
Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation - kristianpaul
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-54100001
======
emsy
Tangential, since this article is about the US and China. But if the US has
dropped the ball, then Europe (or the EU specifically) didn't even bother to
go to the game. The only thing we're innovative at is coming up with
regulations. And I say this as someone who thinks the US tech sector should be
under much heavier regulatory scrutiny.

~~~
fvdessen
There was still not that long ago an incredible amount of innovative companies
and products in Europe.

But at that time companies were still built for their home markets first and
on that regard the USA is big and unified. Since software is mostly winner
takes all it means that when the USA companies came to Europe they had already
won the USA and could steamroll the local competition

There is for example no way a swedish mapping company could have competed with
google maps , which had so much search monopoly money backing it up from the
start

The only way Europe could have prevented this is to just ban foreign
monopolies, wich is what china did, and why they are now succesfully
‘innovating’.

I read often on this website that europe cannot ‘take risks’ or ‘innovate’ and
is ‘riding on american innovation for free’ and I find that a bit insulting,
because I fell that as things are geopolitically it’s just not possible for
Europeans to compete fairly with Americans

~~~
88840-8855
I like your points and agree on your conclusion.

Further, I would like to add a few ideas:

\- innovation in Europe can only scale if we achieve a higher degree of unity
in Europe, including one common language, one common jurisdiction and law
framework. Localization is just too expensive in Europe and hinders scaling.

\- a certain degree of protectionism is good. I am a big fan of how China made
it. They have a really fantastic digital landscape that is superior in so many
areas compared to Europe (if you exclude the data privacy issue)

\- reliance on the old economy is bad and this is a political decision.

\- too many people are too scared of new technologies and want things "how
they used to be". This is bad and is typical for many Europeans, especially
here in Germany. Cultural change must happen but you cannot force it.

~~~
irrational
What could the one common language be? English would seem to be the logical
choice, but there is no way France would agree to that.

~~~
zegl
The EU doesn’t even agree on which alphabet to use, Latin is the most common
one but the Greek and Cyrillic alphabets are also official in the union.

English is my second language, and while I wouldn’t mind changing the official
language of my country, I can’t see that ever happening, there’s just so much
culture attached to the language, that would be forgotten together with our
language.

~~~
menybuvico
Yep. A common European first language would start a process which would result
in a terrible loss of local cultural tradition. Cultural suicude for the
common good has been suggested before, but I can't imagine that there would be
a lot of people who'd agree with it.

~~~
0xfaded
I disagree, I live in Denmark where the majority speaks very good English.
There's no shortage of Danish media.

On the other hand, economic suicide is assured by insisting on a high standard
of living while doing everything possible to prevent innovation.

~~~
menybuvico
As a Swedish-speaking Finn, I can confirm that a culture can end up on the
decline even if there's powerful legal backing to preserving it (including
forcing the remaining ~90% of the population to learning Swedish in school).
Incidentally, I'd say there's a large correlation with English being more and
more accepted in Finnish society, but I suspect the actual root cause simply
is that cultural production is mainly taking place in the first language
(Finnish) and that it leaves less for the others.

The same would happen if you managed to get the entire EU to agree to switch
to one single language (remember, it's likely that it would be French or
German instead of English). As a result of pushing adoption of the new first
language, it would mean increased cultural output in that language, and a
reduced output for the others. After a while, the differences will start
showing.

I've lived in Denmark for quite a few years and I agree that people in
Copenhagen and the other larger cities wouldn't notice that much of a
difference to begin with, but remember that this would mean a cultural shift
that will take multiple generations. Ask the German speakers in southern
Jutland in another 24 years, and compare how their culture thrives compared to
how they did before the war and you will probably have a pretty decent view on
how the situation would be for many, many of EU's minorities 100 years after
the switch to a single European first language.

------
notwatching
Schmidt has the typical perspective of someone who knows nothing about China.

For ease, I've singled out this one point:

> For example, Chinese telecoms infrastructure giant Huawei spends as much as
> $20bn (£15.6bn) on research and development - one of the highest budgets in
> the world.

Any member of Chinese society knows that budgets like this are announced to
look impressive, and that the money itself goes through so many layers that
siphon off 20% that when the project(s) are finally delivered, it was done on
a shoestring and the deliverable _looks_ like a rough approximation of what
was in the scope. Just don't look under the hood.

Then there are all the other grand initiatives where the money is quietly put
into the stock market and again the deliverable is a "driverless car" etc.
that in reality doesn't work.

Obviously, there's a lot more nuance than this, but if I went around refuting
all these "China experts", I'd have no time for anything else. The point is:
don't believe the hype. Just because a lot of low-hanging tech fruit is highly
visible and China has a lack of ethical and legal oversight does not mean the
country is innovative.

The US I can't comment on.

