When Brad Smith was offered a job as an associate with Covington and Burling, he had one condition for accepting: he wanted his own computer.
That may not seem like much of deal-breaker today, but this was 1986, and personal computers were still a novelty rather than a necessary tool for work. No one else in the firm had one at the time. But Smith, who graduated from Princeton and Columbia Law School, was a convert to word processing, specifically using Microsoft 1.0, and he wasn’t about to give it up.
“I got it – it was an IBM 386, and it ran MS DOS,” Smith says.
That affinity for technology was what eventually led him to Microsoft. But it was almost a missed opportunity as Smith initially turned down the job. But the promise of making a difference at the company, of bringing his input, persuaded him, and in 1993 he officially joined Microsoft’s in-house legal team.
These days, Smith is president of the tech giant, helping to shape Microsoft’s policies on important issues such as privacy and artificial intelligence (AI) ethics. He has built up a reputation as a statesman of the tech industry, concentrating on digital rights and the importance of privacy. In the words of Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates, Smith is a “serious thinker”; he is a “vocal and principled thought leader”, according to human rights lawyer Amal Clooney.
In an industry where companies adopt mottos such as “move fast and break things” and everything is about disruption, Smith stands apart, viewed as a principled leader, one who focuses on the responsibilities of the tech industry as much as the possibilities that it brings.
The challenges of technology and society form the topic of his 2019 book, Tools and Weapons: the Promise and the Peril of the Digital Age, which he co-authored with Carol Ann Browne. He also explores it with figures from the tech world, among others, in his podcast of the same name.
Smith was in Dublin recently to accept a special recognition award from IDA Ireland, putting it in the same category as Apple, Pfizer and Google.
This is a milestone year for the company. Not only is Microsoft celebrating 40 years in Ireland, but it is also marking its 50th birthday.
When it was founded on April 4th, 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen the co-founders had a vision: a computer on every desk and in every home.
Over the years, the company’s mission changed. In 2002, it was “to enable people and businesses throughout the world to realise their full potential”; under Satya Nadella in 2015, that changed to “empower every person and every organisation on the planet to achieve more”.
Microsoft has evolved dramatically over the years. It has run the gauntlet from tech innovator to staid, and slightly stale, incumbent, with a swerve into protecting privacy and digital rights of its customers.
“The company has not had just straight-line linear growth. And in fact, when I joined in 1993 the growth had slowed, and then it accelerated again as server computing took off,” says Smith.
There really are very few places in the world where you can bring together a global group of people that with world-class talent, and the fact that Ireland has been so welcoming to that; it’s not just the investment in capital, like data centres, but it’s the homes for people that really matter
— Brad Smith
That has proved a good thing for Ireland. Microsoft opened here in 1985, with a small manufacturing operation that employed fewer than 100 people.
In 2018, the company opened its €134 million 34,000sq m campus in Co Dublin, an ambitious project at the time. It came with an LED waterfall and digital lake, an indoor “mountain” and a dedicated space for teaching the next generation about technology. One Microsoft Place wasn’t just an office, though: it was a statement of intent.
Smith is a regular visitor to Ireland, usually putting in an appearance at the Irish office in Leopardstown every other year – although Covid-19 put a damper on that.
It now employs more than 4,000 people, and over the years has helped advance Ireland’s transformation into a tech hub.
That has been a two-way street, though. Smith says Ireland has played an important role in building Microsoft’s business over the years.
“The relationship we have had with Ireland as a country and with the Irish government has been so important to Microsoft’s success. I really don’t believe that Microsoft would be the successful company it is today, especially across Europe, if we hadn’t forged this partnership with Ireland.”
Part of that partnership has been in Microsoft’s involvement in education, from the Dreamspace project that caters to schoolchildren and young students to the upskilling programmes that Microsoft has invested in to create a more educated workforce, ready to take on the new digital world.
“There really are very few places in the world where you can bring together a global group of people that with world-class talent, and the fact that Ireland has been so welcoming to that; it’s not just the investment in capital, like data centres, but it’s the homes for people that really matter,” says Smith.
The latter may be one area where Ireland runs into difficulty, though. With the country in the grip of a housing crisis, the cost of buying or renting a home here has risen sharply.
But Ireland is not unique in that respect, says Smith.
“Life always has problems. You know, there’s never been a politician who’s run for office saying, ‘Good news, we have no problems we need to solve’, and we’re aware and sensitive to them as well,” he says.
“I will say, if you had to pick your problems, there are problems of success versus the problems of failure. And just as we see the same thing in the western part of Washington state, where we live, one of the problems of success is providing housing that’s affordable to everyone. It’s a priority and needs to be a priority.”
It hasn’t all been plain sailing. The company was forced to make cuts to its workforce in recent years, like many tech companies feeling the pinch after the Covid bump eventually petered out. Earlier this year, it announced it would cut 1,900 jobs across its video-game divisions including at Activision Blizzard, which has offices in Dublin and Cork.
