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Hillary Clinton, having fought off an ambitious Bernie Sanders and now preparing to enter a brutal fight with a fiery and unpredictable Donald Trump, took a bit of a detour this week to talk tech
As reported by Issie Lapowsky of Wired, Clinton gave a speech at an event in Denver Tuesday on her technology and innovation policy platform (the first platform of its kind by a major party nominee), then followed up with a town hall event in Los Angeles to speak with digital content creators.
Clinton’s expansive, five-point platform on tech and innovation policy carries over a number of goals and initiatives she has already made public: among them bringing broadband internet to every American household by 2020.
Other policy points are newer, however. Clinton emphasizes breeding homegrown tech talent, calling for increased funding for computer science education in public schools and forgiving the student loans of young American tech entrepreneurs. Clinton also makes a strong case for net neutrality, both in the US and abroad, and insists that government bureaucracies must become more tech efficient.
During her speech Tuesday, Clinton also called for a “Manhattan-like project” to strengthen American cybersecurity. She stressed the need for tech companies and government agencies to act as partners, not combatants, in strengthening America’s cyberdefense.
Clinton’s calls for delaying the student debt of young entrepreneurs received the most media attention following her speech. The New York Times called the proposal “a nod to young voters” after millenials overwhelmingly supported Bernie Sanders in the primaries.
Brian Fung of the Washington Post, meanwhile, argued that Clinton’s tech agenda is actually a “huge economic plan in disguise.” Elements of her platform, such as more flexible benefit packages for freelance workers, Fung notes, reflect Clinton’s plans to combat major disruptions in the traditional American workforce.
Clinton’s tech speech comes less than a week after gaining support from a number of major Silicon Valley execs. Last week the Clinton campaign revealed 56 business executives who support Hillary for president, including Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, and Google Executive Chair Eric Schmidt, as well as Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce and Brian Chesky, CEO of AirBnB.
Read more at Wired