~~~
solstice
To be fair, Schmidt's larger point seemed to be about how bad the US has been
doing and he used China as a counter example to illustrate that. If his
counter example turns out to be exaggerated that doesn't change the fact that
US r&d spending is lower than before Sputnik. (I have no idea whether his
numbers are right.) Your point to not believe the hype is a very good one
though.

------
crazygringo
> _And that 's one of the key reasons why China has been able to catch up...
> he thinks the US is still ahead of China in tech innovation, for now. But
> that the gap is narrowing fast._

Which is _awesome_.

Because framing it as "ahead" or a "gap" is _completely_ backwards. Innovation
isn't a competition or zero-sum game.

Innovation coming out of China benefits the _world_ , just like innovation
coming out of the US does. What matters is the _total_.

How about we be _thankful_ that there are now so many more scientists the
world over contributing to research and knowledge? How amazing is that for the
human race?

Now, if there's an article that actually proves US innovation is slowing
_compared to itself in the past_ somehow, that actually measures total
_results_ rather than government-funded inputs (e.g. including private funding
and taking impact/effectiveness into account, not just # of papers
published)... then I'd be _very_ interested in that.

But this article isn't that. This article is just cheap nationalism. Ugh.

~~~
aikinai
Whatever you're position happens to be, you can't pretend like we're all in
this innovating together for the betterment of humankind. China and the US
have very different ideologies and are opposing forces in global geopolitics.
There are a lot of people, both inside the US and outside, that would prefer
to see the US continue to be the most innovative country, so Schmidt's
perspective is relevant and informative, not just cheap nationalism.

~~~
crazygringo
But what do ideologies/forces have to do with it?

The article uses published scientific papers as an example. That's _open_.
That's research results the US is getting _for free, from China_. Which is
awesome!

The only way I can interpret your comment as making sense is if we were
talking solely about _military_ innovation -- innovation in China's navies, in
its air force, in its missiles, or even its ability to hack and disrupt
foreign networks.

But Schmidt clearly _isn 't_ talking about that, he's talking about basic
scientific and engineering research.

I don't disagree there _are_ people who see it as a competition and want to
see the US "win", but that _is_ cheap nationalism to me. Because the fact is,
the more research that gets done, the more _everybody_ wins.

Even if it's not the intention, why _don 't_ you think that research is,
indeed, ultimately resulting in the betterment of humankind? Isn't that what
progress _is_?

Here's another way to think about it: producing research is like producing
anything else, like iPhones. The world is better off because China has the
manufacturing capacity to churn out iPhones cheaper and better than anyone
else. Which benefits us all. Because it's not a competition -- it's progress.

------
Shivetya
If you follow the article around you realize this isn't about money invested
but simply based on how many scientific articles are being published [0] and
not dollars invested even though they toss in one Chinese based companies
number.

Personally I do not find article count a good number to base the claim on.
Percentage of GPD might not be a good reference either but then again I am not
100% sure a dollar for dollar comparison works well in all cases.

[0][https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/01/top-ten-countries-
lea...](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/01/top-ten-countries-leading-
scientific-publications-in-the-world/)

~~~
searchableguy
There was also this article linked about federal decrease in R&D spending:
[https://itif.org/publications/2018/12/14/dwindling-
federal-s...](https://itif.org/publications/2018/12/14/dwindling-federal-
support-rd-recipe-economic-and-strategic-decline)

Can someone link me historical total R&D spending data for US?

I found
[https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R44307.pdf](https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R44307.pdf)
which states:

> The United States became a global leader in R&D in the 20th century, funding
> as much as 69% of annual global R&D in the period following World War II. 1
> Figure 1 shows the growth in total U.S. R&D expenditures from 1953 to 2018
> in current dollars. 2 U.S. R&D in 2018 was 112 times higher than it was in
> 1953 in current dollars, and more than 15 times higher in constant dollars.3
> By sector, business-funded R&D grew the most during this period. However,
> faster growth in total R&D spending of other nations reduced the U.S. share
> of global R&D to approximately 27.7% in 2017.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
> in the period following World War II.

That'd likely tbe because most the rest of the developed world had been
reduced to rubble.

27% is still a hugely outsized slice of the pie.

------
pontus
As an employee of Google, it's sad to see it turn into a conventional company.
Sure we take certain risks here and there, but by and large we're optimizing
for the next quarter's PnL / growth. We would much rather invest in growing
our ad revenue by x% than to start a new team doing something novel. Whenever
a new idea comes up that's a bit outside the predictable path of OKRs, it's
almost scoffed at, and you're implicitly told not to be silly. There's very
little left of the "nothing is impossible" attitude.

Google is still a fantastic company to work at as far as compensation and
benefits, but it won't be for long (maybe 10 more years?)

