Stanford grads walk out on Google CEO Sundar Pichai speech
Comments
gritspants
BLKNSLVR
In this seemingly forever argument, it seems there is some nuance in that Palestine is not Hamas and vice versa. One of the perspectives as I understand it is that Hamas is actually a threat to the existence of Palestine; the militaristic behaviour undermines Palestinian efforts at independence (and this is an avenue for exploitation by those who don't want to see an independent Palestine).
It is a similar situation with Hezbollah in Lebanon.
You can argue that the government of Israel isn't the will of the people of Israel (in the same way the US government isn't the will of the people of the US), but in my opinion there's more of a separation between 'Palestine' and 'Hamas' than there is between 'Israel' and 'the will of the people of Israel'.
There's a lot of wrongdoing, which means there are a lot of innocents being harmed, and the harming of innocents is the greatest wrongdoing. Harm by inaction is also wrong. Harm by preventing aid and assistance is also wrong.
None of this stuff is easily answered.
The joys of ideology, or maybe more correctly, the joys of living amongst those who take ideology so seriously that they attempt to enforce their fantasies upon the real world.
In my personal logic bubble: Protesting in support of Palestine is not protesting in support of Hamas. Declaring support for Israel is protesting against Hamas and their acts of terrorism against Israel. I can do both of these things without being hypocritical (like I said, in my personal logic bubble).
yodsanklai
There's simply no excuse for what Israel has been doing and everyone with a functioning moral compass should be denouncing it. Debating about Hamas is a distraction. They have a right to defend their country, but not treating a whole population as collateral damage.
BLKNSLVR
I agree with your first sentence.
The rest is the messy middle around which negotiation is required for any form of minimal co-existence.
seanmcdirmid
Wait, you mean there is “no excuse for what Israel is doing” and “Hamas kidnapping and murdering Israelis” was just a distraction?
This is why we should just move on to EVs and stop getting involved at all in the Middle East. I see no morally right way of engaging with either side. Both positions seem to end in “let one side genocide the other side.”
gmerc
That’s not an excuse. Kidnapping is a police problem. Not a genocide problem.
bulbar
Hamas' mass murdering isn't a "police problem" whatever that's meant to mean and they are quite explicit in their goal of genocide of the Jewish population in the southern levante.
TitaRusell
Hamas is not the same as Palestinians.
But I understand that Israeli soldiers need justification to shoot at children and raise houses- just as Germans needed justification for their genocide.
bulbar
Hamas has been the government in Gaza for the last years, so I'm not sure what you want to say by stating the mass murdering by Hamas is a police problem.
seanmcdirmid
See, it’s statements like this that make me want to run away like heck from this.
Netanyahu is a hack, a war monger, all sorts of bad, but Palestinians continued support for Hamas and seeing large scale cross border kidnapping/murder as a “police issue”, it’s hard for me to feel sympathy.
So I bought an EV and that’s the end of it.
gmerc
The Epstein Class solution to turmoil of the soul - give Elon money instead
seanmcdirmid
Elon isn’t the only person selling EVs. I’m glad I’ve never given him money. We should just wash our hands of the Middle East though, maybe if the western world stops caring, all of the parties will come together and figure out a way forward that doesn’t involve killing each other.
expedition32
The argument that all Palestinans deserve to be genocided because of the actions of a terrorist organisation is so asinine that people should be ashamed of themselves.
It is the same reasoning Americans used for their war against the Apaches.
sfifs
I think Israel's leadership has very unwisely lost the Strategic plot here in favour of tactical political advantages of survival.
The history of middle East for the last 5000 years (since Sargon of Akkad) is replete with 'the king X "pacified" (the most commonly used euphemism) the people in the conquered territory'. It has never gone well for the victors under successors of king X, often within a generation or two.
