Trump makes nice

The New York Times has articles by Sean Alfano and David Streitfeld about yet more Trump (get used to it, it could be eight years...):

President-elect Donald J. Trump (center, with the odd hair) met with leaders of the technology industry in New York City on Wednesday, assuring them he would make it easier for them to make trade deals. 

Here's what you need to know:
• "I'm here to help," Trump says.
Details are emerging from Trump's private meeting in New York City with some of the technology industry's most powerful figures. Vocational education, trade, and immigration were prominent topics, according to some executives.
Three of Trump's adult children attended the gathering, but journalists were ushered out after a few minutes. Tonight the president-elect will continue his "thank you" tour with a rally in Pennsylvania, a state crucial to his victory. 

• Potential obstacles for Trump.
The friendship between Trump's nominee for Secretary of State, Rex W. Tillerson, and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia is likely to draw scrutiny during Tillerson's confirmation hearing. It could also test the Republicans' longstanding foreign policy position of taking a hard line on Moscow.
Separately, some Democratic state attorneys general are considering teaming up to try to resist Trump on issues affecting undocumented immigrants and environmental policy.

The meeting between President-elect Donald J. Trump and the nation’s tech elite was hyped as something out of The Apprentice: the new boss tells his minions to shape up. It turned out to be a charm offensive, a kind of Dancing With the Silicon Valley Stars.
“This is a truly amazing group of people,” the president-elect said in a conference room on the 25th-floor of Trump Tower in Manhattan. The gathering included Jeff Bezos of Amazon; Elon Musk of Tesla; Timothy D. Cook of Apple; Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook; Larry Page and Eric Schmidt of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, and Satya Nadella of Microsoft, among others. “I’m here to help you folks do well,” Trump said. He kept going in that vein: “There’s nobody like you in the world,” he enthused. “In the world! There’s nobody like the people in this room.” Anything that the government “can do to help this go along”, he made clear, “we’re going to be there for you.” And that was just in the first few minutes. The candidate who warned during the presidential campaign that Amazon was going to have antitrust problems, that Apple needed to build its iPhones in the United States instead of China, was nowhere to be seen.
Even after the press was ushered out, the meeting continued its genial way. Among the topics discussed, according to several corporate executives and a transition official briefed on the meeting, who asked for anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, were vocational education and the need for more of it, the promise and peril of trade with China and immigration (Trump wants “smart and talented people here”). The president-elect also asked the executives to see if they could not apply data analysis technology to detect and help get rid of government waste.
There are plans for quarterly meetings of a smaller group of tech executives, to be organized by Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner, said one of the executives briefed on the meeting. They will focus mainly on immigration and education issues.
The meeting lasted more than ninety minutes, longer than expected. Trump was seated next to Peter Thiel, the tech investor who is a member of the president-elect’s transition team. In another sign of Trump mixing family, business, and government hats, three of his adult children— Donald Jr., Ivanka, and Eric— also attended.
“I won’t tell you the hundreds of calls we’ve had asking to come to this meeting,” Trump told his guests. Everyone laughed.
To get to the conference room, the tech leaders entered the golden elevators of Trump Tower the same way anyone would. by punching a button. This gave the news media, cordoned off a few feet away, time to shout questions. None of the executives took the bait.
