June 21, 2012

Silicon Valley Needs a Foreign Policy

Ernest Wilson, Foreign Affairs

Over the last 30 years, even as the United States transformed from a manufacturing economy into a service economy and the economic epicenter of innovation and progress shifted decisively toward high-tech frontiers such as Boston and North Carolina's Raleigh-Durham Research Triangle, the technology industry's political engagement remained paltry. Lobbyists were considered by many such enterprises to be The Man; lobbying was taboo. Tech firms were very slow to assign staff to Washington, and when they did, their numbers were puny relative to industrial-age companies that are not so politically retiring. Compare information-industry goliaths to those in the U.S. oil industry. In 2010, ExxonMobile employed nine in-house lobbyists and worked with 41 outside registered ones, according to a...

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TAGGED: China, Google, Silicon Valley, United States, ERNEST J. WILSON III, Barack Obama, University of Southern California, Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, Chair in Communication and Dean, Southern California

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