President Trump's relationship with those in the technology industry has often been frosty at best. Barring the odd exception, such as long-time supporter Peter Thiel, most of Silicon Valley's leaders have battled against Trump and his policies since the beginning of his campaign.
The relationship was further soured through the introduction of the controversial immigration ban at the start of the year. Trump's executive order preventing entry to the US for seven Muslim-majority countries saw tech rivals unite in their condemnation of the president's actions.
More recently, the decision to pull the US from the Paris agreement was also met with disdain by hundreds of tech and non-tech companies alike, and led to Elon Musk quitting Trump's advisory councils. But the White House hopes to build bridges with the industry during what it has dubbed "Tech Week."
The event, which will see a number of tech policy discussions take place throughout the week, began on Monday with the inaugural meeting of the American Technology Council that Trump established through an executive order in May.
During the meeting, Trump announced he is aiming for up to $1 trillion of tax savings over the next decade through a "sweeping transformation of the federal government's technology." According to Trump's son-in-law and chief advisor, Jared Kushner, the DoD still uses 8-inch floppy disks on some of its legacy systems, and federal agencies operate 6,100 data centers which could be "consolidated" and migrated to the cloud.
Tomorrow will see Trump meet with at least four drone companies - Kespry, AirMap, Airspace, and PrecisionHawk - to discuss the future of the industry. Other meetings are scheduled this week, including one that will cover 5G technology. The White House also plans to announce "additional tech reforms at the Department of Veterans Affairs on Friday."
Here's a full list (via Recode) of all those who attended Monday's meeting. Notable absentee Facebook was invited but blamed "scheduling conflicts" for its non-attendance. Elon Musk was also invited but declined to attend, unsurprisingly. While Twitter, which Trump seems to love, appears not to have been invited at all.
Tech CEOs:
Ajay Banga, MasterCard CEO
Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO
Zachary Bookman, OpenGov CEO
Safra Catz, Oracle Co-CEO
Tim Cook, Apple CEO
John Doerr, Kleiner Perkins, Chairman
Pat Gelsinger, VMware CEO
Alex Karp, Palantir CEO
Brian Krzanich, Intel CEO
Tom Leighton, Akamai CEO
Bill McDermott, SAP CEO
Steve Mollenkopf, Qualcomm CEO
Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO
Shantanu Narayen, Adobe CEO
Ginni Rometty, IBM CEO
Eric Schmidt, Alphabet Executive Chairman
Julie Sweet, Accenture CEO
Peter Thiel, Founders Fund Partner
From the White House:
President Donald J. Trump
Vice President Mike Pence
Jared Kushner, Senior Advisor to the President
Ivanka Trump, Assistant to the President
Chris Liddell, Director of Strategic Initiatives
Reed Cordish, Assistant to the President for Intragovernmental and Technology Initiatives
Gary Cohn, Director of National Economic Council
Dina Powell, Senior Counselor for Economic Initiatives
Stephen Miller, Senior Advisor to the President for Policy
General H.R. McMaster, National Security Advisor
Tom Bossert, Homeland Security Advisor
Steven Mnuchin, Secretary of the Treasury
General John F. Kelly, Secretary of Homeland Security
Mick Mulvaney, Director of Office of Management and Budget
Wilbur Ross, Secretary of Commerce
Seema Verma, Administrator for Medicare and Medicaid Services
Presidents of Universities
Michael Drake, President of Ohio State University
Carol Folt, Chancellor of University of North Carolina
Rafael Reif, President of Massachusetts Institute of Technology