A small group of top Silicon Valley tech executives has been invited at the Trump Tower to attend a technology summit organized by President-elect Donald Trump.
Trump's Call For Tech Summit
Among the tech executives invited to attend the summit are included big names in the Silicon Valley tech industry, such as Apple CEO Tim Cook, Alphabet CEO Larry Page and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. According to CBS News, the technology summit will take place at Trump Tower in New York on Wednesday, Dec. 14. Included on the guest list for the are also Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich, IBM CEO Ginni Rometty and Oracle CEO Safra Catz.
Catz declared in a statement that said he would like to discuss with President-elect Trump specific policy issues. The Oracle CEO explained that he plans to tell Trump that tech executives are here to help. He added that the U.S. technology community has the potential to become much stronger and competitive than ever if the future president will reduce regulation, reform the tax code and negotiate better trade deals.
Despite Trump's presidential campaign grudge against Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, he was also invited to the roundtable and is likely to accept that invitation. PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, one of Mr. Trump's few vocal supporters from the tech industry, incoming chief of staff Reince Priebus and son-in-law Jared Kushner are the ones who reportedly extended the invites.
A number of prominent of tech executives are noticeably missing, at least so far, from the list of confirmed attendees. Among them is included Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, despite the fact that Trump used feverishly the Twitter platform to build support throughout his campaign.
Previous Trump Relationship With Tech Industry
Because of his proposed crackdown on immigration, Trump largely struggled to gain favor with the tech executives in Silicon Valley during his presidential campaign. In contrast, several tech executives worked with pro-immigration reform advocacy groups, such as the technology-focused Fwd.us.
But Trump has also been under critics from Silicon Valley on other issues. For instance, he took a controversial stance when urged a boycott of Apple after the company denied the request to unlock an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters. A day before South Carolina's GOP primary, Trump called for a boycott of Apple until the company gives the requested information.
With attacks against the "dishonest media," Trump has also touched several technology companies. Since leaders in tech, for the most part, vocally disapproved of Trump's campaign, this coming meeting is pretty notable, according to CNN. However, going forward, during Trump's presidency his administration and the tech industry could clash over some important issues like immigration and net neutrality.
During the presidential campaign, Silicon Valley pulled highlighted the reasons why they believed Trump would be bad news for innovation and tech industry. As much as 145 tech leaders, including well-known names like Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, IAC's Barry Diller, Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales and Reddit's Alexis Ohanian, have signed one open letter against Trump.
