The U.S. government collaborating with big tech firms isn"t exactly something new. Former U.S. President Donald Trump appointed CEOs from multiple companies such as Microsoft, Tesla, Apple, Uber, Alphabet, IBM, and more as his strategic advisors. Many of these companies, including Microsoft, departed from this advisory body following strained relations. Now, it appears that sitting U.S. President Joe Biden wants to mend bridges with big tech firms and has invited numerous CEOs to the White House.
Bloomberg reports that president Biden will be meeting with representatives from tech firms tomorrow. In terms of names we are aware of so far, Tim Cook from Apple, Satya Nadella from Microsoft, and Andy Jassy from Amazon have been invited to the gathering. All three of these are CEOs at their respective firms. Apart from that, Google, IBM, and JPMorgan Chase have also been invited. That said, it"s unclear how many of them will actually attend the meeting.
While the exact agenda of this meeting is currently unclear, it"s highly likely that cybersecurity and growing digital threats will make up the meat of the discussion. In the past few months or so, we have seen massive cyberattacks on SolarWinds, Colonial Pipeline, Kaseya, Microsoft Exchange Server, and more.
For its part, Microsoft welcomed the inauguration of Joe Biden as the President of the United States back in November, and stated that bridges need to be built to unite people. In May, the president also signed an executive order urging private companies to collaborate with the government to strengthen the nation"s cybersecurity defenses. Microsoft is already leading this initiative with its Zero Trust security models.
Source: Bloomberg