized by non-competitive forces and not necessarily in the national security interest?
7
The former CEO of Google is sounding a wake up call to Americans.
"Unless these trends change, in the 2030s we will be competing with a country that has a bigger economy, more research and development investments, better research, wider deployment of new technologies and stronger computing infrastructure."
It appears he has realized Google and Silicon Valley cannot take China alone, and what is needed is countrywide Federal Manhattan Project.
4
@Hugh This article from a tech monopoly smells like socialism for the already wealthy and an overt elite power grab.
China is not our problem, ask the Walton family and the American public who buy their wares by the hundred millions at affordable prices, and who work there for paltry wages.
Big government and big business is the problem, put the two in each others pocket overtly as is being proposed here and this will be the last nail in the coffin of democracy. We'd openly be pursuing an ironic business mode, based on 1930s Germany and general ideas of national superiority, that conversely ignores home grown American STEM education excellence in favor of foreign students and techies. This concurrently would be the poaching of other countries smart students and techies, who should be using their smarts to better their own countries from which they came.
There is an open double standard on display here, as smart American programmers and other techies emigrating to China for example would likely be smeared by 2020 America as traitors.
If we go this route, we should be for open borders for all countries to stay consistent, as it otherwise is emigration and immigration a special interest thing for the wealthy and well connected only, that cannot stand the test of time as it is a tyranny of a kind.
3
Mr. Schmidt is quite correct. The particular market capitalization of "FANG" stocks, for example, is otherwise a separate issue (and any equity investor is free to index them in his portfolio), and they have created enormous wealth that is not easy to come by. One may argue for incentives for them to re-invest their profits (their corporate tax rates should be zero in my view), or consider ways that they may accelerate new technology start-ups themselves (which they do, in part). But the longer-term benefit of private and government cooperation is indeed a profound source of national competitiveness that the US is losing ground on, vis-a-vis several other countries. That "cooperation" already exists of course (and existed as he states, in US business history), and is even highly institutionalized including in our R1 universities; but it is also uneven, sporadic, somewhat sub-rosa, and not nearly as deep and explicit as it could be. In economics, the concept of "core theory" gets at the heart of the cooperation argument (see Lester Telser at the University of Chicago) and if I may, my book (no I'm not pitching it here) discusses precisely the benefits of public and private cooperation (and project integration) in certain industrial sectors (https://www.amazon.com/New-Airline-Code-Public-Private-Integration/dp/0595347010). Regards.
1
.As a tech worker, 100% agreed. Most of our work is focused on 3-5 years products and profitability. AI leadership needs to be funded and driven by the government as a strategic mid to long term investment. I have seen our Chinese colleagues leaving the US companies to work with Chinese companies to do AI work even though their previous work wasn't related to AI. However, the Chinese government is investing so heavily on that sector and hiring anyone with potential know how just to harvest any information that fuels it's AI advancement.
I'm all for a massive infusion of federal investment in technologies, provided we also take the income gain distribution back to post-war through 1970's levels, when the 95th percentile, median, and 20th percentile grew in a tight cluster at approximately the same rate. The means to accomplish that can be debated and as varied as the means by which the federal government supports technology development. It's the result that matters. Our course since 1980 is unsustainable in a democratic society, the evidence for which is becoming more apparent with each passing decade income inequality grows unchecked.
4
We haven't been garage startups for 25 years now. Every aspect of digital business is dominated by a single monopoly and there is 0 space for innovation outside of them.
4
This is all very important -- but first there needs to be regulations in place for the Internet, IT, AI, genome research & testing, etc -- prior to the damage already been created. The Internet needs to be regulated by the FCC -- as it is a communication tool that has an extreme impact on society. The laws & rules that apply to broadcast, radio & print -- should all apply -- as it does all of these. Requirements & regulations need to be met to allow the "legal" transmission of information --FTC laws must also apply and all consumer protection laws. 20th & 21st century technology requires preventative & proactive measures prior to mass use of technology ---instead of the American reactive approach when faced with problems, death. destruction and any impingement of the protections provided by the Constitution. It is assured that humans & corporations can not self-regulate & will do harm. No one can rely on everyone doing the right thing. All new technology & innovations should be prescreened in all manners to include complete ethics panels & review on society impact ---physical, mental, economic, etc & any implications on rights, freedoms, privacy, etc. provided by our Constitution. Finally, total monopolies must be addressed--new rules written for a new & different world. In other words, Congress has ignored & refused to regulate all they don't understand. Experts /specialists' panels required to assist lawmakers. Not reading/understanding a Bill, unacceptable.
1
Asking for a friend Eric: Looking at the history of Internet (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet) any child would ask this qn: How come the industry got all the startup capital from the US Govt (NSF etc.) for their innovation and their monetized products, but when it came to innovating government's own next gen infrastructure, they want to compete and bid for their profitability? E.g Why even go through the bid process for JEDI (the $10B contract that the $T marketcap big techs are fighting over) than just form a consortium and develop and deploy the next generation full stack for the whole government? 5G from Huawei is fully Govt sponsored and unless our industry partners do something rightnow to give back to the Govt that gave their life to begin with, 2030 is sure to come and we will still scratching the lower back and wondering what happened?
3
There is so much more going on in Silicon Valley than producing products for consumption i.e. programming,think tanks etc.
Programming using AI for problems facing our world today is growing at a rapid rate. Some of the greatest minds of our time are at the forefront. We must as a country fund education at all levels,and prepare capable students with higher standards by giving them the tools needed to compete globally.
At present China has the ability to surpass the US on the Global stage, not by products for consumerism but by AI programming, which is not being funded properly for our country to remain in the forefront in our rapidly changing world.