In today's age when access to technology and information is such that any small sufficiently competent and motivated group can cause massive destruction, is it wise to keep creating motivated enemies and expect they will somehow never become competent or that the competent won't become motivated? It is doubly ironic given Israel's own defense industrial complex is filled with such small motivated and competent groups and the evidence of Ukraine/Russia conflict is staring in the face. This situation will blow up I fear within a generation unless Israeli society chooses different leaders.
donsupreme
I am tired boss
BLKNSLVR
Tell me about it!
jmyeet
No, it's actually really simple. You start with these two questions:
1. Is Israel an apartheid state?
2. Is Israel committing a genocide?
At this point (IMHO) you need to do some serious mental gymnastics not to answer "yes" to both questions. As soon as you do, it gets real simple. The existence of Hamas doesn't justify either of these things.
The people who bring this up are engaging in respectability politics or engaging in weaponized cvility. Instead of addressing the underlying issues, the focus is on the methods and the actions of the oppressed when it is the oppressor that sets the level of violence. As Nelson Mandela put it:
> A freedom fighter learns the hard way that it is the oppressor who defines the nature of the struggle, and the oppressed is often left no recourse but to use methods that mirror those of the oppressor. At a certain point, one can only fight fire with fire.
People understood this quite clearly with apartheid South Africa. Can you imagine protesters having to do the performative "does apartheid South Africa have a right to exist?" pledge? No, me neither.
ameminator
While I actually have sympathy for people on both sides of the struggle, I also find it hard to answer "yes" to both questions, mostly because of how muddied the definitions of everything are. It's obvious to me, that both the Israeli government and Hamas are both committing serious warcrimes, and that there no good actors here, here are some questions I don't have an answer to.
For example, is Palestine its own country? Is Hamas is its rightful government? Does that extend to the West Bank or only in Gaza? Palestinians seem to say that Palestine is its own country, Israelis say that Palestinians are not a part of Israel - so how can it be an apartheid state if BOTH sides say they aren't part of the same country at all?
Is Israel committing a genocide? Well, what does a genocide look like? Israel is still distributing food in Gaza, to this day. I don't think it would look like this, but at the same time, there are terrorists on both sides (Itamar ben-Gvir being the most prominent on the Israeli side, in my opinion).
There are more issues and questions and uncertainty around the problems in Israel, Palestine, the Levant as a whole, Iran's involvement and so on.
Even worse, for most Israelis (who are 70% of Arab descent), the country of Israel no longer existing could mean a real genocide for the Israel side! (A counter-genocide?) Regardless, if this issue were easy to solve, it would have been solved already.
Honestly, the situation seems to complicated to boil down to two "simple" questions and I admire that you can have such an "obvious" outlook, but the more I look at Israel and the Middle East (and read, and research), the more questions I have.
kibibu
Yes, Israel is unequivocally committing genocide in Gaza. Genocide is not just "are they killing everybody", but also "are they driving people from their ancestral homelands"?
Israel is constitutionally an ethnostate. If there is an existing population, there is literally no way to establish an ethnostate without genocide - either through killing or displacement.
throw39647
Israel is 20% Arab/Muslim with full equal rights, some of them at the highest positions in many fields.
They have Sharia courts, Arabic on road signs and currency, and proportional representation in parliament.
It’s officially a Jewish state. Like there are about 50 countries that are officially Muslim, and many countries that are officially Christian or Atheist.
sosomoxie
Muslims do not have full rights, especially those who were murdered and had their land stolen. Do Muslims have the right of return? No. Can any Jew become an Israeli citizen? Yes. There are many other discrepancies.
jmyeet
The definitions aren't muddled. Apartheid [1] and genocide [2] are both defined by the UN. Apartheid in particular is also objectively true. Do Israeli Arabs have the same rights as Jewish Israelis? No, objectively [3][4].
As for Palestine being its own country, it clearly isn't. Palestinians live on land claimed by Israel and recognized by pretty much every country in the world. But what if it was? Then Israel is illegally occupying it. Is that better? Why does this matter? Does one make the treatment of Gazans (in particular) more acceptable?
