Hillary Clinton comes out with a lengthy tech agenda

Included are calls for diversity, deferring student loans for founders and defending net neutrality

Given the antipathy that the tech world has for Donald Trump (for the most part), as well as the fact that California goes for the Democrat every election cycle, it's not like Hillary Clinton had to do all that much to court Silicon Valley. Most are basically on her side by default.

Still, Hillary is nothing if not the kind of candidate who likes to show off her knowledge of the issues (this is one of the best things I can say about her, even if I don't like her that much), so she's released a lengthy agenda, with her plan on how to make technology work better for more people.

It's a pretty long document, filled with proposals, so I'll distill it down to the most important, and interesting, parts. Here is some of what she wants to do:

• Invest more in computer science and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) education, including providing every student in America an opportunity to learn computer science, through grants and investments, as well as training 50,000 teachers in computer science. 

• Fund alternative learning programs, and incentives for colleges and universities to accept them as credit toward graduation.

• Promote more diversity in the the tech workforce with a $25 billion fund to support colleges that serve minority students,and a $20 billion in youth jobs and pathways for individuals from disadvantaged communities.

• Defer student loans to help young entrepreneurs, so they won't have to make any payments on their student loans for up to three years. That won't be just for founders, but the first 10 or 20 employees also.

• Forgive up to $17,500 of student loans after five years for entrepreneurs who launch either new businesses that operate in distressed communities, or social enterprises that provide measurable social impact and benefit.

• Support “start-up” visas that allow entrepreneurs from abroad to come to the United States, and build tech companies.

• Connect every household in America to high-speed broadband by 2020.

• Promote cyber-security by building on the Cybersecurity National Action Plan, especially the empowerment of a federal Chief Information Security Officer, the modernization of federal IT, and upgrades to government-wide cybersecurity.

• Put together a "high level working group of experts, business and labor leaders" to make sure workers right are protected in the changing, gig economy. 

• Appoint a Chief Innovation Advisor to reduce federal regulatory barriers.

• Defend net neutrality and defend FCC decision that have ruled in its favor.

• Improve the patent system by reducing excessive litigation.

• Strengthen copyright policy, developing technological infrastructure to support digitization, search, and repositories of such content, to facilitate its discoverability and use.

That's a very pared down version of her agenda, so obviously there's a lot that she's proposing. It's unclear how much of this she can actually do, or how she will pay for it, but there's little doubt that she grabbed Silicon Valley's attention with this. It's an agenda that is meant to show the tech industry that she understands their issues, and has plans to fix them. 

Like I said, not that she really needed to do that. After all, this is a place that gave President Obama nearly 600 percent more money than they gave Mitt Romney in 2012. And Romney hadn't spend the majority of his campaign antagonizing them. 

(Image source: abcnews.go.com)