~~~
srtjstjsj
The fact that "conventional company" was redefined because everyone started to
be more like Google (as an operation, not privacy/advertising issues), is a
great thing.

Google isn't a startup and there's no reason why it should be or why that
would be good. "Innovation" isn't valuable if it isn't scaled up.

------
lgleason
"This high skills immigration is crucial to American competitiveness, global
competitiveness, building these new companies and so forth," he said. "America
does not have enough people with those skills."

Translation -- US software engineer salaries are still too high for his
liking, so he wants to dilute the market with more to lower the overall cost.

~~~
dayjobpork
Bingo

It really annoys me when they bitch about not being able to bring in skilled
workers from overseas because they can't find skilled people here... Hey,
maybe they should fucking train someone!

Usually when a tech boss is complaining about not having skilled staff locally
it's code for "... I want to find someone cheaper overseas". It's like seeing
a job ad that wants a wizard at everything but has terrible pay, they just
want to import a cheaper worker.

~~~
weyland108
Or they don’t really care where a skilled worker comes from... we should be
able to higher and attract best and brightest across the world. Current
immigration system is not setup for that.

~~~
TimWillebrands
Why do you feel that smart people from all over the world should serve the
American economy?

------
specialist
Late to this thread, sorry.

I have two tangental questions.

#1 In general terms, what's China's commitment (investment) in higher ed?
Compared to the USA and other economies?

USA's tuition, loans, student debt is always good for an argument on HN.
Almost no one mentions that the USA decided to privatize higher ed some
decades back. So I was wondering if China and others made the same mistake.

#2 How does current China think about growing inequity?

One persons's story in "American Factory" resonated with me. Glass furnace
technician Hong We
[https://www.imdb.com/name/nm10930334/](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm10930334/)
works his ass off, making huge personal sacrifices, to further enrich Fuyao
Glass America owner Jeff Daochuan Liu.

Shown is gob standard corporate team building meetings where Fuyao uses
economic nationalism to motivate their underpaid staff.

What is Hong We's future? When will the feel goods not be enough? When will
Hong We demand to be paid fairly?

I assume Labor in China will follow the American trajectory. With all that
political and cultural strive that entails. But I'm keen to hear what others
think.

Edit: I think Cao Dewang is the founder and owner, not Jeff Daochuan Liu. I
regret the error.

~~~
R0b0t1
The problem with making higher ed only a public service is you run into
rationing. If all positions have to be government funded there tends to be
fewer positions.

There are plenty of people on HN who likely would not have made the cut in a
EU country.

~~~
galimaufry
US higher ed already is a public service. Only 25% of students are in private
colleges/universities, and ~every professor who does research is funded mostly
by government.

I believe that what's actually happening with US higher ed supply is that we
stopped founding large research universities. Many of the great public schools
were endowed using federal land[1] and eventually the government ran out of
valuable agricultural land.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land-
grant_university](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land-grant_university)

~~~
R0b0t1
The institutions themselves are mixed and the student funding is also mixed
but can lean towards private, especially if you are not a first pick for
higher ed but are still capable. In non-US locations there can be no private
funding option.

Student tuition has replaced a lot of government funding. As we can see it has
gone to administrative spending. Do you think new unis would fix that?

~~~
specialist
I was staff (vs faculty) for a public uni. It was understood that all state
funding would eventually go away, effectively making it a private uni. I'd
have to look up the numbers, but state funding went from 80% in the 1970s down
to 10% in the 2010s.

Obviously, rising administrative overhead is due to cost disease, and misc
adjacent theories, like Graeber's bullshit jobs).

But I haven't seen anyone discuss the corollary of "keeping up appearances".
Parents now spending ~$3,000 per credit hour (non-resident) have high
expectations. Better housing, better food, better amenities, responsive office
staff, etc. All that cruise ship caliber fluff needs that much more
bureaucracy.

------
bogwog
Anyone else find it ironic that Google is the subject of one of the biggest
anti-trust cases in recent history, and now Schmidt is blaming the US for not
innovating enough?

Maybe if so much of the tech industry's wealth and resources weren't pooled
together into a handful of massive monopolists who have nearly complete
control over whether any competitor lives or dies, the US (and really, the
entire world) would have more opportunity to innovate.

~~~
alpineidyll3
Just look at tensorflow. It masquerades as enabling open source ai, while
really pushing people to pricey, proprietary google cloud compute. How these
ppl can keep a straight face, I have no idea.

~~~
scsilver
I currently run a 120 dollar tensorflow device all locally that does real time
object detection. I dont understand your criticism.

