Electing a new United States president is among the world’s most pivotal events. The outcome of this election will impact our lives for years, possibly even decades.
One question weighing on many minds is how the two leading candidates’ tech policies will differ, particularly in this era of rapid technological development. Whoever sits behind the Resolute Desk for the next four years, be it Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald Trump, will wield authority over agencies and policies that have grown increasingly important in the digital age.
The 47th president will bring their own approach to issues including net neutrality, the digital divide, artificial intelligence (AI), the race against China to dominate the tech industry, the fate of TikTok, and selecting new members for the board of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Harris’ and Trump’s policies and approach diverge significantly on almost every issue associated with technology.
Most believe Harris is likely to govern within historical norms. Her lengthy experience as California Attorney General, a senator, and currently as vice president suggests that, as president, she would have a collaborative approach to governance.
Trump, on the other hand, has signaled that he wants to break the mold by consolidating power in the executive branch. Both his platform and the controversial Project 2025 drafted by the conservative think tank the Heritage Society describe a sweeping overhaul of government that would give him vastly greater power.
The clock ticks for TikTok
Both Trump and Harris have said TikTok is a national security threat due to it being owned by Chinese company ByteDance. TikTok maintains it’s not.
As president, Trump signed executive orders that would’ve forced the app’s sale to a U.S. buyer or banned it. More recently, he’s flip-flopped, claiming this month that he’s the candidate who will “save TikTok.”
President Joe Biden rescinded Trump’s order after taking office. Then this April, Biden signed legislation to ban the app if ByteDance doesn’t sell its U.S. subsidiary. TikTok and ByteDance quickly filed suit to block the law; the case is predicted to reach the Supreme Court.
Trump says a Harris administration would shutter TikTok, but it’s not entirely clear that’s accurate.
After Biden signed the TikTok law, Harris told ABC’s This Week that a ban is “not at all the goal or the purpose.” Instead, Harris said, their goal is to “deal with the owner” due to security concerns. Others in the administration have brought up TikTok’s privacy risks.
Like Biden, Harris hopes to take TikTok out of Chinese hands. China’s government has indicated it won’t cooperate.
One possibility is that, if legal avenues fail, TikTok simply shuts down. Harris hasn’t addressed how she’d respond in that contingency; Trump says he’d maintain the status quo.
It bears mentioning that both candidates joined TikTok in recent months. Trump recently said he’s a “big star” there. Harris has also enjoyed immense success on TikTok, so it is possible that she has gained newfound appreciation for the app.
@kamalahq clock it
♬ som original – memeSpotn
For his part, Trump, if elected, might change his mind yet again.
The great technology race
The battle over TikTok is the latest, loudest front in a power struggle that’s been raging between the U.S. and China for years. TikTok isn’t the first, nor likely the last, Chinese company to get caught in the crossfire as both countries race to dominate the tech industry.
Trump and Harris have each endeavored to cast the other as weak on China. Federal statutes and regulations label China a foreign adversary.
Trump has attacked Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D), Harris’ running mate, for teaching English in China in 1989 and leading student trips there in subsequent years. Last month, Trump’s campaign amplified a FOX News segment implying that Walz’s international experience, fluency in Mandarin, and other biographical details suggest that he is a spy for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
In the September debate, Harris said Trump “sold us out” by “selling American chips to China to help them improve and modernize their military.” She cited Xi Jinping’s opacity about COVID-19’s origins and criticized Trump’s praise for him.
Harris also said Trump “adore[s] strongmen instead of caring about democracy.”
Democrats claim, “[FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr] may be misusing his official position as an executive-level employee of the FCC to craft and advance a political playbook to influence the presidential election in favor of Donald Trump.”
Political posturing aside, each candidate has already been part of presidential administrations that were mostly hawkish on China, which is widely seen as the nation’s largest economic and geopolitical rival.
Building on Obama-era groundwork, both the Trump and Biden administrations restricted Huawei and ZTE, as well as other Chinese tech firms, due to security concerns such as possible surveillance. Huawei and ZTE are the two largest Chinese telecom equipment manufacturers. China considers the state-backed Huawei and the partly state-owned ZTE “national champions,” meaning the CCP supports them for bolstering China’s strategic aims and global ambitions.
