Gates: US Need Not Fear Overseas Tech
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The United States has nothing to fear from rapidly growing technology markets in China and India, Bill Gates, chairman and chief software architect of Microsoft Corp.
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By Dean Takahashi, San Jose Mercury News, Calif.  May 30--When Bill Gates talked about a new kind of computer in a speech a couple of years ago, I thought it was pure fantasy.
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BERKELEY, Calif. (CBS.MW) -- The computing problems to be solved in the next two decades will be more exciting than those that already have been solved, according to Microsoft&#39;s Bill Gates.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates called on the U.S. Congress toÂ raise the cap on skilled-worker visas, saying the county's economic future was at stake. Gates, testifying before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said he'd prefer that "unlimited" numbers of highly skilled foreign workers be allowed into the U.S., although he acknowledged that might not be politically feasible. Right now,Â the controversial H-1B program, which tech vendors and other companies use to hire foreign workers, has an annual cap of 65,000 people a year, and the cap is typically reached in the first couple of months the applications are available. "We have to welcome the great minds of this world, not drive them out of this country," Gates said, repeating his earlier calls for a higher H-1B cap. "These employees are vital to American competitiveness. We should encourage them to become permanent U.S. residents; they provide the nation economic growth, alongside America's native-born talent." Several U.S. tech companies have recently said they have hundreds of unfilled jobs because they can't find qualified workers. Gates also repeated two other themes he said are necessary for the U.S. to continue to compete in a global economy: He called on Congress to improve the U.S. education system and increase government spending on research and development. Without those three changes, the U.S. is at risk of losing its economic power and high standard of living, he said. "When I reflect on the state of American competitiveness today, my immediate feeling of pride is mixed with great anxiety," he said. "The challenges confronting America's global competitiveness and technological leadership are among the greatest we have faced on our lifetime." This generation of U.S. residents is too often living off the innovations of the past, he said. He called for "courageous" leadership to fix failing U.S. high schools, find more money for research, and welcome more immigrants. Few senators challenged Gates' position on foreign-worker visas, instead asking questions about Gates' ideas on improving education, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation'sÂ funding of experimental high-school programs. U.S.-based tech worker groups such as the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers-USA (IEEE-USA) have opposed a higher H-1B cap, arguing that companies use the program to hire foreign workers for less money than unemployed U.S. workers would receive. Senator Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat, said he heard different stories from industries and workers during forums on the economy in his state last month. "Time and time again, local businesses told me that they just could not find the engineers or the computer scientists they needed to run their businesses," he said. "At the same time, skilled workers in my state are watching their jobs move overseas, not because foreign workers are more qualified, but because U.S. companies can get away with paying poverty wages to workers in other countries." Senator Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent who often votes with Democrats, also questioned the effect of outsourcing. U.S. companies can hire overseas engineers at a "fraction of the cost" of U.S. engineers, he said. The free trade agreements that allow easy outsourcing benefits the U.S., Gates answered. The U.S. tech industry is able to grow by being able to sell products all over the world, he said. "The demand worldwide for highly qualified engineers is going to guarantee them all jobs wherever they are located," Gates said. "The IT industry, I guarantee you, will be in the United States as long as we can get these people to come to the United States." Senator Judd Gregg, a New Hampshire Republican, said he agreed that Congress needed to raise the H-1B cap. He asked if an annual cap of 300,000 would be appropriate. "It'd be a fantastic improvement," Gate said. "My basic view is we should welcome as many of these people as we can get."
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Microsoft preached its "new world of work" mantra at the company?s Global High Tech Summit 2007 conference in San Jose, Calif. on Thursday.Noting synergy between the disciplines of business and IT, the event is intended for professionals from both realms, said Tyler Bryson, Microsoft's newly announced general manager of the U.S. Manufacturing Industry portion of the company?s Industry Solutions Organization."At Microsoft, we believe that alignment [of business and IT] is critical to innovation," Bryson said. Also featured at the event were speakers from chipmakers Intel and Freescale Semiconductor, who talked about modernizations to their systems and processes.Trends are accelerating, such as globalization and market growth that are creating a new world of work, Bryson said. Other relevant trends include the pressure to improve operation performance, quality-driven regulatory compliance, and rapid cycles of product innovation.Globalization and technology create entirely new ways that people think about work, and everyone must adjust and respond, said Bryson. "The world is transforming what it means to be at work," he said.The morning's presentations had a bent toward high-tech manufacturing. Bryson said the National Association of Manufacturers expects a 40 percent turnover in the manufacturing work base; companies must cope with transferring knowledge to employees."Most manufacturers are reporting a shortage of skilled workers," he said. A culture of innovation must be created that can attract the best talent, said Bryson.New tenets of work, according to Bryson, include creating a culture of innovation, empowering the workforce, driving operational excellence, running a customer-centric business, using compliance as a tool of transparency, and operating in a global environment.At Freescale, the company is undertaking several upgrades, including moving to a single global instance of SAP for supply chain operations. Freescale is what Janelle Monney, senior vice president of business operations at the company, described as "a 50-year-old startup" that was part of Motorola until 2004.The company also has initiatives in manufacturing and business intelligence, she noted. Freescale's business intelligence platform is intended to bring multiple data streams altogether into a single data warehouse."One of the key objectives of IT is to turn data into information for decision-making," said Monney.Also, employees can access e-mail on cell phones