Neither did they talk on the way out, although by that time the building was being closed for Trump Tower’s holiday party. Safra Catz, the co-chief of Oracle who attended the meeting, gave a thumbs up.
Bezos later issued a statement that said he found the meeting “very productive. I shared the view that the administration should make innovation one of its key pillars, which would create a huge number of jobs across the whole country, in all sectors, not just tech— agriculture, infrastructure, manufacturing— everywhere,” he said.
The technology world had been in turmoil as the meeting drew near. Some argued the chief executives should boycott the event to show their disdain for Trump’s values. Others maintained they should go and forthrightly make their values clear. And still others thought they should attend and make their accommodations with the new reality.
“There is a wide spectrum of feeling in the Valley,” said Aaron Levie, the chief executive of the cloud storage company Box.
Complicating the debate was the fact that the most fervently anti-Trump elements in Silicon Valley seem to be the start-ups and venture capitalists, few of which were invited to the meeting. (Alex Karp, the chief executive of Palantir Technologies, was the only head of a privately-held tech company at the meeting.)
Some tech companies were also notable for their absence. Twitter, the president-elect’s medium of choice for communication, was not invited. Twitter declined to comment on why it was not included. A campaign official complained last month in a Medium post that Twitter had killed a #CrookedHillary emoji. Sean Spicer, a spokesman for Trump, said that Twitter had been left out of the meeting because of space considerations in a gathering that many other technology executives were “dying to get into”.
In the days and hours before the meeting, various factions made their positions clear.
A group of engineers and other tech workers issued a statement asserting that they would refuse to participate in the creation of databases that could be used by the government to target people based on their race, religion or national origin.
The proclamation immediately drew more than five hundred signatories, including employees at Google, Apple, and Microsoft. During the campaign, Trump did not rule out the idea of a database of Muslims.
Another group of entrepreneurs assembled virtually this week with the same goal of preventing any erosion of civil liberties. They also accepted “a responsibility to partner with communities where the effects of rapidly changing technologies have hurt our fellow Americans.” Among those signing were Aileen Lee, a venture capitalist; Dave McClure, of the 500 Start-Ups incubator; and Lenny Mendonca, an angel investor.
Levie, of Box, was a Hillary Clinton supporter, but believes in engagement with the new administration. “We have to face reality that this is the next four years, and the best way to make sure our values are upheld is actually push on them,” he said.
Other tech chief executives also took the same route. Hours before Trump’s meeting with tech leaders, the president-elect announced that Musk and Travis Kalanick, Uber’s chief executive, would be among those joining his Strategic and Policy Forum, which is already stacked with businesspeople from finance and other industries. Ginni Rometty, the chief executive of IBM, had previously joined the forum.
More than values and policy are at stake in the relationship between the administration and the Valley. Money is, too. In the wake of Trump’s victory, Forrester Research is cutting back its growth estimate for the United States tech market in 2017 to 4.3 percent from 5.1 percent. One reason is simple caution, as large multinational manufacturers navigate a new and unpredictable administration.
Another reason: less tech spending by the government. “There are so many cabinet secretaries who are explicitly hostile to the mission of their agencies,” said Andrew Bartels, a Forrester principal analyst. As for 2018, there are so many ways things could go that a forecast is impossible. “It’s up for grabs,” he said.
So, too, is the relationship of Trump and the tech industry. For the moment, though, Silicon Valley seems to have dodged a bullet.

