The President: Thank you very much.
It's great to have you at the White House, and I
just wanted to pass on word that Otto Warmbier
has just passed away.
He spent a year and a half in North Korea.
A lot of bad things happened, but at least we
got him home to be with his parents where they
were so happy to see him, even though he was in
very tough condition.
But he just passed away a little while ago.
It's a brutal regime, and we'll be able to handle
it, but I want to thank you all for being here;
special people.
I'm really thrilled to welcome many of you for
the first time and, certainly, the first time
meeting as the American Technology Council.
We're joined by an incredible group of
leaders on the absolute cutting edge of
innovation, including many CEOs from the world's most
successful businesses.
We have approximately 3.5 trillion dollars of market
value in this room.
But that's almost the exact number that we've
created since my election.
(laughter)
In fact, I think we have you beat by a little bit,
which is a pretty good number.
But I congratulate you all.
You've done an amazing job.
Thank you for lending your time and your talent to
the American people.
A lot of ideas have come out of the room today, and
a lot of ideas will, over the next short period of time.
I also want to welcome Secretary Mnuchin,
Secretary Kelly, Administrator Verma, and
my Budget Director, Mick Mulvaney.
Thank you all.
You've done a great job.
I want to thank Jared and Chris, Chris Lavalle, for
assembling such a spectacular group of people.
They're working very, very hard, and I want to thank
Ivanka for working so hard on it.
It's a real passion.
Our goal is to lead a sweeping transformation of
the federal government's technology that will
deliver dramatically better services for
citizens, stronger protection from cyber
attacks, which we were just discussing in the
Oval Office with a little bit smaller group.
That's a big problem.
There's no question about it.
We're going to be working on it.
We're going to solve the problem, and up to a
trillion dollars in savings for tax payers
over the next 10 years; over a trillion.
We're embracing big change, bold thinking, and
outsider perspectives to transform government, and
make it the way it should be, and at far less cost.
My administration's already taken very
historic steps to modernize critical IT
systems, and make government more transparent.
As an example, you're seeing what we're doing
with the airports, with all of the billions and
billions of dollars that have been spent on planes
flying all in the wrong directions.
We're getting it changed.
They've spent many billions of dollars and we
are getting that whole system fixed; money wasted
over the last six or seven years: billions.
V.A. Secretary Shulken recently announced that we're
upgrading technology to allow the seamless
transfer of veterans' medical records from the
Defense Department, which has been a huge problem
for decades and decades for our great veterans.
We'll have it fixed very soon, but it's been a
problem for many, many decades.
Across government we're fixing problems in months
that others have not fixed in many, many years, and
we're just getting started.
Fifty years ago our government drove the
innovation that inspired the world and put
Americans on the moon.
Today many of our agencies rely on painfully outdated
technology, and yet we have the greatest people
in technology that the world has ever seen right
here with us in this room.
And most of them are just nodding as I say that.
They're actually agreeing with me --
(laughter)
-- which, that's interesting Eric, right?
Government needs to catch up with the
technology revolution.
We're going to change that with the help of great,
American businesses like the people assembled.
The businesses represented here today employ hundreds
of thousands of American workers.
Your innovation has shaped the modern world and
created millions of jobs.
America should be the global leader in
government technology, just as we are in every
other aspect, and we are going to start our big
edge again in technology; such an important industry.
I view it from the standpoint of jobs
and other things.
You view it somewhat differently.
But we're all in the same ballpark.
It's so important, so important.
My administration is embracing a new spirit of
innovation that will make life better for all
Americans, and when it comes to what we're here
for today, American technology, we're working
very diligently with everybody, including
Congress, on immigration so that you can get the
people you want in your companies, and it's been a
tremendous problem that you've had over the past
long period of time.
So we're working very hard on that, and we'll be able
to solve that problem.
I want to thank everyone in the room for lending
your time again, and what I'd like to do is maybe
just go around the room briefly and just introduce
yourself and, perhaps, the name of your company.
We won't go with too many long speeches, but we'll
start with our wonderful, great genius from
Microsoft who has done one hell of a job.
Congratulations on the job you've done.
