If you read nothing else today...

... make sure you check out the WaPo interview of Eric Schmidt, Executive chairman of Google in the wake of his testimony before Congress.


On the nature of his testimony:

So we get hauled in front of the Congress for developing a product that’s free, that serves a billion people. Okay? I mean, I don’t know how to say it any clearer. I mean, it’s fine. It’s their job. But it’s not like we raised prices. We could lower prices from free to…lower than free? You see what I’m saying?

On regulation:

Washington—having spent a lot of time there, I grew up there and have spent a lot of time there recently—is largely defined by detailed analytical views and policy choices that are not very good. You know, each policy choice has a winner and a loser, right? Somebody’s ox is getting gored. They’re complex arguments: They’re economic and political and social, and everyone has an opinion on those. Here, the arguments are, how do we make something that affects a million people? How do we change the economics of an industry?

And one of the consequences of regulation is regulation prohibits real innovation, because the regulation essentially defines a path to follow—which by definition has a bias to the current outcome, because it’s a path for the current outcome.

And the answer to regulation with respect to Washington not screwing things up:

You’re asking it the way an engineer asks. It’s not an answer, it’s a journey. If it were an answer, then after we had done our thing and told everyone to leave us alone, they would have left us alone. That’s not how Washington works. That’s not how government works. It’s naïve, on our part. So the modern model is that we spend a lot of time trying to make sure the government understands how large the contribution is that technology has made to the GDP of the country. One of our quotes: Fifteen percent of the GDP growth has been due to the two-and-a-half percent of the economy that’s IT. In other words, don’t screw that up.

On rent seeking:

Let me give you a counter example. Now there are startups in Washington. And these startups have the interesting property that they’re founded by people who were policymakers, let’s say in telecommunications. They’re very clever people, and they’ve figured out a way in regulation to discriminate, to find a new satellite spectrum or a new frequency or whatever. They immediately hired a whole bunch of lobbyists. They raised some money to do that. And they’re trying to innovate through the regulation. So that’s what passes for innovation in Washington. And again, God bless them. But they have a political strategy to get their particular legislation and niche approved. That’s unheard of here.

And the counter concept to that:

The conclusion that we came to [as far back as when I was at Sun Microsystems] is that there are two kinds of lobbying. And this, I think, is grossly unfair but kind of true. There’s the kind of lobbying where you pay an ex-senator to get the current senator to write a sentence into a bill, and there’s no confusion as to what this is about. You are representing your corporate interest. It’s specific to your company. In Washington, for example, you can pay an ex-person $50,000 to arrange a meeting to get that process, to get those five sentences written in this bill, and so forth and so on.

The punch line is, we concluded that we didn’t want to do that as industry, and certainly not at Sun. We wanted to lobby based on ideas. And as far as I know, every company that I’ve worked with—and I was part of the Business Software Alliance and all these other groups—we all sort of agree with this. There’s a line that we’re not willing to cross. So what we do from a leadership perspective, at least in terms of political leadership, is we talk about ideas. And inevitably what happens is everyone says ‘yes,’ yet inevitably on the Hill you have an older gentleman or lady.

On immigration with respect to the tech sector:

A classic example is H-1B visas. Now, the following arguments are so obvious, it’s hard for me to believe that anyone would believe that they’re false. These industries are full of very smart people. There are very smart people who don’t live in America. They come to America, we educate them at the best universities, they are smarter than I am, and then we kick them out. If they stayed in the country, let’s just review: They would create jobs, pay taxes, have high incomes, pay more taxes than the average American, and generally increase the GDP of the country. I hope my argument is clear, and if it isn’t I’ll start screaming about it. It’s the stupidest policy the government has with respect to high tech. So you have this conversation and people say “yes,” and you say, ”This is the single thing that you can do that will lead to innovation occurring in our country, and the future economic wealth of our country.” And then they don’t act.

Check out the rest of the interview at the link above.

Video clip of the day

Consider this a follow-up post to the economics lesson given to us by the President a few days ago.


Because it's A Tea M party, y'all!

"Do you know how stupid that sounds?"

So it wasn't Bush's fault?

Just sayin'...

Evidence outlined in a Pentagon contractor report suggests that financial subversion carried out by unknown parties, such as terrorists or hostile nations, contributed to the 2008 economic crash by covertly using vulnerabilities in the U.S. financial system.

The unclassified 2009 report “Economic Warfare: Risks and Responses” by financial analyst Kevin D. Freeman, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Times, states that “a three-phased attack was planned and is in the process against the United States economy.”

While economic analysts and a final report from the federal government's Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission blame the crash on such economic factors as high-risk mortgage lending practices and poor federal regulation and supervision, the Pentagon contractor adds a new element: “outside forces,” a factor the commission did not examine.

“There is sufficient justification to question whether outside forces triggered, capitalized upon or magnified the economic difficulties of 2008,” the report says, explaining that those domestic economic factors would have caused a “normal downturn” but not the “near collapse” of the global economic system that took place.

Suspects include financial enemies in Middle Eastern states, Islamic terrorists, hostile members of the Chinese military, or government and organized crime groups in Russia, Venezuela or Iran. Chinese military officials publicly have suggested using economic warfare against the U.S.

In an interview with The Times, Mr. Freeman said his report provided enough theoretical evidence for an economic warfare attack that further forensic study was warranted.

However...

