US President Barack Obama To Meet With Tech CEOs This Week, Including Steve Jobs

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ABC News is reporting that this Thursday, US President Barack Obama will travel to San Francisco and will meet with some of the – wait, the biggest CEOs in technology today. Steve Jobs, Eric Schmidt and Mark Zuckerberg of Apple, Google and Facebook will all meet privately with the Leader of the Free World. I don’t know what’s a bigger story – that Jobs, Schmidt and Zuckerberg will be in the same room, or that they’ll be in the room with the President.

Jobs being there is a huge story. The CEO is on a medical leave of absence, just the latest time the so-called visionary has been plagued with medical problems in the past 10 years. We had heard that Jobs had made a surprise visit on the Apple campus, bringing delight to the Apple employees who are said to be taking their fearless leader’s time away hard. But then today, tabloid stories and pictures pinned an extremely frail-looking Jobs going to the Stanford Cancer Center.

Obama and his campaign staff are known to have heavily used Macs during his 2008 Presidential campaign (there are sites out there dedicated to posting pictures of the President using MacBooks). Last year, during a fundraising tour for his Democratic Party, Obama met with Jobs to discuss the economy. Obama has also praised Jobs as an innovative figure who achieved the American dream.

As for Obama’s other guests – Eric Schmidt of Google contributed heavily to Obama’s campaign in 2008 and even served in some capacity as his technology policy advisor. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s political opinions aren’t known, and the young billionaire has yet to make a political donation according to public records. But, Facebook has quickly become one of the most important companies in the world today, what with it’s global reach and ability for connecting people.

Obama will be discussing the economy and technology with the tech titans, as well as pushing his new agenda outlined in his recent State of the Union address. Obama called for an American innovation revolution and called for “our generation’s Sputnik moment.” Obama’s administration has also spoken out in favor of internet freedom and establishing internet access for all Americans.