equipped with Windows OSes, she said.With Intel, the company is extending itself to accommodate three market opportunities: mobile Internet devices, consumer electronics, and development of low-cost PCs, said Stuart Pann, an Intel vice president and co-general manager of customer fulfillment, planning and logistics."One of our goals is how do we configure the supply chain to take advantage of these new opportunities," Pann said.Intel is running a new manufacturing process on Intel systems and Microsoft operating systems at its high-volume plant in Arizona, Pann said. "That is virtually run on Intel architecture and on Microsoft operating systems, so we've made the transition over the years, and we've found that the combination of these two products is more than robust enough to run $3.5 billion factories," said Pann.Among other improvements, the company is developing a new workspace that is a fundamental change to the company's cubicle culture, he said. Phone booths will be created, more privacy options will be offered, and the company will get rid of underutilized office space, said Pann.Also, author and consultant Geoffrey Moore, managing director of TCG Advisors, lectured on the challenges of finding a competitive advantage and innovation in a marketplace that faces frequent commoditization."You must innovate in order to continue to sustain advantage," Moore said.Differentiation also is important, he said. Apple with its iPod has customers acknowledging it is different, he said. But past differentiation can erode so that a company?s core competency is no longer core, he said."Our friends at Dell are dealing with that right now," with the industry catching up and Dell having to reinvent itself, said Moore.Microsoft officials briefly noted the company's new unified communications platform, which features Office Communications Server and provides such capabilities as IM, voice, and videoconferencing.
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Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates told Congress on Wednesday that overhauls of the nation's schools and immigration laws are urgently needed to keep jobs from going overseas. "The U.S. cannot maintain its economic leadership unless our work force consists of people who have the knowledge and skills needed to drive innovation," Gates told the Senate committee that oversees labor and education issues.
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US Defense Secretary Robert Gates expressed concern Friday over China's developing military capabilities and the ease with which military spending can be hidden from public view.
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U.S. Defense Secretary  Robert Gates will encourage engagement with China and avoid  public criticism of its military build-up at an Asia security  conference this weekend, a senior U.S. official said.
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A top U.S. antitrust official on  Wednesday urged foreign governments to think twice before  interfering with popular new technologies, singling out  overseas scrutiny of Apple Computer Inc.'s  iTunes  online music service as an example of misguided enforcement.
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MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. --Â  Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates, during an appearance here Friday at the Computer History Museum, expressed no fear of Linux usurping Windows in the software industry.
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InfoWorld - MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. --&#160; Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates, during an appearance here Friday at the Computer History Museum, expressed no fear of Linux usurping Windows in the software industry.
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RAWALPINDI, Pakistan  - Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Monday the United States would not repeat the mistake of neglecting Afghanistan and allowing it to become a haven for Islamic militants.
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(InfoWorld) - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was happy to talk about technology, the environment, and alternative energy sources during a brief few minutes with the press in Silicon Valley on Thursday. But the Iraq war was off-limits. Rice made a few stops in northern California, checking out an electric car built by Tesla Motors and then meeting with such executives such Cisco Chairman and CEO John Chambers and Salesforce.com Chairman and CEO Marc Benioff at the Four Seasons Hotel in East Palo Alto, Calif. She and Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer were hosted by TechNet, which features a political network of CEOs promoting innovation. "We are here because we want as foreign ministers to understand a little bit better what is going on in some of the most exciting areas of technology and development," Rice said. Technology will affect how business is conducted during the next several years, Rice said. A former provost at nearby Stanford University, Rice stressed the issues of global competitiveness, seeking alternative fuel sources, and addressing the problems of greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. But as the 11-minute press access portion of the meeting was ending, she declined to respond to a reporter's request to talk about the Iraq war spending bill. Downer, meanwhile, said it had been a "fascinating morning." He added he was impressed with the relationship between universities like Stanford and the private sector. "The massive investment in universities here has been a tremendous boon to the economy," said Downer. Australia, he said, has benefited from technology. "The information and communications technology revolution has been a great thing for us," Downer said. "It's drawn our country much more into the mainstream of the world than it would have been before the advent of that technology." Consumers' concerns drive the market, and they are interested in clean air and environmental issues, Downer said. "If these environmental problems are going to be solved, they're not just going to be solved by government fiat," and new laws, he said. "They're going to be solved by technology," Downer said.
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Robert Gates is unlikely to rein in the Pentagon's controversial post-September 11 expansion into intelligence, despite concerns the U.S. military is ill-suited for espionage outside the battlefield, experts say.
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BERKELEY, Calif.  - The United States has nothing  to fear from rapidly growing technology markets in China and  India, Bill Gates, chairman and chief software architect of  Microsoft Corp. MSFT.O said on Friday.
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â¢ Reiterated his stance on security. &quot;I&#39;ll never turn over America&#39;s national security needs to leaders of other countries.
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Keeping information secure in this age of laptop-lugging workers is the tech industry's most formidable challenge, Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates said Tuesday.