The leaders of three of the nation’s leading tech companies won’t attend a White House cybersecurity summit in California on Friday, according to media reports.
Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Google executives Larry Page and Eric Schmidt will not attend the event, which will be held at Stanford University.
Apple’s Tim Cook is scheduled to attend.
The White House brushed off the snubs and pointed out that Yahoo, Facebook and Google each will be well represented at the event, even if their leaders won’t be there.
“I think if you look at who will be joining us over the next day or so, you’ll be looking at industry leaders in the tech industry, in the privacy advocacy community, in academia and government, and business leaders from across the board. So we are gratified and we welcome their participation,” White House principal deputy press secretary Eric Schultz told reporters aboard Air Force One on Thursday Night.
“Not only the engagement that we’ve gotten from tech and business leaders across the board we’re proud of, but also some of the commitments that are going to be announced over the next day or so are pretty significant,” Mr. Schultz said.
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Leading private companies, such as Bank of America, Walgreens and others, committed Friday to use the Obama administration’s cybersecurity framework, a voluntary set of guidelines releases last year.
Mr. Obama also will sign an executive order directing the federal government and the private sector to better share information on hacking and other cybersecurity threats.
The president will deliver the keynote address at the summit Friday afternoon.
• Ben Wolfgang can be reached at bwolfgang@washingtontimes.com.
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