It’s been six months since Donald J. Trump was sworn in as the 45th President of the United States of America.
And as with any new administration, new objectives for the nation and new ways to run the country have surfaced that’ll affect many different industries (whether they like it or not).
One of the industries that’ll be significantly affected by America’s new president is technology.
Trump has five ideas for tech that’ll be financed by the new administration. And those ideas will have an impact on the technology industry and its future… at least for the next four years.
1. Cybersecurity Is a Huge Priority
Without a doubt, cybersecurity is a crucial component to the country’s well-being, and for some reason, there’s been little interest in it on a nationwide level. New technology will emerge and both private and public sectors will start to depend on cybersecurity more and more, especially when it comes to safeguarding personal data or security information.
The U.S. infrastructure, which includes the electrical grid, is not as secure as it needs to be and could be at risk for a cyber attack. But that’s completely unacceptable. Working with cybersecurity firms to better manage these kinds of issues will benefit the country and the government’s security for the better.
Trump set a 90-day deadline back in May for each agency in the executive branch to submit a report that summarizes its security measures and what kind of risks exist within the branch. With these reports, it’ll be clear what kind of risks there are and how to fix these vulnerabilities.
2. Forming the American Technology Council
The executive branch has decided that it would be beneficial to the country to have a technology council. The goals of this council would be to “transform and modernize” the U.S. government’s information technology systems.
This council has been organized by the White House Office of American Innovation (OAI), which is run by a White House senior advisor, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.
The council is expected to meet to brainstorm and find solutions for a range of topics that’ll ultimately achieve three objectives: improve government technology services, decrease government spending in IT, and increase cybersecurity efforts for federal government systems.
Having a plan of action to solve some of these issues could definitely save the country a lot of money in the long run like the plan to reduce IT spending by $1 trillion over the next decade.
Some of the most influential U.S. CEOs in the technology industry are expected to attend the sessions conducted by the council, such as Apple’s Tim Cook, IBM’s Ginni Rometty, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, and Microsoft’s Satya Nadella.
3. President Trump’s Climate Change Stance
It might seem like Trump’s stance on climate change wouldn’t entirely affect technology, but it does.
Trump is openly against climate change regulations. And if that remains his stance, then it would have a huge effect on a lot of different technology that has already been conceptualized and designed over the eight years of the Obama’s administration. (Obama was a huge advocate of climate change regulations.)
Trump has revoked several of Obama’s executive actions on climate change and has called for a review of Obama’s signature on the Clean Power Plan.
Not only will Trump’s plans affect Obama’s executive orders, but they would also paralyze the energy department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), which was a program created by the George W. Bush administration to increase energy innovation in areas that private sector investors thought were too risky.
4. Funding the Switch to Cloud Computing
The government has about 6,000 data centers that are costing a lot of money, so it wants to cut down on data centers that it controls and shift the responsibilities to the private sector.
One way to reduce the costs of these data centers is to move all federal IT systems to the cloud.
President Trump’s homeland security adviser, Tom Bossert, says:
From this point forward, the President has issued a preference in federal procurement in federal IT for share systems. We’ve got to move to the cloud and try to protect ourselves instead of fracturing our security posture.
However, switching all federal IT systems could have its downsides, even though it would be able to cut down on costs. It would create a central target for attacks and could have a greater risk of compromising a lot of data at the same time.
5. Accelerating the U.S. FDA Approvals for New Drugs
Trump wants to focus on accelerating the process for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approvals for new drugs, which will be great news for biotech firms. FDA approval puts a huge damper on getting a product onto the market for a lot of biotech companies because the process is very long.
However, at the same time, his budget proposal removes a fifth of the budget for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which creates major setbacks for biomedical research and development (R&D). Accelerating the FDA approval process wouldn’t make sense if companies were having a hard time funding their R&D for potential drugs and treatments.
Until next time,
Jennifer Clark
Pro Trader Today