Go ahead.
Satya Nadella: Thank you Mr. President.
Thanks for the opportunity today to spend the time;
both learn and contribute, I think, to what is one of
the most important dialogues which is about
modernizing our government with the latest
technology, and so that the people of America can
benefit from it.
So I think the first thing I took away is how
important an agenda it is to modernize technology.
The second thing I think is for us to do our best
work as an industry and in collaboration with the
government to skill the people of the United
States for the jobs of the future.
Technology will play a role, both in creation of
the jobs and the skills and then, lastly, I would
say that we also need to increase American
competitiveness, and the two things that the
government can and has done is spending
in big research.
After all, all the technology that we have
today is because it started, in fact, in the
government and the recent institutions you funded,
as well as the enlightened immigration policy.
Of course, I'm a beneficiary of that, and I
hope that we continue to be able to sort of really
make sure that the American competitiveness
is what helps us set policy for it.
The President: Well, thank you Satya, and perhaps we
could keep it a little shorter than that.
(laughter)
Otherwise, we might be here for a long time.
Anyway, Jeff.
Jeff Bezos: All right, I will be short.
I think, you know, when we met before in December I
encouraged this administration that you
could be the Innovation Administration.
I'd like to see that kind of thinking continue.
I applaud the formation of the Innovation Council,
and I thank Jared for doing that.
Just a couple of things that you could certainly
focus on: one would be using commercial
technologies wherever possible.
I think you guys are already headed that way,
but to leverage those will save taxpayers
a lot of money.
The second one is to continue to work hard on
to figure out ways to retrain and upskill
workers all over the U.S.
We have a program at Amazon called Career
Choice that's been doing that.
We've already got 10,000 people in the program.
Ivanka knows about this program.
And then the third thing to keep your eye on: I
think it would be impossible to overstate
this, is that the United States needs to, in every
way, at every level, be working on machine
learning and artificial intelligence, and that can
be used in every part of government to improve the
services that government provides to citizens.
The President: Good.
Thank you Jeff.
Very good.
Thank you.
Okay, next.
Raphael Reif: Mr. President, I'm Rafael Reif.
I'm MIT's president, and I'm delighted to be part
of this terrific group.
Let me say that I applaud the focus of your
administration in innovation.
We are the most innovative country in the world
today, and the biggest issue we have among our
self right now is: my view is to stay where we are as
the most innovative country in the world 30
years from now and beyond.
The President: Well, my uncle was a professor
there for a long time, so I have a lot of respect
for MIT, believe me; great place.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Okay, yes.
Carol Fault: Carol Fault.
I'm the Chancellor at UMC, and I too am delighted to
be here, talking about innovation and
workforce and talent.
People have said what's really important, but when
I think about the future, I think of all those kids
that have such capacity and what we're talking
about is trying to take every resource we have to
put to building that innovation capacity for
the country, and so it's great to be here.
The President: Thank you very much.
Yes, thank you.
Tom Leighton: I'm Tom Leighton from Akamai, and
we protect government websites from attackers,
the majority of the government websites,
including White House.gov.
The President: The DNC could have used you.
(laughter)
Tom Leighton: Well, it's an important job and, as
you can imagine, there's a lot of folks out there
trying to do bad things, and we're delighted to
help with the effort to save a trillion dollars,
and to secure the government.
The President: Good, thank you.
Zachary Bookman: Thank you Mr. President.
I'm Zach Bookman, CEO of a company called Open Gov.
We have about 1,500 governments across the
country as customers of our smart government cloud
for budgeting and intelligence and open data.
I'm really excited and honored to be a part of
today's conversation, and I applaud the work that
Jared and so many others here are leading.
It's clear to me that a lot of the thinking being
applied is exactly what's been needed for a long
time, and I think it's just the beginning of a
lot of innovation.
So --
The President: I think that's right.
Thank you very much.
Pat Gelsinger: Pat Gelsinger, CEO of the
(inaudible) representing Dell here today, and we're
some 70 plus percent of government workloads run
on the VMware software today.
