Speaker 1: Don't let your legacy i T systems cost you money, innovation,
Speaker 1: and a place at the digital table of the future.
Speaker 1: You can change your systems and the economics of it
Speaker 1: with software from red hat. See how at red hat
Speaker 1: dot com. On Friday January, on his eighth day in office,
Speaker 1: President Donald Trump signed an executive order at the Pentagon.
Speaker 1: The content of the action was rumored for days, but
Speaker 1: no one quite knew what the order was going to
Speaker 1: mean on a practical level. Secondly, I'm establishing new vetting
Speaker 1: measures to keep radical Islamic terrorists out of the United
Speaker 1: States of America. We don't want them here. We want
Speaker 1: to ensure that we are not admitting into our country.
Speaker 1: The very threats are soldiers are fighting overseas. We only
Speaker 1: want to admit those into it. In l A. Hussein Kasai,
Speaker 1: the c EO and co founder of a mid sized
Speaker 1: technology startup called on Fight Oh, was at his family's
Speaker 1: home when the news broke. He didn't really think much
Speaker 1: of it at first. There's been a few executive orders
Speaker 1: that actually don't mean anything in terms of legally being enforceable.
Speaker 1: They don't mean much. So my first reaction was this
Speaker 1: is another one, and that this this, it just seems
Speaker 1: I'm not a lawyer, but it seems a pretty common
Speaker 1: sense that it just seems mostly like I can't see
Speaker 1: how legally this could be enforced. Um, so you got
Speaker 1: real for me when when I saw the protests at
Speaker 1: that airports, including JFK say and the reports that that
Speaker 1: didn't individuals have now been either detained or asked to
Speaker 1: go back. And after I had just calls from the
Speaker 1: messages from lawyers or others offering support and saying don't
Speaker 1: sign this, and so on if if you're traveling. Trump's
Speaker 1: order halted citizens of seven majority Muslim countries from coming
Speaker 1: into the US that's Syria, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan,
Speaker 1: and Yemen, and included people with valid US work visas
Speaker 1: and initially Green cards too. Hussein doesn't simply disagree with
Speaker 1: the band. It affects him and his family directly. His
Speaker 1: father is Iranian. Hussein himself spent ten years of his
Speaker 1: childhood in Iran, and he's a British Iranian dual citizen.
Speaker 1: Hussein is also a Green card holder, which means he's
Speaker 1: a legal resident, but he's nervous that because of his
Speaker 1: Iranian citizenship. His status here in the US might not
Speaker 1: be as secure as he wants thought, and that means
Speaker 1: it's going to get a lot harder for him to
Speaker 1: run his business. A major part of the reasons why
Speaker 1: myself and others moved to places like the US or
Speaker 1: Europe is is because it's different. Because you know, there's
Speaker 1: the rule of law, there's justice, as freedom is democracy
Speaker 1: and all these things. Um So this is particularly surprising
Speaker 1: for us because we know what's what the other way
Speaker 1: is like, and hence it's not normal. It's dangerous. This
Speaker 1: is the starting points of very dangerous road to go down.
