You’re mistaking the original term hacker, a tinkerer of systems, for the black hat variety.
black and white hat is relative. someone breaking into a state run database in a dictatorship and stealing documents that prove some opposition leader was murdered would be a black hat criminal if you ask their government. a hacker jailbreaking a phone to let people fix it without expensive official service is a black hat to the company. we should really switch to saying offensive and defensive or something else that doesnt come with moral implications. maybe lawful and chaotic.
I suppose his point was that the both parties are black hats.
What true hackers really did was discuss the definition of the word and how to use it
Hackers didn't use to spend a lot of time defending trillion-dollar corporations and their intellectual property rights.