Foreign Affairs: Techno-Nothings

By Thomas L. Friedman
New York Times, 18 April 1998

(Palo Alto, Calif.): I don’t think I like Silicon Valley.

Here’s why: I’m as impressed as anyone with the technologies that Silicon Valley is
producing
and the way they are changing how we must think about economic power and how nations
interact. But what is so striking about Silicon Valley is that it has become so enamored of its
innovative and profit-making prowess that it has completely lost sight of the overall context
within which this is taking place. There is a disturbing complacency here toward Washington,
government and even the nation. There is no geography in Silicon Valley, or geopolitics. There
are only stock options and electrons.

When I asked an all-too-typical tech-exec here when was the last time he talked about Iraq
or
Russia or foreign wars, he answered: “Not more than once a year. We don’t even care about
Washington. Money is extracted from Silicon Valley and then wasted by Washington. I want to
talk about people who create wealth and jobs. I don’t want to talk about unhealthy and
unproductive people. If I don’t care enough about the wealth-destroyers in my own country, why
would I care about the wealth-destroyers in another country?”

What’s wrong with this picture is that all the technologies Silicon Valley is designing to
carry
digital voices, videos and data farther and faster around the world, all the trade and financial
integration it is promoting through its innovations, and all the wealth it is generating, is happening
in a world stabilized by a benign superpower called the United States of America, with its capital
in Washington D.C.

The hidden hand of the global market would never work without the hidden fist. And the
hidden
fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies to flourish is called the United
States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps (with the help, incidentally, of global institutions
like the U.N. and the International Monetary Fund). And those fighting forces and institutions are
paid for by all the tax dollars that Washington is “wasting” every year.

Because of the intense competition here among companies, and the continuous flood of new
products, there is a saying in Silicon Valley that “loyalty is just one mouse-click away.” But you
can take that too far. Execs here say things like: “We are not an American company. We are
I.B.M. U.S., I.B.M. Canada, I.B.M. Australia, I.B.M. China.” Oh yeah? Well, the next time you
get in trouble in China, then call Li Peng for help. And the next time Congress closes another
military base in Asia — and you don’t care because you don’t care about Washington — call
Microsoft’s navy to secure the sea lanes of Asia. And the next time the freshmen Republicans
want to close more U.S. embassies, call America Online when you lose your passport.

Harry Saal, a successful Silicon Valley engineer, venture capitalist and community activist —
an
exception to the norm — remarked to me: “If you ask people here what their affiliation is, they will
name their company. Many live and work on a company campus. The leaders of these companies
don’t have any real understanding of how a society operates and how education and social
services get provided for. People here are not involved in Washington policy because they think
the future will be set by technology and market forces alone and eventually there will be a new
world order based on electrons and information.”

They’re exactly half right. I’ve had a running debate with a neo-Reaganite foreign-policy
writer,
Robert Kagan, from the Carnegie Endowment, about the impact of economic integration and
technology on geopolitics. He says I overestimate its stabilizing effects; I say he underestimates it.
We finally agreed that unless you look at both geotechnology and geopolitics you can’t explain (or
sustain) this relatively stable moment in world history. But Silicon Valley’s tech-heads have
become so obsessed with bandwidth they’ve forgotten balance of power. They’ve forgotten that
without America on duty there will be no America Online.

“The people in Silicon Valley think it’s a virtue not to think about history because
everything for
them is about the future,” argued Mr. Kagan. “But their ignorance of history leads them to ignore
that this explosion of commerce and trade rests on a secure international system, which rests on
those who have the power and the desire to see that system preserved.”