So we're thrilled to be able to be in that role
today but, more importantly, moving it
forward to the cloud, we think is critical; this
potential in cyber and really putting in place
cyber hygiene and, ultimately, we, as an
industry, are the product of the seed corn that was
planted 30, 40, 50 years ago from the great
research investments of government and university.
And we deeply believe that we need to be planting
those seed corns for our children
and grandchildren.
The President: Great, thank you.
Steve Malenkov: Mr. President, Steve
Malenkov, CEO of QUALCOMM.
Thank you for the opportunity to contribute today.
Obviously, our company works a lot on creating
the base technology that allows big transitions to
exist in cellular technologies, and we're
very excited about the upcoming 5G transition.
It's going to be a big job creator worldwide, and I
think it's important that the U.S.A.
stays competitive, and we applaud the direction that
the administration is taking.
The President: Thank you very much.
John Doerr: Mr. President, my name is John Doerr,
Chairman of Kleiner Perkins, and of a startup
company called Nuna, and Jeff would say that your
administration will be the Innovation Administration,
and I'd like to challenge it to also be the Data
Liberation Administration.
There's a trillion dollars' worth of value
locked up in government databases, and if we
unlock that, we can transform healthcare.
We can improve services for citizens.
We could lower the costs to government, and if you
set the data free, the entrepreneurs are
going to do the rest.
I'm particularly impressed by the thinking of Seema
Verma over in --
The President: Right.
John Doerr: -- your Medicare and Medicaid
teams, and look forward to working with you
and the administration.
The President: Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Michael Drake: I'm Michael Drake, President of the
Ohio State University.
I'm glad to be here today, and I'm very happy to
participate in this conversation.
You know, we try to enable and empower and inspire
young people to make a difference, and being able
to partner with our colleagues here around the
table and with the government to do that in a
better way is something that we are
very excited about.
The President: Thank you very much.
Ajaypal Banga: I'm Ajay Banga, the CEO of
MasterCard, and thank you for having us,
Mr. President.
I think in addition to what technology and the
Internet are going to do for all of us
is an opportunity.
Side-by-side comes a tremendous responsibility
of cyber security.
I think working that the right way with the right
public/private partnerships but also
working it where the weakest link, which is
small merchants and the individual consumer: get
the right level of safety that they demand from us
is really important.
And I think the level of engagement and the
dialogue today was very, very interesting.
The President: Thank you very much.
Ginni Rometti: Mr. President, Ginni
Rometti from IBM.
And, you know, I've had the pleasure of being in a
number, and the honor of being in a number of these
sessions, and I think it's worth noting that the
efforts around workforce development, around cyber
security, around modernization: while
they're difficult, in the short time there has been
progress already made.
And so I would really say, on behalf of both, you
know, Ivanka and Jared and Chris and Reid, those of
us who've been in it from the beginning: I can
already see, and actions have been taken.
So, while these are difficult problems, I
would just encourage us to keep going because I
actually can see the change happening already.
So I think this is a good sign of progress.
The President: Thank you Ginni.
Thank you very much.
Eric Schmidt: Mr. President, thanks to
Jared and Ivanka for sort of driving this so hard.
I'm absolutely convinced that during your
administration there's going to be a huge
explosion in new opportunities because the
platforms that are getting built in our industry:
those will create huge, very large new business
opportunities, for which the entrepreneurs,
technical talent, immigration, and so forth
that you understand: it can drive America very,
very positively forward.
It's going to happen soon during your leadership.
The President: We will Eric.
Peter.
Peter Thiel: Mr. President, I'm Peter Thiel.
I'm a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley; very
honored to be here today with all these
terrific people.
I think that the tech industry is an industry
that is doing well in America, and we need to
sort of make it do even better, and give it the
support, the regulatory support, in all
sorts of different ways.
I think your administration is off to a
terrific start in doing these things.
Thanks.
The President: Thank you Peter.
Thank you for your help.
I appreciate it.
Shantanu Narayen: Mr. President, I'm
Shantanu Narayen.
I'm CEO of Adobe.
We're the company that's best known for Photoshop
and PDF, and too, thank you for having us today.
Two quick things: one is I think you're championing a
culture of innovation.