Rico says that Trump's getting liberal; he met with an openly gay guy, several foreigners, and a woman...

View in Browser | Add nytdirect@nytimes.com to your address book. Thursday, December 15, 2016 NYTimes.com » Morning Briefing Thursday, December 15, 2016 Your Thursday Briefing By SEAN ALFANO President-elect Donald J. Trump met with leaders of the technology industry in New York on Wednesday, assuring them he would make it easier for them to make trade deals. Kevin Hagen for The New York Times Good morning. Here's what you need to know: • "I'm here to help," Trump says. Details are emerging from President-elect Donald J. Trump's private meeting in New York with some of the technology industry's most powerful figures on Wednesday. Vocational education, trade and immigration were prominent topics, according to some executives. Three of Mr. Trump's adult children attended the gathering; journalists were ushered out after a few minutes. Tonight, the president-elect will continue his "thank you" tour with a rally in Pennsylvania, a state that was crucial to his victory. • Potential obstacles for Trump. The friendship between Mr. Trump's nominee for secretary of state, Rex W. Tillerson, and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia is likely to draw scrutiny during his confirmation hearing. It could also test the Republicans' longstanding foreign policy position of taking a hard line on Moscow. Separately, some Democratic state attorneys general are considering teaming up to try to resist Mr. Trump on issues affecting undocumented immigrants and environmental policy. • Horror in Aleppo continues. The latest effort to evacuate Syrian civilians and insurgent fighters from rebel-held neighborhoods of eastern Aleppo was bogged down today, after one person was killed and several civilians and aid workers were wounded while being transported to Red Cross ambulances, opposition figures said. Some of the thousands of civilians who are trapped are documenting the carnage on social media. "They are refusing to let us off the hook," a Times writer says. • A billion Yahoo accounts breached. The company, already reeling from the hacking of 500 million accounts in 2014, disclosed that the information of more than a billion users was compromised in a different attack in 2013. We've provided some steps you can take to protect your personal information online. • Speaking of hacking … In our latest look into reports of Russian cyberattacks seeking to influence U.S. elections, we examine how the Obama administration spent months deliberating how to respond. The delay, according to President Obama's press secretary, was partly due to a desire to avoid politicizing intelligence findings and interfering in the presidential race. • Political turmoil in North Carolina. Republicans in the state legislature are moving to strip powers from the incoming Democratic governor, Roy Cooper, after a bitter election. The measures include an effort to end the governor's control over election boards and requiring State Senate approval of cabinet members. • Do you have the next big story? If you think you have a credible tip, our newsroom wants to hear from you. Click here for secure, encrypted ways to share messages and materials with our journalists. Business • The Federal Reserve, as expected, raised its benchmark interest rate to a range of 0.5 percent to 0.75 percent, which is still low by historical standards. And it may defy forecasts and remain low for years, our writer explains. • Not all hospitals are equal in quality. The differences, a new study shows, can be a matter of life or death. One finding: Patients at the worst U.S. hospitals were three times more likely to die than if they were treated at one of the best hospitals. • A visitor to Japan ponders what lessons the U.S. might take from a work culture that weathered decades of a painfully damaged economy. "The anger apparent in so much of the developed world simply isn't visible," he writes. • U.S. stocks were down on Wednesday. Here's a snapshot of global markets. Noteworthy • 36 hours in Nairobi. Our 360 video introduces you to the delights of Kenya's capital, from giraffe kisses to country music. And if that leaves you with wanderlust, check out a slide show featuring our favorite travel photography of 2016. • Not just a barroom pastime. Michael van Gerwen has won 25 tournaments this year, amassing nearly $1.5 million in prize money. He's the world's top-ranked darts player. Whether he's the greatest of all time is debated among fans of the game. He begins his quest in London tonight for a second world title. • Seasonal revelry, without regrets. What happens at the office party doesn't necessarily stay at the office party. That's just one tip workplace experts offer for attendees of holiday gatherings. Here's another, blunter piece of advice: "Drinking too much at a workplace party is one of the quickest ways to derail your career," the head of an addiction treatment center says. • Recipe of the day. Try spiced lamb burgers with cumin, red chile flakes and, if you have them, Sichuan peppercorns. Back Story The death of John Glenn has resurfaced memories of his famous orbit of Earth in 1962. Back then, there wasn't much debris to block his view or threaten his spacecraft. Not so anymore. Mitsunobu Okada, the founder of Astroscale, with a model of a satellite designed to intercept and remove debris from low Earth orbit. Ko Sasaki for The New York Times Humans have created millions of pieces of so-called space junk during the past 60 years. While most are less than four inches in diameter, even tiny objects can threaten spacecraft and communications satellites. "Going at 17,500 miles per hour, a little marble can wipe out a space station," said John L. Crassidis, a University at Buffalo engineering professor. When bits of junk collide, they often break apart, creating more debris. Adding to the clutter is the abundance of satellites that technology companies are launching these days. NASA has called for stronger international regulations. "It's a political mess," Dr. Crassidis said. Japan, though, is stepping forward to confront the challenge. Last week, its national space agency launched a spacecraft featuring a 2,300-foot cable that can safely guide debris into Earth's atmosphere. If the mission works, it could lead to more innovative approaches, like one a Japanese entrepreneur recently discussed with The Times. He wants his company to be the leader in extraterrestrial trash collection. Its slogan: Space Sweepers. Giovanni Russonello contributed reporting. _____   Your Morning Briefing is published weekdays at 6 a.m. Eastern and updated on the web all morning. What would you like to see here? Contact us at briefing@nytimes.com. You can sign up here to get the briefing delivered to your inbox. ADVERTISEMENT FOLLOW NYTimes FACEBOOK @nytimes Get more NYTimes.com newsletters »  | Sign Up for the Morning Briefing newsletter » ABOUT THIS EMAIL You received this message because you signed up for NYTimes.com's Morning Briefing newsletter. Unsubscribe | Manage Subscriptions | Change Your Email | Privacy Policy | Contact | Advertise Copyright 2016 The New York Times Company | 620 Eighth Avenue New York, NY 10018