> Even worse, for most Israelis (who are 70% of Arab descent), the country of Israel no longer existing could mean a real genocide for the Israel side!
You can't use a theoretical future genocide to justify a current actual genocide. Also, it's ahistorical. Did this happen when apartheid South Africa ended? What about slavery? No, what actually happened was the former oppressors continued to commit violence against the previously oppressed.
[1]: https://legal.un.org/avl/ha/cspca/cspca.html
[2]: https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/...
[3]: https://decolonizepalestine.com/myth/all-israelis-are-equal/
[4]: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2022/02/israels-...
ameminator
While I appreciate your candor, words matter. I wouldn't call Israel an apartheid state if, in fact, it was two different countries warring to the death over not enough land. I think that situation is closer to reality, with the "victorious" side refusing to completely destroy the loser and the loser refusing to surrender to the "victor".
That situation has changed for the worse in recent years, and the world should step in, if it can. How the world should step in is not obvious - especially if the thorny history of the region is considered.
Finally, on the "current vs future 'genocides'" - dismissing Israel's legitimate security concerns would be as wrong as dismissing Israel's obvious warcrimes, in my opinion. I can't, in good conscience, advocate for action that would replace one genocide with another and it's important to me to consider my actions and words in that light. You may think differently, but maybe you value human life and morality differently than I do.
It's obvious you've made up your mind, but I don't think you've convinced anyone who hasn't already made up their mind, nor have you addressed, what I believe, are very valid questions about the conflict.
bulbar
What do people think Hamas would do if Israel was defenseless?
I find the level of denial disturbing. It's not like Hamas has always ruled over Gaza, they stayed in power by force.
Why do people struggle to acknowledge political elites on both sides are evil?
gamblor956
Hamas has unilaterally broken every ceasefire and peace treaty. This war started with them unilaterally breaking a peace treaty, invading, kidnapping 1000+ civilians, and raping and murdering most of them.[1]
Does this justify what Israel is doing to the West Bank? Most people would say no. On the other hand, before the invasion normal Palestinians were chanting "Death to Israel" and "Death to America" on a daily basis, and they still refuse to recognize the existence of the nation of Israel. If your counterparty doesn't agree that you have a right to exist, there's no negotiating.
[https://www.cnn.com/2026/05/12/middleeast/report-sexual-viol...]
subscribed
"kidnapping 1000+ civilians, and raping and murdering most of them" has been debunked by Haaretz, Israel's "Defense" Minister, UNs ICO, The Jerusalem Post.
Feel free to read through the receipts in this and the follow up article: https://open.substack.com/pub/realleecamp/p/people-are-learn...
I'm quite sure you'll believe quotes from the Israel military figures?
sivakon
Can you stop spreading atrocity propaganda?
The rape hoax has been debunked several times. Meantime, there is a lot of video evidence of Israelis raping Palestinians.
https://zeisquirrel.substack.com/p/rape-hoax-redux-debunking...
kibibu
> they still refuse to recognize the existence of the nation of Israel. If your counterparty doesn't agree that you have a right to exist, there's no negotiating.
Quick question - does Israel recognize the existence of the state of Palestine?
bulbar
It goes further, the continued existence of the nation Israel is denied. They want Israel dismantled, not sure what people think would happen to the Jewish population in this case.
Palestine has not been a nation historically. Westbank was part of Jordan before they attacked Israel. Israel occupies the Westbank ever since. What would even be the ruling Government of Palestine? Fatah or Hamas? There isn't one singular government for the two unconnected regions. If it's a nation, it's two nations, Westbank and Gaza.
ameminator
I mostly agree, except for the blatant calls for genocide from the Israeli side, and the blatant calls for genocide from the Palestinian side. I honestly don't know who to support - neither side wants to live with the other, and it seems, eventually, one of those sides will get their wish. To the detriment of us all.
TiredOfLife
> Protesting in support of Palestine is not protesting in support of Hamas.
Yet every Palestine support protest includes Hamas symbols and chants to exterminate a certain group of people.