In 2018, Trump signed a military budget that prohibited federal agencies from procuring or using either company’s commodities or contracting with entities that do. Two years later, Trump signed a law directing the FCC to blacklist firms posing “unacceptable” national security risks. The FCC subsequently designated Huawei and ZTE national security threats, blocking them from billions of dollars in federal broadband subsidies.
The 2020 law also established an FCC program, now referred to as “rip and replace,” that provides funding for small telecom providers to swap out the blacklisted Chinese gadgets in their networks. During the Obama administration, federal investigators had reportedly determined that Huawei was selling gear at a discount, likely even a loss, that was exploitable for espionage to rural U.S. providers near secretive military installations, including nuclear missile silos.
Biden worked to further limit Huawei and ZTE incursions into the U.S. by signing a law blocking either from gaining equipment-making licenses from the FCC and other regulators. In November 2022, he extended the national emergency Trump had declared in 2019 over cyber-espionage against the U.S. The extension paved the way for the commission, that same month, to stop authorizing new gear from Huawei, ZTE, and certain other Chinese firms, effectively outlawing the import, sale, and use of their new goods and services entirely.
Many, though not all, anticipate that a Harris-Walz administration would remain tough on China and continue Biden’s approach of counteracting the country by investing in domestic industries and maintaining strong relationships with economic and diplomatic allies in Europe and Asia. As senator, Harris pushed legislation to promote human rights in Hong Kong and allowing the U.S. government to sanction “foreign individuals and entities responsible for human rights abuses” against Uyghur Muslims. While in Congress, Walz served for several years on a commission exclusively monitoring human rights in China, taking positions contrary to the CCP’s.
If Harris wins the election, some wonder if whether the U.S. relationship with China might soften somewhat into, as Walz put it in 2016, not “necessarily […] an adversarial relationship.”
For his part, while simultaneously threatening China with tariffs, Trump has a long record of praising the Chinese president, saying in 2023, “He runs 1.4 billion people with an iron fist. Smart, brilliant, everything perfect.” While he may admire Xi, who abolished his own term limits in 2018, Trump has promised to resume levying tariffs that some believe will accelerate the trade war that began during his administration and continues to present day.
The future of the FCC and net neutrality
The FCC has been an independent regulatory agency since it was created in 1934. It is nevertheless influenced by presidents in various ways, primarily by appointing commissioners. Once confirmed by the Senate, commissioners serve five-year terms and cannot be removed except for cause in extreme circumstances.
Of all the federal agencies, the FCC has the most authority over internet access, radio, TV, wire, satellite, and cable communications.
This year alone, the commission has fined telecom giants hundreds of millions of dollars for selling customers’ location data; cracked down on AI robocalls; voted to slash exorbitant prison and jail calling fees; and, in its most attention-getting move, restored net neutrality. Net neutrality requires internet service providers (ISPs) to treat all traffic equally. The FCC’s website describes it as necessary “to ensure broadband internet service is treated as an essential service.”
Net neutrality is another area in which Harris and Trump disagree.
As they view most regulations, conservatives have long held that net neutrality is an unnecessary rule that stifles development. Trump has opposed net neutrality since at least 2014. In 2017, his pick for FCC chair, Ajit Pai, moved swiftly to overturn it.
In 2021, Biden signed an executive order encouraging the FCC to restore net neutrality, which it ultimately did this April.
Both Harris and Walz have publicly supported net neutrality, including by voting for it during their terms in Congress. If she wins, it’s exceedingly unlikely she would appoint commissioners who would again revoke it.
“We will hold social media platforms accountable for the hate infiltrating their platforms, because they have a responsibility to help fight against this threat to our democracy,” Harris said in 2019.
Meanwhile, there’s no reason to believe that Trump-appointed commissioners would maintain net neutrality, given his longstanding opposition to it.
The FCC is mentioned on Trump’s website in a section in which he vows to bring independent regulatory agencies “back under presidential authority.” But the FCC has never been under presidential authority. Instead, it’s subject to judicial review and answers to Congress.
