Derek Robertson

Tech-world insiders are getting more involved than ever in national politics this year—and it’s not just Elon Musk. But as the presidential election looms, there’s a major disconnect between American politics and Big Tech when it comes to their visions of America’s future.

Elon Musk made an explicitly future-forward pitch to Pennsylvania voters Saturday—arguing that a vote for former President Donald Trump was a vote for the progress of humanity itself. Musk has spoken at length about his desire for humanity to become a “spacefaring civilization” and colonize Earth’s moon or Mars, even specifying which type of government he thinks would fit an off-world colony (direct democracy). He’s been equally specific about what kind of government he thinks is necessary on Earth to enable that future, namely, one that will ease up on regulating his vast business empire.

Meta has always insisted that building the “metaverse” is a long-term play, but a flashy recent demo from Mark Zuckerberg demonstrated just how immediate a policy concern it might become if people really start to inhabit virtual reality at scale. At Meta’s annual Connect conference, Zuckerberg strode onstage to demonstrate the company’s prototype Orion augmented reality glasses.

Top officials from the Department of Homeland Security, Department of Justice, the National Economic Council, and private industry all dropped by downtown Washington for the POLITICO AI & Tech Summit on September 17. And with the first presidential election of the generative AI era a mere seven weeks away, much of their attention was turned to ensuring its security and trustworthiness. Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) described how artificial intelligence demands a response from each sector of government.

Kara Frederick, the Heritage Foundation’s director of tech policy, on her sweeping vision for re-imagining how conservatives relate to tech, including low earth orbit satellites (LEOs), Smart Cities, and generative artificial intelligence. She spoke about what the government could be doing but isn't, saying "Having a national data protection framework is also, to me, an extremely common-sense measure.

California recently lawmakers sent a nationally consequential artificial intelligence bill to Gov.

When former President Barack Obama takes the stage at the Democratic National Convention, he’ll address a party that has done a major about-face on its relationship with technology since he left office. Hailed as the first “internet president” for his campaign’s embrace of then-nascent social media and blogs, Obama’s rise was inextricable from that of the digital landscape we now take for granted.

The Artificial Intelligence Polling Institute asked nearly 1,000 respondents to rate the sometimes conflicting views that Trump allies and the man himself have expressed on AI. What they found might give pause to open-source acolytes and out-there accelerationists alike — and, perhaps unexpectedly, to the Republicans who are ready to line up behind Trump’s desire to 

After a campaign that started out looking like a Queens vs. Scranton rematch, Americans are all but certain to be asked to choose between two visions of the future shaped by California. One is the pioneering candidacy of Vice President Kamala Harris, a Bay Area-born politician who would become both the first woman president and woman president of color.

The politics of Sen JD Vance (R-OH), Donald Trump’s new running mate, might require a lot of explanation if you’re still accustomed to the traditional Democratic/Republican divide — a Yale-educated former venture capitalist and economic nationalist with ties to Catholic integralists and an