Emerging leaders talk about tech’s growing DC role

The growing influence of Silicon Valley, Austin and New York continues to reverberate in Washington, rising tech leaders said.

The participants at POLITICO’s Emerging Tech Leaders event all agreed that technology — from drones and privacy to politics and social media — has vaulted into consequential policy areas. Evan Burfield, co-founder of startup platform 1776, said understanding “the logic of these machines” is a second language in many fields now. “I’m a big proponent of the idea that understanding technology is a new form of literacy,” Burfield said at the Microsoft Innovation and Policy Center. “Frankly, those have been communities speaking different languages, wearing different clothes, hanging out in different places.” While technology literacy has already moved many industries to a more data-driven, collaborative model, startups and developers still need help making waves in Washington, he said.