1
"America’s companies and universities innovate like no other places on earth. We are garage start-ups, risk-taking entrepreneurs and intrepid scholars exploring new advances in science and technology. But that is only part of the story."
This is funny. We have stagnant industry that is held in place by bought and paid for politicians, and a citizens united everything for sale oligarchy.
Innovation is dead, unless you create a new donut bacon pork chop sandwich. You know, something for the people, to keep them from surviving into the social security territory.
Just want to thank the good serfs who volunteer for early death. You are my heroes.
8
The government should fund new tech firms based around R&D, but only make it eligible to companies founded very recently. The goal of that requirement is to keep the dominant companies out of the funding pot while tempting their best and brightest engineers to leave and form new companies.
The tech giants attract all the best talent in the country (and many other countries) because they pay more than anybody else for it. If you remove a lot of the financial roadblocks and other problems about starting a research firm, I'm sure a lot of the people working there would jump at the chance to do it, especially if there is active outreach by the state to find talented engineers.
You can't simply yoke these people and force them to work for the government, they have to be enticed. They're very well compensated by their current employers and many do not feel any particular fondness for the US Government, particularly those here on work visas.
1
By words and paragraph count, about 6% of Schmidt's piece talks about the need to ensure trust, personal information confidentiality, and engineering safety in the use of A.I.
Since the 1990's 'disruption' and 'innovation' have become a rationale for any business initiative. For over twenty years Silicon Valley has been a playground accountable only to itself and those ideas. Now the Silicon Valley bros raise fears of Chinese disruption to their dominance in order to justify federal protection and investment.
To paraphrase Elizabeth Warren, we ensure people's safety when using a toaster better than we do when companies deploy A.I. The way Schmidt tossed in mention of these issues, almost as an afterthought, indicates his and likewise the industry's, priorities.
6
But does the Federal Government need Silicon Valley?
3
Appropriate comments, to remind us that public-private enterprises are sure winners to advance technology and, hopefully, human entrepreneurship to promote solidarity and embrace the richness of our diversity. Inasmuch as we are concerned about the abuses we see in the Internet, the Internet remains a marvel in communication, and helping us in acquiring knowledge, and understanding, of how our world works, and the wisdom to know how to use it prudently (doing what's right, however difficult). Remember when the Internet was in the hands of the 'military', and slowly released for general use? This ought to be a reminder to republicans, that government has a positive role...other than abusing it 'a la Trump' when they are in power. Almost forgot to mention, that in addition to upholding the truth based in evidence, a bit of humility works wonders.
2
Mr. Schmidt summarizes the situation in two quick paragraphs and then comes off the rails in Para 3. "Americans have put too much faith in the private sector..." This really should be the Republican party has put too much faith...." They have gone further, largely denying Government input and their disinformation has been successful. From there it has been another short step to pleas for smaller government and the inevitable changes in the tax code. Mr. Schmidt knows all this and has profited form it, but "American's" get the blame.
5
The US government is now scared of its own people; and sacrifices doing the right thing just to keep people happy. To keep people happy USG is letting people pollute air and water, cut on consumer safety, and allow outright fraudulent practices of businesses. They are even more afraid of Silicon Valley.
So, I think the Federal Gov needs Silicon Valley to tell them what to think about and do, and how to do it - and in no way get in the way of their complete desire to function as uncontested predators in the economic food chain.
This writer has got to be kidding. After Silicon Valley has made billions, maybe trillions, in profits now he wants the USA government to assist them? Maybe after all the enormous profits and creations of multiple billionaires based on stock increases and benefit dole outs the companies there might consider doing something for America now by absorbing the costs, and revving up to do the job necessary for the security of our country.
However, can we really expect that from the new billionaires running these companies that might affect their enormous annual profits? I don't think so because its more important for them to have their stock rise then to do what's right for our country.
I have no sympathy for Silicon Valley companies, or for that matter Seattle companies who have made it big without really giving back in the form of concentrating on country over the pile of money the keeps streaming into their coffers.
8
@MarnS How about this: federal grants should include a clause that if a company goes public, the grant money must be repaid. Similarly, if an existing firm introduces a new product, the grant must be repaid.
The government should also be able to take a percentage of a private company as a condition of grants.
I don’t mind putting tax money into R&D, but I do mind all the resulting wealth going to people who benefited from government investment.
1
The proposals by Eric Schmidt regarding the need for the American government to start funding Silicon Valley for developing A.I. and other new technologies to keep us competitive internationally are sound.
The only reservation we should have is the worry that history will repeat itself. Namely, we do not want the tech entrepreneurs, fortified by government seed money, to then turn on the American public and abuse us and invade our privacy for even greater profits.
2
"We are garage start-ups, risk-taking entrepreneurs and intrepid scholars exploring new advances in science and technology."
Actually, Dr. Schmidt, I could also fairly say, "We are trillion-dollar enterprises that PhDs flock to, where they shoulder zero-risk and are showered with endless benefits. We monopolize our field at the expense of both small enterprises and the public's privacy. And then when we get rich, we erect enormous buildings in Menlo Park that are monuments to our prosperity and our enormous egos."
Seriously. Break up Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple. Then we'll see a little market traction on the innovation front.
376
palo-alto-techie, how would breaking up these companies help? What pieces would you break them into?
The innovation problem with the internet giants is not just that they are big but that it is hard for new, young companies to compete against them. The barriers to entry are too great. Breaking these companies up would not help with that.
We need competition policy that lowers barriers to entry and allows the innovative power of new, young companies to blossom. That's true in all industries. Too bad that so many instead look to the trustbusting that has shown little power to help over the century it has been tried.
