Besides military problems, we face environmental catastrophe, which Silicon Valley's ethos that technology will solve it, when it's mostly exacerbating it, and I expect Schmidt will end up more than "wrong, terribly wrong."
That idiot ordered to kill president Ngo only to complain later:
> By the mid-1960's, Mr. McNamara says, it was clear that "political stability did not exist and was unlikely ever to be achieved"
You can not call this just an incompetency. He is a type of a person who can not be entrusted with lacing his own shoes, let alone statecraft.
People must stop decrying types like McNamara, Kisinger, Dulles as some kind of "smart calculating types." They were top idiots at the apex of power, and their coming was a prelude to what America got itself in now.
Errol Morris' documentary on McNamara, The Fog of War is well worth your time to watch.
The parallels with Donald Rumsfeld's time as Secretary of Defense are remarkable - it seems Rumsfeld was making all the moves and mistakes that McNamara made. I fully expect Eric Schmidt to suffer the same fate.
The title refers to individuals who at the time were widely admired -- including of course Robert McNamara. These individuals were of keen intellect, and had been educated at Ivy League and equivalent schools; many had PhD's. They had a reputation as successful managers and leaders who prided themselves on straight talk. And yet, these "uber-men," working together as a team with the best of intentions, gradually managed to entangle the US into the hell of the Vietnam war, by many accounts mismanaged the war, and, last but least, deceived the public about it.
Schmidt and McNamara are similar, but not alike enough to warrant prediction, I think.
Reading through their Wiki pages briefly, the thing that stands out to me the most are the ages. McNamara was 42 when he became SecDef. Schmidt is currently 65. Those 23 years matter on the back end. Schmidt may have the dynamism still, but his career is set and his life's trajectory is on the downslope. McNamara's career apexed with the SecDef role. He was at the height of his working life. Sure, Schmidt is smart and hard working, but that fire doesn't seem to be there like it was with McNamara, understandably.
McNamara’s Folly is a great book on one of his more idiotic policies, and a great meditation on the dehumanizing cruelty that results from basing policy on false but ideologically pleasing assumptions.
> In an interview, Mr. Schmidt — by turns thoughtful, pedagogical and hubristic...
> While that philosophy has led to social networks that spread disinformation and other unintended consequences, Mr. Schmidt said he was convinced that applying new and relatively untested technology to complex situations — including deadly ones — would make service members more efficient and bolster the United States in its competition with China.
If the NYT would cast an equally cynical eye at politicians as they are doing at Eric Schmidt, it might actually be productive.
To me, this article is so drenched in loathing that it's hard to read. (E.g., the second paragraph that I highlighted seems to misattribute elements of the authors' opinions to Eric Schmidt.)
I agree that the article is a little heavy on the author's opinion — the quote above neglects to put the perils of software and machine learning in any kind of relation to their positive impact, which makes it sort of pointless. Also, headlining a section "I don't care", when the (paraphrased) quote is "I don't care why people listen to me, as long as I have a positive impact", is just ridiculous.
I’m pretty critical of the NYT, but I don’t think this article is particularly biased. It’s a fairly in-depth look at his actions over the last few years and is mostly just descriptive.
Do you really think the NYT is uncritical of politicians?
They're extremely critical of anything the GOP does, and moderately negative on the populist left. Maybe they're too cosy with corporate Democrats, but those are the same Davos set as Schmidt et al.
If anything, I feel like the Silicon Valley titans have gotten a free pass from the media for too long. It's only in the past few years that issues like data privacy or monopoly power have started to get coverage in major media after decades of the EFF or Mozilla banging their lonely drums.
"seems to", "is drenched to me" -- your comment is just the usual padding without content. All you're saying is that you don't like it, but have not a single thing about it you can correct.
I haven't Eric since his comments on the "creepy line" and "if you have something you want to hide, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place". Seems like he'd love to oil an authoritarian apparatus.
>“You absolutely suck at machine learning,” Mr. Schmidt told General Thomas, the officer recalled. “If I got under your tent for a day, I could solve most of your problems.” General Thomas said he was so offended that he wanted to throw Mr. Schmidt out of the car, but refrained.
Yeah because exactly what the world needs is a bunch of Machine Learning algorithms thrown at matters of life and death and strategic decision making of the US military.
Over the last ten years technology has really turned into a cult. I think Eric should go and watch Colossus: The Forbin Project if he's never seen it.
I'm not an idealist over here, but It's really weird to me that when he looks at all of the US government's tech problems, he singles out the military as the part that it is really important to improve. But I guess it doesn't satisfy his ego to try and ensure the IRS' website works properly when addresses don't work unless they're all upper case.
Not only that but does he even have a clue about the DDS and USDS for civil and military digital transformation groups, where they select a lot of people to fix the issues he's talking about to embed in areas and build solutions? A lot of former SV people (they brag about ex Googlers) so this comes off as pretty funny and tone deaf by Schmidt but whatever. Why support existing transformation structures when you can fix everything in one day under a tent (to paraphrase his own words, if they are even accurate)?
But I'm equally mad at not wanting to fix boring infrastructure first, like parent said. I see a lot of high quality transformation efforts, albeit anecdotally, in the military. Can we focus on the more boring civic systems, lest we find out that not only COBOL unemployment platforms are in trouble?
Improve, or get his cut from? Schmidt is invested in several military startups and of course Google. So he’s nothing special; no one wants to make the military more efficient. It’s just a convenient channel for transferring money to contractors while soldiers are short on body armor.
