Who Is Better for Tech—Clinton or Trump?

An interesting piece from careers site Dice.com ponders which presidential candidate is better for the tech industry, Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump?

As writer for Dice.com, Christopher Zara, points out that thus far, neither candidate has made technology a major talking point on their political agendas. More so, “Neither candidate seems to have a consistent or well-defined stance on some of the biggest issues facing the tech sector,” Zara said.

Even more troubling is that the two advanced baby boomer-aged candidates have displayed an apparent lack of tech savvy.

From the article:

“In fact, both nominees have repeatedly demonstrated a distinct lack of technical competence, whether it was Clinton conducting government business on a private email server, or Trump suggesting that the way to defeat ISIS is to simply ‘close up’ parts of the Internet.”

Trump supporter Jeff Eisenach, a tech policy expert and visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, which is a pro-business research group in Washington, said to Dice.com, “I’m going to call it a toss-up at the moment–largely unknowable.”

“It’s Democrats who are going after the Airbnbs

and Ubers of the world and protecting the incumbent hotel and taxi companies,” Eisenach said. “I don’t mean to be casting stones here, but I think that’s an accurate characterization.”

And, of course, it seems as though email troubles and Hillary Clinton are always in close proximity. However, Mrs. Clinton unveiled her technology and innovation strategy a few weeks ago, which includes plans to provide every American student a computer science education and to engage the private sector in training 50,000 new computer science teachers in the next decade.

Other details of her plan include:

• Connecting every household to high-speed Internet by 2020.
• Connecting more public places, including airports and train stations, to the Internet.
• Enabling more public places to offer free WiFi hotspots.
• Helping to deploy next-generation 5G wireless.
• Allowing entrepreneurs and tech startup founders to put federal loans into special status while they get their businesses off the ground. They can defer student loan payments for up to three years, with zero interest and zero principal.

President Obama has been very pro-technology, launching a series of tech-focused initiatives to further technology education for students and help America compete in the 21st century. Clearly, either candidate will have big tech shoes to fill following this election.