Speaker 1: Hi am Aki Ito, and I'm Olivia Zeleski, and this
Speaker 1: week on Decrypted, we're discussing Trump's executive order and what
Speaker 1: it means for the tech industry across the country. Over
Speaker 1: the last week and a half, we've been hearing stories
Speaker 1: like Hussain's. We've heard them especially loud and clear here
Speaker 1: within the tech community, which relies heavily on the brains
Speaker 1: and the labor of skilled foreign immigrants. For weeks since
Speaker 1: Trump won the election, tech executives have been trying to
Speaker 1: make nice with him. But after this executive order, Silicon
Speaker 1: Valley is in full revolt. We'll see what this could
Speaker 1: mean for the tech industry going forward, as we hear
Speaker 1: reports of even broader restrictions on foreign workers. Over the
Speaker 1: last weekend a half, the details have been changing quite
Speaker 1: a bit, so we're going to recap what we know
Speaker 1: for now. For one, anyone who was born in or
Speaker 1: as a citizen of the seven Muslim majority countries has
Speaker 1: been stopped from entering the US for ninety days. It
Speaker 1: means that people who are in the US when the
Speaker 1: order was issued cannot travel internationally, otherwise they might not
Speaker 1: be able to come back in now. The order never
Speaker 1: applied to U s citizens, And as for Green card holders,
Speaker 1: they were getting detained at first, but then Homeland Security
Speaker 1: Secretary John Kelly came out and said Green card holders
Speaker 1: will be allowed in unless there's reason to believe they
Speaker 1: pose a threat to national security. And the situation has
Speaker 1: been changing fast. There's been a storm of legal challenges,
Speaker 1: and on Friday, February third, a federal judge ordered a
Speaker 1: nationwide temporary block to the travel ban. As a result,
Speaker 1: over this past weekend, border officials stopped enforcing the execut
Speaker 1: of order, and the State Department has reversed its cancelation
Speaker 1: of what's said to be tens of thousands of visas
Speaker 1: for people from these seven countries. But Trump isn't backing down.
Speaker 1: Immediately after the federal judge ordered the suspension of the ban,
Speaker 1: the administration asked a federal appeals court to reinstate it,
Speaker 1: and the President has put out a couple of tweets.
Speaker 1: One said, quote the opinion of this so called judge,
Speaker 1: which essentially takes law enforcement away from our country, is
Speaker 1: ridiculous and will be overturned. Another tweet from Trump said,
Speaker 1: when a country is no longer able to say who
Speaker 1: can and who cannot come in and out, especially for
Speaker 1: reasons of safety and security, big trouble. As of taping
Speaker 1: this on Monday, February six, we're still waiting to hear
Speaker 1: a final decision from the appeals court. Whichever side loses
Speaker 1: could even bring this to the Supreme Court. This all
Speaker 1: means that Hussein, the CEO of the startup on Fido,
Speaker 1: is in limbo. On Fido is based in the UK,
Speaker 1: but Hussain spends most of his time here in the US,
Speaker 1: which has become his company's largest and fastest growing market.
Speaker 1: He spends about three to four weeks here in the
Speaker 1: US for every week he spends in the UK, and
Speaker 1: perhaps ironically in this contacts and Fido verifies people's identities
Speaker 1: and runs background checks. The entire company is now just
Speaker 1: shy of a hundred and fifty people, with eleven in
Speaker 1: the rapidly growing US office, and and any company growing
Speaker 1: tech in particular, co founders play a pretty important role,
Speaker 1: anything from from enterprise client sales, to recruitment, to infrastructure
Speaker 1: work to just whiteboard sessions with the team on the
Speaker 1: product side and on the talent side, in the whole
Speaker 1: range of areas. It is why it's important to be
Speaker 1: mobile now. Hussain says he's fortunate that even if he's
Speaker 1: forced to leave his life in California, he could still
Speaker 1: return to the UK. A he says it startups US
Speaker 1: business has grown enough that it could still run without
Speaker 1: him being physically there. Eighteen months ago, we may most
Speaker 1: definitely what have had to think of alternative plans We
Speaker 1: are now just because we're constantly looking to recruit and
Speaker 1: constantly looking to grow um. But we're probably at the
Speaker 1: stage where it's it's if I spend less time, it's
Speaker 1: not going to be as damaging as it would have
Speaker 1: been eighteen months ago, but that's not true for all
Speaker 1: startup founders. The night before Trump signed the executive order,
Speaker 1: another Iranian entrepreneur, Sasha Islami, was boarding a flight to Argentina.
Speaker 1: He was planning to spend two months they're recruiting for
Speaker 1: his fledgling photo sharing app called ever Snap. He spoke
Speaker 1: to our reporter Shelley Haggen about it. I arrived to
Speaker 1: Bueno Sirius eleven PM the day after Buenasirius time. All
Speaker 1: of a sudden, it starts getting messages from one of
Speaker 1: my friends in the US and he's telling me about
Speaker 1: what Trump has done. And at first I thought, Okay,
Speaker 1: well this is really bad, but it shouldn't affect me
Speaker 1: because I'm a Green card holder, UM permanent resident. Then
Speaker 1: if one hour later he sent me an article about
Speaker 1: how it's been confirmed that also permanent residents are also banned.
