The News & TeleGraff

This morning I attended the Northern Virginia Technology Council’s "Titans of Technology" breakfast to hear none other than keynote speaker Bill Gates himself. It was quite the event—more than 1,100 people packed into the Capitol Hilton ballroom at 7:30 in the morning to hear Gates talk, from tech entrepreneurs to venture capitalists, recruiters, lawyers, businessmen, and even a handful of politicians. It was certainly in aggressive networking crowd for that early of the morning. Business cards were flying everywhere.

Gates, who during his brief stint at Harvard actually lived in the same freshman dorm room as I did, was in town to talk on Capitol Hill about a number of policy issues near and dear to his heart—not the least of which was America’s competitive standing in the globalized tech world. Now I argued in "The First Campaign" that one of the biggest problems facing the United States is the increasing disconnect between the government and the technology sectors. Luckily, despite the theme of Gates' remarks, this morning at least there was little of that disconnect on display—Congressman Jim Moran and Frank Wolf, who both represent the Northern Virginia tech corridor, were in attendance at the breakfast, as were a number of other local and state government officials. As far as Gates was concerned, though, that's about as far as it goes. He at several points made mention of the fact that the government isn't doing what it needs to be doing to keep the tech sector competitive.

While Gates's speech focused mostly on where he sees technology going in the coming decade, what he calls the second digital decade—mainly increased convergence of broadcast television, cable, speech recognition, velocity, and desktop computing—what I found most interesting given my interest in the subject was Moran’s question to Gates at the end about his assessment of the political landscape in regards to tech. Needless to say, the world's second-richest man didn’t paint an optimistic portrait.

As Gates said, “Historically the United States has done a great job with making the right investments.” However, today he has doubts as to whether the U.S. is equipped to make the same type of investments. The U.S. political system appears to be increasingly geared toward short-term stimuli even at the expense of long-term payoffs. One example he cited was the current plan to provide tax rebate checks to boost to the economy while ignoring any longer term fixes that would help the U.S. over the next decade. Today other countries are doing the best they can to compete with the United States, wire their nations, and build the infrastructure that the U.S. has successfully created in the past. As one questioner noted, the U.S. definition of "broadband" is increasingly outdated as other countries surpass us not just in connectivity but speed as well. Worldwide all of those investments are leading to an increasingly fast pace of innovation.

The United States is struggling to maintain its traditional lead and isn't making some of the smart decisions that it should be making—Gates cited as one example the 60% of computer science students in the U.S. who are not U.S. citizens and how given the vagaries of the current immigration system not a single one of them will be allowed to get a job in the United States upon graduation, a mind-numbingly stupid decision that will have a long-term impact not just on the US economy (negatively) but the economies of developing worlds around the globe (positively). We need to be looking, Gates said, at the long-term multiplier effects of some of the investments that we could be making today—even if there is no sure short-term gain.

Craig Mundie, Microsoft’s CTO, said that the US is generally geared towards making introspective decisions and has a lack of understanding about how the rest of the world is coming online. Too often, he explained, he runs into politicians who say in answer to his prods and questions, “The polls won’t let us do that.” What we need here is some real leadership from the government, he said, to explain why some of these investments are so critical to our nation’s future. Mundie has very strong concerns that we skew too much to the short-term today in the decision-making on Capitol Hill and in the government. There is much more energy outside the United States for infrastructure investments then there is inside the United States, he said.

Gates also had some choice words for the U.S. education system, which he has been helping to reform and revolutionize through the work of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He said that too often school today in the U.S. is “like stepping back in time.” Kids today, as he explained, have cell phones, Xboxes, and all sorts of electronic gadgets at home, but when they step into the schools they are likely to face computer shortages, limited access to the internet, and even outdated software. “It’s a real problem,” Gates said.

Unfortunately the challenge of the morning for Gates and the Microsoft team was that they were preaching to the choir: the people in the audience from Congressman Moran to Northern Ireland's Minister of Trade, Enterprise, and Investment are the ones who already understand just how important technology will be to the future of the world economy. Given the early hour, the people Gates really needed to reach were probably still sleeping.