Protect Silicon Valley Jobs
Supercharge the Silicon Valley to innovate for the next century
We have to plan for the next century of innovation for the Valley. It must be done with close cooperation from the government, the local universities, and investors. The next generation technologies necessary for the United States are artificial intelligence, quantum computing, advanced manufacturing, robotics, and advanced medicine including gene therapies. We must transform Silicon Valley into a behemoth of Bio-Silicon Valley. For this to happen, Congress must act in harmony with the spirit of the valley. I intend to introduce federal programs, tax incentives, and low cost funds to encourage diversification of the Silicon Valley industry start-ups.
Silicon Valley has over a century of innovations and start-up history. Tremendous amount of that credit goes to the unique philosophy of Stanford University where it encouraged its faculty members to start companies. It supported the discovery of Audion tubes by Lee De Forrest with $500 funded by the university president David Starr Jordan, in early 1900s. Ambitious guidance of Dr. Terman at Stanford, who did not like the idea of his electrical engineering graduates to migrate to the east coast for jobs, created Hewlett Packard. Close partnership of Stanford with the industry, the military, and its establishment of Stanford Industrial Park to house companies, catapulted this valley to where it is today –a $3 Trillion neighborhood.
Factors that made the Silicon Valley successful were to attract highly educated engineers and scientists, and let them experiment freely without the fear of failure. Proliferation of the VC money took risks with thousands of companies, thereby creating an amazing spectacle of new Electronics and Internet related industry formations in the history of this world. The rewards for this pioneering spirit of the valley are apparent. As an entrepreneur and future policy maker, I will encourage sensible regulations for the start-ups, such that the spirit of innovation and the investor money does not stop flowing.
We must keep the tax rates low and regulations reasonable in order for new industries to start, grow, thrive and complete worldwide. I want the companies to start here and stay here. We don’t want where, for example, the chip manufacturing, and computer manufacturing completely went overseas. We want key expansion to happen locally such that the IP remains within the valley and rest of the country.
Covid-19 crisis teaches us that we need to change tax laws to encourage domestic manufacturing. A 5-10 years tax holiday, along with low interest rate loan incentives, would help establish domestic manufacturing across the country and enhance the middle class living wages. I will introduce such visionary bills in the congress.
For us to thrive as a country, we must protect the enormous intellectual property created by the Valley. I will propose strict IP security related bills. Potential candidates are: 1.) All technology transfers to any foreign entities, regardless of ownership, must get a review and an approval. 2.) University admissions of personnel and collaborations from certain countries on key research areas need to be scrutinized carefully. 3.) IP protection laws also need to be examined carefully, particularly, where Patents on key technologies can be copied, or transformed.
In and around the Valley, we need Federal funds to acquire industrial parks to kick start companies with low cost facilities during incubation period. In our district, we have many sites for such purposes. I have targeted Milpitas, Fremont, and Newark as candidates for such funds. These towns have land to host variety of supply chain manufacturing support.
In order to attract diversity of start-ups and help their employees, the government needs to be creative partner. Start-ups compensate hardworking employees and investors in many innovative ways such as stock options, stock purchase plans, and carried interest to name a few. A flexible tax treatment is required to un-burden hardworking innovators. When companies grow and mature, you still want creative entrepreneurial skill to continue to compete in the world. I would support a program where an “employee dividend plan” is not taxed. This would be amazingly attractive for a continuous industry innovation and expansion.