BLKNSLVR
One MAGA hat at a Republican rally doesn't mean all Republicans are MAGA.
If anything is to be learnt, it is that individuals should be judged as individuals, or at least that individuals should not be judged by the worst actions of a group that they may (only appear to) be a part of.
A good way for "one side" to trivialise or demonise "the other side" would be to seed "the other side" with extremist messaging.
keypusher
Hamas has been the democratically elected government of Palestine since 2006. That was the year after Israel pulled all their military out of Gaza.
mptest
"democratically elected" being an extremely load bearing sentiment if you know anything about what people's lives are actually like on the ground. did you know a large majority of the populace didn't even vote in 2006? since 2006? there hasn't been elections since. The median age is 18.
Pulled all their military out? Oh, they still controlled their airspace, critical infra, borders tho? Sounds very self determined!
Serious, bad faith or extremely reductive misrepresentation that I can't tell is borne from ignorance willful or accidental.
your comment is the equivalent of acting like cuba's economy is all their own choosing, without analyzing the immense damage sanctions (and why sanctions were there in the first place) have done to the country, or accosting haiti without knowing why their struggles exist. context matters.
crote
2006 is 20(!) years ago, the elections had a 70% turnout, and Hamas received only 44% of the vote.
Considering that about 60% of the Gaza population is age 20 or younger, that means about 18% of the current population voted for Hamas.
And of course Israel directly helped this by arresting a huge number of Hamas politicians right before the elections, and openly interfering with the election process in general.
So no, Hamas does not represent the will of the people in Gaza, and calling it "democratically elected" is at this point a straight-up lie.
citadel_melon
This argument you make is the same one Osama bin Laden uses in his 2004 “Letter to the American People”: he argues that because the American people re-elected George W. Bush, the populace was complicit in the policy consequences, self-rationalizing 2001.
Congratulations for using a heuristic that resulted in 9/11! Osama’s rationalization at least had a more accurate premise that the American people continued to be able to vote — unlike in Palestine. So congrats on having either a worse moral compass or worse reasoning skills than Bin Laden!
piva00
Support for Hamas also came from Netanyahu[0], he explicitly gave support to be used as wedge for the Palestinian cause, to perpetuate the conflict giving casus belli to Israeli actions against Palestinians in Gaza.
[0] https://www.972mag.com/netanyahu-hamas-october-7-adam-raz/
mthoms
That's a weird way of saying there hasn't been an election in 20 years.
keeda
Aww, does that mean we won't get to see whether he could avoid getting booed when he inevitably mentions AI?
smallerize
If only there weren't so many reasons.
themafia
If only Google kept "don't be evil."
sva_
I wonder what percentage of total graduates walked out? The video shows maybe around 50 people at all. The title makes it seem like everyone graduating walked out.
happytoexplain
It does not.
Freedom2
Which part of the title indicates that everyone walked out? I assumed it was merely some of the cohort.
Venn1
Tech leaders from this era will not be remembered well.
dragonelite
There's not much good to remember them by for the past decade they have been implementing a global panopticon system etc.
At least in the 1990s and 2000s it felt they were doing some good stuff for humanity. But the 2010s and 2020s the masked pretty much slipped.
penguin_booze
I think you underestimate what the human attention span has become.
jameson
I wonder which spectrum Steve Jobs would be on if he was still alive to this day.
happytoexplain
Hate him or not, Steve Jobs understood humans. He spoke and behaved as a human. He was flawed and may be considered "cringey" now, but I think he'd be liked better than the rest.
LeFantome
That is a bold prediction
happytoexplain
It doesn't seem like a stretch. I don't know what you mean.
