Google CEO: Israel’s Military Responsible for Technological Advantage

At a closed Google event that took place on Monday, Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google, praised the Israeli military and said that it is the basis for Israel’s technological advantage

Google CEO: Israel’s Military Responsible for Technological Advantage

Eric Schmidt, Google CEO (Photo: Niv Kantor)

“One of the more interesting things in Israel is that the Israeli military has considerable data and it integrates between many types and sources of information. There’s a whole generation of computer scientists working with very large databases and it’s an entirely new industry that's being built, and it’s impossible to know what products might come out from it in the future,” said Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, at a closed Google event that took place Monday at the Tel Aviv Exhibition Grounds.

“Everything you see in this magic known as Israel relies on the advancements of Moore’s Law. The progress in computer capabilities is allowing all of these wondrous developments that you are doing here.” According to Schmidt, Israel is only at the start of its ventures. “Five years ahead, things will be ten times faster. Today’s expensive devices will be cheaper and more common, and so the influence of the technology is expected to be far-reaching. For example, my phone (Nexus-S), which costs around $400 today, will cost just $20 in a few years. The cameras being used today are ten times stronger than the computers from the time when I was studying computers." 

Schmidt explains that despite the fact that those in Israel are use to excellent technology that allows for connectivity from any place, the cellphone is a life-altering thing in other places in the world such as Pakistan or Afghanistan. “There are about five billion cellphones in the world, one billion of which are smartphones, and 2.3 billion internet links. This is a trend that is constantly being accelerated."

During the event, Schmidt was asked about the events surrounding the “Google Street” vehicles, which gathered data from open wireless networks. He responded that it was due to a service engineer who tried to find a creative way to navigate the autonomous machine via data received from wireless routers along the way. “This is not about personal information,” Schmidt said. He added that when members of Google's management board learned of the incident, they put the hard drive with the data (there was only one) into a vault, and informed the US law authorities about the event. “Until this day, no one has made any use of the data, and no one has observed it,” Schmidt said. "We operate according to the instructions of the government. Half asked us to destroy the material, and the other half asked us to preserve it for future claims."

Another question from the audience was on the subject of Google’s information cooperation with the US law authorities. “Are you blocking or preventing information from surfers according to government requests?” Schmidt did not mind the question and answered that Google does not operate according to requests from government entities (including the CIA, NSA, or President Obama), friendly or otherwise. Rather, it operates according to court decisions. "In any such request, we ask that a search warrant be provided by the court. If there is such a warrant, and it’s legal, we can’t operate against it, or we would be arrested,” Schmidt answered. He also noted with regards to a follow-up question that there was no request to prevent the publication of search results directing to materials from the WikiLeaks website.

Answering the question posed by Dr. Ilana Dayan, who hosted the event, as to whether he regrets the attempt to work with China and censor Chinese surfers, Schmidt said, “After five years of trying to work with the Chinese government, it didn’t work. We went to Hong Kong, which, as is known, has the "Great Firewall" between Hong Kong and China, and the Chinese government is the one doing all the censorship, not Google.” Schmidt did not express regret for trying to work with the Chinese government. “If we don’t try, we won’t know if we’ll succeed. We tried, and it just didn’t work.”
“Dictators use censorship. It’s one of the signs of this form of regime,” Schmidt said. “The mistake of dictators in countries such as Libya or Egypt was that they didn’t block the internet. The internet succeeded in doing what the resistances in those countries couldn't accomplish over a decade."

When asked if Google would continue to develop in Israel, Schmidt responded by saying,
“I want to believe that we’ll continue to develop here in Israel, but I can’t commit to that. You never know where things might develop in Google.” However, Schmidt noted the relative advantage of human capital in Israel. Schmidt asked, “I assume that most of you here served in the military? The scientists and engineers here are excellent. In my opinion, it has to do with the fact that most of them went to the military and absorbed professional capabilities in intelligence, cyber, and data analysis work - abilities that the military provides on the tactical level. Furthermore, these are people that depart for the labor market more mature and more focused."