Vice President Kamala Harris has run a more explicitly future-focused campaign than her opponent, all the way down to her anti-nostalgic unofficial campaign slogan, “we are not going back” — a clear contrast with her opponent’s backward-looking promise to “make America great again.” Yesterday in this newsletter we took a deep look at former President Donald Trump’s ideas about the future, which have taken some surprising turns since his 2016 campaign and earned him some new political allies in the tech world. By contrast, Harris’ plans remain somewhat unclear. Some of that is likely strategic ambiguity, as she tries to unite a party still divided over issues like crypto or Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan’s tech-busting antitrust crusade. Some of it is surely due to the fact that Harris had mere weeks to kickstart an entire presidential campaign. What it amounts to, however, is a campaign where tech watchers are largely left to project their own hopes for a liberal-coded utopia onto her bootstrapped campaign — or simply to imagine that she’ll pursue the policies that have worked for a deep-blue nation-in-miniature like California, where she cut her political teeth. Wherever Harris lands, the difference between her future and Trump’s can largely be chalked up to a fundamental difference in how the two parties see tech innovation. In the GOP, even new-school Trumpian, statist Republicans largely see industry leading the way toward an America-dominated future, preferably with as little friction (and as much support) from government as possible. Democrats generally believe the government should have a strong hand in shaping how technology serves society and which values should be encoded in it, especially if the government is investing taxpayer money. Harris’ role in the Biden administration’s AI policy is a perfect example of this. In her work promoting Biden’s executive order on AI she emphasized the parts of it meant to mitigate bias and discrimination. And in keeping with her campaign’s efforts to find a middle ground on other tech issues, Tony West, Harris’ brother-in-law and campaign adviser (as well as Uber’s chief legal officer), suggested that her potential administration would balance those safety concerns with maintaining American “global competitiveness when it comes to AI and other emerging technologies.” Peter Leyden, founder of the strategic foresight firm Reinvent Futures, a former editor at Wired, and an outspoken Harris booster, pointed to climate technology and innovation as another major point of difference between a hypothetical Harris and Trump administration. “Climate change is the mother of all challenges,” Leyden said. “With clean energy and electric vehicles, this is a big-picture, long-term, world-historic kind of game and you need a healthy government that's a strategic partner.” Harris has said she would continue the Biden administration’s emphasis on electric vehicle infrastructure and industrial policy, in May announcing $100 million for EV-related upgrades to auto facilities. (Not coincidentally, California has been a leader on this front as well.) Trump has previously called for EV boosters to “ROT IN HELL,” although he has somewhat softened that rhetoric amid his newfound friendship with Tesla impresario Elon Musk. Putting such ambitious plans into place is one thing. Executing them is another. POLITICO reporters have covered extensively the failures in Washington to fully fund and execute the Biden administration’s CHIPS and Science agenda — and some tech veterans see that struggle as an unwelcome preview of a future where a big-government innovation agenda runs head first into a brick wall in Congress. The bill has so far spent $53 billion subsidizing the semiconductor industry, while its R&D budget has lagged far behind. “CHIPS and Science had maybe a bigger agenda than it should have, and that was hard” to execute efficiently, said Jennifer Pahlka, senior fellow at the Niskanen Center think tank and a deputy chief technology officer under former President Barack Obama. Pahlka highlighted a new pro-growth movement in liberal politics, suggesting that to effectively implement such sweeping government tech programs, a nascent network of wonks and policymakers united under the banner of an “abundance agenda” will have to step up their game in the next administration. “This faction is maybe more present on the left, but not absent on the right … that cares very much about state capacity, and I'm hoping that whoever wins, some of that faction gets to have power to shape the agenda,” Pahlka said. How that might happen remains a mystery. When it comes to her potential administration’s relationship with innovation and state capacity, Harris clearly sits at the center of a tug-of-war between centrist, business-friendly technocrats and populists like Lina Khan who see reining Big Tech in as a first priority. Whoever wins that debate, Harris boosters at least hope they get the chance to have it — envisioning a climate-friendly Democratic administration that seeks somehow to balance “big tech” with the public’s interest. The alternative, to hear them tell it, is that tech companies will “do whatever they want to do,” as Leyden puts it, because “there won't be anyone watching anything” under Republicans. “Then some crazy-ass thing like our whole electric grid being shut down will happen, and the public will be completely freaked out and there’ll be a backlash, and then we’re going to end up with regulation anyhow.” | 
