Future historians with an eye for inflection
points may well focus on the Wall Street Journal of
June 12, 2020. A page 1 banner reads, “Companies Pledge Actions to Promote
Racial Justice” and recounts how in response to the George Floyd killing, Apple
and Google are pledging millions to promote racial inclusion. Less than a week
later, Google was more
specific: allocating $175 million to sharply increase the number of black
Google executives (30% by 2025), upping the firm’s anti-racism efforts, $100
million for black owned start-ups, $15 million for improved training for black
job applicants and $3 million to schools to close gaps in computer education
and STEM fields.
If Wall Street Journal readers flipped it over
to the last
page of Section A, they would have seen the banner, “China Pours Funds Into
Tech Push.” The story told of China’s trillion-dollar investments in computers
to overtake the U.S. in cutting-edge technology. Now more than a dozen Chinese
cities will launch projects ($935 billion), the Ministry of Industry and
Information Technology’s five-year program will invest $14 trillion in
artificial intelligence, data projects, and communications. Private Chinese
firms, notably Alibaba and Tencent, are similarly upping their high-tech
investment.
These figures of course tell only a partial story -- American
firms are only putting millions into “woke” enterprises, but billions will
continue to be invested in high-tech to match Chinese efforts. Also excluded
are U.S. government-funded agencies such as DARPA and,
conceivably, U.S. brainpower toe-to-toe will outperform the Chinese despite
their lavish spending.
Nevertheless, it is certainly fair to ask why these U.S. tech
companies embrace million-dollar racial justice schemes when every
similar past diversity effort has failed? Have Google, Apple, Oracle
and others, unlike their Chinese rivals, recently discovered that a diverse
workforce builds a better supercomputer? Might the Chinese Communist Party now
send spies to infiltrate these Tech giants to acquire the secrets of diversity
as they now steal advanced chip designs? Most important, does this
divergence in priorities harbinger a slow decline in U.S. technological
preeminence?
Silicon Valley’s diversity push began in 2014 when Jesse
Jackson set up shop there along with other
more community-based groups such as Hidden Genius,Kapor Center, and Greenlining
coalition. Jackson and his allies enjoyed initial success -- Intel,
for example pledged $300 million to help boost workforce inclusiveness while
Apple donated $40 million to historical black college and universities. Google
sent its engineers to black colleges to teach introductory computer science and
help graduates find technology jobs. It also created a one-year residency at
the firm for students at HBCU’s. In
2017 Apple
announced that it number of “under-represented minorities” had
increased from 19% of its workforce to 23% and, of the utmost importance, 50%
of its new hires were from these underrepresented groups.
Oddly, the underlying premise of this pressured diversity
contradicts the dog-eat-dog, innovate or die mentality dominating Silicon
Valley. With billions at stake, and hungry startup rivals galore, everybody
seeks an edge, and overlooking any advantage is suicide. Intel, for example,
heavily invests in chip
development in Israel. Successful firms routinely recruit talent from
overseas. Surely if pools of talented minority software engineers existed,
firms would uncover them with being pressured by social justice
activists.
Unfortunately for diversity devotees, however, a review
of hiring in Wiredreveals that such hidden talent is
nearly nonexistent. In the all-important field of technical workers such as
coders, the share of black and Latinx workers rose less than one percent since
2014 when the big bucks diversity push began (the proportion of women did,
however, rise substantially). Yes, tech executives can tout progress, but this
is deceptive since the burgeoning number of hires overall post-2014 means that
the blacks and Hispanics workforce must be sharply expanded just to keep
proportions steady (Facebook during this period quadrupled its
workforce).
Would employing workers from historically under-represented groups
give U.S. firms an edge when competing against Chinese rivals? Alas, claims
regarding the diversity benefit seem over-heated rhetoric. One data-free
claim, for example, asserts that upping diversity would add an additional
$400 billion in revenue to the tech industry. As these advocates put
it, “…more diverse companies, we believe, are better
able to win top talent and improve their customer orientation, employee
satisfaction, and decision making, and all that leads to a virtuous cycle of
increasing returns (italics added for emphasis).” Yes, profitable companies may
relish diversity but equally plausible is that ample profits versus being
almost broke permits the luxury of diversity while polishing corporate images.
Another
advocate claims that “More than ever, companies mired in culturally
myopic ideas are finding it more difficult to get ahead in a society that has
embraced different backgrounds and lifestyles.” A further claim is that many
potential employees cherish diversity and thus want to work in a diverse
environment which, in turn, is a supposed recruitment advantage. Again,
no hard evidence, and such claims would counsel company directors to fire
current Tech executives for leaving billions on the table for ignoring
diversity.
If the past foretells the future, merit is in trouble over the
long haul. Today’s pressures are immense, and merit grows increasingly
unfashionable. Diversity activists are attending stockholder meetings and harangue
everybody with horror stories about working sans diversity. One female
Google engineer explained how the absence of diversity and inclusion
initiatives “…left many of us feeling unsafe and unable to do our work.” She
further added, “The chilling effect of harassment and doxxing has impaired
productivity and company culture.” Keep in mind that Silicon Valley is in
California, home of rampant ill-advised social engineering so compulsory diversity
may arrive soon. Predictably, discrimination lawsuits have been filed by
terminated Google employees who were queer or transgendered, a tactic whose
likely real purpose is to prod Google into hiring by gender/sex quota to
pre-empt future diversity discrimination.
While it may seem impossible to imagine the demise of Google,
Apple and other contemporary deep-pocket high-tech firms, the “creative destruction” of
capitalism is relentless. Websites recount
the demise of Alta Vista, Netscape, Infoseek, Webcrawler, and Zune. Not even
Microsoft has made Bing a success
or could save
Explorer, and Google itself bombed with Nexus
Q. AOL was once
a multi-billion-dollar firm with a near web and e-mail monopoly. No firm can
survive endless bad decision-making, and hiring people by skin color, not
ability, surely invites failure.
The university is the
parallel -- diversity hiring began small but as additional diversicrats were
hired and handsomely rewarded, racial bean counting exploded. Traditional merit
became disparaged as “white male standards” whose devious purpose is to exclude
historically under-represented groups. As today’s universities drop the SAT in
admissions, Google’s “bias” against communities of color may eventually be
eliminated. If so, white and Asian males will stop even applying for Big
Tech jobs just as white males currently shun academic positions.
If the diversity
mania goes unchallenged, American Big Tech may slowly lose its edge as
consumers gravitate to better software and communications gear built in China
though engineered by Americans unable to advance up the Google or Apple
career ladder. When you consider the stakes here, one can only suspect that
China is secretly funding the diversity push.