8
@palo-alto-techie I agree. How about the ugly mega-mansions constructed all over Palo Alto and surrounding suburbs while the homeless problem grows exponentially? He also fails to mention where the government really needs to step-in: that is protecting peoples' data privacy and controlling mis-information and meddling by foreign governments and making the executives of these companies fiscally and personally responsible for data-breaches of personal information.
28
@palo-alto-techie
Success in business tends to "runaway positive feedback," which is to say success creates a financial foundation for more success, and in turn more, putting the profits into just a few hands when random factors early on decided which company would succeed.
This in turn suppresses innovation and entrepreneurship, especially among startups.
The solution is not "trust-busting"(which is slow,expensive and uncertain,) but a graduated tax on gross corporate income. Taxing Amazon, Exxon, Google or Walmart at 30% of gross sales would considerably level the playing field for smaller companies of only $10 million sales, allow them to grow and compete for excellence in products or service, while generating income for early childhood education and community college.
And if Walmart broke up into 100 mere behemoths that would compete against each other, the country would be better off for it.
There's no reason the country has to be dominated by a few companies big enough to buy Senators and Presidents in wholesale lots.
10
Can ‘we the people’ fund all this by increasing taxation on the top 1 percent?
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@Alan DeWitt If we do keep funding everything by increasing taxes on the 1%, there will be nothing left. So far, they are covering healthcare, education, child care, infrastructure, and more.
Where do we go from here?
And, if the government is to decide how, when and where to use this additional money, who will oversea its spending?
The NYT had an excellent editorial several months ago about Bill Gates using $1.08 Billion to eradicate polio. Now, if Gates uses that money, the majority of it will go to eradication. If Elizabeth Warren (as President)were to use that money for the same purpose, just how much of that would go to funding eradication of polio, and, how much would be used for, say, studies, power point presentations, and other wasted resources?
6
@bsb To say that increasing taxes on the one percent will leave nothing is incredibly ludicrous. Right now the top 10 people in wealth own more than 60% o the entire globe, those people would not go broke even if you taxed them at 110% of their income because they already control so much wealth that the few billions trickling in are just gravy, not the meat of the corporations because that Profit is above and beyond what is needed to run the plants and (Under) pay their people. When you have several tens of billions already owned, then putting a 90% tax (like we had under Eisenhower and the government was doing good and the rich were STILL getting richer) would not harm today's wealthy class one bit.
But it sure would help out America and those 60% that are at or below the poverty line here in the US.
All the talk is about the 1%, the writers and pundits forget to write about the other end of the scale and what percentage of our population is barely scraping by,, along with all the societal and financial ills this brings to the whole Nation.
We have been hollowed out by the trickle down economics started under Reagan, and now Trump is trying to bury the rest of the poor with his anti-American policies he thinks are so grand, but all them fail the smell test and makes our body politic smell like a whole room full of two week old dead fish, with Trump, the Great Golden Snowflake smelling worst of all, no matter how he tries to pump the Trump brand that we all know is a dump.
43
There will not be any money to take from the rich if the Democrats win this fall. Every candidate is planning on punishing them. Were I In the ultra-rich class I’d pull up roots and head for a less rich hating country. You can always live in the US without paying income tax if you don’t make any money here.
3
The Chinese have thousands of miles of fast rail. They are building new cities ,dams and bridges constantly. The US just gives Tax breaks to the rich. The country is garbage compared to most first world countries now.
44
While I am pro-immigration & support immigrants, we don’t allow our own citizens (especially POC - black citizens descended from slavery, Native Americans who experienced a genocide) enough opportunities through universal child care, universal preschool, quality public schools and affordable college (and housing) to be able to compete in this economy. I hate hearing how we need to let super educated ppl (invested in by their countries) opportunities in this country rather than educating and providing for the masses of Americans who would love these types of jobs but have never had the chance. Yes, immigrants help innovate but so would a more diverse group of Americans than white & Asian middle & upper class folks here in US who currently control the tech industry & it’s hiring/“innovation”. Let’s be pro-immigrant but look more critically at how we could provide our own historically disadvantaged groups more opportunity & thus truly become innovative by utilizing all our people and resources.
11
@Megan Blach And these foreign governments generally don’t allow US citizens to go there to work. They are happy to get foreign investment but not immigrants
1
"Ask not what your country can do for your corporation---ask what your corporation can do for your country." --paraphrasing John F. Kennedy's advice to Eric Schmidt.
5
Silicon Valley doesn't need Federal Government. It is the homeless and families living in trailers and cars need Federal Government.
In fact, I think hi-tech companies in Silicon Valley should help those folks without an adequate living space because they have no place to hide and still can enjoy life. Not like ordinary folks, we still have our comfortable bed, TV, working out space, and kitchen to cook. They don't.
In addition, they are the most vulnerable to virus. Their conditions will put a lot of pressure to local hospitals and clinics.
4
Involved with Si Valley and 128 going on a half-century, I – as do many others – see how different some things are today vs then
My insight continues into how things changed, why they could, and who/what forced the change. Sometimes, new tech faced a void. More often, something being displaced. Higher performance, new functions/features, and lower end-user cost were a continual drive, opening ever-larger markets
In time, my typing of high-tech reduced to:
1. Information (HW and SW)
2. Energy (sourcing, conversion, distribution)
3. Transportation (moving something somewhere)
4. Clinical (diagnostic/intervention/therapy)
5. Tooling & materials (whatever needed – and credibly
possible)
Am closest to 1 and 5. For years, HW comp/comm markets grew exponentially, enabled by T/M that would markedly improve feeds/speeds – and SW that linked the new HW to larger markets
3’s progress, mixed. Cars and harvesters very different now, though drivers not changed much. Semi-trailers a different story. One real change: higher weight limits, battering and crumbling our roads faster than we’re willing to admit – let alone fix
For 2 and 4, gone off the rails and into the weeds (w/ exception of WGS). Incumbents entrenched – crowding out the most credible paths to progress. We’ve fusion and fuel-cell sci-fi, but squandered a lead in SMRs for more than a decade. Likewise for clinical imaging AI, under the guise of stifling adjacent tech – facial recognition
(1500)
Schmidt should be careful of what he wishes for. If you worked along 128 around 72, you probably recall how vindictive Tricky Dick pulled all government military and research contracts from MA, closed military bases, and set the IRS on those of us who contributed to McGovern. The resulting economic devastation was unforgettable... and, unnecessary. Government funding is also a leash and a cuddle, and never more so than when in Republican hands.
