The fruits of the economy and all the advantages of technology and globalization have gone far more to the investor class and the professional class and not as much to the working class. Partly because of the loss of labor unions, partly because of things like a lack of antitrust enforcement, policies that have privileged shareholder returns.Collection: Technology
My grandfather, or Nana Ji, as we called him, was a family legend. Amarnath Vidyalankar spent his life fighting for India's independence, which included spending four years in prison in Mahatma Gandhi's movement. I still remember the conversations we had together, many of them while playing chess.Collection: Independence
We have to define American patriotism as future-oriented.Collection: Patriotism
Technology is amoral, but it requires humanistic values to steer it in a way that's empowering, and not detrimental to social progress. It's up to us to maximize the good and minimize the bad.Collection: Technology
We must make it clear that we won't interfere in other countries' elections and work to make that the clear international norm.
We have tried to change regimes through a variety of means - over 80 times, by some estimates. Many of these efforts were counterproductive to U.S. interests.
America has been a force for much good in the world. But we should learn from the mistakes of an over-expansionist foreign policy and return to the restraint that George Washington and John Quincy Adams advocated.
I'm not an apologist for Iran's actions. Iran certainly has supported activities of terrorism, and the Houthis don't have clean hands. The Houthis have engaged in crimes too. But the idea that that justifies American involvement in a civil war in Yemen doesn't make any sense strategically.
If you look across the economy, if you have multiple players in an industry, you have more customization, more innovation, greater choice for consumers. The more you have consolidation, the less likely you are to invest in innovation. It becomes all about driving down cost and mass production. And that's not good for innovation in an industry.
What makes the Amazon-Whole Foods deal so problematic is that they are going into an industry with large infrastructure, brick-and-mortar cost, and seeking to build consolidation where we already suffer from consolidation. It's not like Walmarts and Targets have been good for wages or local grocery stores or niche producers.
We have an economy that's really geared toward rewarding the investor class. What are we doing to make sure that people who want to have a middle-class life are able to keep up?
I think automation will eliminate certain types of jobs - lower income, lower-skilled jobs in manufacturing. But nobody knows whether it's going to change the job basket of the 21st century, or be net positive, or net negative.
The 21st-century mix of jobs is probably going to be different than the 20th-century mix.
There's no doubt we need stronger antitrust enforcement. We shouldn't allow Amazon to privilege its own products on its platform, and we should make sure they're not using sellers' data, but the E.U. is not a model for America to copy.
We should have companies required to get the consent of individuals before collecting their data, and we should have as individuals the right to know what's happening to our data and whether it's being transferred.
I have helped shape in the past the Democratic Party's agenda on innovation.
I want to help bring tech jobs to middle America and help us create more innovation clusters.
I will oppose a Muslim registry with every fiber of my being. That is not the American way of conducting affairs and violates every principle we stand for.
Of course it would be great to have more scientists in Congress. But what I'd love is to have another Lyndon Johnson in Congress who makes climate change his first priority. We need people who know how to work the system and the institution.
One thing I want to do is get Silicon Valley to think harder about those who have been left behind by the technology revolution. It has created huge winners for those who are able to understand it and are adept at it. But it has also displaced a tremendous number of jobs.
We've been living with this myth that somehow government investment in research has not been critical to economic growth.
I'm obviously in favor of a carbon tax. And I think climate change is one of the biggest threats to our planet.
I definitely think America should seek to lead and shape the world and make it safe for liberal democracy. I just don't think military intervention is going to get us there.
I do believe American leadership in the world matters, that we can't just disengage from the world.
I think that when you look at our founding principles, it was based on America as a nation committed to universal human rights and a nation that was weary of foreign entanglements and foreign alliances that did not keep us safe or promote our interests.
Silicon Valley is actually a prime target for an ICBM missile strike. It occurred to me as I has touring Apple Park that if I was concerned about Americans' safety and the symbol of America's future I would think that those is Silicon Valley as the most vulnerable. That's where you would be attacking the future economy.
People want to have some assurance that their privacy, their data is going to be protected.
We need a basic protection for people having access to their data and knowing where their data is.
The challenge for America is: can we become a multicultural, multiracial democracy? It would be historic. It would be America's greatest contribution to human civilization.
The structural changes of globalization and automation that has created concentrated wealth among some people who have had the right skills and the right opportunities has also created extraordinary disruption and havoc among the American middle-class.
Expanding the EITC can get us close to a universal basic minimum income.
Silicon Valley needs partners. You can't do edited manufacturing just in the Valley. Why not have the DNA of manufacturing but combine it with the digital world?
Imagine a world where Apple, Google, and Intel were Chinese companies. It would be scary.
The criticism of the Democrats in the past is that they were too timid. They ran on consultant-driven platitudes and didn't offer a compelling enough vision.
Peter Thiel and I disagree on 99 percent of things.
This idea you're going to take a 50-year-old coal miner and turn them into a software engineer is ridiculous.
There should be some commonsense principles that will assure the American public that their rights are going to be protected online.
I believe there are ways of cutting past some of the ideological logjams in Washington when it comes to issues of American economic competitiveness and a pro-growth agenda.
America should always stand for human rights and freedom, but not through endless military intervention.
Our troops shouldn't be mired in taking land for the Afghan military, providing force protection and fighting a permanent insurgency.
If anything, prolonged overseas military presence breeds radicalization.
We've got to get people across this country believing they can be a part of a technology future, that that's going to work for their families in an empowering way.
There's so many people who've built America, much greater in sacrifice and contributions than Silicon Valley. There are people who've died for this country. There are people who have marched for civil rights in this country.
My honest answer to what's going to happen to the future of jobs is I don't know.
I think we need to have stronger antitrust enforcement.
One key question for the United States in the 21st century is whether noncoastal towns and rural communities, including many communities of color, will be able to participate in the digital revolution.
We know that almost all Americans are avid consumers of technology, but many lack the opportunity to do the creative work that fuels our digital economy.
If we can figure out how to give more Americans a shot in tech, a shot at the ordinary jobs that don't necessarily afford rock star status or come with generous stock options but that can sustain middle-class life, then we might just take a step toward stitching our nation back together.
Although the most advanced software innovation may take place in big cities with research universities, there is a lot of work concerning the application of software to business processes and the administration and maintenance of software systems that can be done remotely.
Both the Venezuelan and American people will be better served by a negotiated solution between Maduro and Guaido than by a conflict that leads to increased instability and violence.