A lot of things are seriously wrong with this interview Eric Schmidt gave at Stanford, but you just have to love not only how these techbro billionaires think they’re above the law but the nonchalance with which they claim this as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
[W]hat you would do if you’re a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, which hopefully all of you will be, is if it took off, then you’d hire a whole bunch of lawyers to go clean the mess up, right? But if nobody uses your product, it doesn’t matter that you stole all the content. And do not quote me. [“you’re on camera”] Yeah, that’s right. But you see my point. In other words, Silicon Valley will run these tests and clean up the mess. And that’s typically how those things are done.
Then there’s this gem:
Google decided that work-life balance and going home early and working from home was more important than winning. And the reason startups work is because people work like hell.
Yes, indeed, all those people working “like hell” for startups who get fucked over in the end when investors either push for an IPO or, alternatively, to sell it to one of the giant tech oligopolies, so that they and the startups’ CEOs can line their pockets.
Also, at time Schmidt falls into ramblings not unlike a public figure we’ve all come to know way too well:
And I’m talking to the big companies and the big companies are telling me that they need 10 billion, 20 billion, 50 billion, 100 billion. Stargate is a 100 billion, right? That’s very, very hard. I talked to Sam Altman is a close friend. He believes that it’s going to take about 300 billion, maybe more. I pointed out to him that I’d done the calculation on the amount of energy required. And I, and I then in the spirit of full disclosure, went to the white house on Friday and told them that we need to become best friends with Canada because Canada has really nice people, helped invent AI, and lots of hydropower. Because we as a country do not have enough power to do this. The alternative is to have the Arabs fund it. And I like the Arabs personally. I spent lots of time there, right?
Jebus. These techbro billionaires really are the French aristocracy of our age. It’s high time we held them accountable.
Addendum AUG 16
Originally, I linked this linked-list entry’s title to the YouTube video from Schmidt’s Stanford Q&A, but as Schmidt keeps scrubbing it from the internet because “he misspoke,” I replaced it with a link to an article at The Verge, which also links to the full transcript.
Addendum AUG 18
New video uploads keep popping up, maybe this one will last a bit.