Who’s job is it to do all of this?
Eric Schmidt writes about government as if it were a benevolent organization. However, some ethics and knowledge of history shows otherwise. It has engaged in mass surveillance and refuses to take responsibility and make full restitution to its victims. It refuses to take responsibility for victimizing people in Southeast Asia and Iraq. It has imposed Trump's tariffs on us without consent and refuses to make full restitution.
We can rationally expect that it will not stop evading taking responsibility nor to stop harming people. Why doesn't Eric Schmidt know this? Based on his Wikipedia page, he is well-educated in certain fields, but evidently, not the history of government, nor ethics.
I would suggest that the NYT make available to its writers a database of government's harms to society, and some books on ethics. The NYT has done some first-rate reporting, but we certainly don't need editorials based on a sub-standard grade school view of government.
7
For the first time since WWII, the US faces a real competitor (Russia wasn't it - its economy wasn't growing and was nowhere near that of the US) that can outspend, out-innovate and set the standard on technology (just look at Huawei, where the US is taking a very rear-guard action). That can be a good thing - it punctures the bubble of American hubris in all things technology. That said, I would much rather have the US win this war for technology dominance than China because the US' values are far better for the world than China's. The stakes are just too big for America to become an also-ran.
114
@Kumar Ranganathan They can out innovate us because they don't have to develop their own technology..they just "borrow" ours..forever.
Here? We call that IP theft.
There? Just another day at the office.
12
@Erica Smythe The Chinese didn't steal everything. Some was outright sold to them in the name of "what is best for the stockholders" attitude in most US Corporations.
25
Kumar Ranganathan, what about Japan in the 1980s? There were many books like "Japan as Number One", "The MITI Miracle", and "Trading Places" that said Japan had beaten the United States in the innovation game. Japanese government policy was given all the credit.
Trouble is, that did not last. The Japanese government turns out to not be as prescient as advertised. Japanese companies lost their edge and tumbled to the ice. Japanese innovation has not disappeared, but it has shrunk to a shadow of what it was.
4
I agree with everything Eric Schmidt has written. The Chinese are poised to overtake the United States in key areas of technology that may transfer global power to China. The U.S. need to counter this is imperative. We can not allow global leadership to be assigned to a totalitarian state. The entire world has an interest in this not happening. The U.S. must have the political will to do this.
78
@Yankelnevich :" We can not allow global leadership to be assigned to a totalitarian state. The entire world has an interest in this not happening. The U.S. must have the political will to do this."
I was an active participant in Cold War V1.0. At that time many progressive thinkers pointed to the US as THE problem vis-a-vis global power.
I'm sitting out Cold War V2.0. At some point, taking the path you recommend will lead to some sort of military conflict or at a minimum economic conflict with severe impact on the participating countries - Trump current actions notwithstanding. Good luck with that.
5
@Yankelnevich
This has to be a parody. The totalitarian system is quickly becoming us. I thought free-reign capitalism could not be beaten by a socialist country?
2
National Research Cloud? How is that not going to be hacked? Just asking.
2
If we're going to do more industrial policy to support silicon valley, reverse the historically implicit practice of "the policy that can't speak its name." This was because it runs against myths of false dualities between capitalism and socialism; the competence of businesspeople and incompetence of "bureaucrats," the less government is always better mantra.
Social responsibility of these government seed-funded companies can't be way down the priority list, and ethicists treated on a par with technologists so they can figure out the hard ones. These companies, including Google, must end the slippage and get back on the "Socially Admirable Companies" train they once were. Employees who speak up for ethics must be protected (the recent Times article about Google was disappointing, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/02/18/magazine/google-revolt.html#commentsContainer&permid=105314295:105314295), and that includes even conservatives.
This whole government-industry effort must be democratically managed in a way that is meaningful.
Pay your taxes, even if you can get away with not doing so, ensure the public gets back royalties from those government funds, and get the element of socialism out of the closet--because we're probably going to have to do a lot more of this.
6
As someone who had worked for a corporation with a large research organization, I, too, mourn the loss of government funding for fundamental research. The world has, however, changed dramatically since the last few decades of the 20th century -- the lower tax structure and huge profit margins of our large technology organizations. Rather than wait for research funds to become available by correcting these issues, there are things that can be done now -- using a successful model from the late 1980's.
I'm thinking of the MIT X Consortium model. (Dr. Schmidt, I know you're familiar with it). It started with 9 corporate sponsors providing MIT with funds to create a computer graphics software system. The corporate sponsors (mostly computer companies) had oversight responsibility for the priorities of the Consortium work and then received the resultant product source to port to their computer hardware. Representing one of the 9 original corporate sponsors, I know the benefits were enormous -- a high quality product for a fraction of the cost of independent development, and a portable platform to encourage end customer software development, resulting in greater hardware sales. In fact, this portable platform environment was so successful, it led to the creation of the World Wide Web. (CERN credits X Windows as an enabling factor).
There exists a successful model and sufficient profits for current technology companies to sponsor the research that we need. Let's get on with it.