Speaker 1: So um, then all of a sudden, things, you know,
Speaker 1: it gets pretty scary because I have all my all
Speaker 1: my business in the US. I have a gigantic house
Speaker 1: in San Jose that I have all my stuff there.
Speaker 1: You know, I I go to meetings all the time,
Speaker 1: right with business partners, with investors, with founders when I'm
Speaker 1: in the US, and it's something that my business relies
Speaker 1: on me being able to be there and most of
Speaker 1: the time. For now, Sasha's hope is that by the
Speaker 1: time he's done with this two months recruiting in Argentina,
Speaker 1: any ambiguity will be resolved, at least for Green card
Speaker 1: holders like him. Nobody knows how it's going to play
Speaker 1: out within the next couple of weeks. Right um, every
Speaker 1: day we're getting some sort of new information, right and
Speaker 1: it isn't even the administration himself. They're not clear on
Speaker 1: what it entails. So my plan is to just, you know,
Speaker 1: wait a week or two, see how everything unfolds, right,
Speaker 1: and then take a take an education educated decision after that.
Speaker 1: And then there's another couple we spoke with, the husbands
Speaker 1: and engineer at one of the biggest tech companies here
Speaker 1: in Silicon Valley, and he's been in the US for
Speaker 1: nine years. His wife is a medical researcher at a
Speaker 1: large university in California and she's been here for seventeen years.
Speaker 1: They're both from Iran, and they've asked us not to
Speaker 1: use their names or their employers names because unlike Hussain
Speaker 1: and Sasha, they don't have the security of a U
Speaker 1: screen card. Their applications pending, and now they're worried it's
Speaker 1: never going to come through. I mean, the unstability, the unpredictability,
Speaker 1: is just unbelievable. We had plans, we had I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm a kind of a math type, so I would
Speaker 1: just like look at the investments and figure out what's
Speaker 1: the right amounts to do in the four one K
Speaker 1: and what's the right balance of the funds and all
Speaker 1: that stuff, figuring out based on what when we want
Speaker 1: to retire, based on then we want to buy a house,
Speaker 1: and you start planning for thirty or forty years in
Speaker 1: the future in some way, right, And those plans were
Speaker 1: here in the United yes, And then suddenly now we're
Speaker 1: thinking about plans for tomorrow, next week, next month, trying
Speaker 1: to predict what could happen if that happens. What can
Speaker 1: I do? How can I move fast? How can I
Speaker 1: be very dynamic to handle various different scenarios. It becomes
Speaker 1: from a stable life with the future. In one day
Speaker 1: or two it changes into a survival mode life in
Speaker 1: a way that I know nothing about my future. I
Speaker 1: don't know if I if I'm gonna be able to
Speaker 1: legally work or stay at my home. I don't know
Speaker 1: where in the world and I can go because as
Speaker 1: I can't go back to your own for various reasons,
Speaker 1: including that time, I'm not a Muslim and I'm atheist.
Speaker 1: What would happen if you went backed her in and
Speaker 1: the so To be honest, I'm not sure. They may
Speaker 1: not care that much, or they may care a lot.
Speaker 1: A lot of it is kind of arbitrary, which I'm
Speaker 1: kind of worrying may happen here too. Arbitrary stuff. If
Speaker 1: they don't like you for some reason, they're gonna dig
Speaker 1: up everything on you and then attach that level to
Speaker 1: you and then take your life away in various ways.
Speaker 1: Coming up, we take a look at how the tech
Speaker 1: industry has reacted to the executive order that's right after
Speaker 1: these words from our sponsor. Inside the most successful organizations,
Speaker 1: I T has gone from supporting the business to driving
Speaker 1: the business. But the costs of legacy infrastructure can heed
Speaker 1: this progress. Budgets can't stretch enough to pay for digital
Speaker 1: innovation at the speed required. No one gets a blank check.