~~~
alpineidyll3
I'm talking about Google sequestering tensor cores and writing the distributed
training code for g-cloud pods. Even your nice embedded inference device was
designed with the hopes you'd grab some high performance compute to train
something high quality. (These embedded devices are useless for training)

~~~
scsilver
Fair enough, but with everything google, the free tier good enough for a
prototype and personal use. If I need to scale it, there are other options.
For me, I appreciate the option of this model, it makes high tech accessible
to low capital ventures. And sometimes buying locked in services is the
rational decision taking into account the costs of learning other platforms
and maintaining a vender unlocked platform.

------
hvasilev
When innovation in the world of bits is no longer sufficient and mass
innovation in the physical world is required, what is the western world going
to do? Knowledge is not something permanent and mass production was
centralized in China decades ago. Nobody around you remembers how to build
real things, unlike your competition in China. They call the shots now...

"Almighty Chinese gods, can you please design, prototype and mass produce this
device for me. I would like to use it as a platform and run my crappy code on
it so I can compete with your own people".

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
You've heard a very exaggerated version of the narrative. Manufacturing output
is only twice as high in China as in the US; certainly a large disparity, but
hardly consistent with the idea that the Western world has stopped building
real things.

------
softwaredoug
Why do we persist in this old fashioned notion that Nation States are the axis
on which “innovation” turns? The brainpower, resources, and motivation for
innovating increasingly lie with huge multinational tech companies, not nation
states. And they largely don’t care where you live - if you’re smart they want
to hire you (unlike nation states with their Byzantine immigration policies)

~~~
fullshark
Cause Schmidt’s new venture is to ask the government for money, and his sales
pitch is “US is falling behind China in R&D, you need to spend more money.”

~~~
tempodox
Big companies asking the government for money is by no means new. And
“innovation” sounds so much better than begging or rent-seeking. This whole
article is a whirl of hot air.

------
tomcam
A reminder that Google's revenues come almost completely from ad technology
that they bought (from Doubleclick, IIRC). Google has stuck its fingers into
hundreds of pies since then, to its credit, and has found that innovation is
difficult, unpredictable, and expensive.

~~~
throw_m239339
Search, Maps, Ads and Android are Google's most successful product.

Android was bought at well.

~~~
robk
The serious android work was done well after acquisition

~~~
nix23
I would say the serious work was done before...you know the operating-system.
Like with chrome..the serious work was made before...khtml.

~~~
mondoshawan
No, not really. The vast majority of the OS was developed after Android was
acquired. It wasn't even a shippable product before then. Source: I have a
Sooner, the first ever android phone, abd I wrote software for it.

~~~
wombatmobile
The value of Android to Google is that it enables them to gather vast
quantities of data from their users. Google uses this data to enhance the
efficacy of its advertising, by predicting what people will click on.

~~~
mondoshawan
I'd be curious to know what hard evidence you have to back this claim up with,
otherwise its just hearsay.

~~~
nix23
>curious to know what hard evidence you have to back this claim up with

Wow buddy...that should be absolutely known by now, same with Chrome and every
single Google-Service.

[https://about.google/intl/en/how-our-business-
works/](https://about.google/intl/en/how-our-business-works/)

> But, when you use our products you trust us with your personal information.

Thanks you very much ;)

------
gigatexal
Xenophobia and nationalism sure don't help. We used to import the smartest
most capable people from all across the world to develop and market their
inventions and ideas and maybe even become rich in the process. Now, not so
much.

~~~
rjkennedy98
> Xenophobia and nationalism sure don't help.

But somehow China a country with even more Xenophobia and nationalism is
catching up to us. And the U.S. used to have more Xenophobia and nationalism
in the past and was also substantially more innovative.

Maybe the real problem is that the U.S. (all the way up to the top) has become
anti-intellectual. We have completely dumbed down our culture so that children
today want to be basketball players instead of astronauts. Our schools and
government explicitly oppose meritocracy. There is just too much money in junk
media and junk education that its never going to be fixed and instead we have
to bring in more immigrants.

~~~
nine_zeros
But Chinese xenophobia is not American style. Sure they lack immigration but
so many Chinese travel outside for education and business that they are in
fact hyper aware of cultural differences and are upskilling themselves en
masse in dealing with various cultures. They bring that skill back home to
build companies and sub cultures that ape the best of other countries.

This is very unlike US style xenophobia where Murica number 1 and anything
about foreigners sucks.

~~~
IdiocyInAction
China is an ethnostate that is actively committing a genocide. If that is not
xenophobic I don't know what is.

~~~
xster
And Iraq is taking Kuwaiti babies out of incubators and Libya was... what
again? Considering the Uyghur population doubled in the last 50 years and
China has 20 times more mosques than the US, China isn't very good at
geocoding.

