WSJ: Open Letter By 150 High Tech Leaders Aghast At Trump's "Disastrous" Impact

Tech Leaders Pen Open Letter Criticizing Donald Trump

By REBECCA BALLHAUS

Nearly 150 technology executives including Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Wozniak, TwitterInc. co-founder Evan Williams and eBay Inc.  founder Pierre Omidyar published an open letter to Donald Trump on Thursday laying out why they don’t support the presumptive Republican nominee, who they say would be a “disaster for innovation.”

“We believe in an inclusive country that fosters opportunity, creativity and a level playing field. Donald Trump does not,” the letter, published on Medium, says. “He campaigns on anger, bigotry, fear of new ideas and new people, and a fundamental belief that America is weak and in decline.”

Mr. Trump’s campaign didn’t immediately return a request for comment.

The sharp criticism of Mr. Trump from the broad swath of Silicon Valley leaders marks the latest show of resistance to the Republican nominee, who has also struggled to unite business leaders in his own party. The letter’s signatories include few Republicans, and several of them have previously donated to presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign. It makes no mention of Mrs. Clinton.

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The letter criticizes Mr. Trump for opposing “productive engagement with the outside world,” and lambastes the New York businessman’s immigration proposals. (He has said he would build a wall on the Mexican border, deport the millions of immigrants living illegally in the country and at least temporarily ban Muslims from entering the U.S.). It also criticizes the candidate for his controversial comments about women and various racial and ethnic groups.

The tech executives also take issue with Mr. Trump’s proposal last year to “shut down” areas of the Internet in order to prevent terrorists from operating online, saying the suggestion shows “both poor judgment and ignorance about how technology works.”

Also signing the letter were the co-founders of Tinder Inc., Reddit Inc. and Facebook Inc., as well as Yelp Inc. CEO Jeremy Stoppelman, Samsung Electronics Co. Senior Vice President Richard Titus and Instagram Inc. Head of Product Kevin Weil.

One Silicon Valley titan not on the list: billionaire Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal Inc. who is set to speak at the Republican convention next week.

“Many people are uncertain in this election year, but most Americans agree that our country is on the wrong track,” Mr. Thiel said in a statement. “I don’t think we can fix our problems unless we can talk about them frankly. That is why I am going to speak in Cleveland, and that is why I will support the Republican nominee.”

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The biggest names in tech say Trump would be a ‘disaster for innovation’

By Brian Fung July 14, Washington Post

"We have listened to Donald Trump over the past year and we have concluded: Trump would be a disaster for innovation."

That's the top takeaway from nearly 150 officials from the tech industry and elsewhere who on Thursday published a broadside against the GOP presidential candidate, arguing that Trump represents a danger to jobs, exports and the social fabric of the country.

The group of signatories includes Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, as well as Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and Vint Cerf, who helped develop the Internet. Others include Ev Williams, the co-founder of Twitter; the sitting chief executive of Yelp; the founders of reddit, Slack and Tumblr; and various former federal officials and venture capitalists.

The letter takes aim at Trump's willingness to stoke racial anxieties and his lack of policy proposals. It highlights the risk that the candidate's rhetoric poses to immigration, which many U.S.-based tech companies view as a crucial source of talent and ideas. It takes on Trump's call to shut down parts of the Internet that are controlled by the Islamic State as evidence of "poor judgment and ignorance about how technology works."

[Clinton and Trump are looking for an easy out on the Internet. Don't give it to them.]

The letter came together as a Google Doc "with a lot of people pecking away at it," said Alec Ross, one of the co-signers. He added that the Google Doc went viral as the authors passed it along to other members of their network. "Very reflective of the community," he said in an email. "Networked vs. hierarchical."

Ross has served Trump's rival, Hillary Clinton, as a senior adviser on technology issues, particularly during her tenure as secretary of state. A number of other signers have advised her campaign, although a disclaimer at the end of the letter emphasizes that they are all speaking for themselves (and not for their respective organizations or businesses).

The letter is a sign that, in the perpetual political campaign for Silicon Valley's money and influence, Clinton may enjoy the upper hand. This is not much of a surprise; earlier analyses suggested that campaign donations from the tech industry were largely flowing toward the Democratic Party over the GOP.

Clinton and Trump are now roughly tied among registered voters, according to a New York Times/CBS poll released Thursday.