Tonight was the only scheduled debate this fall for the Presidential Campaign. It featured the Republican candidate former President Donald Trump and current Vice-President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee. This was billed as an opportunity to hear the two candidates discuss the issues affecting the American people. It was supposed to be the royal rumble of a presidential election that has drastically changed in the last two months with Joe Biden's withdrawal and replacement with Kamala Harris, and the addition of Vice-Presidential nominees. As this blog focuses on technology and politics the review will stay on this focus.
There was very little mentioned about technology in the debate tonight. This is not unusual for Donald Trump who as far as I know never discusses technology on his campaign stump speech. Kamala Harris started answering a question on the economy by discussing how she wants to create an opportunity economy and provide $50K for startups. Startups include restaurants, cafes, bakeries, other stores, and technology companies. The large tax break she is proposing could lead to the development of new products, hardware and software apps, that will lead to more people being hired. The tax break amount will not cover the development of many breakthrough technologies that require millions of dollars for several years to achieve the breakthrough to get to commercializing. The $50K tax break should be looked at as a down payment that will allow some startups to continue until they find additional funding.
Kamala Harris was the only candidate who actually mentioned technology. She did so by mentioning that she was focused on winning the technology war, really more of a competition, with China. She mentioned the efforts to stop selling AI chips and other technology that China was using to develop advanced weapons systems. She accused him of allowing the vending of the technology and not protecting America. AI chips, really GPU processor chips used to run algorithms that are trained with large language models, are critical to building these advanced technology systems. In a turn of fate the NVIDIA which is the main manufacturer of such chips is a US based company. This is why the Biden administration has implemented multiple export controls and bans to impact China's abilities to use this new cutting edge technology.
Donald Trump on the other hand could only muster a comment that we don't make chips in America. The vast majority of chip manufacturing is performed in Taiwan which has built specialization in this manufacturing process. It should be noted that over the last few decades new semiconductor plants have been built and are running in the United States in cities like Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, Malta and Fishkill New York to name a few. The Biden-Harris administration also passed the CHIPS Act specifically to re-invigorate and build up chip manufacturing capability in the United States. They viewed the issue as one of national security. In response to the above mentioned law Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has invested hundreds of millions of dollars into building a fab, manufacturing plant, in Arizona. Additionally in Ohio Intel, a major and early chip maker, is investing billions of dollars in a semiconductor fab.
Donald managed to mention several things about abortion that should be addressed. He stated that Democrats supported abortion up to the 9th month, which is the point at which women typically give birth. The Democratic party position is about restoring the protections of Roe, the Roe v. Wade legalization of abortion. The ruling of Roe legalized abortion up to the point of viability which in 1977 was deemed to be 24 weeks. He also stated that the Democrats wanted to perform abortion after birth. An abortion is an action performed on a fetus and thus cannot be performed on already birthed baby. Trump additionally stated that there was support among Democrats for execution of the child after birth. Anybody committing such an act would be guilty of murder, and as far as I know there are extremely few such cases that occur and therefore prosecuted. All these misstatements at best or more likely lies that were spouted without any remorse or caution should ask any voter whether Donald Trump is disconnected from the real world.
We deserve a debate on new technology and what role the government should have in regulating and/or supporting it by candidates who have a deep understanding of the technology. I don't mean that the candidates should be technical experts who can create the algorithm or hardware, but at least be able to accurately understand the broad concept. Unfortunately, there was only one candidate who seemed to have any mastery of policy topics other than immigration on the stage tonight. We cannot have a substantive debate on these topics until the candidates on both sides take care to craft policies with actual substance and have a decent understanding about existing and emerging technology.
No comments:
Post a Comment