I think it's going to be critical to our country's
future leadership, and shared services for
improving government will, I believe, drive a
lot of efficiency.
The President: Thank you very much.
Brian Krzanich: Mr. President, Brian
Krzanich, CEO of Intel.
You know, what I got out of today is first, it's a
great honor to be here, and a real pleasure.
But also it was a great outreach, I think, between
the private/public partnerships that we can
really drive innovation much, much faster.
And so I hope today's just the start of what we can
accomplish together.
The President: Thank you, a great company, and I
appreciate it.
Thank you very much.
Alex Karp: I'm deeply honored to be here.
I'm Alex Karp, Palantir.
I know many people in the room and in your White
House from our work and tech supported General
McMaster on the frontline in many of the special
operations people in America and
around the world.
What's very gratifying about what you're doing is
the focus on getting more output for the input,
which I don't think there's been a deep focus
on in the past, and I'm really grateful to your
staff for pushing that forward.
We focused on rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse in
the government, which is something I think all
Americans would welcome, and I thank
you for your efforts.
The President: Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Bill McDermott: Bill McDermott from SAP.
It's been a great pleasure working with your team on
the intellectual renewal of America.
We've had the opportunity, the great opportunity, to
work with the Army, the Navy; even states like
Indiana in driving results, and I know you
want to drive results.
So in addition to the trillion in costs we can
take out, probably we can add another two trillion
on the numerator, in terms of digital business by
getting the public and the private sector in full
cooperation under your administration.
I look forward to supporting you every way I can.
The President: Thank you very much.
I appreciate it.
Bill McDermott: Thank you Mr. President.
Kiron Skinner.
Hi, I'm Kiron Skinner.
I think you know me from the campaign on the
foreign and diplomacy side, and from transition
as well, but I'm also a professor at Carnegie
Mellon University, where I work on international
security issues, cyber security with the
engineers and computer scientists, and what I
liked most about today is that we talked about
re-creating the ecosystem of the early decades of
the Cold War among government, the private
sector, and the university to regenerate our economy,
and create innovation.
I'm also a fellow at the Hoover Institution at
Stanford, and they'll get mad at me if
I don't mention that.
(laughter)
The President: That's good, thank you very much.
I appreciate it.
Julie Sweet: Thank you Mr. President.
Thank you Mr. President.
I'm Julie Sweet, CEO of North America
for Accenture.
The level of discourse and enthusiasm in the sessions
today, which were very productive, is a powerful
reminder of the importance of collaboration, and I
think two very clear themes were that
modernizing the government is not about technology.
It is about outcomes for our citizens and, second,
is the investment also in our great public servants
that this will bring about, and the
opportunities for the many people who serve in the
federal government today to help them bring better
services and outcomes for the citizens.
And those are both very important and exciting things.
The President: Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Safra Katz: I'm Safra Katz, CEO of Oracle.
We had an absolutely tremendous day working together.
The partnership between academia, the government,
and commercial enterprise is such a powerful
combination, together with leadership, which is
critical for real success, and you had volunteers
from all sides, and a lot of people working already
and raring to go for the next level.
So, thank you.
The President: Thank you Safra.
Tim Cook: I'm Tim Cook from Apple.
The U.S. should have the most modern government in the
world, and today it doesn't, and it's great to
see the effort that Jared is putting in in working
on things that will pay back in five and
10 and 20 years.
The government should be focused on its citizens,
and the services of the government should be
measured on how pleased the citizens are with
receiving those services.
That basic premise is not how it's done today, and
so I would really encourage you to ask the
Cabinet how they're measuring their parts of
government, and what they're doing to serve the
citizens that they're meant to do.
Secondly, totally unrelated, but something I
feel very passionate about: coding should be a
requirement in every public school.
We have a huge deficit in the skills that we need
today, versus the skills that are there, and we're
trying to do our part or, hopefully, more than our
part in doing that.
But I think leadership from government is also key.
The President: Thank you very much Tim.
I appreciate it, and I appreciate all you're
doing over the last number of months for jobs.
Thank you all.
Thank you very much.
I appreciate it.
Thank you.