Seems like some people are really into power, to the extent that they'll forswear most of the things people generally use power to obtain (money, material possessions, sex, etc) and just focus on the power itself as an end.
On a related note, I think this idea explains the appeal of smart jerk god characters (Doctor Who, Doctor House, Rick Sanchez, Sherlock Holmes...) to a sizeable portion of nerds (including me). "So smart they can't help but need you" is not a healthy goal, but damn if it isn't seductive.
It's plenty reasonable to be skeptical of the public utterances of CEOs, but it's not necessarily true that his words are hollow because his company is not currently compliant with the law he's proposing. As long as competitors are free to ignore this proposed privacy requirement it probably makes no competitive sense for his company to comply with it. In that case, it's perfectly logical to agitate for a law, which would let you adhere to stricter privacy requirements confident that your competition has to do so as well.
I don't know what the relevant statistics actually are, but if the death rate for sherpas rescuing solo climbers is higher than that for sherpas supporting guided climbs -- even if the total number of deaths is lower -- this still suggests reducing the number of solo rescues, no? Especially since, as far as I can tell, supporting guided climbs is way more economically important.