Mark Cuban Advises Trump to Invest $100 Billion in Robotics

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By Lilly Maier December 19, 2016

Billionaire Mark Cuban, once a fierce critic of Donald Trump, is now offering free advice to the President-elect: spend $100 billion in robotics.

In a blog post, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks suggested that Trump take the money from the $1 trillion he promised to spend on infrastructure. Cuban wrote that China, Korea and the European Union are eclipsing the U.S. on robotics.

“We have to win the robotics race. We are not even close right now,” Cuban wrote.

The tone of the blog post is far from his earlier jeremiads against Trump. In August, Cuban called him “horrible” and “toxic”. After the election, Cuban wrote on Twitter that the Dallas Mavericks would boycott Trump hotels.

But by early December, Cuban had made a complete turnaround on his fellow billionaire, calling him our “No. 1 draft pick” on CNBC.

Whether Trump will take Cuban’s advice remains to be seen. Robots could make certain human jobs obsolete, which would undercut Trump’s promise to put Americans back to work.

Lilly Maier is a news intern at the Forward. Reach her at [email protected] or on Twitter at @lillymmaier

Lilly Maier is a news intern at the Forward. She is a graduate journalism student at New York University, where she studies as a Fulbright scholar. She also holds a B.A. in Jewish history from the University of Munich. Contact Lilly at [email protected], read her portfolio, or follow her on Twitter.

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