
Eric Schmidt to head new Pentagon innovation board - uptown
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-military-innovation-idUSKCN0W421V
======
epicureanideal
Guy who colluded with other high level corporate officers (see techtopus) to
artificially limit the salaries of tens of thousands of highly skilled
workers, now asked to advise the government on how to do innovation. For
purely moral reasons I'd disqualify him from the position. I suspect he'll
find some way to leverage this to benefit himself and/or his friends and won't
consider any harm to the public. I don't want this guy in this position.

~~~
peyton
I was under the impression this agreement, at least initially, was to prevent
anticompetitive poaching.

Suppose Apple wants to dominate search. One way to do so is to poach every
Google search engineer by offering to triple their salaries. These companies
agreed not to do that.

Yeah, it's illegal, but what options did these executive have? California
effectively bans noncompete clauses. And there's enough money in the system
and teams are typically small enough that dismantling a competitor is
feasible.

Google Engineer Sarah shouldn't be paid triple Google Engineer Jessie just
because she works on a product that's valuable to Competitor X.

Edit: original post not clear enough. Reproducing a reply below:

>The problem was with using money to prevent your competitors from doing
business. Doing so subverts the free market.

Suppose every time a competitor rented office space, you bought the building
and evicted them.

Suppose Walmart opens a store in SoMa that sells groceries at a tenth of what
surrounding stores sell, then jacks prices when those stores fold.

To ELI5: you run a lemonade stand. Your neighbor Susie also has a lemonade
stand. Susie's mom doesn't like your parents and wants you to fail, so she
pays the store $500 to not sell you lemonades. Yeah, the market price of
exclusive lemonade rights is now $500, but unreasonable sums are being spent
to prevent competition. Something's wrong.

There are laws against most anticompetitive practices, but not all.

Part of the motivation behind the poaching agreement was filling a gap. You
could dismantle a competitor by paying everyone and anyone in their product's
critical path to simply not work there anymore.

The solution, an antipoaching agreement, was illegal.

~~~
hobs
> Google Engineer Sarah shouldn't be paid triple Google Engineer Jessie just
> because she works on a product that's valuable to Competitor X.

If they want to keep the employee, they absolutely need to match what others
are willing to pay. That you suggest otherwise is nonsense in the american job
market.

Cheating to get a better price is as you acknowledged, illegal, and most of
the time you will find the market begins to even out those weird bumps by
creating incentives for others to learn/work on that skillset (because of the
higher rewards.)

This is very equivalent to "Well why should we pay engineer X more when they
are working the same number of hours as marketing person Y?"

Its a comparison that doesn't make sense unless you want to pretend that the
employer does not benefit as a result of the value the employee produces.

If the engineer is 3x more valuable to the other company and not to your
bottom line, its an obvious time for that engineer to move, not be made a
slave by anti-competitive agreements between employers.

Hopefully you will be able to find someone to work on your product at a price
point that your business can derive some value from, but if not, its probable
that your business sucks.

~~~
peyton
I agree it's wrong. I was just elaborating on the reasons it happened, as I
haven't seen it explained in press and I know people who were affected in 2005
when this started.

------
uvesten
Assange's "When Google met Wikileaks" comes to mind...
[https://wikileaks.org/google-is-not-what-it-
seems/](https://wikileaks.org/google-is-not-what-it-seems/)

~~~
wslh
(strong downvotes here) But Google uses HTTPS... Joking aside, Google is
seriously helping to advance computer security as a whole (just take a look at
their security blog). Obviously, it is not a good idea to have your private
life in the cloud.

Joking aside #2: could a private company like Google be acquired by US as a
key security asset? It seems possible, I found this
[https://www.quora.com/Can-the-US-government-acquire-
private-...](https://www.quora.com/Can-the-US-government-acquire-private-
companies) helpful.

~~~
zekevermillion
I'm a bit mystified by the downvotes. During previous wars, the US did in fact
compel industry to retool for wartime needs. And not in arm's-length
transactions, but by fiat and in many cases at enforced price levels. e.g.,
during WWII domestic civilian auto and airplane construction was completely
diverted to military needs. In a global war, I think it is actually quite
likely that the same thing would happen with each combatant's civilian tech
industry.

