Gates, Barrett ponder tech's role in crisis
BY KRISTI HEIM
Mercury News
NEW YORK -- Intel Chief Executive Craig Barrett has taken about 10 flights since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. And the tall, distinguished-looking Barrett, 62, has been singled out and searched on half of them.
Still, he thinks the national ID card system touted recently by Oracle CEO Larry Ellison won't work.
Almost any identification card can be faked, and ordinary citizens would get most of the scrutiny. ``If I'm not a terrorist, how does it help?'' he said.
At a dinner with a group of journalists on the eve of Microsoft's Windows XP debut, both Barrett and Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said they have been thinking of what role they might play in finding ways to deal with the threat of terrorism.
``Bioterrorism is the scariest thing,'' said Gates, who turns 46 Sunday. ``It's the asymmetric nature of the unhappy person's ability to cause trouble vs. our own ability to deal with that.''
Barrett said he had to manage his diverse, global staff carefully in the aftermath of terrorist attacks.
``We had to preach tolerance and remind everyone that Oklahoma City wasn't a foreign-born event,'' he said.
Gates was clearly in an upbeat mood at the Wednesday dinner of filet mignon and sea bass, which was held in his top-floor hotel suite in New York. Gates had appeared on Regis Philbin's morning show the day before and taped an episode of the TV show ``Frasier'' in which he plays himself.
Microsoft's founder said he did not see the tech economy slowing dramatically as a result of the downturn and public fears about terrorism. ``Did the craziness of the Internet mania speed the economy up?'' he asked. ``Not really. It was very artificial.''
Barrett said he predicted an upswing in Intel's business in about six months, but that today's unique conditions made it impossible to be sure.
``When have you ever had the Y2K-bug hangover, the dot-com hangover, hangover from economic recession and hangover from terrorist attacks?'' he said. Nonetheless, Barrett sees record sales in Latin America, India and China as a reason to be encouraged about the world economy.
New technology, including Intel's Pentium 4 chip and the new Microsoft operating system, will make rich content over the Internet possible. ``That in itself is kind of a killer app,'' he said.
The tech economy in general and Microsoft in particular are benefiting from an influx of people who left the dot-com world, Gates said.
Gates and Barrett agreed on the importance of spending for research, which they pledged will continue despite the economic downturn.
And they said neither company will have any layoffs. Barrett said Santa Clara-based Intel will reduce its workforce by 5,000 this year through attrition.
``It's pedal to the metal in R&D technology,'' Barrett said. Recessions eventually end. But ``technology never slows down. Moore's Law hasn't recognized a slowdown yet.''
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