------
hevad
Thiel on google not innovating
[https://youtu.be/2Q26XIKtwXQ](https://youtu.be/2Q26XIKtwXQ)

------
natmaka
Those directly involved in innovation, especially scientists and technicians,
are more and more traveling, changing employers and above all communicating,
in all relevant meaning of this term here, therefore by 'publishing' as well
as by leaving information circulate informally among peers.

A high proportion of scientists go through major US universities. This imbues
them with certain ideas and creates social (IRL) networks where 'information
ought to be free'. Those who then work elsewhere (let's say 'return to China')
just cannot completely drop them, and some even broadcast those ideas and
associated behaviors.

Moreover the US supremacy on software provides them with increasing means to
effectively spy on research conducted in all countries.

Consequently, the US ability to benefit from innovation payed for by other
nations keeps growing.

In a way it is similar to the 80's "Strategic Defense Initiative" against the
USSR ('let them dissipate resources'), with the added bonus of being able to
rack a fair part of the benefits up.

------
ma2rten
I am not sure what he is talking about. I work on AI/Machine Learning and I
can't think of any major paper that came out of China.

~~~
arvinsim
I am ignorant on this field so please indulge me with this question:

Isn't in China's best interest not to make public any innovations that they
can leverage against other countries?

~~~
ma2rten
Maybe if it was some kind of military technology. But Schmidt's quote is about
publications and the article talks about civilian companies.

------
throwaway4good
It is the old military industrial complex thing again, isn't it?

Drumming up a scary vision of global war against China using flying AI-killer
robots in outer space while your companies are siphoning billions of dollars
out of defense budgets and you get your competition (Huawei, TikTok etc.)
banned on national security grounds.

Innovation comes from a functioning global market place of "ideas". It is a
1+1=3 game, not a zero-sum one.

Drop the new cold war and get back to doing business.

~~~
sprash
If you deal with unequal trade "partners" like China that grossly disregard
any intellectual property, don't care about labor security and environmental
standards and as a result have a massive trade surplus not based on innovation
but mostly based on cheap labor you have to draw a line at some point.

The biggest "ball" that was dropped on innovation in the US was to allow
companies to outsource their manufacturing to mainland china.

~~~
wombatmobile
China has rapidly become a global leader in automation. From 2018 to 2020, a
sales increase between 15 and 20 percent on average per year is possible for
industrial robots. Annual sales volume has currently reached the highest level
ever recorded for a single country: Within a year, sales in China surged by 27
percent to 87,000 units (2016).

[https://ifr.org/news/robots-china-breaks-historic-records-
in...](https://ifr.org/news/robots-china-breaks-historic-records-in-
automation)

------
dfee
Eric Schmidt is a household name around here. Doesn’t mean I give a damn about
what he thinks.

> Dr Schmidt, who is currently the Chair of the US Department of Defense's
> innovation board, said he thinks the US is still ahead of China in tech
> innovation, for now.

“Invest in my next project now, before it’s too late!” is what I read it as.

Edit: let me clarify. Innovation isn't zero-sum. I believe America is the most
fascinating experiment – balancing (albeit imperfectly) innovation with
ethics. There's a lot of innovation that can happen – and at a cost that's too
great.

For example, North Korea has demonstrated an ability to develop nuclear
weapons (deep technical advancement), and China can develop datasets on
millions (billions?) of people (broad technical advancement). But, the ethical
costs are too great. I don't want to celebrate cultures of innovation that do
this – foreign or domestic.

Sure, let's always have an eye on _increasing_ our investments against R&D –
fundamental and more broadly. But I'm no apologist for falling behind when the
truth is that _that view_ of innovation is a zero-sum game where we lose our
humanity in the process.

~~~
thewarrior
The United States balances innovation with ethics ?

The people of Hiroshima or the victims of agent orange might have something to
say about that.

~~~
swinglock
Do you actually think damages caused in actual wars are somehow comparable to
those in peace time technical development? What do you really mean by that?

~~~
wombatmobile
DuPont developed Teflon, then made billions by taking it to market without
developing a way to dispose of the toxic waste byproducts of the manufacturing
process. They just dumped it into virgin streams in West Virginia.

Then they avoided responsibility for the deaths they caused by spending
millions in the us court system to reduce the damages payout to less than one
years profits.

------
adamnemecek
The problem starts with culture. In high school, people want to be athletes
and pop singers or idk actors. Social skills are over valued. Also the way
science is taught in the US discourages exploration and encourages "draw
indide the circle". Not to method how hostile academia is.

