Eric Schmidt: Vanity and hubris in North Korea

Commentary:

(MoneyWatch) Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google (GOOG), is in North Korea, along with former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, ostensibly to have a good look around and assess the country's social media.

What?

The North Korean government is calling this a "Google delegation" which may be news to the governor. They will meet North Korean leaders, visit some universities, talk to some economists. So not exactly a vacation. But the trip doesn't have the blessing of the U.S. State Department and it isn't really clear who -- or what -- it is for.

• Google head Eric Schmidt in North Korea
• Richardson dismisses State Dept. concerns about North Korea trip

What bothers me about this trip is that it implies that Schmidt thinks he is more important that the State Department, or at least a better judge of global politics. I seriously doubt that. He may have a think tank advisor giving him good background but that isn't the same thing. He appears blissfully unaware that North Korea gets more out of his boondoggle than anyone else. But perhaps vanity prevents him from seeing that he is being used. If you take yourself seriously enough, such an idea is inconceivable.

It also implies that his -- or Google's -- interests supersede national interests, that a commercial business matters more than an elected democracy. I balk at that conclusion and I would have hoped that Schmidt would too, but apparently not. The U.S. government, after all, has no diplomatic relations with North Korea so, in diplomatic terms, Schmidt's trip looks like a snub to his own government. This may offer great kudos to North Korea; it doesn't make Google or Schmidt look anything except egregious and vain.

There's a lot of talk these days about how companies, being larger in revenue than some national GDP, are also smarter than governments. But dollars and IQ aren't the point here. We still live in a democracy, we are still citizens in a state and even corporate CEOs should recognize that they aren't above anyone or anything.

I'm not arguing that no one should visit North Korea ever. That's a more complex question of geopolitics. But for any CEO to perform as though his interests are above his country's reeks of hubris. Nor does it do Google any good. As Google's power gives more and more cause for concern, acting as though you don't care even about your own government makes it feel pretty intuitive that you definitely won't care about your customers.

Forget "do no evil." Let's just try "do nothing stupid" for awhile.

[Sinikad]

I don't think Schmidt went around advertising his visit, the author of this article is the one doing that.

As long as he isn't doing anything illegal - ie, selling something or buying something he shouldn't be - then what he does is his own business, right? I mean, we are in a free country, aren't we? We can go where we want, and talk to whomever we want, right?

If your answer to that is 'no', then you might want to re-analyze who you think the communist / fascist is, and who it isn't...

60 years of the approach this article's author advocates - let the State Dept and the North Korean Gov't work it out - has failed. What better way to break down barriers between people than for those people to interact with each other.

[forwardman]

Why should we doubt Chairman Schmit's sincerity?
MH is wrong to heap such absurd criticism on him.

The idea that our government's policy is always right is also ridiculous.
After all, didn't we experience the disasterous Iraq war that was led by
the Bush administration with all kinds of lies?

When our government refuses to engage with our "adversaries,"
despite the 2008 campaign promise by Obama, it is up to our citizens
to reach out to the isolated country to build reconciliation and friendship. Trying to put more santions for launching a satellite into
space is also absurd. How about some sanctions on the US for launching
more than 20 military satellites into space in 2012?

Thanks to ES for undertaking a courageous trip in this cold weather!

[tim_acheson]

has been the foremost champion of the luny "open" movement in technology, which believes that everybody should get products and services for free. Google has been campaigning hard for a false-economy utopia in which all software is "open source" and we have "open data" etc. Google has used the cash from search to finance a decade-long hate campaign against more capitalist tech corporations such as Microsoft.

However, while there is a healthy balance to be found between "open" and "closed" ideologies, Google's fanatical "open" philosophy and neo-Communist doctrines are intrinsically flawed.

In reality, rival companies like Microsoft and Apple have defined the technology that we use each day, and the tech we take for granted today was conceived thanks to the motivations of commercial gain. E.g. It's easy to call for free "open source" software which seeks to imitate MS Office, but we would not have MS Office on the first place without a very different approach -- and it's noteworthy that no alternatives come close to being as good as MS Office and the "Open Office" / "Libra Office" fiasco served only to prove the inherent dangers of relying on "open" projects.

North Korea, as a Communist state, would love to have free and "open source" software. Why pay money to the US corporations who did all the hard work and innovation? North Korea is a natural ally in Google's sinister ideological war with Microsoft and more recently Apple. And Google means business -- they spend more on political lobbying (a euphemism for the subversion of democracy) than Microsoft, Apple and Facebook COMBINED!

Meanwhile, Google does all it can to avoid paying taxes -- especially in capitalist countries like the US and UK where it has major operations. North Korea would not let them get away with such blatant tax avoidance.