(You may disagree with the opinion of course, but "bold" is a counterintuitive adjective here)
Larrikin
No it is not.
ares623
There's two opposing forces at work. Everyone wants to be Steve Jobs, and no one wants to be Steve Ballmer. So the only choice is to go to the extreme to stay as far away from the other end as possible.
layer8
I'd take Steve Ballmer over most of the current big-tech CEOs, to be honest.
t0bia_s
Would be interesting to see how many of them actually use services of company that this CEO represents.
boelboel
Many times you're just forced to use most these services if you're in education and/or employed. I can be against the government while still drinking tap water or using roads, it's basically impossible not to.
happytoexplain
It would be a petty gotcha with little meaning, more than interesting.
happytoexplain
Regardless of the details of this speech, I believe Sundar Pichai is uncommonly out of touch with reality and with the nation of the United States of America, even among tech CEOs.
He should step down.
criddell
No chance. Have you seen the stock price lately?
iwontberude
He ruined Google, started by shattering the culture into a million pieces. He has negative charisma and no imagination. He was best as a mid level manager.
Gud
GOOD!
I wish more people had the guts to reject Google and the panopticon they’ve built.
jfkeinfmsn38
Everyone loves the "free Palestine" slogan, but I've never actually seen the people who call it offer a concrete realistic solution that could achieve that - is it a two state solution? Is it a one state solution that will burst into a civil war? What's the plan?
What does it actually look like?
I still think a two state solution is the only realistic plan.
blackqueeriroh
Unless the people who shout “Free Palestine” are part of the Knesset or Hamas, I don’t think their offering of a “concrete realistic solution” matters one bit.
zelphirkalt
How can a solution ever be realistic, if on the other side you have: (1) Israel and its "we are the victims!" citizens, (2) Israel's military, bombing civilians, while they are trying to get to humanitarian aid, oh and journalists, especially, when they are coordinating with Israeli military to supposedly avoid being targeted, oh and whole news agency buildings, when they negatively report on what Israel is doing (3) Netanyahu, who starts one conflict after another, to stay in power, (4) Zionists, most of who are maximalist in their ideas about what land they want to possess, and assign a value of approximately zero to the lives of other human beings, nearing a racist ideology of "master race"?
(5) There are also complete idiotic and anti-semitic forces on the other side, who demand Israel to completely disappear.
What solution will be accepted as realistic by multiple sides of this conflict and acceptable enough for most sides to get everyone back to the negotiations table?
I have a very unrealistic idea about what should happen, which is directly opposed to factors (1) to (4):
Israel needs to return all stolen land and return to internationally recognized borders as a first step of showing good will. Israel needs to prosecute its own military personell for war crimes and for supporting armed mobs chasing people out of their own houses in the West Bank. Netanyahu and his gang need to be brought to Den Hague, and be put in front of the International Criminal Court. This is just the base justice level.
On the other side Hamas needs to disarm at least in majority. No more rockets launched. Also no more rockets launched from Hezbolla etc. Is the hostages situation still ongoing? Of course they need to be returned, if any still actually alive.
Next, Israel starts financing rebuilding efforts in Palestine.
Sounds realistic? Probably not, but that would at least be somewhat fair. Just not gonna happen with a US-supported dictator and his gang on one side and a guerilla militia on the other side.
Maybe the point is, that "realistic" probably != fair, and that is extremely painful. Maybe the point is, that fairness can only be achieved via a lengthy decades long process of first getting the weapons to cool down, and then holding all parties responsible at international courts. But guess what, Israel would never consent to be judged, because they do whatever the f they want.
triyambakam
I'm very uninformed but could "free Palestine" not mean a two state solution?
poisonborz
Maybe the shouts are less about "hey I have a concrete solution for a complex hundred year old ethnical problem" and more about "hey an authoritarian state shouldn't be allowed genocide of 100k civilians, or at least my state should not support them with weapons". Protests are about immediate action, solutions happen over long time, if ever.
crote
Let's start by Israel no longer committing a genocide on the Palestinians and go from there.
Most "free Palestine" protestors probably don't care an awful lot about the final outcome of the conflict, they just want the mass killing of innocent people to stop.