~~~
adventured
In a new world war, assuming no nuclear wipe-out scenario, Google would indeed
be drafted. Their effectiveness as a global entity would collapse rapidly
however, as the global internet would be destroyed as a first stage target.
Google would lose the vast benefits it has on global information, tracking,
etc. Mostly what Google would be drafted for then, would be the sheer
engineering talent - basically the government would want their skill, not
Google itself per se. In the case of WW2, the government wanted the steel
output and labor.

------
AndrewUnmuted
This comes on the heels of Schmidt's most recent email innovation, as
published by Time [1]:

> If you get something you think you may want to recall later, forward it to
> yourself along with a few keywords that describe its content.

> This isn’t just handy for emails, but important documents too. Jonathan
> scans his family’s passports, licenses, and health insurance cards and
> emails them to himself along with descriptive keywords.

This is so horrible and wrong - and now he holes himself up in a make-believe
position at the Pentagon? Figures...

[1] [http://time.com/3425368/google-email-
rules/?xid=time_socialf...](http://time.com/3425368/google-email-
rules/?xid=time_socialflow_twitter)

~~~
benevol
Translation:

"If you have private data, please put it on our servers so we can add it to
our internal profile we have on you."

This is surreal.

~~~
dopamean
Do people really believe this?

~~~
Joof
Some believe it's intentional.

I believe it's unintentional, but that the result is eventually very similar,
if not the same.

------
asadotzler
"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't
be doing it in the first place."

~~~
cryptoz
I remember when that happened. I will never defend that silly argument, but I
do think this was taken out of context. Wasn't he specifically trying to say:
if you're going to commit a crime, don't tell Google about it, because then
Google will be compelled to help the authorities? So from his perspective,
he's frustrated that people expect Google to ignore it when you're doing
illegal things and also telling Google about it.

Eric Schmidt has a way with words in that he always says the wrong thing -
sometimes you can see what he was trying to say, and there might be something
good there - but whenever he talks he just fumbles and ruins everything.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
The problem is Google cannot have it both ways. They like to act like the data
you generate on Google is private only to you, and that Google employees can't
see it, and that you're not "telling" anyone, as far as they're concerned.

But you are, because they can and do access that data. And pass it on to the
relevant authorities.

~~~
fixermark
In the large, for most people, those assertions are true. It turns out that
there's a wide gulf between "Can" and "do" that a fair risk assessment will,
for many people, indicate is a useful place to be.

Entire companies are built and thrive in the gap between "can" and "do" on the
Internet.

------
robk
All of his actions lead me to think he's considering a run for the presidency
one of these days. Maybe 2024 after Hillary. They're quite aligned and he'd be
a natural Democrat successor.

~~~
mtgx
How many corporate Democratic presidents can the US population withstand?

~~~
phunkystuff
all of them apparently

------
tchaffee
I've said long ago that Google at one point became a new R&D branch of the US
military.

~~~
ljk
Google _does_ own Boston Dynamics....

~~~
deelowe
Which isn't focusing on military contracts any longer as part of their buy-
out. Does no one actually read anything before they make comments like this?

Best link I could find on short notice:
[http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/185570-google-finally-
pro...](http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/185570-google-finally-proves-it-
wont-pursue-military-contacts-pulls-leading-robot-from-darpa-competition)

------
justsaysmthng
I've always been fascinated with how the smartest people end up doing the
stupidest things.

Only after opening the next pandora's box do they realize how stupid it was to
try to open it in the first place, but it is too late by then.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixb7MdeR8yU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixb7MdeR8yU)

But we never learn, do we...

What good can potentially come out of a high tech, nuclear, AI-driven military
force, ran like a software company is beyond me..

~~~
krylon
The only thing we learn from history, Hegel once said, is that we learn
nothing from history.

~~~
ljw1001
well, that's something ;)

------
colordrops
Julian Assange met with Schmidt and his entourage at the Ecuadorian embassy in
London, and afterwards put his thoughts into an article:

[http://www.newsweek.com/assange-google-not-what-it-
seems-279...](http://www.newsweek.com/assange-google-not-what-it-seems-279447)

He basically claimed that Google is an arm of the US State Department.

