Rep. Zoe Lofgren Accepts Lifetime Achievement Award from Silicon Valley Leadership Group

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose, Calif.) was awarded with a lifetime achievement award from the Silicon Valley Leadership Group (SVLG). The SVLG honored Rep. Lofgren and her colleague Rep. Anna G. Eshoo (D-Palo Alto) with the lifetime achievement award during the organization's largest public policy gathering in Silicon Valley. Dr. Ed Moses, who served for over fifteen years as the director of the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, introduced Rep. Lofgren who delivered the following remarks in accepting the award.

Remarks As Prepared for Delivery:

"Ed, thank you for your kind words, and thank you to the Silicon Valley Leadership Group for this honor. I also want to congratulate my friend and colleague, (Rep.) Anna Eshoo. We have worked together on so many causes, and I can testify that she is truly deserving of praise.

"I grew up just a few miles from here when Santa Clara County wasn't called Silicon Valley. I've seen my home become the center of the tech universe.

"Now we know that government can't create technology, but the laws we make can either foster, or hinder, innovation. Policies can empower and spur entrepreneurs to create new industries, or they can hinder them. Laws can determine how technology is permitted to develop—or not. Finally, government investments in science can make the difference in getting an idea from the drawing board into the real world.

"We set rules and make frameworks that foster an environment where Silicon Valley can exist.

"In 1997 I realized that the governing body for the Internet couldn't continue as a division of the Department of Commerce, and the international nature of the Internet was fostered when we created ICANN. When we promoted net neutrality – and that fight isn't over! – we were setting an innovation framework. When my insistence on notice and take down and safe harbor in the DMCA succeeded, we helped create a framework for innovation.

"These are just a few examples where government set rules, or made a framework, that made it more possible for Silicon Valley to prosper.

"We also foster innovation by fending off threats – that's what we did when we stopped SOPA. Working together to get a world wide web black out and crafting strategy to defeat SOPA were some of my most enjoyable moments in Congress. We're working together again now, in this protect innovation mode, to make it harder for patent trolls while also making sure that we nurture start ups while we do so.

"We can also foster innovation by promoting education, science and research. Innovation depends on smart people and Silicon Valley would not exist without them. We do this by supporting education from pre-k to post-doc. And by working to reform immigration.

"And we do this by spending the taxpayer's money where we can get the best 'return on investment' by making smart federal investments in science. The money the Federal Government invests in science and research is very important. And yet, because of budget cuts, that essential engine for our technology future is being eroded.

"That was true for a scientist at Yale who just lost funding for the research that actually got him the Nobel Prize this year. It's also true for the monumental science effort underway at the National Ignition Facility.

"Dr. Ed Moses made note of my advocacy for fusion research. When I meet with new interns in my office, they often ask me what I'm working on and I'll tell them the three I's: Immigration, Intellectual Property and Inertial Confinement Fusion.

"Today, probably the most important fusion research in the world is being conducted at the National Ignition Facility up the road at the Lawrence Livermore National Lab. Let's be clear: this is still a science experiment, not a commercial venture into a new energy source. But it is essential science with tremendous promise. Let's remember that the Internet was at one time just a federally funded experiment for battlefield communication.

"For the last century we have been engaged in intense geo-engineering of the planet. When we thought we were just driving to work or getting power to homes and businesses, we were engaged in unprecedented geo-engineering of our planet through fossil fuel emissions. Now the seas are rising and the polar ice is melting.

"Fusion, nuclear fission and solar energy – including biofuels – are the only energy sources capable of satisfying the Earth's need for power for the next century without the negative environmental impacts of fossil fuels. Of these sources, fusion would promise the most punch with the least down side.

"The simplest fusion fuels, the heavy isotopes of hydrogen (deuterium and tritium), are virtually inexhaustible and available worldwide.

"One gallon of seawater would provide the equivalent energy of 300 gallons of gasoline; fuel from 50 cups of water contains the energy equivalent of two tons of coal. A fusion power plant would produce no climate-changing gases, and there would be no danger of a runaway reaction or a disastrous core meltdown in a fusion power plant.

"But we can't get there if we don't pioneer the science and we need your support for continued funding for the science at NIF.

"Nowhere is the future more present than here in the Valley. I'm glad that Ed Moses was here to tell you something about the future you might not have known about. We will need the ingenuity of Silicon Valley to bring fusion science into commercially available power. After all, Silicon Valley specializes in using basic science to derive disruptive technology that changes the world.

"I accept this award with gratitude for my past work and an understanding that Silicon Valley is always about the future. And I renew a pledge: You can continue to count on me in Congress to stand up for innovation and the future."

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