Why Big Tech’s congressman is betting on Iowa

California Rep. Ro Khanna vaults up the stage in one long stride, ignoring the steps that lead up the wooden platform.

It's a frigid December night, and the congressman is in Jefferson, Iowa, in a 120-seat theater in the back of a historic-furniture store. (Think salt boxes and trestle benches built with 18th-century tools.) His audience is a blend of tech executives and local educators, Silicon Valley innovators and community leaders. Everything smells of sawdust.  

Khanna is here to talk about bridging divides. From the podium on stage, he brings up opportunity and inequality, and how we need to find a way to unite rural and urban America. “It’s what will allow our country to be stronger and win in the 21st century,” he says.

From where most Americans stand today, Big Tech has fallen short in a big way. Data privacy and diversity issues, compounded by partisan politics, have dogged some of the industry’s leading names. Jobs and and talent still tend to cluster in big cities and leave smaller towns behind – in fact, the gap has only widened since the Great Recession – despite hopes that telecommuting and the internet might

‘We want to be part of the future’‘No magic pill’‘Lightning in a bottle’