The DoD is also the single largest conglomeration of systems in the USG. NIH and DoE would also (presumably) be real benefits, but that’d be two different organizations to hack through.
Possible explanation: The military can expend large amounts of money with little oversight - even when there are no results, poor results, or when money just falls through the cracks.
It’s much more challenging to make software for the IRS, healthcare, and civilian agencies that operate within the United States with direct impact on the lives of US Citizens.
[+] [-] spodek|5 years ago|reply
Then came Vietnam. Eventually McNamara would admit
> "We were wrong, terribly wrong. We owe it to future generations to explain why."
You can read more in "McNamara Recalls, and Regrets, Vietnam" https://www.nytimes.com/1995/04/09/world/mcnamara-recalls-an....
Besides military problems, we face environmental catastrophe, which Silicon Valley's ethos that technology will solve it, when it's mostly exacerbating it, and I expect Schmidt will end up more than "wrong, terribly wrong."
[+] [-] baybal2|5 years ago|reply
> By the mid-1960's, Mr. McNamara says, it was clear that "political stability did not exist and was unlikely ever to be achieved"
You can not call this just an incompetency. He is a type of a person who can not be entrusted with lacing his own shoes, let alone statecraft.
People must stop decrying types like McNamara, Kisinger, Dulles as some kind of "smart calculating types." They were top idiots at the apex of power, and their coming was a prelude to what America got itself in now.
[+] [-] smackay|5 years ago|reply
The parallels with Donald Rumsfeld's time as Secretary of Defense are remarkable - it seems Rumsfeld was making all the moves and mistakes that McNamara made. I fully expect Eric Schmidt to suffer the same fate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fog_of_War
[+] [-] cs702|5 years ago|reply
"The Best and the Brightest" (https://www.amazon.com/Best-Brightest-David-Halberstam/dp/04...)
The title refers to individuals who at the time were widely admired -- including of course Robert McNamara. These individuals were of keen intellect, and had been educated at Ivy League and equivalent schools; many had PhD's. They had a reputation as successful managers and leaders who prided themselves on straight talk. And yet, these "uber-men," working together as a team with the best of intentions, gradually managed to entangle the US into the hell of the Vietnam war, by many accounts mismanaged the war, and, last but least, deceived the public about it.
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Balgair|5 years ago|reply
Reading through their Wiki pages briefly, the thing that stands out to me the most are the ages. McNamara was 42 when he became SecDef. Schmidt is currently 65. Those 23 years matter on the back end. Schmidt may have the dynamism still, but his career is set and his life's trajectory is on the downslope. McNamara's career apexed with the SecDef role. He was at the height of his working life. Sure, Schmidt is smart and hard working, but that fire doesn't seem to be there like it was with McNamara, understandably.
[+] [-] ZhuanXia|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] carbocation|5 years ago|reply
> While that philosophy has led to social networks that spread disinformation and other unintended consequences, Mr. Schmidt said he was convinced that applying new and relatively untested technology to complex situations — including deadly ones — would make service members more efficient and bolster the United States in its competition with China.
If the NYT would cast an equally cynical eye at politicians as they are doing at Eric Schmidt, it might actually be productive.
To me, this article is so drenched in loathing that it's hard to read. (E.g., the second paragraph that I highlighted seems to misattribute elements of the authors' opinions to Eric Schmidt.)
[+] [-] klum|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] keiferski|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ForHackernews|5 years ago|reply
They're extremely critical of anything the GOP does, and moderately negative on the populist left. Maybe they're too cosy with corporate Democrats, but those are the same Davos set as Schmidt et al.
If anything, I feel like the Silicon Valley titans have gotten a free pass from the media for too long. It's only in the past few years that issues like data privacy or monopoly power have started to get coverage in major media after decades of the EFF or Mozilla banging their lonely drums.
[+] [-] einpoklum|5 years ago|reply
You forget what the NYT produces... it is Manufacturing Consent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
[+] [-] mellow2020|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ur-whale|5 years ago|reply
Actually, it's kind of fun to see the lefties attacking one another.
More please.
[+] [-] pcdoodle|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Ackshully|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] einpoklum|5 years ago|reply
Also, Schmidt could solve a lot of problems by stopping the censorship of non-mainstream content on Google Search, YouTube and possibly elsewhere.
Finally, he could solve a bunch of problems by _stopping_ Google's collaboration with the US government and the NSA.
[+] [-] Barrin92|5 years ago|reply
Yeah because exactly what the world needs is a bunch of Machine Learning algorithms thrown at matters of life and death and strategic decision making of the US military.
Over the last ten years technology has really turned into a cult. I think Eric should go and watch Colossus: The Forbin Project if he's never seen it.
[+] [-] 0xy|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] naringas|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Gibbon1|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] lowdose|5 years ago|reply
http://archive.is/RN8ZA
[+] [-] Eridrus|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 616c|5 years ago|reply
But I'm equally mad at not wanting to fix boring infrastructure first, like parent said. I see a lot of high quality transformation efforts, albeit anecdotally, in the military. Can we focus on the more boring civic systems, lest we find out that not only COBOL unemployment platforms are in trouble?
[+] [-] jkestner|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Traster|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pc86|5 years ago|reply
Problems like the IRS website are are about incompetence at the lowest levels, not incompetence at the highest levels.
[+] [-] brown9-2|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Armisael16|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zarkov99|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] einpoklum|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mch82|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] boublepop|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] remir|5 years ago|reply
That being said, I am not American, so my opinion on this is irrelevant.
[+] [-] ws66|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] obarthelemy|5 years ago|reply