10
@rlkinny There is one difference with the X Consortium, though. The goal for X is a standard graphical display interface which is a well defined end state. Fundamental innovations would often not have such a well defined direction. Even Zuckerberg did not have any idea what FB would turn out to be from the outset. I think a better model was Bell Laboratory which gave us transistors, Unix, etc. The problem is few or no US companies would now be willing to invest for such long term with no concrete annual ROI.
Government could give more tax breaks for such long term research investments. More importantly, government need to stop meddling in basic academic research fueled by Session's China Initiative. By all means, stop all thefts of IPs. But it is critical to not chill basic research which depends on open exchange of data. Study the case of Dr. Xi: (https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2020/02/19/fbi-chinese-intellectual-property)
@t bo Thanks for your comment. Interestingly, Bell Laboratories was the company that I worked for and I worked with UNIX since 1971. (My job was to move Unix out of Research and into the Bell Labs product development organizations, i.e. Applied Research). From my experience, there's no reason why a consortium model couldn't also work for fundamental research. The key, as I think you point out, is convincing corporations to make the investment -- convincing them to set aside budget money for Research and Applied Research. I think today's companies are too focused on short term return and by stock market shareholder value. The effects of this short term strategy are showing as the US falls behind in vital technology. I don't believe the government can fix this by giving tax breaks for research. Many of the companies are already paying so little in taxes that a further tax reduction is not much of an incentive. I believe, instead, the tech companies need to pool their resources, cash and key personnel, to meet the technology leadership challenge. They need to invest more in the long term. Now.
3
For sure pure get rich quick greed has stripped silicon valley investments of any judgment in investing. Outsize valuations for a taxi company (Uber), a fraud (Theranos) and many others point this out.
The government can also drive private sector behavior by the policies put in place, and as many have pointed out already, the tax structure. Low interest rates don't encourage innovation, they encourage private equity to buy as much as possible, strip the assets, and leave the carcass to rot.
Although Mr. Schmidt has some good points, he is also an example of the fact that there are always a lot of people with their hand out to Uncle Sam, not just illegal immigrants and welfare recipients.
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Sorry, Dr. Schmidt. It takes trust to achieve the goals you outline. It's hard to feel any confidence whatsoever that our federal government is trustworthy right now. In my eyes, you open yourself to doubts simply by not acknowledging that elephant in the room. I don't think I trust you.
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Ummm... how about?
- Free college for all the young American citizens who wish to pursue higher education in STEM
- Better teacher pay so young American children have the right training in the scientific method
- Forgiving college debt so that young Americans are unshackled to pursue their passion in STEM instead of working in soulless jobs to service the debt for the rest of their lives
- A Congress that actually believes in science
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@Linus and STEM jobs for americans. End H1B Visa.
And vote Bernie!
To protect our freedoms and liberal democracy, we need - more government. And government money.
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.. which means more corporate taxes
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After reading The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff, it’s hard to take what Eric is saying at face value. He’s lost my trust. I’m trying to read between the lines. Eric, what is your actual motive here? You’re openly trying to perpetuate fear. Are your concerns in the interest of the American people, or as a lobbyist for Google? It’s hard for me to decipher.
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See "Superintelligence" by Nick Bostrom.
Note to Silicon Valley and to China:
Please stop your current mode of “innovating”.
Just give us stuff that works well and doesn’t need to be “upgraded” and thrown in a landfill every 2 years.
And please start innovating in ways we really need to solve the challenges of the 21st century. Less slavish addiction to “growth”, rapid transitioning away from fossil fuels, and less wasteful business models that do not depend on mindless consumerism at the expense of the natural systems with which we must integrate gracefully, over the long term, to build a truly sustainable global society.
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There is so much more going on in Silicon Valley than producing products for consumption i.e. programming,think tanks etc.
Programming using AI for problems facing our world today is growing at a rapid rate. Some of the greatest minds of our time are at the forefront. We must as a country fund education at all levels,and prepare capable students with higher standards by giving them the tools needed to compete globally.
At present China has the ability to surpass the US on the Global stage, not by products for consumerism but by AI programming, which is not being funded properly for our country to remain in the forefront in our rapidly changing world.
I agree in priciple that a public-private initiative is called for.
Good luck selling that to a populace that has little to trust in self-serving elites who hide revenue overseas, avoid paying taxes, provide campaign cash, lobby (including for targeted tax cuts) and rely on taxpayers from a dwindling middle class to bail them out.
You can either play winner-take-all hardball or you can start to show concern for every American. With capitalism showing more of it's corrupt roots (those with increasingly less must protect those with more from self-created bad behavior), trust is probably at an all-time low since the Great Depression. The fact that Trump lied his way into office using populism and that Bernie has the Democratic cozy class in knots should make that clear.
Capitalists have become the entitled class, replacing titled elites of yore. They believe their hubris while the rest of us are coming to the conclusion that the system is rotten in a way neither party is willing to fix having been sold off.
When you have a plan to share prosperity through work and investment on a level playing field, come back with your plans. You need to give in order to get.
We're not China. Most of us believe in our democratic birthright. Stop selling.Try to convince us you are wiling to act in good faith.
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@Tom at what point will words not be enough? I don't see how the power brokers can be motivated to do anything that will not further enrich themselves. Growing unrest is a possibility, but if you ask me, I think America has depended more on accidents than anything else. Take Teddy Roosevelt for instance: The captains of industry were terrified of Roosevelt's trust-busting progressive politics, so the safely pigeon-holed him in the vice presidency where, apparently, he could do no harm. But a Polish-American anarchist shot McKinley, elevating TR to the top and progressive trust-busting went gang-busters. The common main finally got his lucky break. Why must democracy that works for you and me be so dependent on lucky breaks? Can't we do better?
although I believe many of Mr. Schmidt's points to be correct, it is hard to read "the US govt should do this and that to help the US tech industry" when the US tech industry continues to act like a greedy spoiled child, denying all accountability and responsibility to American democracy. get Zuckerberg to shut down political ads and out right lies in FB, and then we'll talk.