Paul Bracken, a Yale University professor who has studied economic warfare, said he saw “no convincing evidence that ‘outside forces’ colluded to bring about the 2008 crisis.”

“There were outside players in the market” for unregulated credit default swaps, Mr. Bracken said in an e-mail. “Foreign banks and hedge funds play the shorts all the time too. But suggestions of an organized targeted attack for strategic reasons don’t seem to me to be plausible.”

And check this out:

Regardless of the report’s findings, U.S. officials and outside analysts said the Pentagon, the Treasury Department and U.S. intelligence agencies are not aggressively studying the threats to the United States posed by economic warfare and financial terrorism.

“Nobody wants to go there,” one official said.

A copy of the report also was provided to the recently concluded Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, but the commission also declined to address the possibility of economic warfare in its final report.

Officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said senior Pentagon policymakers, including Michael Vickers, an assistant defense secretary in charge of special operations, blocked further study, saying the Pentagon was not the appropriate agency to assess economic warfare and financial terrorism risks.

Mr. Vickers declined to be interviewed but, through a spokesman, said he did not say economic warfare was not an area for the Pentagon to study, and that he did not block further study.

Mr. Vickers is awaiting Senate confirmation on his promotion to be undersecretary of defense for intelligence.

(italics, ours)

Yeah, it may be a thorny issue and inconvenience some people but someone ought to be checking into this, no?

So, what do you all think?

We anxiously await feedback from commenters who have much more experience than we do in IT and cyber-security.

Pedro from housekeeping wouldn't be blamed for thinking there oughta be a law

The employees at an indoor mall witness, via security monitors, one of the hazards of modern life.

Your cultural red meat of the day...

... unless, that is, you own one.

iPad owners are "selfish elites" and critics are "independent geeks", according to a psychological study, the results of which were published in Wired.

According to Koelkebeck, owners are six-times more likely to be "...wealthy, well educated, power-hungry, over achieving, sophisticated, unkind and non-altruistic 30-50 year-olds." Yikes!

The analysis of the iPad owners led one to the inevitable conclusion that they are work-a-holics who, according to the test results yearned to have yet another screen in their lives that delivered an additional way to stay engage with the things they love the most.

The price tag helped keep iPad owners in the category of those able to spend money on non-essential items in the midst of the high unemployment and mortgage foreclosures.

Any way you look at it: Battle of the nerds

Video clip of the day

Cochlear implants for infants. Jonathan hears for the first time.



It is entirely appropriate to question whether this sort of medical technology/innovation sees the light of day under ObamaCare considering its obsession with controlling medical costs.

Awww... (UPDATED)

(please scroll to bottom of post for update. Thanks.)


The whiner-in-chief is bummed about technology or something.

US President Barack Obama lamented Sunday that in the iPad and Xbox era, information had become a diversion that was imposing new strains on democracy, in his latest critique of modern media.

Obama, who often chides journalists and cable news outlets for obsessing with political horse race coverage rather than serious issues, told a class of graduating university students that education was the key to progress.

"You're coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don't always rank all that high on the truth meter," Obama said at Hampton University, Virginia.

"With iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations, -- none of which I know how to work -- information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation," Obama said.

He bemoaned the fact that "some of the craziest claims can quickly claim traction," in the clamor of certain blogs and talk radio outlets.

"All of this is not only putting new pressures on you, it is putting new pressures on our country and on our democracy."

(italics, ours)

Wasn't this supposed be the most tech-savvy president and presidential administration of all time? Wasn't Team Obama's alleged abilities to connect with young voters via social mediums like Twitter and FaceBook an oft-repeated meme' and big reason for his victory in 2008?

Maybe he's just venting because it was a crappy week.. and it was but his hey, I'm just a regular guy schtick rings hollow. Maybe he doesn't know how to use all that techy stuff as he claims but tough luck there, champ - when you're the hippest person to ever walk the planet, people are going to hold you to it.



(UPDATE #1): The irony of the hippest and most tech-savvy President evah going grumpy old man on us, shrouded the larger issue in his Hampton University commmencement address and that is his very curious take on the explosion of information that is now available to us because of the digital revolution is somehow bad for democracy.

Sure, there is the danger of facts being misrepresented and falsehoods being represented as truth but since when was any of that not the case? And we're looking at you, old state-controlled media.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out who the President is lashing out at as the second-to-last paragraph of the pull quote indicates (to wit, the right blogosphere has been opining on the possibility that the Gulf oil spill is Obama's Katrina. It's far to early to speculate and we'll wait until more facts are brought to light before we pass any judgement, if at all).

And in totally related news to the President having a tough time of late controlling the media narrative you'd be pleased to know that the FCC's Diversity Chief (the first position to suffer the budget axe in a BwD administration, btw) Mark Lloyd is a big fan of that champion of free speech and opposition politics, Hugo Chazez.

Two years ago, Lloyd stated, "In Venezuela, with Chavez, is really an incredible revolution -- a democratic revolution. To begin to put in place things that are going to have an impact on the people of Venezuela." Lloyd also commented that when independent media outlets criticized Chavez's policies, the Venezuelan dictator "began to take very seriously the media in his country." Lloyd's comments came in the middle of Chavez's two-year run of closing down nearly every single privately-owned media outlet in Venezuela, thereby ending all criticism of the government.

A long but good read from the American Spectator, here, on just what is in store for the internet, TV, radio and free speech, in general, if the politically-appointed folks at the levers of power within the FCC get their way.