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After replacing Dark Brandon last month, Vice President Kamala Harris is setting her sights on the presidency, and tech observers are already parsing her words and actions to see how she would work with the industry once in office.
A former California attorney general and previously one of the state’s two senators, Harris has a close familiarity with the tech sector. Early supporters like venture capitalists John Doerr, Ron Conway, are Silicon Valley investors, as is booster Reid Hoffman, a Democratic power broker.
“Ms. Harris’s familiarity with the needs of the tech industry and her ability to innovate and protect the public interest mark her as a 21st-century leader,” Hoffman wrote in an opinion piece for the New York Times on August 3.
In line. Rex Booth, SailPoint CISO, told IT Brew that he believes that a Harris administration would likely listen to industry—and continue to add guardrails to tech. Of particular interest is how the federal government will work to restrict and assist in the development of AI. Booth said that during his time in government as part of the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations, leaders in the industry were open to regulation.
“You’d think these captains of industry are typically opposed to regulation, they want to be able to do their own thing and chart their own course. That’s actually not the case,” Booth said. “The lack of predictability that we have right now, specifically within cybersecurity, is more of a cost for them than the advantages of whatever freedom it affords, so there’s an appetite for regulation.”
Secure the bag. The Biden administration’s record on cybersecurity has focused on empowering industry actors to enforce the rules, and there’s an expectation in some quarters that this would continue under a potential Harris White House. Minn. Governor Tim Walz, Harris’s pick for VP, has a record of supporting aggressive cybersecurity rules and privacy protections.
But Booth cautioned against reading too much into how a potential new administration would deploy cyber capabilities, noting that the administrations in which he served all took differing approaches to cybersecurity.
“It would be great if the next administration, whether it’s Harris or anybody, was able to find a way to get everyone rowing in the same direction,” Booth said. “That’s a big ask, but I think it’s one that’s necessary for both the efficacy of cybersecurity defense writ large, and also for the various stakeholders that the government serves.”