[HN Gopher] Eric Schmidt's influence on U.S. science policy
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Eric Schmidt's influence on U.S. science policy
Author : walterbell
Score : 141 points
Date : 2022-04-17 02:58 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.politico.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.politico.com)
| cycomanic wrote:
| For someone from outside the US this is an insane read. Private
| companies paying for government employee saleries? The government
| agencies even looking for private funding for employees? How can
| that not raise all sorts of crazy ethical alarm bells?!
|
| To me it also illustrates why people should never be able to
| become this wealthy. If they really are interested in the
| government having adequate funding to pursue what is important
| they would pay adequate taxes (and push for tax reform so this
| affects everyone) and not use their wealth to push very specific
| agendas that that mix personal, financial interest with social
| agendas (which they probably say is their only interest). It
| destroys the whole notion of democracy. So even if they are only
| interested in the "good for the country" it is specifically not
| the good as determined by the democratic process. Instead their
| circumvent the democratic process (using the immense wealth) to
| push their own notion.
|
| As a side note, why is the Biden administration deputy CTO a
| former lawyer?
| [deleted]
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| "Private companies paying for government employee saleries? The
| government agencies even looking for private funding for
| employees? How can that not raise all sorts of crazy ethical
| alarm bells?!"
|
| It gets even better: Facebook financed the 2020 election in
| some counties: https://www.npr.org/2020/12/08/943242106/how-
| private-money-f...
| cycomanic wrote:
| ... I'm lost for words. The crazyness about this is not so
| much that they got money from Zuckerberg, but that they had
| to look for it! I'm showing my lack of knowledge about the US
| political system now, but did the founding fathers not
| provision somehow that the elections as the central element
| of the democratic process must have guaranteed adequate
| funding, without influence from any other government entity?
| cush wrote:
| Big tech is quickly turning into what the tobacco industry was in
| the 50s. At least tobacco kills people when they're older,
| whereas social media robs young people of their mental health
| while simultaneously threatening truth and democracy.
| mritun wrote:
| Would you say the same of the cable industry? What about Fox
| and MSNBC channels that spew hate and conspiracy theories non-
| stop?
| tzs wrote:
| > What about Fox and MSNBC channels that spew hate and
| conspiracy theories non-stop?
|
| For those of us who don't watch either of them, does anyone
| have a few examples of hate and conspiracy theories they have
| pushed?
| tonguez wrote:
| "For those of us who don't watch either of them, does
| anyone have a few examples of hate and conspiracy theories
| they have pushed?"
|
| saddam was involved in 911, iraq has wmds, russiagate,
| syrian gas attacks, bengazi was caused by a youtube video,
| theres an epidemic law abiding black people being regularly
| executed by white cops for no reason, russias invasion of
| ukraine was unprovoked, jan6 event where there are videos
| of cops opening the doors and allowing people into the
| capital was worse than 911, etc
| morelisp wrote:
| > russias invasion of ukraine was unprovoked
|
| How is this hate and/or a conspiracy theory, even if it
| was true?
| scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
| Yes
| tjpnz wrote:
| At least with cable everyone gets the opportunity to see what
| everyone else is watching. Content on social media feeds is
| made specifically for the person viewing it, who knows what
| dark rabbit holes the people you interact with on a daily
| basis are being led down? It used to be that we could
| construct a theory of mind for these individuals, you could
| even argue that it was a defining feature of our society
| enhancing social cohesion. Not even the worst of the cable
| news channels can lay claim to destroying that.
| cush wrote:
| You absolutely nailed it.
| ttoinou wrote:
| You could also make an effort to watch things others watch,
| instead of believing all information will come to you
| without any effort
| cush wrote:
| What control do we have to do so? You're served what
| you're served.
| sitkack wrote:
| I'd love to see a log of every ad sent to my ip address by
| how much it cost to place and how much it earned the site.
| psyc wrote:
| I would, but big tech is outpacing them in power and
| influence. Most people seemed to see Don't Look Up as a
| warning about climate change, and it is, but I resonated far
| more strongly with its warning about Silicon Valley.
| cush wrote:
| Interesting... this comment went from +20 to -1 upvotes
| jrockway wrote:
| What do you suspect happened and what evidence do you have
| for that?
| photochemsyn wrote:
| > "Schmidt has made the development of 5G technology and
| artificial intelligence key aspects of his post-Google work and
| has advocated for a stronger federal role in funding both, along
| with biotech initiatives."
|
| Solution: Set up a private research institution unaffiliated with
| government similar to the historically successful Bell Labs.
| Here's how it worked before:
|
| Georgescu, I. Bringing back the golden days of Bell Labs. Nat Rev
| Phys 4, 76-78 (2022).
