Margaret O'Mara: "Silicon Valley is a Truly Distinctive American Story."

1. Intro.
2. (1:40) - Start of interview.
3. (2:17) - Margaret's "origin story". She grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas. She graduated from college (history major) the year that Bill Clinton ran for President. She took a job in the Bill/Gore '92 campaign. That led to her work in the Clinton White House. It shaped her understanding of how politics and power works. She later went to graduate school to study presidential politics. Her path to studying technology came from President Dwight Eisenhower (involving the domestic economic effects of the cold war). She later worked in VP Gore's office, but not on the technology policy side, rather in empowerment zones, community and regional economic development. "It's very strange to have lived through the history that you're writing about." "The politics of the 1990s is critically important in understanding how we get to the now of the business landscape, globally and in the tech sector in particular."
4. (8:54) - On why she decided to write her book “The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America.” "This is the book I wish existed in 1999 when I was in graduate school to explain [Silicon Valley], [it's an] explanatory handbook."
5. (12:53) - On the role of the government in supporting the development of Silicon Valley, the "military-industrial-complex", the collective vs the individual, reality v. myth. "[Silicon Valley] is a truly distinctive American story." "What the U.S. has done, particularly since the 1940s when the technology flywheel began, is to enlarge the government in a stealthy way." "The government helped to build the computer, hardware and software industries but giving space for entrepreneurs to be entrepreneurial." "The government threw a lot of money in Silicon Valley's direction, and then got out of the way." "Government contracts were a huge and critical piece of the book of business of technology companies [in the early days], that's the launchpad that threw them into the stratosphere."
6. (18:59) - On the origin story of the "Traitorous Eight", Fairchild Semiconductor, the birth of the semiconductor industry, "Defection Capital" (term coined by Tom Wolfe), Arthur Rock, and venture capital.
7. (28:01) - On Silicon Valley's rise vis-a-vis other regions such as Massachusetts, ("geography was destiny" as told by Anna Lee Saxenian, in her book Regional Advantage, highlighting the organizational/management contrasts between the two regions). "The Bay Area is full of transplants, from the U.S. and around the world." "Immigration policy is part of the secret of Silicon Valley." The  roles of Lockheed Martin and HP in Silicon Valley ("HP did so much to set the tone of Silicon Valley's business culture, in a very deliberate contrast to places like Boston." "Management by walking around, or by wandering around" - rather than sitting around in an office.") "The idea of meritocracy in Silicon Valley comes from that era - it was the place where smart boys who didn't have family wealth or connections came, and they were able to build amazing careers, and in some cases significant fortunes." "Now that openness is not quite as easy."
8. (33:56) - Margaret's take on the use of dual-class share structures by Silicon Valley founders on an historical perspective. "The return of Steve Jobs to Apple [after being fired] cemented the founder narrative, the belief that the "brilliant guys" get displaced [by investors or others] result in companies loosing their innovation." "When hardware got displaced by software, engineering became the product and having extraordinary talent at the top became the priority and a market advantage." The political environment and abundant capital has also played a critical role in setting these terms.
9. (44:05) - Her article "The Secret of Building the Next Silicon Valley" (Wired, Jan 2022). "The next generation of high-tech places will come from investments in people, as well as in technology." "Silicon Valley is no longer merely a place in northern California, it is a global network, a business sensibility, a cultural shorthand, a political hack." "One commonality is that it is not about technology, it's about the people seizing opportunities [such as Fred Terman]." "It's also about an investment in higher education. In the case of UC Berkeley, Californian students were paying $50 per semester in the 60s to study elite level engineering (it was accessible and cheap). It was an escalator of upper mobility [although at the time it was mostly white men.]" "Steve Jobs went to a public school in Silicon Valley in the late 60s that had a computer lab [Steve Jobs' dad did not graduate high school]."
10. (49:00) - On the rise of U.S. regional hubs ("the geography of tech"), and the geopolitical tensions with China.
11. (55:37) - Margaret's favorite books:
    1. In the Shadow of the Poorhouse, by Michael B. Katz (1986)
    2. The Power Broker, by Robert Caro (1974)
12. (57:44) - Who were your mentors, and what did you learn from them?
    1. Michael B. Katz (her graduate advisor).
    2. Bosses in the Clinton Administration.
13. (59:22) - Quotes that she thinks of often, or lives her life by: "The days are long, the years are short."
14. (59:33) - An unusual habit or an absurd thing that she loves: watching TikToks with her daughters.
15. (1:00:36) - The living person she most admires? Her students at UW. Having their college careers upended by the pandemic is no treat. She admires their resiliency. She's bullish on GenZ.

Margaret O’Mara is the Howard & Frances Keller Endowed Professor of History at the University of Washington. She writes and teaches about the growth of the high-tech economy, the history of U.S. politics, and the connections between the two.

You can follow Margaret at the following links:

Twitter @margaretomara

LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/margaretomara/

Instagram @margaretomara

Website https://www.margaretomara.com

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Music/Soundtrack (found via Free Music Archive): Seeing The Future by Dexter Britain is licensed under a Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License