Welcome to a tech policy podcast. I'm Ashken Kazarian. On today's show, we're going to talk about 5G, again. But from an industry perspective, we have a very special guest. We have John Godfrey, who is Senior Vice President for Public Policy in the

Samsung Electronics America. John, thank you so much for joining the show. Thank you, Ash. I'm glad to be here.

So before we get into 5G, what does a vice president for Samsung Electronics America do?

Well, I represent Samsung in Washington, D.C. We've got a team of people who

interface with the government, with industry associations, with nonprofit organizations,

even some technical standards groups. And so we're almost like, you know, early in my career, I studied political science and international relations.

I was interested in diplomacy, thought I might want to be a diplomat.

In a way, that's kind of what I am now.

I'm a diplomat representing Samsung in the United States.

And so we help the company understand what's happening in Washington, D.C.

The U.S. is an extremely important market for any global company, certainly for Samsung.

And so knowing what's happening in Washington, D.C., policies,

laws, regulations that affect our business is very important to the company. And then we also

try to educate the government about Samsung. I'm actually technically not a lobbyist. I don't do that.

We have some people in our team who are.

But we do educate the government about Samsung's presence

in the United States, our technology,

try to help them understand what the technology does,

what you can do to empower people, users, schools,

doctors, what have you.

That's the really fun part of my job.

Only a little bit of it also is trying to actually influence what those laws and regulations

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