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s42254-022-00426-6
|
| > "AT&T had a clear vision, that of offering universal
| connectivity to its customers. To achieve this well-defined long-
| term goal, the company consistently invested in R&D, planning
| ahead in terms of decades rather than years. Thanks to its
| government-supported monopoly, it could also afford to maintain
| the long-term thinking for half a century. Bell Labs was funded
| by what physicist and historian of science and technology Michael
| Riordan called "essentially a built-in 'R&D tax' on telephone
| service"
|
| Google/Alphabet is essentially a monopoly these days with cash to
| burn, so they can certainly do the same thing. Cut the dividend
| to the shareholders and invest billions in independent R&D, just
| like AT&T did. Don't try to buy your way into federal agencies so
| you can direct their funds to private ventures.
|
| Even better, change federal tax law such that the only way
| billionaires can escape a 90% income tax bill or corporations a
| 50% tax bill (highest tiers c. 1960) is to get a write-off by
| putting their money into such R & D efforts.
| Jyaif wrote:
| > Cut the dividend to the shareholders
|
| What dividend?
| BlewisJS wrote:
| Stock buybacks:
| https://ycharts.com/companies/GOOG/stock_buyback
| the__alchemist wrote:
| Eric Lander was the President's science advisor? That dude's
| Intro to Biology course on MitX is outstanding!
|
| https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-to-biology-the-secre...
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| To sum it up: Schmidt is making investments, and is trying
| influence the federal government to follow his footsteps. That's
| one way to pump massive life into your portfolio.
| mupuff1234 wrote:
| Tbh as far as lobbying goes this bothers me less as it seems to
| be driven by something beyond just self interest.
|
| But maybe I'm just being naive.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| With Eric Schmidt, history would suggest you're being naive.
|
| He was on the Apple board until giving Google's Android
| division NDAed designs for iPhones, at which point Android
| phones lost the trackball, yes, trackball, and went full
| touchscreen. He was subsequently removed from Apple's board.
| flatearth22 wrote:
| arcticfox wrote:
| https://www.schmidtfutures.com/our-work/statement-on-science...
|
| Schmidt's rebuttal.
|
| There doesn't seem to be a lot of "there" there in terms of
| misconduct, relative to what I've seen elsewhere in the past 4
| years. If anything, it's a bit of a new ethical question caused
| by the structure of a government office. Certainly something to
| look into but if we want to look at ethical issues of money in
| politics, there are a lot of easier places to start IMO.
| vmception wrote:
| I think the whistleblower and a lot of people here are noticing
| that there are inherent conflicts of interest that are easily
| misdirected and subverted by the due process involved in making
| these institutional conflicts.
|
| So yes, the whistleblower messed up as of course the proper
| chain of command looked into it and found no _legal_ issue,
| because the legalese version of ethics was met.
|
| This is different from whether the law needs to be revisited.
|
| This is also different from whether the people with the
| financial conflict have a noble goal.
|
| Many people with political influence believe in their goals.
| Some benefit more people, others dont.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| This rebuttal is incredibly shallow.
|
| To summarize and address 6 points:
|
| > 1) US has been accepting philanthropic funding for staffing
| for 25 years. Does not discuss the scale, impact or % of
| Schmidt's influence.
|
| > 2) We are experts at technology and with rapidly changing
| landscape, we can contribute.
|
| Yes, this is precisly the problem. Google has enormous monopoly
| power and you, Mr. Schmidt, are the beneficiary of that power.
| There is a conflict of interest here, need not be spelled out.
|
| > 3) We love helping US Gov because of 1971 IPA act of "tours
| of duty".
|
| Of course, Mr. Schmidt.
|
| > 4) We don't have any influence. We are one of the 20 orgs.
| Funding is administered by neutral party.
|
| There is a specific assertion in Politico article. Schdmidt
| Futures are not directly paying people's salaries, but quoting
| the Politico article:
|
| > Schmidt maintained a close relationship with the president's
| former science adviser, Eric Lander, and other Biden
| appointees. And his charity arm, Schmidt Futures, indirectly
| paid the salaries of two science-office employees, including,
| for six weeks, that of the current chief of staff, Marc
| Aidinoff, who is now one of the most senior officials in the
| office following Lander's resignation in February.
