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What the West needs to do to win these things
is to raise the standard of competence
so high that you have both moral and technological superiority.
And then the question you always get
is, well, how do you do that?
Well, in software, and I can't speak to other industries,
software is a magical business which
has certain ethical challenges because the magic can only
be done by very few people and they end up with all the money.
And that's a real issue for our societies, that
has to be dealt with, in my view,
through some form of redistribution.
But the one thing that's a caveat
is Europe is weak in software.
So if you're going to do this for cars, and chemicals,
and clothes, and everything else,
you've got to do it for software.
And so that's something that has to be-- and by the way,
now is the moment to do it because there's
a very strong working relationship between Europe
and America, and this will be co-beneficial.
Germany, by the way, is uniquely positioned to push this,
because, well, there's the financial reason, which
is it's absolutely in the interest
of every German because Germany's an export country.
It relies on open markets.
Without open markets, Germany's economy will not work.
Everybody in business knows that here.
And to have open economies, you're
going to have to have standards, because the parties that you're
shipping to don't like each other.
But Germany is uniquely positioned
of the large countries, it's the only one
that's plausibly neutral.
And everyone associates Germany with a high level of competence
and certain kinds of rigour.
True or not, this is just the cultural association.
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Germany has a very positive reputation
globally-- realistic, everyone knows German history.
But I would say outside of Germany,
people are more positive about Germany than inside Germany.
And as you know is an ambassador,
It's like an amazing asset.
And when you're negotiating complicated treaties,
you got to find a standard that both people can live with,
which is a standard.
And by the way, maybe Germany is the best at software tomorrow
and that's different.
I do think Germany or Europe has laid
out a lot of ideas about data protection, which in my view,
or, by the way, the idea is we conceived off in our product
20 years ago.
So I happen to share these ideas, what are those ideas?
Who does the data belong to?
Under what conditions?
What is the provenance of the data?
Where is the data processed?
Who has legal rights to the provenance of that data?
Is it Germany or is it Palo Alto?
Is it the US authorities, because it
gets processed in Palo Alto or is it the European authorities?
Is there a distinction between data and processing?
How do you prove the security model?
Can that be proved in a transparent way?
How long does the data get held?
One of the things that American civil libertarians prefer
is that you can't get rid of the data,
because if you can get rid of the data, then you
maybe you could do weird things on the data and purge it.
Germany, in general, Europe sees that differently.
They want you to purge the data because they
want to have a personal life.
I'm much more on the European side here personally
and our product allows you to do those things which is why it's
been very successful in Europe.
So I do think Germany, Europe does have a very unique way
of conceiving the policy.
And yes, we will all have to live with those things.
But there is just, you could say, one of my--
it's not exactly related, but one of my favourite quotes from
Wittgenstein is "Zu glauben einer Regel zu folgen,
ist nicht der Regel folgen."
So believing you're following a rule is not following a rule.
You got to follow the rule.
And by the way, right now for lots of geopolitical reasons,
one of the things I learned at this conference,
many things is America and Europe
is working very well together.
You want to get these things done?
Get them done now.
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