Putting the FCC under presidential control would give Trump and his successors authority over most lines of communication in the country, which could have immense ramifications.
Trump’s pledge to seize control of the FCC and other agencies is in sync with the controversial Project 2025. The 900+-page policy agenda details plans for sweeping changes that would give the president much greater authority, so much that some say it would create an autocracy.
Project 2025 directs the next administration “to bend or break the bureaucracy to the presidential will” by replacing thousands of nonpartisan, career civil servants with loyalist appointees fireable at whim and forcing executive branch departments and agencies, including the FCC, to heed “the President’s agenda.”
Both Trump and Project 2025 bill this as a massive shrinking of the administrative state. Critics say it amounts to a massive power grab by the Oval Office. Some even consider such plans to expand presidential power as tantamount to creating an authoritarian regime.
Certain federal agencies—among them NASA, the Federal Trade Commission, and the FCC—were founded as independent within the executive branch (though not independent from the other branches) in no small part so their scientists, engineers, and researchers could make fact-based policy without constantly checking over their shoulders for partisan interference. Politics may play a role in how such agencies are run, but Trump’s and Project 2025’s plans would put any employees of such agencies who dare to defy Trump squarely in the president’s crosshairs.
The project has become a centerpiece of Democrats’ attacks on Trump during this campaign cycle. Harris’ website calls it “Trump’s plan to take your power, your control, and your money.”
Trump has tried to distance himself from Project 2025 in spite of having ties to many of its authors, dozens of whom worked for his administration or presidential campaign. Project 2025’s chapter on the commission was written by FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr, who was appointed by Trump.
In July, 16 Democratic members of the House of Representatives asked for an investigation of Carr over his authorship of that chapter, alleging that he leveraged his official position to electioneer in violation of ethics rules governing federal employees and the Hatch Act, which criminalizes federal employees using their positions to influence elections.
The Democratic members wrote that Carr “may be misusing his official position as an executive-level employee of the FCC to craft and advance a political playbook to influence the presidential election in favor of Donald Trump.”
Carr denies wrongdoing.
Taking on Big Tech
Large technology companies, pejoratively referred to as Big Tech, and their increasingly outsize power in the digital age have become recurring focal points for politicians of both major parties.
There are ongoing antitrust suits against Apple, Meta, and Amazon. In another case, a federal judge recently issued a ruling stating, “Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly.” Google plans to appeal.
It’s probable that either candidate’s administrations would continue pursuing these cases.
The Trump administration initiated antitrust suits against multiple tech companies and he’s openly expressed animosity toward them. While Harris has been rather quiet about the antitrust lawsuits on the campaign trail, experts believe it’s likely that she would keep pursuing these cases as president, if only because of how other Democrats would react if they were dropped.
The next several years may bring darker times for other Big Tech companies, particularly social media platforms. Both Republicans and Democrats have expressed dissatisfaction with their broad immunities under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. The provisions largely shield platforms from civil liability for user-generated content, so long as they act in good faith.
If the next president decides to really go after Big Tech, it’s probable they will target Section 230. Harris has been circumspect on Section 230. While she hasn’t said it should be repealed, in 2019, she said, “We will hold social media platforms accountable for the hate infiltrating their platforms, because they have a responsibility to help fight against this threat to our democracy.” This time around, she’s been even quieter about Section 230, potentially due to her strong backing from Silicon Valley. More than 200 venture capitalists, startup founders, and tech leaders have pledged to support Harris, including notable names like LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman.
Trump issued an executive order in May 2020 seeking to peel Section 230 liability protections away from online platforms. Once out of office, however, Trump launched his own platform, Truth Social, with terms of service relying on 230.
Part of Trump’s animosity toward social media companies is likely due to his belief that they engage in what conservatives have come to refer to as viewpoint discrimination. For years, they’ve complained that social media platforms discriminate against their views.
Trump’s website states that he “is absolutely committed to dismantling and destroying the left-wing censorship regime.” His plan includes “banning federal agencies from censoring speech, stopping federal funding for all non-profits and academic programs engaged in censorship, passing a digital bill of rights, and enacting landmark legislation to drastically limit the ability of big social media platforms to restrict free speech.”