|
| Schmidt's rebuttal completely glosses over the details.
|
| > 5) Schmidt Futures staff had no authority to make any policy
| decisions and did not do so through OSTP, and the story
| presents no evidence or examples to the contrary.
|
| Schmidt Futures has no _direct_ authority, that 's correct.
| Politico article explicitly sources _indirect_ authority of
| Schmidt Futures.
|
| > 6) OSTP has always had and continues to retain full
| discretion and ownership over appointments, hires and policy
| decisions.
|
| Mr. Schmidt, we can see the Front door. Clearly, it is locked
| with US Gov(tm) seal. You are not addressing Back door claims
| in the article.
|
| What a fucking joke.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| What does Google have a monopoly on?
|
| I think Google has repeatedly failed to gain or exploit any
| monopoly power. For example social.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Google literally is the poster child of Big Tech monopoly
| masquerading as a "Technology company" which is a false
| broad characterization of what it does. Revenues are
| overwhelmingly from search ads.
|
| If you haven't been living under a rock, you should be
| familiar with a decade long fight it has put up to fight
| off its monopoly status.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/21/opinion/google-
| monopoly-r...
| stonogo wrote:
| Allow me to introduce you to Chrome, the software funnel
| through which Google absolutely dominates the internet
| advertising market.
| simulate-me wrote:
| Internet search? They have almost 92% market share.
| dodobirdlord wrote:
| Market share does not a monopoly make. Do you really
| consider Bing to be so bad that you don't even count it
| as a competing product in the same product category as
| Google Search? The cost to switch is literally nothing.
| dataflow wrote:
| I don't know anything about this topic yet, but just reading
| their denial raises red flags for me before I even start
| reading the Politico article.
|
| > Schmidt Futures staff had no authority to make any policy
| decisions and did not do so through OSTP, and the story
| presents no evidence or examples to the contrary.
|
| Isn't this a clear misdirection? Nobody is accusing them of
| having "authority" (they're not the government!), but
| "influence". It's denying a nonexistent (and nonsensical)
| accusation, which is never a good sign. Right?
| vmception wrote:
| Yes, it is. They present another thing and discredit that, in
| order to discredit the original premise. Its the structure of
| a strawman. In any case, their public sector work is probably
| frustrating and they havent achieved nearly the influence
| that they want, so its probably accurate but if it wasnt,
| what would we expect them to say?
| kolbe wrote:
| I agree. I am, if anything, overzealous about screaming
| "corruption," but I really don't see it here. When someone
| worth $26bn sits on the board of a company (with no mention of
| equity) with ties to government contracts, it's hard for me to
| believe he's doing anything unethical for his own personal
| gain. There's just nothing of meaningful substance to be gained
| from it.
| flatearth22 wrote:
| KerrAvon wrote:
| I agree that there are worse problems in this area (FDA
| regulatory capture is a major one), but this clearly isn't a
| nothingburger either.
| [deleted]
| scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
| Sounds to me personally like all this talk of "AI and research"
| and foundations for all the "good" things are really a smoke
| screen for 5G investment and monopoly protection through
| political influence.
|
| At the same time this isn't this always a component of power?
| Political parties usually pursue financial support from companies
| in return for favorable conditions behind the scenes. Good that
| someone is blowing the whistle at least.
| bezier-curve wrote:
| 5G investment? This sounds like a non-sequitur.
| scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
| Apparently, oh well. It mentions this in the article
| [deleted]
| dang wrote:
| All: this looks like a pretty well-reported and well-sourced
| article. Please don't post shallow-indignant comments in such a
| thread. It leads to boring, repetitive conversation and there's
| enough of that already.
| whatshisface wrote:
| To quote the ancient texts...
|
| When A spends B's money on C, there's never going to be as much
| care as if B was spending their money on C or if C was spending
| their own.
|
| I always used to think that science funding was an exception
| because knowledge was a public good in the way pollution is a
| public harm, but at the same time, what's to stop it from falling
| prey to the inevitable consequences of your congressman being too
| busy to take your calls unless you're a special interest group,
| that befall other programs of government spending?
