Trump's Right!

Silicon Valley does need to create more jobs…but not in tech.

- Kevin Maney

​WHEN DONALD TRUMP met with technology leaders in December to tell them he wanted them to create jobs in the U.S., their heads probably tilted to the side, as when you explain physics to your dog and she just watches your lips move and wonders when, among all those unfamiliar sounds, she is going to hear the word treat. Tech leaders aren’t in the business of creating jobs. They’re in business to help us do more with less. They like innovation and disruption and software eating the world. But people—eh, not so much.

In his own Chance-the-gardener way, the president-elect might be onto something. His victory was a middle-finger salute from those who feel left out by technology and globalization. The tech industry’s trend is toward leaving more people out by automating yet more lower-level jobs while creating only high-skilled jobs. It’s becoming clear that if tech doesn’t change that trajectory, the consequences might look something like the Visigoths attacking Rome in A.D. 410.

Apple CEO Tim Cook, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Alphabet CEO Larry Page and a bunch of their peers slinked into Trump Tower on December 14 for a meeting with the president-elect, who doesn’t use a computer, probably has never used Uber and no doubt thinks Slack is what he finds at the tips of his gloves. If you can imagine how top neurosurgeons would react to a lecture on the brain by the Barefoot Contessa—well, that’s how the tech leaders must have felt in this session.

Trump reportedly told the group they need to create more U.S. jobs—and not just for artificial intelligence specialists in Silicon Valley. He apparently emphasized that to make a difference, tech would need to invest in boots-onthe-ground jobs in the middle of the country.