Trump’s plan does not address the fact that social media platforms, nonprofits, and academic programs have free speech rights, including the right to restrict certain speech.
Project 2025 also goes after Section 230 by urging the next president to direct the FCC to narrow immunities for social media companies, possibly by reinterpreting the distinction between publishers and distributors in light of what it describes as algorithm bias.
The chapter does add a caveat, however, that not all conservatives agree with these ideas. It notes that some believe such actions “would intrude—unlawfully in their view—on the First Amendment rights of corporations to exclude content from their private platforms.”
Bridging the digital divide
The digital divide refers to unequal access to reliable broadband internet. Today internet access is increasingly seen as a commodity or utility because not having it creates barriers to education, employment, the financial system, and more.
Yet there are entire communities, particularly in rural or economically disadvantaged areas, for whom the internet is out of reach.
During his first presidential campaign, Trump promised to bring high-speed broadband to rural areas. His $1 trillion infrastructure plan never made it through Congress, however, and he subsequently disavowed government subsidies for 5G in favor of private sector investment, Politico reported in 2019.
The Democratic platform commits to “closing that divide” and warns that a “full 45 million of us still live in areas” without affordable, reliable, high-speed internet. The Republican platform, in contrast, only gestures at the digital divide, promising vaguely to lower “everyday expenses” and “end Democrats’ regulatory onslaught that disproportionately harms low and middle-income households.”
In 2021, the Biden administration signed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which included $42.45 billion to expand broadband in the U.S. Construction is set to begin in 2025. There’s little to no chance Harris would roll back this plan. Some believe that Trump, on the other hand, would cancel it.
The FCC-run Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), which Biden signed into law in 2021, was also designed to suture the digital divide. It subsidized internet access for an estimated 23 million lower-income households. ACP participants received $30 per month ($75 if on tribal lands), as well as a one-time $100 discount toward purchase of a connectable device.
Because Congress declined to provide additional funding, the ACP was discontinued earlier this year. Members of both major parties have offered legislation to revive the subsidies—including Trump’s running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), who co-sponsored an amendment in May for stopgap funding. Democrats have blamed Republicans for stonewalling their attempts to resurrect the program; some GOP lawmakers have called it “wasteful.”
“The ACP was a big help for people and should be continued,” former software developer Brian Hall recently told the Daily Dot.
A decade ago, Hall co-founded NYC Mesh with a single antenna poking out his Manhattan apartment window. NYC Mesh is a decentralized network that mainly uses low-power, off-the-shelf routers. The network is by far the largest one in the country. Its “guerrilla Wi-Fi,” as the New York Times deems it, delivers similar connectivity as commercial ISPs via publicly available Wi-Fi hotspots. Users pay a one-time, sliding scale fee if they want help with installation; the service itself is free.
Hall said, “It’s obvious how dependable internet helps low-income families. We regularly transition apartments from a $100 or $150 monthly cable bill to NYC Mesh with no monthly bill.”
“There have definitely been beneficial government policies along the way,” he added.
Hall said they were about to register as a provider with the FCC before the ACP was canceled.
Last year, Harris gave a speech promoting the program’s accomplishments. She said the discount “means, every month, families across our nation have more money in their pocket to pay for groceries and school supplies and home repairs.”
Trump has long shown disdain for public assistance for the poor. His policies as president, such as changing eligibility standards and effectively cutting millions off of food stamps and welfare, reflected that derision. It’s doubtful he would make an exception for internet access.
The future of AI
The developing AI industry has ushered in a new era in which deepfakes are easier to create and harder to spot. AI has been used for good—translation services, for instance—and for evil. People ranging from singers to schoolteachers to politicians have had their likeness used nonconsensually for adult content, advertisements, scams, extortion, or other malignity.
AI is yet another area in which Harris and Trump diverge. Both candidates want the U.S. to “dominate” (Trump) or “lead” (Harris) the industry. Harris also wants to regulate it in the hopes of protecting people. Trump seems primarily concerned with its growth.
