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I believe the fact that, so few American officials have backgrounds in science and technology is negatively affecting how these individuals govern the science and technology sector of our country. Technology is continually becoming more and more important to our society. The government realizes that for America to continue to be successful in this highly technical world that we must continue to advance technologically. For this reason, the government provides a lot of support for research and development of new technologies. The downfall is that there is no cabinet level Department of Technology, therefore it is up to a collection of committees and agencies to make decisions on what types of technologies get introduced and funded. (Excelsior PowerPoint 2020) SOPA is a good example of the negative affects I am talking about. SOPA, or the Stop Online Piracy Act was meant to stop piracy, which is already illegal, but in the process would “compromise fundamental internet infrastructure and undermine the security of the net.” (Doctorow 2011) This was written to congress by a group of inventors and engineers who had also brought up names of other countries where similar policies caused problems. (Doctorow 2011)