Speaker 1: The answer is to change the economics of your I
Speaker 1: T by shifting from ownership to use, from licenses to subscriptions,
Speaker 1: from proprietary to open, change the economics of it with
Speaker 1: open software from red hat. Learn more at red hat
Speaker 1: dot com. So far, we've heard from Hussein, Sasha and
Speaker 1: the couple who were not naming today. They're all directly
Speaker 1: affected by the travel ban, and I think you can
Speaker 1: really hear the uncertainty and the devastation in each of
Speaker 1: their voices. You Know, what's been really striking to me
Speaker 1: is how swift the response was from the tech community,
Speaker 1: just how vociferous it was, at least at the beginning.
Speaker 1: We didn't hear a whole lot from other industries. And
Speaker 1: this was after months of careful steps that the tech
Speaker 1: industry was taking to reconcile the Trump Tesla CEO Elon
Speaker 1: Musk and Uber CEO Travis Kalenik both agreed to join
Speaker 1: the President's Advisory Board and a host of tech leaders
Speaker 1: they went to Trump Tower to meet the then president
Speaker 1: elect during the transition. But after the travel band, top
Speaker 1: tech leaders like Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has spoken out.
Speaker 1: He wrote a very personal post about his wife's parents
Speaker 1: that they were refugees from Vietnam and China. It was
Speaker 1: on the very day that the order was signed. Google
Speaker 1: CEO Sundar Pichai sent out an internal memo talking about
Speaker 1: the more than one hundred employees who have been affected
Speaker 1: by the actions, and he said that it's painful to
Speaker 1: see the personal cost of Trump's actions. And Uber's Kalenik,
Speaker 1: who joined Trump's Advisory Council, he announced on Thursday that
Speaker 1: he was stepping down from the committee. In Seattle, Amazon
Speaker 1: and Expedia file declarations that support Washington States pawsuit against
Speaker 1: the executive order. Do you telling how the travel bands
Speaker 1: hurt their businesses? This was the very lawsuit that led
Speaker 1: to the nationwide temporary suspension of the travel restrictions. And
Speaker 1: in New York, an industry group called Tech NYC came
Speaker 1: out with a public letter to Trump opposing the executive order,
Speaker 1: and it was signed by some of the biggest names
Speaker 1: in the New York tech scene. I spoke to their
Speaker 1: executive director, Julie Samuels. Many of the leaders in our
Speaker 1: tech community here in New York City felt that they
Speaker 1: wanted to do something, and you know, in these instances,
Speaker 1: it's kind of hard to know what to do. We're
Speaker 1: here in New York, We're not in d C. These
Speaker 1: executive orders had been signed already, so we took the
Speaker 1: opportunity to put together a letter once you can see
Speaker 1: um at on our website, which is tech NYC dot org.
Speaker 1: Within twelve hours, we had over four hundred signatures um all.
Speaker 1: This took place on a Sunday afternoon, which is also notable.
Speaker 1: Um people were coming out of the woodwork. So this
Speaker 1: gets us to the question of why immigration. Why was
Speaker 1: it this the travel restrictions that provoked such an outcry
Speaker 1: from the tech industry. Well, for one, entrepreneurs are at
Speaker 1: the core of the tech industry. These tiny startups are
Speaker 1: often the ones coming out with the crazy next new
Speaker 1: things that end up taking off. Between two thousand seven
Speaker 1: and nearly of new businesses in California were started by
Speaker 1: people born outside the US. Our reporter Shelley discussed this
Speaker 1: in more details with David Mendel's, the CEO of bright Cove.
