Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell went off script for part of his speech to the Downtown Seattle Association’s (DSA) “State of Downtown” gathering Tuesday at the Washington State Convention Center. Harrell praised a group of tech billionaires that donated hundreds of millions to elect Donald Trump as “some of the smartest innovators around.” The mayor also criticized federal layoffs that could weaken cybersecurity and risk losing data and technology to China, but off-the-cuff remark about “smart innovator” billionaires was a little hard to follow, since the criticism was so oblique.
“The lists of vulnerabilities that particularly AI presents are pretty significant,” Harrell said Tuesday. “We know that the FCC [Federal Communications Commission] is run by Brendan Carr, who did write the playbook for the FCC chapter in Project 2025 we know that our current president surrounds himself by some of the smartest innovators around. When we drop names like [Marc] Andreessen or Peter Thiel or David Sacks or Elon Musk, these are smart innovators. And when you look at the world of regulation, I am concerned about our cybersecurity issues, so I will assure to you as your mayor, as the only mayor that was put on the safety and security board for artificial intelligence, when I look at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, or just one sec here.”
