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

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.

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.

> 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.

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...

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?)

"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.

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/ 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.

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.

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".

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)

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.

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.

Thiel on google not innovating https://youtu.be/2Q26XIKtwXQ

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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?

> 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.

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.

It might help if researchers had a search engine that returned results for the actual search terms they requested.

> "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.

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

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

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

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?

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

Maybe Google should stop buying and mothballing smaller companies.

Does innovation always depend on state funding spent on RnD?

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?