Speaker 1: There're a midsize online video software company in Boston. You know,
Speaker 1: I think you have to keep in mind that most
Speaker 1: of the tech community is in places like Massachusetts where
Speaker 1: we are uh Silicon Valley in California, New Yorkity, the Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. Metropolitan area, and these are people that live
Speaker 1: in incredibly diverse communities. UM for us, the idea of
Speaker 1: working with a Muslim individual of Iranian descent is not
Speaker 1: an abstract idea. That's something I do every day. I
Speaker 1: think everybody here knows people who are being targeted or
Speaker 1: feel like they're being targeted by this, and so I
Speaker 1: think you really have no choice if you want to
Speaker 1: be true to the people around you but to feel
Speaker 1: strongly about this. So that's one point that these are
Speaker 1: your friends and your coworkers and your neighbors. A related
Speaker 1: point is that given how difficult it is for companies
Speaker 1: to find good coders, tech companies don't want to lose
Speaker 1: any of them. Google alone said there are over a
Speaker 1: hundred employees affected by the band. Yeah, I actually didn't
Speaker 1: know this until we started reporting for this podcast, but
Speaker 1: there's a big community of Iranian engineers here in the
Speaker 1: valley and industry executives. You're also worried that it's going
Speaker 1: to hurt their ability to do business around the world.
Speaker 1: Here's David again. Well, I think there's all kinds of
Speaker 1: things that could happen in the future, and there's all
Speaker 1: kinds of spin on effects. So how's the rest of
Speaker 1: the world going to react to America that is closing
Speaker 1: its borders, not just with immigration issues and refugee issues,
Speaker 1: but also all of the talk about tariffs. Um, that's
Speaker 1: a problem for me. Our business is approximately outside the
Speaker 1: United States. For an exporter, it is not in my
Speaker 1: interest for us to put up walls metaphorical ones in
Speaker 1: this case that make it harder for people to do
Speaker 1: business with countries and the United companies in the United States,
Speaker 1: because I think what we'll see its retaliation. You know,
Speaker 1: it's hard to predict where things are going to go
Speaker 1: from here. But our colleagues in Asia, Peter Eelstrom and
Speaker 1: Serretha Ry, obtain a draft of a new executive order
Speaker 1: that the Trump administration is considering, and that draft proposes
Speaker 1: to get harder for all foreigners to get a work
Speaker 1: visa here. The draft, which we should say has not
Speaker 1: come into effect for now, it's just a draft that's
Speaker 1: being passed around, says the changes would prioritize and protect quote,
Speaker 1: American workers are forgotten working people and the jobs they hold.
Speaker 1: And we'll note here that over the years there have
Speaker 1: been some reports that some companies maybe abusing the H
Speaker 1: one B work visa program that they hire foreign workers
Speaker 1: so that they can pay them lower wages than they
Speaker 1: would otherwise pay their American workers. But tech and Yes
Speaker 1: Julie says that when smart, skilled foreigners come to work
Speaker 1: in the US, Americans end up benefiting too. It is
Speaker 1: incredibly important that we have open immigration policies that attract
Speaker 1: the best, the brightest from other countries here to build
Speaker 1: businesses here, to create jobs here. That's incredibly real. The
Speaker 1: list of big companies that were founded are co founded
Speaker 1: by an immigrant um is an incredible list. It includes
Speaker 1: Tesla and includes Facebook. It includes some really big companies.
Speaker 1: Research shows that net new job growth in the United
Speaker 1: States comes from new firms. So while of course the
Speaker 1: majority of startups fail, the ones that grow are the
Speaker 1: ones that create all the new jobs. So we want
Speaker 1: people here growing those companies. Oh, Google, I left Google
Speaker 1: off the list. Think about how many new jobs Google
Speaker 1: has created in the last decade. Hussaying, the CEO of
Speaker 1: a Fido who he heard from earlier, is another example
Speaker 1: of this. He's created eleven jobs here in the US
Speaker 1: through his startup, and he's looking to hire more people,
Speaker 1: and many of the tech workers affected by this measure
Speaker 1: don't think they'll be replaced by American workers. The Iranian engineer,
Speaker 1: whose wife is a medical researcher, Well, he said his
Speaker 1: employer has already offered to move them to another international
Speaker 1: office if that becomes necessary. The thing is that it's
Speaker 1: not like a job that if if I leave, it's
Speaker 1: it's sitting there and somebody get it. I have the
Speaker 1: job because of the particular skill sets that I have.