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Historically (since ~mid-20th century) the idea was to create
| federal agencies that were given lump sums by Congress and
| which then used a kind of internal peer review process to
| determine how to distribute these funds. There's a history of
| some political intrigue there (universities try to get their
| people into the federal agency so they can direct funds back to
| their home university, etc.).
|
| This has avoided some of the usual sort of line-item
| Congressional pork activity, for example (left) Bernie Sanders
| got the F-35 engine factory for Vermont, and (right) Richard
| Shelby got the ULA rocket program for Alabama, etc. There have
| been some coordinated political attacks on federal agencies
| though, if you look into the history of the USGS, Congress
| basically said "stop doing environmental pollution research or
| we'll cut your funding" in the 1990s.
|
| https://www.paloaltoonline.com/weekly/morgue/cover/1995_Feb_...
|
| > "USGS data is considered so reliable and objective that it is
| often used for testimony during court hearings", Conomos
| said... "We do scientific studies and basic data collection, in
| some cases for 100 years or more. We know the history of
| streams and the environment nationwide. Private consultants
| don't do that."
|
| The NSF is probably among the most independent agencies at
| present. NIH seems pretty tied up with the pharmaceutical
| sector, and FDA is even worse. DOE is just entirely captured by
| the nuclear waste and fossil fuel sector at this point. EPA and
| USGS, they're basically hamstrung.
| [deleted]
| walterbell wrote:
| The chair of FAS, Gilman Louie, is also an associate of Schmidt's
| who most recently served with him on the National Security
| Commission on Artificial Intelligence, which Schmidt chaired from
| 2018 to 2021.
|
| It's worth reading the NSCAI final report (2021),
| https://www.nscai.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Full-Report...
|
| _> ... our leaders confront the classic dilemma of statecraft
| identified by Henry Kissinger: "When your scope for action is
| greatest, the knowledge on which you can base this action is
| always at a minimum. When your knowledge is greatest, the scope
| for action has often disappeared." ... AI systems will also be
| used in the pursuit of power. We fear AI tools will be weapons of
| first resort in future conflicts. AI will not stay in the domain
| of superpowers or the realm of science fiction. AI is dual-use,
| often open-source, and diffusing rapidly. State adversaries are
| already using AI-enabled disinformation attacks to sow division
| in democracies and jar our sense of reality._
|
| https://www.coindesk.com/business/2021/12/07/ex-google-ceo-e...
|
| _> "... it has become clear that one of blockchain's greatest
| advantages - a lack of connection to the world outside itself -
| is also its biggest challenge," Schmidt said. "I am excited to be
| helping the Chainlink Labs team build a world powered by truth."_
|
| https://www.coindesk.com/business/2021/11/04/value-secured-b...
|
| _> "Without trusted price data to trigger smart contracts, it is
| impossible to build DeFi applications .. the rate at which
| Chainlink has been able to bring new market data onto blockchains
| has been the rate at which developers have been able to build
| exciting new DeFi apps," said Sergey Nazarov, co-founder of
| Chainlink._
| whatshisface wrote:
| > _The scope for action remains, but America's room for
| maneuver is shrinking._
|
| That quote carries the implication that "action" means massive
| regulatory actions and harsh export controls which are the only
| things that would become impossible if AGI became a major
| economic sector or integral to several of them.
| walterbell wrote:
| Also financial regulation, including blackchain and CBDCs. If
| search engine rankings wield economic influence, imagine the
| influence of "trusted truth inputs" on a smart contract's IF
| clause to control a THEN transaction.
| tomohawk wrote:
| > The science office's efforts to arrange for Schmidt Futures to
| pay the salaries of Lander's staff sparked "significant" ethical
| concerns, given Schmidt's financial interests in areas
| overlapping with OSTP's responsibilities, according to the
| science office's then-general counsel, Rachel Wallace
|
| When a private individual gives funds to a government official to
| get what they want, that is called bribery.
|
| Where's the FBI when you need them?
| voakbasda wrote:
| All areas of the government are approximately equally corrupt.
| The FBI does not investigate every crime that deserves it. They
| pick and choose and will not move against those in power
| without sufficient political willpower to back them up.
| perfecthjrjth wrote:
| Exactly this. Prosecutorial discretion, and discretion on
| which laws to use to charge people, are ways how these
| corrupt ways work in the US.
| usrn wrote:
| zelag wrote:
| Maybe slightly unrelated, but does anyone have any idea why Eric
| Schmidt would join Chainlink as its advisor?
| whatshisface wrote:
| I don't know about the situation in specific but typically
| those things are governed by reciprocity and personal
| relationships.
| ohyoutravel wrote:
| This is my experience. ES joined the board of my small
| company based on personal relationships and some reciprocity.
| To be fair though, I don't think him being on the board has
| had any meaningful impact and he's been very hands off.
| [deleted]
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