Tech Titans Make Pilgrimage to White House to Discuss Government Systems

Silicon Valley is fuming about President Trump’s stance on climate and immigration, but top technology executives still made a pilgrimage to the White House on Monday to discuss a potential upgrade of government technology.

Timothy D. Cook of Apple, Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Satya Nadella of Microsoft and Eric Schmidt of Alphabet were among 18 tech executives and investors — many of whom have criticized the Trump administration — who attended the four-hour afternoon session to discuss cloud computing and procurement systems run by government agencies.

For many, it was the second group meeting with Mr. Trump since the election — and another demonstration of the administration’s ability to summon top business executives, even amid controversy.

“Government needs to catch up with the technology revolution,” said Mr. Trump, who strolled in at the end of the meeting to greet the tech titans. “We’re going to change that with the help of great American businesses like the people assembled.”

Few technology specialists from the White House attended. The administration has not filled several major science and technology positions. But the business and economics team closest to the president attended, including Gary D. Cohn, director of the National Economic Council, and Dina Powell, senior counselor for economic initiatives.

The event was organized by Jared Kushner, special adviser to the president and Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, and Chris Liddell, the White House director of strategic initiatives and former chief financial officer of Microsoft.

The opportunity for Silicon Valley is enormous. The federal government spends $80 billion a year on information technology, much of it used to maintain outdated technology such as data systems that are decades old and storage that includes floppy disks used at the Defense Department. Federal agencies maintain 6,100 data centers that could be consolidated and moved to the cloud.

The tech industry has walked a delicate line in its engagement with the Trump administration. Some tech workers and customers have called on industry leaders to withdraw from positions as official advisers to the president. Uber’s chief executive, Travis Kalanick, resigned as a White House adviser after protests by employees and users. Elon Musk, chief executive of SpaceX and Tesla, quit the White House business advisory council after the administration withdrew the United States from the Paris climate accord.

Mr. Musk did not attend the meeting Monday. Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook, was invited but declined because of a scheduling conflict, the company said.

The meeting occurred only weeks after tech executives, including Mr. Musk and Mr. Cook, publicly criticized the withdrawal from the Paris accord.

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