~~~
visarga
Maybe it's a similar kind of trend where women in western countries prefer
non-STEM related fields on average as they have access to an abundance of more
attractive possibilities. It's a sign of social progress, as twisted as it
seems. Math is hard, people avoid it when they feel they can.

------
tgtweak
Pretty rich coming from a guy who's rule saw one of the most profitable
companies in the US sit on 50bn cash instead of investing it into innovation.

------
TaylorAlexander
I am always curious what people think about the following subject: Do you
believe patents promote innovation or hamper it? Certainly some business
models are dependent on patents and intellectual property restrictions, but do
you think it actually promotes innovation?

My own observation has been that with the 3D printer for example, innovation
was stagnant for the 20 years that they were under patent. Once the patents
expired, innovation in the space boomed and the price of a decent 3D printer
dropped by 100x.

So with the US so patent-heavy, are we actually making things more expensive
and crippling innovation? What would it do to the price of your washing
machine if it was open source hardware? Prusa Research has seemingly had good
competitive success even with all open source products and many clones, so I
feel like the economics can work. Would we be better off if we learned the
economics of open source hardware and pushed the industry in that direction?
Have any economists taken this question seriously?

This blog post on innovation from Bunnie Huang talks about the real on the
ground experience of innovation without IP restrictions here:
[https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=284](https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=284)

Libertarians make a good case against intellectual property restrictions too:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZgLJkj6m0A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZgLJkj6m0A)

~~~
angio
Historically, from steam engines to 3D printing, innovation has been stifled
by patents. The book "Against Intellectual Monopoly" [0] from Boldrin and
Levine (two economists, Levine website has more work by other economists)
gives an historical perspective on IP and offers answers to common (and less
common) rebuttals ("Why would anyone invest in research if another company can
just copy their work?").

[0]
[http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/against.htm](http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/against.htm)

~~~
TaylorAlexander
Wonderful thank you so much!

------
d3ntb3ev1l
I remember when Eric was CEO of Novell. When he left Sun someone high up sent
an email with the slight joke “short Novell” in it.

Eric is smart, no doubt but Google’s success was him getting out of the way
and letting him just talk to stroke his own ego

Now he has the government backing him to stroke his massive ego

Does anyone really think Eric does anything for “America’a” interest or your
interest?

------
einpoklum
> Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation

... yes, by:

* Letting capital become concentrated to an incredible level, especially in the tech sector.

* Degrading public education through under-funding, privatization (and perhaps problematic pedagogical approaches).

* Allowing infrastructure and welfare services to degrade, contributing to many people being saddled with "life overhead" that inhibits their disposition and availability to innovate technologically.

* Encouraging US residents, in particular students, to become saddled with large amounts of debt.

and I could go on.

Now, it's true that federal and state investment in research has dropped, but
Schmidt seems to be focused on getting what amounts to indirect government
subsidy for R&D.

------
amai
Not the 'US' people and government are to blame for this. It is more that the
big tech monopolies in the US certainly lead to less innovation.

~~~
harryf
Yeah this could be titled “Ex-CEO of D-o-D incubated monopoly, that actively
stifled innovation through products they later cancelled and anti-competitive
search practices complains about lack of innovation”

Not saying that’s the whole picture but there’s certainly some “pot calling
the kettle” going on here.

Edit: Perhaps a real issue would be looking at how big-tech lobbies government
and its impact on innovation

------
uniqueid
It might help if researchers had a search engine that returned results for the
_actual search terms_ they requested.

------
didibus
> "America does not have enough people with those skills."

Seriously, I feel the US has a big education problem, with part of it being
cultural I think. Seems being educated, knowledgeable, having expertise,
learning about science and technology, medicine and law, just isn't valued
anymore, in fact it's almost being denigrated and shamed.

What I see instead is people pushing for anti-intellectualism and valuing the
"college dropouts".

There's also just the quality and access to education seems it's getting worse
and worse.

I don't know, but it frustrates me that the truth is the US doesn't have the
know how that its companies require anymore, and has to either outsource the
work or import workers who do from elsewhere.

~~~
fiblye
> in fact it's almost being denigrated and shamed.

"Almost" really isn't necessary there anymore. There's a growing group that
believes virtually all doctors, scientists, and professionals within certain
fields are "in on it" and part of some big conspiracy to do some vague,
undefined thing that'll take down America and corrupt their children.

