Silicon Valley Needs a Foreign Policy

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 Center for Responsive Politics compilation. That same year, Apple employed three in-house lobbyists and worked with 13 others. Facebook worked with two, so it was telling when that number ballooned last year, pre-IPO, to 23.