On this week’s episode of Confluence, we speak with President of Microsoft, Brad Smith. In 2019, Smith penned Tools & Weapons: The Promise and the Peril of the Digital Age, a book which explains how Big Tech has a core responsibility to address the issues and potential harms of the technologies they create. This year, Smith updated the book with a second edition for 2021 that includes new chapters on cybersecurity and the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. We spoke to Smith about these updates, and how he’s seen the landscape in Silicon Valley change in the years since the book’s first publishing. How should Government policy makers be engaging with the private sector? What kinds of collaboration can lead to the development of more ethical innovation? And, from the perspective at the helm of one of the most important companies in the world, where is Microsoft headed for the future?

LINKS:

• Brad Smith LinkedIn
• Brad Smith Twitter
• Microsoft Homepage
• Link to Tools & Weapons at Microsoft
• How Top-Valued Microsoft Has Avoided the Big Tech Backlash
• Microsoft president Brad Smith on the cloud, tech outages, and Boston’s ‘extraordinary advantage’
• Microsoft’s larger lesson from TikTok: Brad Smith on the future of U.S.-China tech relations

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