Throughout his campaign Trump has shared AI-generated images. Recently he posted AI photos that reinforce his debate lie about Haitian immigrants eating dogs and cats. Last month, he infamously posted a fake Taylor Swift endorsement.
The pop star called him out when she endorsed Harris after the debate.
“Recently I was made aware that AI of ‘me’ falsely endorsing Donald Trump’s presidential run was posted to his site,” Swift wrote. “It really conjured up my fears around AI, and the dangers of spreading misinformation. It brought me to the conclusion that I need to be very transparent about my actual plans for this election as a voter.”
Given Trump’s apparent fondness for AI imagery, it doesn’t seem he’s particularly concerned about regulating its misuse (except perhaps by his opponents).
His plan for growing the AI industry is simple: lower electricity costs. His website says, “Inexpensive electricity could make the difference in the world-changing race between [the] U.S. and China to develop the most sophisticated AI.” (Harris also vows to lower energy costs via clean energy—though without banning fracking.) Trump simply plans to “DRILL, BABY, DRILL.”
AI’s appetite for energy, like cryptocurrency’s, contributes to making tech among the world’s most polluting sectors.
During a livestreamed talk on Aug. 12, Trump told Elon Musk, “I know you’re a big fan of the AI.” To compete with China, Trump continued, AI “will need tremendous electricity, like almost double what we produce now for the whole country, if you can believe it.”
The Republican Party platform doesn’t say much more about how a next Trump presidency would approach AI. It vaguely promises to ensure that “AI Development” benefits “Human Flourishing[,]” but puts more emphasis on repealing “Joe Biden’s dangerous Executive Order that hinders AI innovation.”
Biden’s order stressed that the U.S. should try to lead the global industry while protecting the safety and security of individuals and the nation at large.
Two days after Biden’s order, Harris gave a high-profile speech at the inaugural global summit on AI during which she said, “President Biden and I reject the false choice that suggests we can either protect the public or advance innovation. We can and we must do both.”
Harris also promoted the administration’s efforts to address AI risks via a voluntary agreement between some key players in the industry. She said the potential “flood of AI-enabled mis- and disinformation” could be an “existential [threat] for democracy.”
Harris is seen as a guiding force in the White House’s approach to artificial intelligence. Some have called her the “AI czar” of the administration.
Last month, Bhaskar Chakravorti, dean of global business at Tuft University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, wrote an op-ed for Foreign Policy in which he wrote that “much work remains to get a full-throated AI policy in place,” but credited Harris and the Biden administration with various early-stage successes. Missing in all this is Congress, which, he said, has done very little on the subject.
Picking the country’s path
On Jan. 20, 2025, the 47th President of the United States is scheduled to take the oath of office. Typically, new presidents give their inaugural address that afternoon. Both Trump and Harris are working to convince voters to put them behind that podium to announce their vision for the next four years to the world.
Campaign trail talking points come to an end when the next president assumes office and faces a different reality that includes classified presidential intelligence briefings, thorny specifics on how to implement their agenda, unforeseen butterfly effects, market panics, protests, and maintaining desirable international relations.
Trump—impeached just days after the Capitol riot—has made it no secret that he’s out for revenge against those he views as having wronged him: the Justice Department, Big Tech, Biden, the list goes on.
If elected, he’d seek to remove the guardrails that restrained him during his previous term. His plan to expand executive branch power and stack the government with loyalists could have sweeping ramifications for the nation, including the tech industry and the agencies tasked with regulating it. Decisions ranging from artificial intelligence to the FCC to net neutrality and TikTok’s fate could potentially be decided exclusively by Donald Trump.
Conversely, Kamala Harris seems content to largely maintain the norms under which the federal government currently functions. If elected, she’d likely use presidential power to push for her priorities, such as easing the hardships of poverty and encouraging growth of the AI industry while developing regulations designed to prevent abuses, without radically changing the system.
In some respects the two candidates align. Each views China as a threat and each has signaled willingness to take on Big Tech. But there are few additional similarities in their prospective tech policies.
Early voting has already begun in three states. Barring any outside interference as was attempted during the Capitol riot, on Jan. 20, 2025, we’ll start down the path the country has chosen.
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