What to Watch for in the New Hampshire Debate When it Comes to Tech

You know their stances on healthcare, climate change, and income inequality, but can you identify the Democratic presidential candidates’ relationships with tech?

On Thursday night, Brex sought to answer that question for Silicon Valley by hosting a town hall for tech founders, tech investors, and tech employees. Representatives from the Bloomberg and Yang campaigns sat down with Axios reporter Kia Kokalitcheva to discuss the candidates’ stances on different issues central to the industry.

Left to right: Nazli Parvizi, reporter at Bloomberg; Kia Kokalitcheva, reporter at Axios; and David Tsai, a representative for Andrew Yang campaign

Key topics included net neutrality, immigration, intellectual property, and regulation around competition. Brex also released a scorecard, below, for each candidate’s potential impact on tech, which captured the positions of candidates that were not able to send representatives. Leading the pack for their alignment with tech leaders on issues like intellectual property and net neutrality were Yang, Buttigieg, and Biden.

Brex’s candidate scorecard, courtesy of Michael Tannenbaum, CFO at Brex

As we prepare to watch tonight’s Democratic presidential debate in New Hampshire (the last debate before the state’s primary election), we wanted to highlight, below, the topics to watch out for when it comes to tech policy. Along with the rest of the nation, Silicon Valley will see a new political environment in the upcoming year, and it will be important to understand what that year has in store.

Brex Town Hall before guests arrived.

Topics to watch:

• The Iowa Caucuses’ Use of the Shadow App

• Net Neutrality

• Competition Regulation

• Immigration

• Intellectual Property

• Trade and Foreign Investment

• Government Research and Tech