Fiorina: Next president needs ‘fundamental understanding’ of tech

The next U.S. president needs a fundamental understanding of technology and a vision to use it, GOP presidential candidate Carly Fiorina said Tuesday.

The former Hewlett-Packard CEO said the next inhabitant of the White House also needs to know when to take a hands-off approach. 

{mosads}”It’s important to have someone in the White House who has a fundamental understanding of technology, a fundamental vision for how technology can be used,” she said at Tech Crunch Disrupt in New York. 

“One of the things I think government shouldn’t be doing is trying to regulate in some bureaucracy how innovation progresses in the technology industry,” she added. 

Fiorina announced her bid for the White House on Monday with low poll numbers in what appears will be a crowded Republican field. She previously ran for the U.S. Senate in California but has never held elected office.

If elected, she said she would immediately try to roll back the new net neutrality rules approved by the Federal Communications Commission earlier this year. She asserted the “400 pages” of regulations “can’t possibly work.”

She also came out strongly against bipartisan patent reform legislation that is meant to rein in abuse by so-called patent trolls. She echoed critics who have argued the proposal — called the Innovation Act — would make it harder for small companies to defend legitimate lawsuits.  

The government can, however, play an important role in technology research similar to the Defense Advanced Research Projects, which helped with the early Internet. Fiorina also called for more worthwhile engagement, arguing the vast majority of online activity is “superficial and useless.”

During the 30-minute interview, she defended her controversial time as the leader of Hewlett-Packard nearly a decade ago that ended in what she called a “boardroom brawl” and her eventual firing. She argued the company grew during a difficult time in the technology industry while she was at the helm.

She pointed to key differences between the tech bubble in the late 1990s and the landscape today. Nonetheless, she called it a “pretty frothy time” with mountains of venture capital money going into online applications.