Donald Trump is a controversial figure.Many people and industries have a relationship,either good or bad, with the President-elect.Perhaps his most perplexing relationship of all is that between the tech industry and Donald Trump.In fact, Donald Trump has recently held a technology summit to help improve this relationship and discuss ideas for the future.On many previous occasions Donald Trump has repeatedly attacked many of the biggest leaders of technology, such as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg,when he claimed that “Marco Rubio is Zuckerberg’s personal senator.” Zuckerberg later remarked that “I hear fearful voices calling for building walls”. In 2013,Trump attacked the CEO of Facebook via Twitter, commenting about how she should “spend more time trying to get the F stock price up & less on her ego!”. He would go on to insult Jeff Bezos (of Amazon),Google, Apple and Twitter all via Tweets. Although he has compared Apple to an “Ugly Yacht” and announced that all should boycott Apple (when they refused to give the cell phone information of the San Bernardino terrorists to authorities), he has also announced that he “has been a fan Steve Jobs” and praised the technology Industry for their “Incredible Innovation”.
Trump’s technology policies are a mixed bag. Some of them, like his position on Space travel related technology (He encourages it as he says it creates and inspires jobs and opportunities.)Other policies of his, such as how he wants all online retailers to collect sales tax, are more controversial. However, the most controversial of all of his technology policies is perhaps his proposed Muslim database. We have conflicting statements which suggest he would like to or not like to implement a database of all Muslim people in America. When asked after a rally,Trump agreed that it was necessary-- except detractors argue that due to Trump’s strange wording, it is entirely possible he did not hear the question. And on a separate occasion when pressed if he would want one he said:"Oh I would certainly implement that. Absolutely". When reporters have asked Trump for logistics of the registry Trump has responded that “It would be just good management. What you have to do is good management procedures and we can do that.“
However Trump's team has stated somewhat recently that he has never advocated for a Muslim Database and Donald himself has tweeted that he didn’t suggest the idea-a reporter did. Despite this, in mid-November, one online publication decided to contact eight of the biggest technology companies in the world (Twitter,Facebook,Microsoft,Google, Apple, IBM, Booz, Allen Hamilton, SRA International and CGI) if they would help build a Muslim registry for President-elect Donald Trump. This online publication was The Intercept, a website created to deliver news about the N.S.A, a publication which is forbidden to be read by members of the military. (The intercept is not exactly happy about the N.S.A’s monitoring.)They compared any tech industry that would comply with Mr.Trump with IBM,who famously aided Nazi Germany compose lists of Jews during the holocaust.Out of all the companies they asked, only Twitter refused,citing their terms and service which are against such a thing. (In late December, IBM later went on to say they refuse as well).The President-elect’s connection to the Tech industry is already incredibly strange and deserves more attention-how this relationship will continue to develop is unknown. Perhaps it will get better. or perhaps it will get far worse--only time will tell.