Speaker 1: If I move, they move with me. It's it's not
Speaker 1: that there's a hole and there's an opening that if
Speaker 1: I'm not there, somebody else can feel it. It's it's
Speaker 1: not that we are taking somebody's jobs. It's you have
Speaker 1: those jobs a lot of people like us. The job
Speaker 1: kind of gets created for the person you want, this
Speaker 1: kind of person, and you figure out how to use
Speaker 1: them to push forward your goals and your company or
Speaker 1: your side, or your university or something like that. So,
Speaker 1: as you said, it's not like the there's a there's
Speaker 1: a whole whole ful field on Fidos who say also
Speaker 1: told his two Randian employees that will move them to
Speaker 1: the UK if it comes to that. Yeah, it's not
Speaker 1: like he's going to fire them and hire two Americans
Speaker 1: in their place. Well, for now, we'll leave you on
Speaker 1: this note. Since the executive order was officially signed on Friday,
Speaker 1: have you both discussed potentially leaving the United States, maybe
Speaker 1: going to Canada, maybe going to Europe. UM. I think
Speaker 1: we are thinking about um, looking at every everywhere that
Speaker 1: we can potentially go. This was the first thing that
Speaker 1: came to our mind that what if this continues? This
Speaker 1: is not just the one time. Yeah, there is no
Speaker 1: one in this world who can ever decide where they
Speaker 1: where they want to be born. No one has ever
Speaker 1: been able to decide that you're born somewhere. And the
Speaker 1: hope was that there is this place on Earth, UM,
Speaker 1: a particular country on then a North American continent that
Speaker 1: didn't discriminate based on where you were born. Right to us,
Speaker 1: I think America is more than a just country with
Speaker 1: certain borders. It's an idea and I felt that that
Speaker 1: idea is shattering that we've been searching for equality right
Speaker 1: in I. I grew up in a kind of a
Speaker 1: lower middle class family in Iran. I grew up my
Speaker 1: family was not connected in any ways to the power powers.
Speaker 1: I was always a second class citizen back home in
Speaker 1: so many ways, by not believing, by not being connected,
Speaker 1: by not being rich. And this was a country where
Speaker 1: we thought those things wouldn't matter. We thought, and and
Speaker 1: beside everywhere, weside in the movies, beside in the media,
Speaker 1: beside in the laws, reside in the corn institution, we
Speaker 1: saw it in the movements. I mean the civil rights movement,
Speaker 1: the feminism movement. I mean I said, Okay, this is
Speaker 1: the country where people are fought for those values and
Speaker 1: they've achieved them, and we can go there and have
Speaker 1: it and be there with these amazing people. That's it
Speaker 1: for this week's Decrypted. Thanks for listening. Well tell us
Speaker 1: what you thought of this episode. Send a voice message
Speaker 1: to our producer Pia at p g A d k
Speaker 1: A r I at Bloomberg dot net, or write to
Speaker 1: me on Twitter. I'm at Olivia's Leski and I'm at
Speaker 1: Akio seven. You can subscribe to Decrypt it on iTunes
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcast, and leave us a
Speaker 1: rating in a review. This helps us make our show
Speaker 1: better and it also gets our podcast in front of
Speaker 1: more listeners. This episode was produced by Pierre get Cary
Speaker 1: Magnus Hendrickson and Liz Smith. Shelley Hagen and Sarah Friar
Speaker 1: helped with additional reporting. We'd like to say a special
Speaker 1: thanks to Shoubert Shawberry, who runs the Persian Tech Entrepreneurs Network.
Speaker 1: He connected us with a variety of startups for today's show.
Speaker 1: Alec McCabe is head of Bloomberg Podcasts. We'll see you
Speaker 1: next week. Don't let your legacy I T systems cost
Speaker 1: you money, innovation, and a place at the digital table
Speaker 1: of the future. You can change your systems and the
Speaker 1: economics of it with software from red Hat. See how
Speaker 1: at red hat dot com.