~~~
harryf
That Google has relationships with In-Q-Tel - the CIA's venture capital arm -
is fairly well known e.g. [http://www.wired.com/2010/07/exclusive-google-
cia/](http://www.wired.com/2010/07/exclusive-google-cia/)

That doesn't need to mean there's anything murky going on or that Google is an
arm of the US state department. Government invests in technology; that's how
the Internet started

~~~
colordrops
Did you even read the article? In-Q-Tel and their investment isn't even
mentioned. He cites dozens of other reasons.

But since you brought it up, why do you think the CIA would invest in a tech
company?

------
woodcut
That to me sounds like the worst job, from the start he's an outsider trying
introduce massive change, but in an advisory role.

~~~
harryjo
Schmidt seems a bit like Bloomberg in that his main interest, now that he has
amassed wealth and power, is to use it to hang out with powerful people, more
than accomplish anything in particular with them.

(For Bloomberg, it was an obsession with becoming British aristocracy)

~~~
JBReefer
Bloomberg was probably the most effective mayor in modern NYC history, and
spearheaded the creation of Silicon Alley as well as modern LIC, Williamsburg,
and Dumbo.

He's a lot more than the "soda ban guy" here.

~~~
wooter
i would credit private industry for those private endeavours. hes "stop and
frisk" guy to me. pure authoritarian.

------
DanielBMarkham
DoD needs the help. I wish him the best of luck.

Having said that, I'd much rather read something like "Google's Schmidt to
head up program X for DoD"

Yes, I understand that his unique talents are needed at the top, but frankly
you can't top-down optimize something that isn't working in the first place.
My preference is to get multiple large programs that serve as an example (and
no, the ACA site does not qualify as a large program, at least it shouldn't)
and then work on optimizing the system. The way things are, I'm kinda left
wondering exactly what he expects to accomplish and exactly how he's going to
know that he's accomplished it. "Advisory boards" are the kiss of death in
D.C.

Could be a prelude for more political activity. In that case, it'd make sense.
He'd be a very interesting SecDef.

------
shmerl
It was his fault that Google killed XMPP efforts and didn't open Hangouts. It
had a direct impact on cutting off the majority of my contact list. That's not
the kind of "innovation" that we needed. So I don't trust him to make good
choices.

------
hackuser
As Schmidt has vested interests and personal relationships with the Pentagon,
will the public trust him with their security in regard to government
intrusion? Should they? Contrast this with Apple's current public relationship
with government.

These public activities may not be representative of what really is happening,
but trust is all the public can rely on. Very few can understand the techical
issues, and very few of those people have access to the information and the
time to analyzse it.

However, I'm glad the Pentagon is getting the best help available; the U.S.
falling behind in military technology could be an historic catastrophe. Let's
not take democracy, liberty, and all their benefits for granted.

~~~
benevol
You seem to take for granted that technology will never be used against
citizens.

~~~
hackuser
I worry about that, but I don't see an alternative other than to mitigate that
risk, via law and policy, as much as possible.

------
Zigurd
It's an appropriate job. Schmidt has always had a more "traditional"
relationship to and attitude about government programs in general, long before
government surveillance became a hot topic. Sun was a big supplier to the DoD.
Schmidt is, despite his occasional odd outbursts of context-free candor, one
of the smartest people in the tech industry, and will certainly be one of the
people most in tune with what's technically possible and what's reasonable to
implement to serve on that board.

------
Drakonkyrios
Whether you think he's not right for the job or not, there has to be some
interaction between the private sector and military to debate the best routes
for security and innovation. There's not many people who have the experience
and know-how as Schimdt, with the other option is the military be completed
segregated from the public and completely fall behind. This board will
probably be a gold mine for the public sector, because they need some serious
help.

------
bostonpete
Why not call him "Chairman" rather than "Former CEO"...?

~~~
jchendy
More people probably know what CEO means.

~~~
waterlesscloud
Perhaps, but the fact that he's still currently part of Google leadership is
far more relevant.

------
xiphias
There are so many places where effeciency could be improved in governments
(healthcare, democracy, transportation, monetary system, law, taxation), and
I'm sure Eric Schmidt can do the job by bringing in high-tech
culture....still, military is the last place where I would like improvements
to be seen.

------
DickingAround
This puts the acquisition of BostonDynamics in a new light. They weren't the
peaceful people snatching them for civilian use. They were a shill for the
military; hiding them inside of something less violent seeming to keep the
heat away.

