GOP platform distinguishes party from Democrats on tech matters - Washington Examiner

Delegates recently adopted the 2024 Republican policy platform during the party’s national convention. The July 15 document’s statements on cryptocurrency, artificial intelligence, and domestic energy production will surely have implications for tech policy if presidential nominee Donald Trump is successful in the November election.

The platform’s chapter titled “Build the Greatest Economy in History” lists “Champion Innovation” among its specifics. It’s a bit of a departure from the tech themes of Trump’s 2017-21 presidency. His administration was adversarial to some aspects of the tech industry, such as “Big Tech,” over antitrust and speech concerns, so the enthusiasm for the broader sector was a welcome surprise to many.  

“The Republican Party inclusion is a huge first for the crypto industry,” Ron Hammond, director of government relations for the industry group Blockchain Association, told the Washington Examiner. 

The platform puts “Crypto” at the top of its listing in the economy section, and it reads: “Republicans will end Democrats’ unlawful and un-American Crypto crackdown and oppose the creation of a Central Bank Digital Currency.” It continues, “We will defend the right to mine Bitcoin and ensure every American has the right to self-custody of their Digital Assets and transact free from Government Surveillance and Control.”

Hammond explained why that might be a politically savvy approach for Republicans: “While crypto is an important issue for many Americans, as poll after poll has shown, the Biden administration hasn’t shown much engagement, and that’s likely why we’ve seen Trump jump in on this issue.” He continued, “For a campaign looking to appeal to a young demographic of voters, crypto has proven to be an issue people care about.”

Another tech area in which the platform distinguished itself from the Democratic tech policy agenda was AI technologies. In October 2023, President Joe Biden signed a sweeping executive order on AI. Critics panned the order as being too regulatorily stringent and warned it risked future U.S. dominance over rivals like China. Vice President Kamala Harris, the likely 2024 Democratic nominee after Biden dropped out of the race on July 22, is now likely to come in for similar criticism over tech policy as her boss.

The adopted Republican platform says, “We will repeal Joe Biden’s dangerous Executive Order that hinders AI Innovation and imposes Radical Leftwing ideas on the development of this technology. In its place, Republicans support AI Development rooted in Free Speech and Human Flourishing.”

“The GOP platform statement is an unsurprising backlash to President Biden’s overzealous move to try to go at it alone on AI policy through a massive executive order,” Adam Thierer, senior fellow for technology and innovation at the R Street Institute, told the Washington Examiner. “The White House should not have tried to make AI laws by executive decree.”

The platform also addresses something AI desperately needs to succeed: energy. AI’s data centers could represent a third of new electricity demand in America and consume as much as a quarter of all the country’s electricity by the end of this decade, up from about 4% today. The Biden administration’s emphasis on renewable energy may not be enough to meet these expected needs.

The Republican platform seizes on that weakness and pledges to lift “restrictions on American Energy Production and terminating the Socialist Green New Deal.” The document also supports increased nuclear energy specifically, a technology that may be necessary to meet the country’s tech needs, alongside calling for “streamlined permitting” for “Oil, Natural Gas, and Coal.”

The GOP platform is silent on other major tech policy matters.

It says nothing about the politically controversial Section 230, the liability shield for hosts of third-party content online, such as social media companies Meta, Alphabet, and X. Both Trump and Biden have supported repeal or curtail of the law in the past. The document also does not address the banning of TikTok in the United States, a law Biden signed, which is now being challenged in the courts, but Trump opposed while out of office.

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The biggest question left unanswered in tech policy may come from the naming of Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) as the party’s vice presidential candidate. One of the biggest headaches for Big Tech is the Federal Trade Commission’s and Department of Justice’s investigations and lawsuits against them. Some of those suits began under the Trump administration, but Biden-appointed leaders at both agencies have been increasingly aggressive in targeting the tech firms on antitrust grounds.

Whether that trend will change under a second Trump administration seems less likely with the nomination of Vance, an outspoken critic of the companies. Earlier this year, Vance told a tech forum, “I look at [FTC Chairwoman] Lina Khan as one of the few people in the Biden administration that I think is doing a pretty good job.”