International

President Donald Trump met with the CEOs of major technology companies on Monday, including Amazon's Jeff Bezos and Apple's Tim Cook, asking them to help carry out a "sweeping transformation" of the federal government's information technology and cybersecurity.
     The meeting was the first of the American Technology Council, a group of tech CEOs whose goal is modernizing the government's "technology infrastructure." The meeting marked the beginning of the White House's "technology week," aimed at pushing Trump's policies in that area.
     "Our goal is to lead a sweeping transformation of the federal government's technology that will deliver dramatically better services for citizens, stronger protection from cyber attacks, which we were just discussing in the Oval Office with a little bit smaller group," Trump said at the start of the meeting.
     Among the other attendees at the event were Oracle co-CEO Safra Catz, IBM CEO Ginni Rometty, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich and Palantir CEO Alex Karp. They joined Bezos and Cook and other leaders earlier in the day for a series of working groups led by the president's senior adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
     Kushner is personally leading the effort to bring the government's IT into the 21st century.