------
whyenot
> Pentagon advisory board aimed at bringing Silicon Valley innovation and best
> practices to the U.S. military

snark: The US military already know how to move fast and break things.

DARPA and the Pentagon have done a tremendous amount to move technology
forward, over the decades. But, I personally would feel more comfortable if it
were a non-military organization that were in the lead role. Technology should
be a means to improve humanity and decrease human suffering. What the Pentagon
wants out of technology, at least in a proximate sense, is something
completely different.

------
daodedickinson
Defense Innovation Advisory Board AND The Groundwork (Hillary campaign)? We
really have to have one person heading both of those, and have him CEO in
charge of determining what people get to look at?

------
martin_bech
I feel a great disturbance in the force..

------
xlayn
I believe big corporations like Google or Apple serve a balance role with the
Government; under that assumption serving a position on both sides would
represent a conflict of interests.

------
Cheyana
Easy on the innovation there Eric. Just help them figure out how to keep a
government server from being hacked every 2 hours.

------
codecamper
do no evil. muah ha ha ha ha ha!

~~~
benevol
They have replaced that motto. Which, I suppose, means that they can feel
better about themselves now.
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_be_evil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_be_evil))

------
myth_buster
Revolving door?

~~~
ju-st
PR stunt

------
lallysingh
"Members will draw on their experience in Silicon Valley to advise on rapid
prototyping, iterative product development, complex data analysis, the use of
mobile and cloud applications and organizational information sharing."

So, what the Pentagon's R&D processes can learn from SV.

------
ljw1001
being evil, it's more of a calling than a job.

------
yxitcti
People may not want to hear it, but by definition we _are_ devolving into
fascism as corporate and government interests become increasingly incestuous.

~~~
dragonwriter
Even if this was corporatism (which it might be, but corporatism is more
complex than that), not all corporatism is fascism -- Mussolini has a quote
equating them, but that was trying to piggy-back fascism on corporatism, which
had been supported in many non-fascist forms by many institutions (notably,
the Catholic Church) long before fascism exist.

Fascism combines corporatism with militaristic nationalism and other features.

Mere business-government entanglement, even when it becomes corporatism, is
not sufficient for fascism.

------
barkingcat
To head the Skynet development team.

------
ocdtrekkie
Yet another Googler infiltrating our government. Obama's administration has
repeatedly positioned Googlers in every open position with any technology
relation whatsoever. It's a staggering example of government corruption at
work, especially coupled with their continual immunity from legal
repercussions for their actions in this country.

~~~
BinaryIdiot
...what?

After working many years in the DoD contracting space bringing in almost
anyone from silicon valley who actually knows how technology works should be
an improvement from the terrible state it's in now.

Why is it corruption when the government tries to get top quality employees to
work within their ranks?

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Eric Schmidt's wealth is heavily tied to Google's stock, and he's effectively
Google's evangelist who they send to government (ours and others) to convince
them to do what Google wants them to. (Usually to pass laws helping Google do
business, or to avoid punishment for Google's privacy or tax violations.)

It's impossible for him to put the interests of the citizens of our country
above his allegiance to Google. This is much like when a government position
at the FCC is filled by a Comcast or Time Warner employee or something. The
conflict of interest here is amazing.

~~~
BinaryIdiot
That's a bit different than your previous post. You simply said Googler's in
general which there is nothing wrong with that. Now if they currently have a
stake in the company AND are working for the government? Yeah I agree with
you.

Though I'm not going to lie it still may be better than the current situation.
I can't tell you how many times you hear "yeah setup a shell corporation and
do this and that and get rich on government contracts". Maybe it's just
replacing one corruption for another...

------
mtgx
And just like that, _out of nowhere_ , a year later the Pentagon starts buying
Google's Atlas robots.

~~~
knorby
Boston Dynamics was a defense contractor before Google bought them. Despite
what was said at the time of the purchase, the continuation that business
relationship should be the expectation.

------
lawnchair_larry
Well that's a pretty dumb move for Google PR and their shareholders.

Hard for foreign business to take you seriously on having their back when the
US government comes knocking when the CEO is running projects at the Pentagon.

~~~
jMyles
Sundar Pichai is CEO, not Schmidt. Although he is still Chairman.