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So, socialism?
I mean, wasn't this what those tax breaks were supposed to do--fund all this sort of innovation and capital investment? It didn't work? Whoops!
Time to try something else, then, right?
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@Keith isn't any democratic government a social wealth redistribution instrument? Isn't "the common good" a socialist principle? I don't understand this aversion to any mention of tax dollars used for the common good. That's the role of good governance!
Of course government investments should be placed wisely. But some investments are going to fail. Perfection is simply an ideal goal that can't be achieved.
Too many comments criticize Dr Schmidt’s wealth instead focusing on his main point: In order to compete with China there must be greater cooperation between our government and the tech private sector.
AI and other emerging technologies are incredibly powerful. If we want to maintain our technological advantage our government should adopt Dr Schmidt’s recommendations; more money for research, more public-private tech partnerships, an easier pathway to citizenship for the best and brightest.
These proposals should not be controversial.
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Thanks. My personal data was hacked by the Chinese military several years ago. At a minimum, this act is an intentional tort. Individuals like me do not have the wherewithal to fight the Chinese (and our) government. The Justice Department failed to do anything. We should have judgments. As long as China does business in the US, they should be held to account by paying damages.
Same with Russia? Did they interfere with our elections? Reduce their damages to judgment.
We need you, Mr. Schmidt, to also spend some of your money to help save the Social Security and Medicare trust funds.
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I am glad that finally our policy experts benchmarked our science and technology state with China empirically using 100 parameters. I think, this results should be captured in a booklet and given to all NSF and NIH stakeholders to understand the reality. The foundation of American technology was build on thee legged tools - NSF, NIH and Corporate/Defense and Energy department Research. The NSF and NIH are outstanding institutions - any major progress will need the enhancement of this capability. Only increasing the funding will not make the institutions suitable for new reality - China is different from Communist Blocks. Chinese technology community is highly interlinked to American research institutions and leakage of American strategic knowhow is extensive through conferences, joint research programs, theft and personal relations. I have deep knowledge on this because I spend my whole research life in Corporate and University research. Unless the American researchers are fully aware of this leakage problem - no American research idea can be shielded from Chinese and once idea is leaked, research result can not be closed. The methodology of research is open secret - money and focus will will bring the result. I like to know how America can prevent this leakage - only law and order actions is not sufficient. We need new physiological and mental awareness of this reality by our research community.
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Dr. Schmidt has given us good information and increased funding is critical.
But the rich billionaires and corporations are not paying their fair share of taxes. Corporations pay, on average, 11% taxes when the rate is 21%. Many corporations do not pay any taxes at all. Also, billionaires are ratholing their money all over the world and do not pay their fair share of taxes.
Dr. Schmidt should start a crusade to have corporations and billionaires pay what they own.
The first thing to do is to increase the manpower at the IRS and give the IRS the power to go after these wealthy corporations and tax-dodgers.
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Mr. Schmidt, previous comments have done an excellent job of pointing out how the tech industry has exploited the opportunities provided by govt. funded research, grants and subsidies. How the tech industry extorts the tax payers who provided the money to create and grow the tech industry.
Instead of engaging in activities to support the common good tech executives have squashed or purchased startup companies that pose a threat, then colluded to fix prices and purchase regulations and laws to protect industry profits.
At every opportunity Tech companies have taken measures to prevent the free movement of labor and tighten their grip on employees. For example, HB1 visas, non-compete employment contracts, and obstructing healthcare for all, are all measures intended to trap workers, suppress wages and increase profits.
The need for HB1 visas would be greatly reduced if beautiful young minds were not damaged by pollution and poor nutrition. Young minds could grow into a highly skilled workforce if money for education was not used to support predatory capitalism and tax cuts for corporations and billionaires. Enough said.
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@ old soldier,
privatize the profit, but socialize the risk.
Different coast, same MO.
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“the resulting disadvantage to the United States could endanger U.S. national security and global stability.” What global stability? The US has been the one country that is perpetually waging war. China is nowhere close to being capable of challenging the US, yet it has already been ear marked as the next enemy. The US is the most destabilising force for the world. That it will remain as the world's only superpower for many years to come, and the fact that they can elect someone like Trump as its leader makes it even more scary for the rest of the world.
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Wang,
agree that the US has not always behaved responsibly or even rationally on international actions, but to pretend China is some fragile tea cup unable to hold it's own is a bit of a stretch.
To only measure strength through military might is both unwise and tends to lead to surprising poor outcomes: Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan come to mind.
China IS a financial superpower that will likely surpass the US in this century, so let's not pretend it doesn't project it's influence throughout the globe as does the United States.
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@Dan I'll go a bit further and suggest that China is playing the long game here..and by 2100....the rest of the world will be controlled by China and Maoism...and we'll be isolated..but since North America is a huge trading area by itself..we'll do just fine.
Humans might not survive due to the CO2 being output by China and India...along with these new viral strains coming to market...but in the battle of Maoism against Adam Smith..I'm going with Smith.
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He is so right on this. He has learned, granted from a perch of being a billionaire who built a business that was unregulated and fought governmental regulation. The key going forward is to continue to learn and innovate as that is what science is. The trouble is that there needs to be a huge push from the Oval Office on this and put aside ego and look what the future looks like not just what is happening right now It’s like a forest fire that is burning in the distance and approaching us and no one in Washington is doing anything about it as there are so many other fires that are burning right in their faces.
This one is easy though as there are so many who realize this is an issue and are willing to work on the issue. We have the first mover advantage because there was no regulation and now we need to focus and create the guardrails on this issue to maintain that edge.
