The first meeting of President Donald Trump’s American Technology Council is set to convene at the White House later this month with Apple CEO Tim Cook expected to be among the attendees.
With an aim of modernizing government services, the group is being led by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. Some of the biggest names in tech are among the roster of advisers, many of whom publicly denounced Trump’s recent decision to leave the Paris climate agreement, which could make the meeting pretty interesting.
Trumps administration will host the first summit for the council on June 19, according to a report from Bloomberg. Representatives from 11 companies are set to attend, including Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Alphabet executive chairman Eric Schmidt, Oracle Co-CEO Safra Catz and IBM CEO Ginni Rometty.
An invitation has reportedly been extended to Facebook too but the company hasn’t responded to the invite yet.
In an interview earlier this week, Tim Cook downplayed his involvement on any special government councils, saying he doesn’t find councils and committees “to be terribly productive.”
Kushener’s Tech Council has been tasked with making the American federal government run more like a fine-tuned business. Trump says he wants the council to form plans reimagining the Department of Veterans Affairs, modernizing technology infrastructure of every government department, develop transformative infrastructure projects and more.
Buster Hein is a freelance writer who lives in Phoenix, Arizona. Twitter: @bst3r.
3 responses to “Tim Cook to attend technology council meeting at White House this month”
I’m willing to wager that Trump won’t listen to them and that nothing will be accomplished by their meeting. Just a hunch.
“Meeting in the White House” more and more seems like “Meeting in the Death Star” ….