Schmidt, Mundie Named to Obama’s Tech Council

Policy Fugue by Kenneth Corbin (bio) Tracking the loveless marriage of technology and government

(L to R) Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Craig Mundie, Microsoft’s chief research and strategy officer Sources: Google, Microsoft

President Obama today named his choices for the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), tapping tech industry luminaries such as Google’s Eric Schmidt and Microsoft’s Craig Mundie to serve on the 20-person body.

PCAST is designed to give the White House a pipeline to some of the leading voices in science, engineering and technology as the administration crafts policies in those areas.

The choice of Schmidt is hardly a surprise, as the Google CEO served as an economic adviser to then-candidate Obama, and represented him as a surrogate on the campaign trail.

Obama also stopped in at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., while campaigning, famously pledging to take a backseat to no one on Net neutrality, the issue he chose to headline his tech policy agenda.

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