Cisco CEO John Chambers appears to spend as much time politicking with world leaders as he does running the world’s biggest data equipment maker, judging from today’s interview in The Times. For he is a half-billionaire with a megaphone: "THE INTERNET WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING", he tells governments. So far so banal. But his message is "brutally blunt". Governments are failing young people. Countries must change their education systems. Or get left behind. In Britain this week to discuss Internet education with senior Cabinet minister Jack "enforcer" Cunningham, Chambers will tell the politician that the British education system is "not yet giving young people the skills need to compete in the Internet economy, and that fewer people are now online than in Germany". Persumably, Chambers is talking percentages, rather than absolute numbers. There are 20 million more people living in Germany, the world’s third biggest economy, than in Britain, the world’s seventh. According to Chambers, Britain is not "training people for where the jobs are", citing the 50,000 well-paid IT job vacancies that exist here. Chambers is what we call in Britain one of the Great and the Good. He sits on US government trade advisory boards, his company sets up networking academies in schools and universities, he hangs out with important people. And tells them off. The Times article reveals just how much of a mover and shaker Chambers is. He says he has met every government leader in Asia, except for President Kim Dae Jung of South Korea. Every government leader? It would have been interesting to be a fly on the wall at Chamber’s meeting with the despotic military regime of UN-sanctioned Myammar, the desperately poor country formerly known as Burma. In some places, the Internet seems an altogether frivolous matter.® 'Ethical' Cisco CEO will avoid anti-trust concerns Cisco chief pans Ascend takeover CeBIT 99. Cisco praises Singapore, bitches about Europe