Editor’s Note: Following the Democratic National Convention, RCR Wireless News Bureau Chief Jeffrey Silva looked at the Obama tech and telecom policy team. Next week, Silva plans to report on telecom and high-tech policy formulation in the McCain camp.<
WHILE SENS. BARACK OBAMA (D-ILL.) AND JOHN MCCAIN (R-ARIZ.) have broadly outlined technology policy directions each would pursue as the next president of the United States, the brain trust of advisers assembled by the Obama campaign suggests a possible return of the kind of high-level, active engagement on telecom, high-tech and media issues witnessed when a Democrat last occupied the White House during the Clinton-Gore administration in the 1990s.
Obama’s high-tech inner circle is led by key players from the Clinton-Gore team – which presided during a period of meteoric growth in the Internet and wireless sectors – and draws heavily from academia and to a lesser extent from industry and legal sectors. Obama’s tech group is organized by industry sectors and policy specialties including broadband/spectrum, intellectual property, public-safety, commerce/privacy, civil liberties, tech innovation, telecom innovation, Internet regulation and e-government. There’s even a category for active bloggers, with Profs. Timothy Wu (Columbia University and wireless open-access advocate) and Lawrence Lessig (Stanford University and liberalized copyright champion) taking the lead.
Naming names
Obama tech advisers serving as high-level surrogates include two former Federal Communications Commission chairmen from the Clinton-Gore administration: Reed Hundt (McKinsey & Co.) and William Kennard (The Carlyle Group). Atop the pack is Julius Genachowski, a Harvard Law School classmate of Obama and a former chief counsel to Hundt. Genachowski also is special adviser to General Atlantic and is managing director of Rock Creek Ventures, a venture-capital firm.
The two high-tech policy coordinators for Obama are Lawrence Strickling, former chief of the FCC common carrier bureau under Kennard, and Alec Ross, executive VP for external affairs and a co-founder of One Economy Corp.
The Obama campaign assigns policy disciplines to task-force leaders. Ellen Goodman, a high-tech law expert at Rutgers University, and Kevin Werbach, a tech guru-writer and University of Pennsylvania professor, oversee broadband and spectrum policies.
Not surprising and understandable at this stage of the political process, neither candidate has offered much on spectrum policy. Obama’s campaign, however, has put into the public domain a few tidbits.
“Obama will confront the entrenched Washington interests that have kept our public airwaves from being maximized for the public’s interest,” Obama’s campaign Web site states. “Obama will demand a review of existing uses of our wireless spectrum. He will create incentives for smarter, more efficient and more imaginative use of government spectrum and new standards for commercial spectrum to bring affordable broadband to rural communities that previously lacked it. He will ensure that we have enough spectrum for police, ambulances and other public-safety purposes.”
McCain, according to his campaign, will fight higher taxes on wireless services, an important issue to the wireless industry.
Even more names
Other Obama tech task-force leaders are John Nakahata (telecom regulation), a communications attorney at Harris Wiltshire and a former FCC official; Mark Johnson (tech innovation), a telecom-media specialist at The Carlyle Group; Philip Weiser (public safety), executive director of the Silicon Flatirons Center at the University of Colorado; Jonathan Askin (Internet regulation), a former lawyer at the FCC and pulver.com Enterprises who teaches at Brooklyn Law School; Arti Rai (intellectual property), Duke University Law School; Stuart Benjamin (television/media), Duke University Law School; Daniel Weitzner (commerce/privacy), Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Beth Noveck (e-government), New York Law School; and Marc Zwillinger (civil liberties), chair of the information security and anti-piracy practice group at the law firm of Sonnenshein Nath & Rosenthal L.L.P.
There are scores of other technocrats from the private sector and universities that back Obama. Some are contributing to tech policy development, some are fundraisers and some do both.
Leveraging tech innovations
Obama publicized his technology positions before McCain, former chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, who recently provided more detail on where he stands on major telecom, tech and media issues. Both candidates offer ideas on how to bolster high-tech in the U.S., viewing technology not in isolation but rather in a broader context insofar leveraging tech innovation to improve education, health care, the environment, business productivity and job creation, public safety and government itself. Language on both camp’s Web sites are full of lofty and ethereal rhetoric.
“Let us be the generation that reshapes our economy to compete in the digital age,” Obama stated in his 2007 presidential announcement speech in Springfield, Ill. “Let’s set high standards for our schools and give them the resources they need to succeed. Let’s recruit a new army of teachers, and give them better pay and more support in exchange for more accountability. Let’s make college more affordable, and let’s invest in scientific research, and let’s lay down broadband lines through the heart of inner cities and rural towns all across America.”
“Transformative information and communications technologies permeate every aspect of our daily lives,” the McCain’s campaign Web site states. “In the last decade, there has been an explosion in the ways Americans communicate with family, friends, and business partners; shop and connect with global markets; educate themselves; become more engaged politically; and consume and even create entertainment. America has led the world into this technology revolution because we have allowed innovation to take root, grow, and prosper. Nurturing technology and innovation is essential for solving the critical problems facing our country: developing alternative fuels, addressing climate change, stopping the spiraling expense of health care, and better educating our children.”
The fine details of just how these objectives will be accomplished will not be articulated until Obama or McCain settle into the serious job of governing the country and dealing with Congress.
The defining high-profile tech issue in the presidential contest likely will center around broadband, how to increase penetration and quality in a way that boosts America’s standing on the world stage and to what extent the Internet should be regulated to keep it a relatively open communications platform.
Obama favors net neutrality; McCain opposes heavy-handed regulation of the Internet.
Some in the tech community have been disappointed with President Bush’s approach to tech policy, which has not been nearly as animated as that in the Clinton-Gore administration and has relied largely on market forces as well as on broad economic policies (tax cuts, deregulation, etc.) to create a favorable environment for business generally. At the same time, wireless and tech companies likely do not want to be besieged by a new regime of regulations and strict antitrust enforcement.
FCC picks?
And the next FCC chairman? Names have been tossed around for months. Most recently, Blair Levin, Stifel Nicolaus & Co. analyst and former chief of staff to former FCC chairman Hundt, has been mentioned as a possibility in an Obama administration. But who knows? Consider the unanticipated vice-presidential picks by Obama and McCain. And don’t forget Reed Hundt himself, who wasn’t a household name in the telecom arena until former President Bill Clinton instantly made him one in 1993.