A world dominated by a Chinese version of AI is beyond dystopian and one we do not want.
Just when did Dr. Schmidt woke up exactly? The current situation is the direct result of decisions that were made by executives like him over the past decades. Fight government at every chance and diminish both supervision and anti trust oversight, create monopolies while exporting jobs in pursuit of lower wages (including PhDs at overseas locations) and push the kind of work that raises the high skilled technocracy to the Pacific Rims and do everything possible to stamp down home grown competition from the start-ups and then ask for government help? What happened to all the tax breaks that was supposed to propel new investments and repatriation of corporate funds kept overseas to avoid taxes?
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@ZenBee Yes, Mr. Schmidt and the Silicon Valley millionaires have greater economic ties with China, India, and other foreign countries than the United States.
Every opportunity to export jobs out of the United States was taken in the name of maximizing profits and creating mega tech centers in Shanghai and Bangalore.
The outsourcing of well-paying tech jobs continues even today and to the point where Chinese/Indian managers oversee US employees in some of the Silicon Valley tech companies these days.
Mr. Trump's "America First" mantra rings hollow to many struggling to keep their communities alive.
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@ZenBee Exactly!
So Silicon Valley giants, like anti-government VC mogul Peter Thiel (an ardent Trump supporter and financier) and the mega-cap tech companies with massive profits and extremely low taxes (or zero) want research and start-up capital from U.S. coffers that is running a trillion dollar deficit?
Sounds like another transfer of wealth scheme from the poor and middle class to the top 1%.
Maybe you could urge Trump to impose a super-tax on the "excess" wages of workers whose minimum wages are going up a few dollars here and there around the country.
Add that to savings from slashing Medicare and Social Security benefits and the budgets of the Center for Disease Control (hurry before the coronavirus outbreak makes that harder to do) and the EPA (already ravaged and politicized),
Or you could get creative and seek capital from the outsized trust funds of the children of Silicon Valley moguls. After all, it the next generation's future that is at stake.
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And our government sponsored monopolies like Google and the rest of Tech will do everything in their $billion power to keep government away from everything. Government so small you could drown it in a bathtub.
As for Americans, the most heavily taxed countries, the most heavily regulated countries. are also the Happiest Countries in the World. Americans want none of that. Americans want King Trump and his Corporate Cronies to Rule with no Laws to restrain them. and continue to vote GOP to achieve these goals. And, suddenly, Mr. Schmidt, perhaps, thinks this is not a good idea,
but will vote GOP anyway.
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The author fails to mention that increased funding from the federal government is in direct conflict with the windfall of GOP tax breaks recently given to the extremely wealthy like himself. I too see value in investing in fundamental research to stay competitive however maybe we should start with who will pay for this. I don’t think the American public is interested in paying for this type of research when many don’t have more than 400 of life savings and high paying job prospects are low.
Does Eric and his band of 1 percent going to open their wallets if the tax man comes knocking? My guess is probably not.
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@Suave you beat me to this response. The Chinese government has the funds to invest in these areas because they tax their wealthy at a higher level. China is not like the old Russian communist state where entrepreneurial thinking was squashed and eventually ran out of money to fund the state. They encourage and invest in new businesses and entrepreneurs get the fruit of their efforts. A wealthy class exists, but that class doesn't control the government like it is in the US.
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Glad to hear that the ex-CEO of Google now realize that Big Tech needs the government.
It is not only a matter of money but visions, goals and education and it’s a matter of collaboration and neither side can do that alone.
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Our government is the ultimate VC firm - it is not risk-averse and can inject capital in ways that no private company is willing or able. Government fails and fails often, but that is a good thing. Huge innovation leaps can't happen without failure and spreading risk across the entire US population is essentially what good government can do.
You don't need to be a New Deal democrat to appreciate that without our government's initiative, we would not have completed the Transcontinental railroad, the US atomic weapon's program, the Federal Reserve, the internet (ARPANET), satellite communications, and countless other technologies that require huge government assistance.
If there was just one area that our government could focus its assistance, I would say that quantum computing should be the focus. Cutting edge advancements in AI, computing security, and big data infrastructure will all depend upon high qubit processors. Some companies expect to surpass 100 qubits within the next few years. This is the point at which quantum computing will surpass classical computing in processing capability. Because AI is so dependent upon huge processing and data resources, any pathway to international technical hegemony will most likely belong to the nation who first deploys qubit machines into the mainstream.
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Intellectual property laws are too generous. That's why we have record high inequality. IP laws were written during a time when businesses took longer to scale. Tech changed that. Now we overpay for innovation.
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Intellectual property is socialist. Our government bans free market competition to artificially inflate prices. That's how we fund innovation. We socialize costs, privatize profits. Our government should collect a royalty on intellectual property and reinvest those funds in public education.
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The American people need their federal government to preserve, protect and defend them and their divided limited different power constitutional republic of united states against the new gilded age robber baron malefactors of great wealth in 'Silicon Valley' aka the District of Columbia, New York City, Beijing, Hong Kong and Shanghai.
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When the wealthy and the corporations start paying taxes we'll have the money to do these things.
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@RickF If you are willing to look at any of the articles in this search (https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=tax+revenue+by+income+class&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8), you'll see that the wealthy pay the most taxes. The top 1% pay more than the bottom 90% combined. It is true that some wealthy people avoid taxes, but on average they are paying the bulk.
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@Dr B These are false equivalencies. You are interpreting these data incorrectly, which is something we see in corporate propaganda. It's incredibly misleading and flat out wrong.
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Sounds good. Let’s begin with Silicon Valley companies actually paying taxes to contribute their share to the future success of this country.