Still, the company has continued to grow globally. Fuelling that growth is its move into AI. Microsoft has built OpenAI’s technology into its products, dubbing the digital helper CoPilot. One clue to the importance with which Microsoft was treating the technology came when it announced the first change to its keyboard in 20 years. A dedicated CoPilot button joined the Windows key.
Our message in Washington is, we can’t afford to invest at the level they are excited to see us investing in the United States unless we can bring our technology to the world
— Brad Smith
Although it is still early days for AI, Smith sees the technology as a utility, the same as electricity, or even broadband access.
“One of the things that really excites me is the opportunity for us to learn together and work together with educators, with teachers, with universities and with governments, including an agency like the IDA, to really understand what kinds of skills can we provide? How do we work with educational institutions? How do we work with employers? I think this is going to be an area where we as a company just focus more and more, because I do think it may play the single most important role in defining whether people across a society benefit from AI,” says Smith.
“There will always be some people that benefit from new technology, but the goal is to really seek to benefit everyone. The key to benefiting everyone is to provide everyone with easy access to the skills [and] that actually requires easy access to the technology itself. We have a huge range of opportunities ahead.”
There are also possible stumbling blocks. With US president Donald Trump imposing tariffs on everything not made in the US and pressuring companies to invest heavily in the US, the tension has ramped up.
Smith is diplomatic about it, however, insisting that Microsoft will continue to be an international company, and a broad-based one, because it wants to survive.
“We will continue to invest heavily in the United States,” he says, “Our message in Washington is, we can’t afford to invest at the level they are excited to see us investing in the United States unless we can bring our technology to the world.”
Europe is an important market for Microsoft, and it expects to continue to be so. Continued growth there, then, is important. “We’ll continue to advocate for the kinds of policies that benefit the economies at home and in all of the other countries where we also call it home, Ireland being a foremost example of that. We’ll be a voice for encouraging collaboration. I don’t see that changing.”
Europe needs all the wins it can get. The region has been accused of stifling innovation in the tech sector, preferring instead to set the rules for others, acting as a finger-wagging prefect to the US’s rebellious wild cards.
Smith is hoping for a degree of regulatory interoperability between Europe and North America.
“That means having more similarity than difference. I do think there’s an opportunity in Europe to ensure that the EU AI act is implemented in a simplified or balanced or commonsense way that isn’t too heavy-handed, even while it pursues important goals,” he says.
“The second thing that I think is really important, is for European leaders to really look at the tech sector in Europe and think about where it is today and where it does or does not need help.
“The good news, in my opinion, is that there are start-ups springing up all across the European Union in a way that was not present 20 years ago and was not imaginable 30 years ago when I first started at Microsoft. That’s really exciting.”
However, he warns scaling up is an issue. “In the world of technology in general, there’s what’s known as the valley of death. You get started, and then you know that at the other end of this valley, there is a sustainable future economically, but in between there is the valley of death, where many companies die,” he says.
“The biggest challenge, in my view, for Europe is to find a way to create a capital environment that will provide firms with more funding one way or another. I see companies like ours and many others coming into Europe and building out this data centre infrastructure. What I don’t see is the capital to help start-ups find their way to success.”
Smith was equally vocal about Microsoft’s role in cybersecurity, pointing out the company was among those who helped Ukraine secure its government systems and data before the missiles began landing, in the early days of the Russian invasion of the country.
“I think Microsoft must remain a vital protector, especially of cybersecurity, of all of the countries where we’re especially building data centres and working in close collaboration with governments,” he says.
“That obviously includes Ukraine. It includes Poland, where I was two weeks ago announcing the expansion of our data centre infrastructure there. It includes Ireland, in every country across Europe, and it includes, of course, by definition, the United States and other places, too.”
Our support for Ireland and our support for Europe is steadfast. We’ve been consistent for four decades here. We’ll be consistent in the future
— Brad Smith
Smith is determined that Microsoft will navigate the next few years and come out the other side.
“What you realise is that you don’t reach 50 years of anything without having bad days as well as good days and bad years as well as good years. But I think the ability to come back is something you don’t tend to see many technology companies achieve, and what it requires is this resilience of spirit, but an ongoing quest for innovation. And we found that.”
And after 40 years, Microsoft is still as committed to Ireland as it was back in the 1980s.
“I cannot speak for any government, but I can speak for Microsoft. Our support for Ireland and our support for Europe is steadfast. We’ve been consistent for four decades here. We’ll be consistent in the future,” Smith says.
“We’ll be determined to help protect the nation of cybersecurity, support its defence, advance its economic and competitiveness. We’ll continue to invest. I think my message is simple: Ireland can count on us.”
CV
Name: Brad Smith
Job: President and vice-chair of Microsoft
Age: 66
Family: Married to Kathy since 1983, with two children.
Something that you would expect: Smith is a committed Microsoft user. His first computer ran MS DOS.
Something that might surprise you: He is a big advocate for transparency from tech companies. He also cofounded a non-profit, Kids in Need of Defense, with Angeline Jolie to provide legal support to unaccompanied immigrant children facing deportation in some of the US’s largest cities.
