Here's how a Trump presidency could change the tech industry

Anything could happen in the next half ... decade

Taking a chainsaw to government

Trump has proposed installing Musk as some kind of chief government efficiency tsar, with hopes the Tesla CEO will bring the housecleaning skills he showed at Twitter to the federal government, proposing cuts of $2 trillion from the budget.

"He's going to just get rid of people who are not working or don't have a job or not doing a job well, just like he did on Twitter," Musk's mother opined the other day. "I think he has 10 percent of the staff and he can do it for the government too."

Outsourcing is another area where there could be shakeup: Moving jobs out of the country may be punished by the White House with taxes and other measures, though government work could be shifted to American corporations – like the Republican friendly Oracle – and stay on home soil.

Another lingering question is the future of the CHIPS Act, a broad funding effort designed to bring chip making back into America. During the campaign, some Republican leaders suggested that act could face repeal, but many in the tech industry would see this as an error.

One agency that may be feeling uncertain right now is NASA. With SpaceX's growing influence in government, budgets could shift, and the agency's Space Launch System might even face cancellation. And about time, too. It's a billion-dollar boondoggle using 50-year-old technology. Similarly Boeing will probably not get much love after failing so spectacularly in space, and the FAA could come under pressure if it blocks any more SpaceX launches.

Security looks good, privacy less so

On the IT security front, things are expected to remain stable, Lisa Plaggemier, executive director of the National Cybersecurity Alliance, told The Register.

"I think because this has been such a bipartisan issue and bipartisan effort that I think a lot of it is staying the course and continuing to build on what every administration before the last has done," she said. "Which is what we've seen is that every administration seems to be doing more than the last, and that's still not enough. So there's still more work to do."

The last Trump administration set up the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, aka CISA, in 2018, and proved very keen on setting security standards and goals. The government gets that security needs to be addressed and is already working hand in glove with the private sector.

"There's already a lot of contractors in government organizations today," Plaggemier said. "I can think of one founder alone who told me he's got six or seven hundred contractors in CISA, and that was about a year or two ago."

So you can expect to see little change on the security front, but it might not be the same on the privacy side, Dr Matthew Guariglia, senior policy analyst for the EFF, told The Register.

Successive US governments of both political stripes have overseen an increase in the surveillance potential and proper checks and balances aren't there, Guariglia said, adding that with Team Trump threatening to use the state to go after political enemies, and perhaps use technology to monitor behavior, for example in women's healthcare, we should be worried.

I worry, with a very unbalanced government, with a lot of people without a lot of checks and balances, that even the law won't restrict the government

"The surveillance infrastructure is there. If they wanted to use any number of types of technology to figure out every single person who was at a protest or seeks reproductive healthcare, they have the technology to do that," he said.

"What's restricting them in many of these cases is the law. But I worry, with a very unbalanced government, with a lot of people without a lot of checks and balances, that even the law won't restrict the government."

And the elephant in the room – tech inflation

As we've already reported, if the Trump plan for large, across-the-board tariffs is enacted, it's going to mean a lot of price rises and pressure on tech buyers.

The current plans for 10 to 20 percent tariffs on all imports are going to mean major increases for everyone as importers pass costs on to shoppers. But the tech sector is going to get hit hard if the proposed 60 percent tariff on Chinese imports comes in.

"There's going to be a lot of collateral damage in tariffs and whatnot from an inflationary standpoint. The data was pretty definitive from economists on this stuff," Farmer told us. "Most people are great at math in this country, and we hate China but we love Chinese goods, but those two are inconsistent with one another."

One likelihood is that the tariff regime will be much more tightly focused. But Musk having a seat at the power table could make life interesting in the automotive sector, Farmer opined, pointing out that Tesla and Chinese automaker BYD Auto are currently duking it out for the electric car market, and the Middle Kingdom manufacturer appears to be winning everywhere but in America.

There's already a 100 percent tariff on Chinese electric vehicles coming into the US and that's likely to continue. Quite how the Chinese will respond remains to be seen.

Jeff Bezos was quick to congratulate Trump for his win, presumably in hope of preserving government contracts. Tim Apple Cook too was effusive in his praise, as was Microsoft's Satya Nadella – with both saying they are looking forward to "engaging" with him. Sundar Pichai even posted a Google map of the Republican election win.

Keep calm and carry on

Time and time again, administrations have changed. This humble hack was in the US on election night in 2004, when nervous nellies were thinking George W. Bush would crash the country. In 2016, I was here for Trump and spent the evening talking panicked people down. ®