Barack Obama has named Intel chief executive Paul Otellini to the President&'s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.
While Otellini is not a supporter, he has a common interesting in seeing that the U.S. remains competitive with other countries when it comes to creating manufacturing jobs. The move also shows the growing alliance between Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C., as tech jobs are one of the best ways to attack the nation&'s stubbornly high unemployment rate of 9 percent.
Intel is the world&'s biggest chip maker and is a key U.S. manufacturer, with factories in Arizona, Oregon, California and New Mexico. The company has 82,500 employees and it makes the majority of its chips in the U.S. Otellini recently announced the company would spend $7 billion expanding its U.S. factories.
Obama is taking a tour today of Intel&'s chip factory in Hillsboro, Ore. General Electric chief executive Jeffrey Immelt heads the jobs council, which was created by Obama in January. Other industry leaders are expected to be named in coming weeks.
The Intel event follows a dinner last night in Woodside, Calif. at the home of venture capitalist John Doerr. That event was attended by the who&'s who of tech company executives, including Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs. It&'s all part of one continuous lovefest with technology.
It&'s not going to be easy creating jobs in tech, particularly if there&'s a big mismatch in skills because of an under-educated work force. Silicon Valley&'s own unemployment rate lingers around 10 percent, even though social media is going through a boom.
In his State of the Union address, Obama highlighted the importance of technological innovation.
a4‚¬AThe first step in winning the future is encouraging American innovation,a4‚¬¯ Obama said. a4‚¬AWea4‚¬a4„re the nation that put cars in driveways and computers in offices' the nation of Edison and the Wright brothers' of Google and Facebook.a4‚¬¯
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Companies: Intel
People: Barack Obama, Paul Otellini
Companies: Intel
People: Barack Obama, Paul Otellini
Dean is lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He covers video games, security, chips and a variety of other subjects. Dean previously worked at the San Jose Mercury News, the Wall Street Journal, the Red Herring, the Los Angeles Times, the Orange County Register and the Dallas Times Herald. He is the author of two books, Opening the Xbox and the Xbox 360 Uncloaked. Follow him on Twitter at @deantak, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.
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