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@Will The taxes today all go to transfer payments. Raise taxes with a promise to put 100% the increases into R&D or infrastructure, and watch the resistance to them shrink.
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Very good observations Mr. Schmidt, but how do you intend for the government to pay for this when Mr.Trump has rewarded the wealthy, like you, and large corporations a huge, debt-escalating tax break. Add to that his demand for a very low tech wall at our border. And with one of your own, Mark Zuckerberg, helping to scramble our elections to aid his new BFF, Donald Trump, what hope is there for rational policy initiatives like yours? Let’s be honest here, politicians, almost all politicians, today are short-term, political maximizers. Their time frame seldom extends beyond their next election. Face it, because of our government (I finally appreciate the longevity of government bureaucrats, even as they are forced to leave), we face living just day to day.
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No mention in Eric Schmidt's piece of the billions in profit that Google, Facebook, Apple etc hid in overseas shell companies to avoid paying their fair share of taxes due on the enormous profits these companies made and continue to make.
Surely these billions could have been used to forward his aims as stated in this article, but no it's down to the government which he and his cronies, have been stiffing for decades to come up with the loot.
Pull the other one Eric
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Do t blame companies for following the tax laws where they operate. If tax laws need change, work to change them.
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@SteveB You're kind of missing the point here, don't you think?
Focusing on the forest rather than the trees right in front of you?
This is a serious issue except for one thing..
If we were in China right now..Chinese government officials would be monitoring every single keystroke we make on this forum..and our comments would go into a government algorithm designed to establish your Social Index score to see just how compliant you are with the Communist Ruling Party.
Our fight with China ought to be about how free China allows its people to think and share their opinions without being sent to re-education camps or prison.
If China can't make those basic changes...for fundamental human rights..then what are we doing worrying about if a billion people can access Google technology on their Hawaii 5G phone?
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@Barry , surely our measly 401(k) has the same voting power as those of the capitalists yes? Keep dreaming.
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The United States has grossly abused its power in the world. With the end of the Cold War, the US aggressively promoted its economic system globally so that it could dominate everywhere. Unleashed, it launched an illegal war that destroyed Iraq and continues to resonate today. The US right wing has made clear its disdain for international law and agreements. Today, the Trump administration has used American financial dominance to blackmail the world into accepting its destructive policies against Iran and in the Middle East. The point is this: the US needs to be restrained and contained. It cannot be trusted with the power it has, as has been proven time and again. And Mr. Schmidt's invocation of "protecting liberal democracy" does not have any credibility at all in the age of Trump. To me, a more powerful China and a better distribution of power in the world sounds like a good thing. Something has to keep the US in check; China seems the best option. Beyond that, however, I am impressed by the American need to manufacture enemies where none exist. China has taken no aggressive moves against the US. It has bought into the system. Americans are making it an enemy by attacking it and trying to hold it back. The danger here is not China. It is the US and its inability to accept that it will need to share power and deal with the world in a more complex way as it experiences relative decline.
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@Shaun Narine I do not agree with "a more powerful China and a better distribution of power in the world sounds like a good thing." However, if you agree with (only to name a few) suppression of speech and dissent, "re-education" camps for religious minorities, organ harvesting, stealing hundreds of billions of dollars in IP each year from US companies and universities, shark loaning in poor countries to take over military-strategic ports, and building 5G networks that will inevitably compromise national security, IP, and personal data in every country that it exists in, then yes, you are right.
"the American need to manufacture enemies where none exist. China has taken no aggressive moves against the US." is also untrue. Economic and informational war is the "kinetic war" of the 21st century. Check out the "Three Warfares" military theory.
The US and the west have not been perfect, but our societies are based on self-determination and individual liberties (even though some may argue these are disappearing). This will, and has, yielded a far better society than authoritarian regimes of the past and present.
The US and west should face competition on the world stage, it will bring the best out of us. However, the Chinese government is not a model we want to adopt or have influence over us.
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Instead of asking the cash-strapped federal government for funding ,Silicon Valley billionaires, if they care so much about maintaining the pre-eminence of US in STEM, should pick up the tab themselves.
With GOOGLE,APPLE,AMAZON,MICROSOFT and FACEBOOK collectively worth north of 5 trillion, there is enough disposable income along the tech billionaire class to fund this project.
So instead of buying another mega yacht or $200 million mansion, consider paying it forward.
Afterall, it was the largesse,the lack of oversight and regulation by the Federal Government that gave rise to the obscene wealth disparity on display today.
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@Gander FIR These private companies do invest and will continue to invest. However, their inventions will be kept proprietary and not shared. Publicly funded research results can be used by any one - which means there would be a much wider impact.
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@Gander FIR Well put.
The country that would do this would have to stop seeing its population as a mine of information to be excavated for profit. The country that would follow your proposal would treat it’s children as an investment not as a profit center. The government of the country that would follow your advice would harness the country’s wealth to build the future not shovel it upwards to the few. We once were this country. We are no longer. ‘ E pluribus unum ‘ is now ‘ E pluribus lucrum ‘
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This article suggests we can win in the competition for global resources and power against China if our government pursues greater investment in technological innovation, which seems logical.
I would add how the development of our human capital via education as an essential component. Every child in America needs to have their potential nurtured in our public schools and disadvantaged children, especially, need greater investment- right now the majority of our native engineering pool comes from advantaged families.
It also fails to mention the value of offering the most creative people from all over the world the best and most welcoming country for them to bring their skills and genius to develop new technologies.
Trump has been very destructive to the American brand as far as attracting this kind of talent. He is anti-science and shows a disdain for the kind of people we need to attract. His anti- Muslim policies are offensive to more than Muslims- people with higher education levels tend to be most appalled by appeals to racism and religious bigotry.
Essentially, he's made America uncool to the global educated class.
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