Lack of detail
1 min read
With less than a year to go until the next US presidential election, Silicon Valley wonders if US presidential candidates have any views on science.
With less than a year to go until voting day in the next US presidential election, Silicon Valley is still struggling to see the greater detail behind the science policies offered by either Democratic or Republican candidates.
Both parties’ frontrunners for their nominations have singled out the use of technology to combat climate change and reduce American dependence on foreign energy sources.
To these ends, some money is being put on the table by Democratic candidates. Hillary Clinton, current leader in the polls, has committed to establishing a $50billion Strategic Energy Fund and Barack Obama, her nearest rival, has proposed a $10bn Clean Technologies Deployment Venture Capital Fund.
For the Republicans, no specific financial commitments have yet been made, although John McCain stands by a strong record sponsoring research into US science policy during his time in the Senate and has tapped Cisco Systems ceo John Chambers as an advisor on technology policy. Amongst his rivals, only dark horse candidate Mitt Romney, former governor of technology rich Massachusetts, has to date made any commitment to the broader science base.
So far, neither the Republican frontrunner Rudolph Giuliani nor recent entrant Fred Thompson have made significant science policy statements of any kind.