There's a reason the movement only flared up when Israel started carpet bombing Gaza, and not during the mostly-quiet years before.
mhb
The "movement flared up" the day after Hamas invaded Israel.
GlacierFox
It's a fashion statement for some people I've found. Like the Anarchy symbol on a T-Shirt. I've run in to people with such a hard line opinion on the matter who couldn't even point to where Palestine is a on a map.
deaux
At least in the US I can guarantee you that the % of hardline pro-Israel people who can actually point to Israel on the map is at least twice as low. I'm willing to bet my assets on that.
mhb
> I'm willing to bet my assets on that.
Impressive conviction but no one needs a bucket full of gumballs.
deaux
Haha, got'em! What's next, a "deez nuts" joke?
khaledh
Free Palestine simply means a sovereign Palestinian state separate from Israel, which Israel has rejected many times over the years, most recently in the Knesset vote in February and July 2024, opposing the establishment of a Palestinian state west of the Jordan River. Any time there was outside attempts to recognize Palestine as a state (e.g. through UN efforts) Israel responded with building more settlements in the West Bank.
kyboren
I've come around on the idea of a Palestinian state.
Once they have a state, the Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank will finally have defined borders and a single sovereign. And history shows they can be relied upon to launch another genocidal war on Israel more or less immediately.
Then it will be a war between two nation-states, not a nation-state vs. an unaccountable terrorist organization that pretends to be a proper state when convenient.
The Israel vs. Palestine conflict will then fall neatly into the framework of Westphalian nation-states and when Israel proceeds to utterly defeat Palestine, demands their unconditional surrender, kills all who resist, annexes their territory, and forcibly re-educates any who remain (post-WWII style), it will all be 100% kosher according to customary international law.
deaux
> they can be relied upon to launch another genocidal war on Israel more or less immediately.
They'll certainly have learnt a lot from Israel in that respect.
762236
It's performance for social standing. They don't actually care.
Gagarin1917
I wish I’d skipped my graduation ceremony as well. What a complete waste of time.
SpaceNoodled
Not me. I always enjoy a nice opportunity to nap in front of a large crowd.
stevenwoo
I went to the Electrical Engineering ceremony, the only speakers were from the faculty and one newly minted B.S.E.E. I biked there and saw there were a lot of smaller ceremonies across the campus outside of the stadium the photo captures.
arjie
Speech itself was kind of fun: https://blog.google/company-news/inside-google/message-ceo/s...
Pretty light hearted, and honestly considering that he's given a speech to an empty stadium before (as referenced in the first few sentences, I think he'll have handled it just fine.
> But people have also been giving me a lot of advice on what to say. Actually, it’s been the same advice, and it’s about what not to say. People thought it would be really difficult for me; it is the last two letters of my last name, after all.
Ha, chuckle-worthy. Of course he'd find it hard to not pitch AI.
The only thing I find surprising is no-one points out that Stanford is a truly elite education system: Some 2 in 5 of students enter disabled, but almost all of them end up successful over time.
dumbmrblah
Disabled in the sense they get more time to take tests.
watwut
Not even that. Disabled as in "theoretically maybe could ask for some accomodation and maybe could get it". They dont get more time on tests, the moral panic is about them potentially being able to ask for more time if they cared.
wxw
What was the speech on?
hoppyhoppy2
It was a commencement speech. Here's a transcript: https://blog.google/company-news/inside-google/message-ceo/s...
inatreecrown2
No mention of AI at all.
timbit42
Well, they didn't walk out about AI...
ChrisArchitect
Associated story released after: https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/sundar-pichai-stanford-c...
smashah
Good kids - proud of them.
kunai
So funny how a site called "Hacker News," once vibrant with the ethos of lighthearted disobedience and an inquisitive spirit, finds itself almost religiously in opposition to those who decry a (horrendously incompetent) dystopia and panopticon forced upon the population by the very forces this website's (former, I'm assuming) users claimed to hate so much.
Seems this has more to do with Palestine and Google's involvement with Israel to provide cloud computing.