These used to just be a fringe group. Now it feels like about half the people
I know are buying into that stuff. Even some college-educated professionals
think only their field is valid, and everyone else is part of "them."

~~~
RestlessMind
> There's a growing group that believes ... certain fields are "in on it" ...
> some big conspiracy to do some vague, undefined thing

I mean, I won't fault anyone if they are jaded and distrust everything the
"experts" have to say these days. Look at what we witnessed in the last 20 or
so years:

1\. Iraq war, where our intelligence agencies were sure about WMDs and the
senate voted 97-0 to wage a war that ended up wasting thousands of American
lives, trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives along
with destabilizing the entire region.

2\. Financial crisis, where the so-called masters of the Universe from Wall St
crashed the entire economy and the "maestro" Greenspan denied the existence of
a housing bubble in 2005.

3\. Recent revelations that scientific studies about the ill effects of sugar
were suppressed in 60's / 70's and instead sugar lobby spent money on
deflecting blame to fat.

4\. Snowden revelations.

5\. Details uncovered about the Harvard admissions process which show how the
elites are favored via legacy or obscure sports admissions.

6\. TPP, especially the way it was conducted where the elected representatives
didn't have any access to the details of the negotiations, while the lobbyists
from the key industries had full access.

You keep reading that kind of stuff and you start discounting "elite opinions"
more and more.

~~~
pbourke
> Iraq war, where our intelligence agencies were sure about WMDs and the
> senate voted 97-0 to wage a war that ended up wasting thousands of American
> lives, trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives along
> with destabilizing the entire region.

My impression is that the war was a solution in search of a problem. The
administration leaned on the intelligence community until the right conclusion
was produced.

~~~
Gibbon1
Since Vietnam the war community has wanted one do over after another. To prove
that war has a useful role in foreign policy.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_Syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_Syndrome)

------
ddmma
Ex-Google China boss, Kay Fu Lee in AI Powers explained how China made their
innovative environmental based on better wilder clones that are just focused
on making billions, starting locally now globally aka TikTok

------
sorval
Google plus, google glass, google health, google reader, meebo, picasa, google
express. The list is long. "dropped the ball on innovation," indeed.

------
heimatau
Is no one going to talk about the hypocrisy? Eric Schmidt isn't a beacon of
sensible innovation pushing America forward. Peter Thiel called him out eight
years ago [1] and I strongly encourage you to watch the 4 min clip.

[1] -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Q26XIKtwXQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Q26XIKtwXQ)

------
say_it_as_it_is
If the only companies that can realistically harness the value of academic
research are the top 5 tech companies, then Schmidt is essentially advocating
billions of dollars of government-backed R&D for them. Would Siri, Alexa, or
Google Assistant be where they are today without prior work? Who else has
benefitted?

Maybe companies such as OpenAI are the answer to this problem?

------
DrAwdeOccarim
Main focus is on IT, and sure maybe the US dropped the ball somewhere there,
but the US is far beyond the leading biotech innovator in the world. This is
harder to oust because of the regulatory standard (maybe a little eroded now,
but not much) to sell products in the US market.

------
jtdev
The Eric Schmidt who presided over the largest web marketing company in the
world? The company that spent its innovation capital refining new and
interesting ways to sell more shit to people?

------
JJMcJ
Google a company that scoops up PhDs and has them figure out which ads to show
based on the last thing you looked at is a mighty engine of innovation.

------
lazyjones
Is this to be interpreted as a political message in light of the upcoming
elections?

It certainly doesn't sound very insightful and he should know better. China
has perfected the schooling system and employee discipline, this gives them a
considerable advantage. US schools and colleges are a politicized mess, kids
are distracted by "diversity" and other decadent but useless ideas. Perhaps
it's hard to see through the eyes of someone who hired only from top
universities (though they are messed up too), but I don't believe his
statement was actually honest.

------
diegoholiveira
That's not a US problem. It's a western problem.

------
monadic2
Ahh yes because you think Eric Schmidt, you definitely think "now this is what
the future should look like".

------
WealthVsSurvive
I have one sentence that could change that for you and correct US trajectory:
all software is prior art.

------
nullappeal
ha! 8 years ago - Peter Thiel: Google has $50B, doesn't innovate. Source:
[https://youtu.be/2Q26XIKtwXQ](https://youtu.be/2Q26XIKtwXQ)

------
huffmsa
Maybe Google should stop buying and mothballing smaller companies.

------
zerop
Does innovation always depend on state funding spent on RnD?

------
moneytide1
I saw a "Just Have A Think" YouTube channel video recently describing the 1MV
HVDC line being built across China. It is part of Belt&Road infrastructure
project and will allow them to distribute excess loads to different time zones
without skin effect losses of an AC line. This is a part of their COVID
stimulus injection.

When American $1.2k per citizen landed in accounts, I remember checking local
Walmarts in the weeks that followed and I noticed all the TVs were gone.

With such a system, China could even launch excess solar as far as Germany in
their afternoon peak sun angle when German duck curve morning peak begins?

