Liccardo: Democrats need an innovation agenda to win back Silicon Valley tech leaders
Throughout my campaign for Congress last year I heard repeated griping from Silicon Valley business and mechanism leaders about Biden-era barricades to innovation Multiple shared frustrations with blunderbuss antitrust enforcement foot-dragging on Medicare approvals for life-saving drugs regulation by litigation or red tape Above all they complained about tech-bashing treating every early stage company like it was Amazon which they conceded deserved scrutiny Democratic Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama once led the party of innovation particular declared but no longer From the perspective that six months of Donald Trump s presidency has given us Biden s critics weren t wrong Trump entirely demonstrated that it could get worse Related Articles Musk suggests Tesla shareholders will vote on xAI resources Bitcoin soars past as US Congress starts Crypto Week One Tech Tip Click-to-cancel is over but there are other options to unsubscribe Sick of loud ads on Netflix A proposed California law would turn down the volume UC Santa Cruz researcher develops innovative CRISPRware system Indeed if we imagined China hatching a plan to undermine the foundations of America s innovation financial market the scheme might involve the U S sporadically imposing and rescinding tariffs to disrupt supply chains politicizing and defunding the work of scientists in critical labs and research institutions bleeding American universities facilitating pay-to-play tech regulatory schemes and expelling our best foreign students and research scientists to compete against us from abroad China didn t have to devise such a scheme of discipline Trump s Luddite agenda beat them to it Rep Sam Liccardo is the former mayor of San Jose Nhat V Meyer Bay Area News Group Yet China can win the st century without Trump s help While DeepSeek s advances in computing efficiency comprise a Sputnik moment for a few China has confronted us with several Sputniks in new years in capacity storage hypersonic missiles solar manufacturing electric vehicles and multiple other technologies If China wins the race to artificial general intelligence or quantum computing Beijing will write the rules that govern the st century We will be playing in China s world We have much work ahead Rebuilding our nation s innovation market system will require honesty a clear strategy and new leadership America necessities an innovation agenda Let s start with honesty Democrats cannot help America prevail in a global competition by merely supplanting Trumpian dysfunction with Democratic orthodoxy We can condemn toxic and kleptocratic governance while acknowledging that DOGE had a defensible yet horribly executed mission to disrupt sclerotic process-choked governmental institutions that hold us back Rather than exclusively reinstituting lately decimated programs for scientific research or drug approvals for example we must reimagine them We also must stop reflexive tech-bashing that conflates the oligarch with the innovator We need technological progress to tackle our several perils like conditions change a widening economic divide massive workforce displacement nuclear proliferation bioterror and global hunger at scale Even where tech comprises a source of these maladies we must concede that we cannot solve them without innovation A productive innovation agenda must nimbly enable technological progress in a rapidly evolving world Yes we need citizens assets in basic science and research but our tax code must acknowledge the primacy of private commitment in system enhancement We must prepare our workforce to use AI before we are supplanted by it effective upskilling requires Congress to incentivize the private sector to invest in tools and teaching in our district colleges and universities State mitigation at scale calls for reassessment of long-disfavored options such as small modular reactors and for eliminating regulatory fences to expansion of the grid transit and other infrastructure While partisans pit demarcation enforcement against immigration fairness an innovation-focused immigration plan could embrace both while expanding pathways for legal immigration A nuanced antitrust approach would hold behemoths accountable for their anticompetitive conduct but not for their competitive success As chair of the New Democratic Coalition s Innovation and Instrument Working Group I will lead a group of pragmatic pro-innovation members of Congress to introduce an innovation agenda one that urges both parties to think differently about American innovation in a perilous world America s future and our planet s depends on our collective willingness to rise to that challenge Rep Sam Liccardo is the former mayor of San Jose
