Which Presidential Candidate Would Be Best For High Tech?

High Tech has never been as focused on lobbying as most other industries, so it has always seemed to play a less significant role in presidential politics despite the fact that it has a larger number of celebrity CEOs than most areas.

Part of the reason for that is because the business is so fiercely competitive it's often hard enough to get this group to agree to development standards let alone political standards—wait a minute, is there such a thing as standards in politics?

Sure there are already a few CEOs in high tech, and there certainly will be a few more that step up and throw their support for one or the other candidate. In the end, I've never believed that anyone's endorsement sways others a whole lot.

The real question is, who do you think would be better for business?

Do you think we need more or less regulation of the industry? Generally, Republicans are supposed to believe in less regulation and the Democrats more. What about taxes on business? Again, the two parties are supposed to be on opposite sides of the aisle.

The reality is, it isn't that simple, and there are many who believe there isn't a hill of beans worth a difference between the two parties any longer when it comes to these basic principles.

There are some issues, of course, that will arise and over which the next president will certainly have influence. But to me, there is really only one difficult problem that must be addressed if the U.S. is to hold onto its dominance of high tech, and that is raising its visibility via the debate around the H1b visa. It's also an area where there does seem to be some agreement among high-tech CEOs, most of whom want to see the government issue lots more of these work visas to allow many more engineers into the country. If the candidates were to adhere to general party principles, you would expect the Republicans to say yes to this and the Democrats to say no. But this is a complicated matter that is a symptom of the biggest issue we face.

The real problem is we are not graduating enough quality engineering students in this country. If we were, this wouldn't be an issue. The longer-term concern is that if we don't fix this problem and ultimately get ourselves back into a situation where the brainpower is being developed from within, then we're going to wake up to discover the slick fast-growing startups of the future are being launched elsewhere. Take a look at the amount of venture capital being raised here and invested elsewhere in high tech these days, and you can argue it's already beginning to happen.

The biggest issue we face as an industry is education and graduating more engineers, and I haven't heard any of the candidates give me an answer as to what they would do about that.

Perhaps it's already too late.

What do you feel is the biggest issue facing the U.S. high tech?
Make something happen. E-mail Everything Channel CEO Robert Faletra at [email protected].