~~~
jeffbee
Really, you "checked local walmarts" to inventory all their televisions?
That's the biggest bunch of horse shit I've ever read, even on HN.

According to the government, only 7% of recipients used any part of their
stimulus money to buy household items.

[https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-9/receipt-and-use-of-
sti...](https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-9/receipt-and-use-of-stimulus-
payments-in-the-time-of-the-covid-19-pandemic.htm)

~~~
Taek
I think it remains a valid question though. What if we had handled the
unemployment by creating infrastructure jobs instead of universal handouts?

That has the added benefit of increasing the productive output of our economy.

~~~
temporalparts
The problem is that bankruptcies, starvation, inability to maintain your
car/house/children/job, and businesses collapsing due to the sudden demand
shock are all extremely expensive for the economy in the long run. Those types
of losses which these universal handouts are intended for are quick to inflict
and long to recover from. As an example, if your normally profitable
restaurant goes under and forced to permanently close due to insolvency, it'll
take years to build back up a similar restaurant with a similar rapport,
client base, efficiency and success. The long term economic impact of these
handouts would easily outweigh the infrastructure investments you are
proposing.

When times are good though, we should be increasing taxation and _investing_
in infrastructure. Instead, the US Republican party sought to create a massive
tax cut during economic boom, which means that we are in a worse financial
situation when times have become rough.

~~~
conductr
I can get behind most of what you said except the idea that tax policy should
match the economic situation of the day. We need stable tax policies that
normalize for the booms/busts.

------
jokull
The book Doing Capitalism (2nd edition) does a good job of explaining the
innovation process at this national interest level, and how it proceeds down
to the private sector where it adapts to business models. Highly recommended.

------
pritovido
Give me a break. I have been living in China and this man has no idea about
what he is talking about. He is talking about pre-bubble China.

People are comparing the official numbers of Governments on the West, like
Covid expansion, economy growth, investment on R&D and so on with the
Chinese's. But the Chinese numbers are just a lie.

You just can not trust whatever numbers the Chinese give you. You can not
trust any government in the West either but those governments have a
democracy, journalists that can expose the truth or reality,competition and
super super important, rule of Law.

In the West you can expose what your government does bad by law. It is not
perfect but orders of magnitude better than on China.

For example journalists or scientists can investigate covid traceability, in
China it is just officially forbidden.

Belgium has one of the biggest official numbers on coronavirus deaths just
because they lie less than other Governments like Spain that have actually
bigger real numbers. And Chinese numbers are in another league.

You just can not compare the numbers given by democratic governments with
those of totalitarian regimes, because on paper they are fantastic, but in
reality they are not true.

In China everything is controlled by the CCP, including (specially) the
statistics.

People that have never lived there just can not comprehend how amazing are the
structures that we have in the West(that took centuries to develop).

We take those structures for granted and believe other countries have those
and are playing with the same rules as we do, but they do not.

China has lots of problems today, floods and covid had created havoc in the
economy, much more than in the West. It is not easy to feed the enormous
population they have.

But you don't know about it because giving bad news about China is just
forbidden. In fact China had censored Western articles about China(Do you want
face masks? We are sorry but until you remove that and that person that
criticizes China on your media you will not have face masks.)

The population is growing older fast, they have less women than men because
they abort girls and they can not do anything about that because abortion
there is super easy.

When the economy was booming everything was great. People lived a tough life
but expected their children to life much better. When the bubble burst is
completely different.

The US has much brighter future than China. I say that as a European. People
on USA have kids and they have much more resources because of the small
population density.

------
nix23
Funny that he says that, Google is probably the lamest most un-visionary Corp
ever...ok maybe second after Facebook. From a Product standpoint they invented
Streetview that's it.

~~~
aembleton
Didn't they invent Bigtable?

~~~
nix23
Your are right, that was really the only invention i could think of, but since
it's not a customer product i didn't listen it (with Customer product i mean
Gmail/Maps etc).

Gosh imagine that, even a former online Bookseller (amazon) is more innovative
than google.

------
trident1000
Google has had no serious innovation in 20 years. Issue the dividend already
and stop calling yourself a technology growth company.

~~~
SamReidHughes
Automatic translation, alpha go, google maps UI, ...

~~~
lobotryas
We’re talking about paradigm shifts and not just incremental innovation (both
are important, but there is a huge difference).

~~~
anticensor
Paradigm shift can also happen incrementally. Not every revolution is sudden.

------
aww_dang
Allowing skilled workers or students to immigrate is one thing. Turning a
blind eye to CCP/PLA espionage and IP theft is another. It is misleading and
illogical to conflate the two.

Given that Schmidt is an intelligent person capable of parsing logic, is it
fair to ask if he has ulterior motives here?

