Ask HN: Are their any politicians that know anything about technology? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Are their any politicians that know anything about technology?

3 pointsjppope15 comments

I've been reading a lot of articles recently that plain scare me... Figured I would ask if anyone knows of any politicians or candidates with even the slightest understanding of technology?

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If you're interested in the systematic reasons why congress as a whole is not tech savvy, you should probably skim through the Congressional Research Service's profile of Congress: https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R44762.pdf

Among the tidbits: - the average age of Reps in 2018 was 57.8 years and senators was 61.8 years - 167 Members of the House (37.8% of the House) and 55 Senators (55% of the Senate) hold law degrees - There are 6 software company executives in the House and 2 in the Senate

In direct response to the original question Ron Wyden of Oregon pops up a fair amount in tech and tech-related questions.

I believe there’s a congressman in Kentucky that is an MIT grad and tech entrepreneur.

Edit: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Massie

That is a solid find!

A libertarian republican from Kentucky... while your answer might be technically correct, I really don't think that this is the rare gem of a politician that OP is looking for.

I'm actually okay with just knowing who is competent enough to make decisions. I'm super worried (I think correctly that our leadership isn't capable of understanding some of the complex issues that our society is about to face)

Like this guy as a judge: https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/19/16503076/oracle-vs-googl...

Someone's education or knowledge of technology is a bad indicator of how competent they would be in decision making.

I'm not using that as a proxy for ALL decision making. I'm representing that making decisions that concern technology would be better performed by people that understand technology.

Implicitly our political class might not be good with tech because they are not digital natives, from which one could infer that decisions on topics such as artificial intelligence, or biotechnology might be difficult. I was hoping for counter examples.

Article https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/8/7/16105120/politicia...

I understand where you coming from but I don't think that a politician's apparent knowledge about a subject is a good indicator of how good their decisions regarding this subject will be.

Don’t think being in a particular party disqualifies you from knowing tech.

Pretty sure the guy ran in the spot he would have the best chance of winning, not the place he prefers as many politicians do this.

Of course it doesn't. My point is that even if you have knowledge about technology/science, that's completely irrelevant when you then go on to support and represent people who actively ignore science/expertise and have no concept of evidence based decision making.

Beto O'Rourke, a Democratic candidate for the 2020 US Presidential election, was a member of "America's oldest hacking group."

[0] https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-poli...

If I remember correctly Beto's involvement with the Cult of the Dead Cow was mainly from an essayist standpoint. Less from the technical perspective. I could be wrong

Andrew Yang understands the fact that we're heading towards ubiquitous automation.

Fair enough, but many people believe that without understanding the underlying drivers...

The Current list: - Ron Wyden - Thomas Massie - Beto O'Rourke

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