Padmasree Warrior, the current CTO of Cisco and former CTO of Motorola, is being spoken of in many blog and new media circles. Born in India, she started her technology career at a relatively entry level position at Motorola, climbing almost all the way to the top before jumping ship to Cisco.

I think Padmasree makes good sense to be the head of technology for the U.S., but not in terms of being good for industry.  Good for the State, bad for industry.

Warrior’s career has been more focused on being a large voice in the technology industry, although maybe not the wisest.  Her time at the helm of technology at Motorola is not one that can be labeled as “technologically-savvy,” she just has an active and expressive personality that is more akin to Steve Jobs, but with worse ideas.  She’s adept at climbing the corporate ladder politically, which is exactly what the U.S. government wants: someone who is politically smart, even if they’re not intelllectually relevant to the market.

Her ability to move from Motorola to Cisco shows that she’s also well connected.  Both corporations needed someone who can spin the right phrases.  Her insight into technology shows that she may not be the wisest candidate for the job.  When the iPhone came out, she slammed it for the following reasons, back in 2007:

1. She saw no purpose for a touch screne on a phone.
2. She didn’t find the gesture interface revolutionary.
3. She didn’t like the lack of a hardware keyboard.
4. She was against the closed operating system structure that Apple professes in their products.

Of course, Warrior was completely wrong on the iPhone, much to Motorola’s detriment.  Is this a person you’d want in charge of your corporate interests?  Not I.

In terms of what she can do for the State, she’s always been a big proponent of “Seamless Mobility,” where Internet access is available everyone in a person’s life.  We know that Obama wants broadband availble for everyone, even if it means slow and financially expensive (for the taxpayers) broadband.  I’d say that Padmasree would be all in favor of such a spending measure.  Many of her old corporate cronies at Motorola and Cisco would love to get a jump on those tax dollars being spent.

Overall, I don’t see her being nominated as a bad thing or a good thing.  She’s politically savvy, well known in the insider tech circles, and is loved by the paleomedia and some in the New Media, such as Om Malik, who let her speak at his conference last year.  As Om says, she also is from Chicago (for the last few decades, it seems), so she definitely would be a crony that Obama is likely to pick.

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