Credit: Stephen Collins

Audio documentaryAudio/VideoTech giantsZuckerberg for President?
November 17, 2017   2 mins

…argues US political commentator and tech writer Joe Trippi within our new thirty minute audio documentary. Joe Trippi is one of a number of influential and informed observers who probe the key questions raised by the Facebook CEO’s not-too-subtle interest in running to be US President…

  • Could Mark Zuckerberg win the White House?
  • And would he use Facebook’s huge presence in so many Americans’ lives to help him win?
  • Would he run as a socially-liberal, pro-immigration Democrat? Or, like key directors he’s appointed to his company, would he more likely be a Republican offering low taxes and less red tape? Or would he run as an independent?
  • With both of the main two parties experiencing challenging times (some would say decline, others would say stagnation or even breakdown), does America need a young leader like the 33-year-old Zuckerberg1, rooted in the transformational technologies of our time, to take it forward?
  • Or would he choose to use the White House to stop Washington’s politicians from forcing the tech giants of Silicon Valley to surrender some of their huge market power?

While the documentary, presented by our technology editor Nigel Cameron, is framed around Mr Zuckerberg’s increasingly discussed exploration of a presidential bid, it is first and foremost an illuminating overview of how the hugely powerful founder of Facebook thinks – and also of the looming battle between Apple, Google, Amazon, Uber, Airbnb, Facebook etc – and the growing number of politicians on both sides of the aisle who feel the tech companies need to be cut down to size.

UNHERD’S ‘ZUCKERBERG FOR PRESIDENT?’ SERIES…

Mark Zuckerberg in 2011 at a presidential campaign event. Credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images. 

This audio is part of a  still unfolding series of articles examining the obstacles between Mr Zuckerberg becoming the second successive US President to have leapt directly from business and into politics with no experience of either electioneering or law-making.

The articles are all gathered here.

OTHER UNHERD PODCASTS

This is the third of UnHerd’s audio documentaries – all produced for us by Sean Glynn.

  • The first examined whether a rolling, 24/7 news culture is damaging western democracies.
  • The second – presented by Juliet Samuel – assessed the health of our capitalist economic system ten years after the crash.

Next week we’ll publish the fourth. Presented by UnHerd columnist Douglas Murray, it will ask why the advanced democracies do so little to remember the victims of communism – and if that failure is of consequence.

Please go to our podcasts and videos page for more – or follow us on Twitter to ensure you learn quickly about all of UnHerd’s podcasts, articles and events.

FOOTNOTES
  1.  By the time of the next presidential election he’ll have passed 35; the minimum age requirement for this highest of the USA’s democratically-elected offices.

Tim Montgomerie was most recently a columnist and comment editor for The Times of London. Before that journalistic turn he was steeped in centre right politics, founding the Conservative Christian Fellowship, then the Centre for Social Justice and, just over ten years ago, ConservativeHome.com.

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