White House invites Satya Nadella, others, to American Technology Council summit meeting

On June 19, 2017, Jared Kushner, Senior Advisor to the President of the United States and the President’s son-in-law, is leading a American Technology Council (ATC) summit meeting in the hopes to talk about modernizing the US government. According to an article by Bloomberg, the White House is inviting Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, along with ten other company heads to talk about different technology matters, including technology sales to US government agencies.

So far the list of companies that will be joining Microsoft include Apple, Amazon, Oracle, IBM, and Alphabet, Inc. Facebook is one of the companies that was invited, but has not yet responded to the White House invitation.

The ATC was created by an executive order enacted by President Trump on May 1, 2017. The council’s goal is to “transform and modernize” the US government IT and digital services. information technology and digital services. Former Microsoft CEO Chris Liddell is the Director of the ATC. The last ATC summit meeting took place shortly before Trump’s inauguration in December 2016.

Little progress has been made since then, with technology executives and their companies taking a stand against the Trump administration’s policies, including the “travel ban” on people traveling from nations with large Muslim populations.

Additionally, several companies, including Microsoft, have disagreed with Trump’s recent decision to pull the US out of the Paris Climate Agreement. It will interesting to see what will Kushner’s role be in the next ATC meeting on June 19.