mntech Policy Pulse

September 2026

From Joel

Six weeks out

U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar addresses MnTech Connect 2026 by video from Washington, shown on the main screen above the audience.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, MnTech Connect, April 2026

Minnesota House Speaker Lisa Demuth speaking from the mainstage at MnTech Connect 2026.

Speaker Lisa Demuth, MnTech Connect, April 2026

On November 3, Minnesota elects a Governor, an Attorney General, a Secretary of State, a State Auditor, a U.S. Senator, eight members of Congress, two Supreme Court justices, and every seat in the Legislature. All 134 House seats. All 67 Senate seats, because 2026 is one of the years the entire Senate turns over.

That last part is the one I keep coming back to. Every legislator who will write Minnesota technology policy in 2027 is on a ballot in six weeks. A good number of them will be new. Many of them do not yet have a trusted source of information and dialogue on technology issues like artificial intelligence, data infrastructure, and the technology talent pipeline.

What is at stake

If you look at the bills proposed during the 2026 session, you can see the 2027 session forming. AI chatbot liability. Protections for minors on social media. Automated decisions in health insurance. Taxes on digital advertising and social media. Disclosure rules for data centers. Most of these did not become law, and it is very likely that the same bills, with small modifications, come back next session. The ones that did pass now need implementation that either works or does not.

None of these are simple, and I do not think any of them have an obvious right answer. What I do believe is that good technology policy does not come from legislating the fastest or shouting the loudest. It comes from people who share a way to reason about hard tradeoffs, and who have somewhere to turn when the question is technical.

Minnesota’s brightest tech future is not one bill. It is forty of them, over years, shaped by people being asked to make technical decisions quickly. That is exactly where MnTech and our members have a role to play: being the trusted source of information and dialogue that helps guide good technology policy in this state. Few things we do matter more.

What we are doing

We convene, and we do it across the aisle. In April, both Senator Amy Klobuchar and Speaker Lisa Demuth spoke at MnTech Connect, to the same room of members from industry, education, and community. They are now running against each other. We are not endorsing either one, and we will not. What we will keep doing is building the room where people with real differences work the same problem. That is what forty-four years of being nonpartisan has bought us, and it is worth more right now than it has been in a while.

We are making the case in public. The Star Tribune ran my commentary on September 18, arguing that Minnesota cannot settle whether frontier AI gets built, but it can decide what AI is allowed to do for Minnesotans. Most legislators form their view of technology during session, under deadline, from whoever reached them first. The interim is the only stretch where that is still open, and we intend to use it.

We are building shared language. A working list of nine things we think every technology bill should have to answer for, drafted over the summer and now in front of you. No priority order, and nothing adopted yet. That is the point.

How you can get involved

Five ways. Any one of them helps. The last one takes ten minutes, and it is where I would start today.

Be a member, and stay one. Advocacy is the pillar you see least, because most of it happens in hearing rooms long before anything reaches the news. It is also the one that only works at scale. Our voice is stronger with you.

Put someone on the Public Policy Committee. We are starting work on the 2027 Policy Agenda this fall. The committee is where members shape what MnTech actually carries to the Capitol. If your company has someone who owns AI policy, data infrastructure, or workforce, that is the seat for them.

Meet the people running in your district. An invitation from an employer in someone’s district lands differently than one from an association in St. Paul. Ask them to come see your operation. Tell them what a badly drafted technology bill would cost you here in Minnesota. That is the thing they cannot get from us. If you do not know who is running where your building sits, reply to this email with your office address and I will send you your House and Senate districts and everyone on the ballot there. Takes me two minutes.

Point them at us. When a candidate or a newly elected legislator needs to understand something technical, they need a place to ask that is not a lobbying meeting. Tell them MnTech is that place. Education and connection, no bill attached. We have been doing it since 1982 and we are good at it.

Help us build the shared language. Below is a working list of nine things we think every technology bill should have to answer for. It is a draft. Our board has not approved it and we have not set a priority order. Tell us what belongs on it, what is missing, and what we have worded badly. There is also a tool that lets you put the nine in your own order against real bills. Ten minutes. This is how we find out whether the framework survives contact with people who actually run technology businesses, which is the only test that matters before we take it to the Capitol.

Joel Crandall

CEO, Minnesota Technology Association

The Feature

A shared way to reason about tech policy

Here is the problem we keep watching play out. Three legislators sit in the same hearing, on the same bill.

Has a constituent whose child was harmed online.

Just met with a Minnesota startup that employs sixty people.

Represents a district still fighting for reliable broadband.

All three have real concerns. All three are weighing the same underlying values, with no shared language for which one wins when they genuinely conflict.

Other high-stakes fields already solved this.

Aviation

Safety outranks authority in the cockpit.

Emergency medicine

Severity outranks arrival order.

In both cases the hard part was not naming what mattered. It was agreeing on what happens when two of them collide. That is the work ahead of us, and we have not done it yet. First we have to agree on what belongs on the list.

Working draft

What every technology bill should have to answer for

Nine things are at stake every time the Minnesota Legislature acts on technology. These are the ones we think belong in the conversation.

Listed alphabetically. We have not set a priority order, and nothing here has been adopted.

A State Where Companies Build

Whether medtech, agriculture, manufacturing, and finance can grow here instead of somewhere else.

Answers When a Machine Decides

When software makes a decision about you, someone should have to explain it and you should be able to challenge it.

Control Over Your Own Information

What gets collected about you, who gets to see it, and whether you can say no.

Critical Systems, Protected and Built to Last

Water systems, the power grid, banks and county offices all run on software now. Attackers go where the leverage is.

Equal Treatment for Every Person

Technology should treat you as worth the same as anyone else, whether or not a system finds you useful.

Protection Where Harm Lands First

New technology reaches kids, patients, and people without much cushion before it reaches anyone else.

Reaching Every Corner of Minnesota

Fast internet, working devices, and modern public services in Worthington and Grand Rapids, not just the metro.

The Energy and Water It Takes

Data centers and the systems behind AI use real electricity and real water. Someone pays for that.

Work Worth Having

Technology should make jobs better, not just cheaper. Work is how people build a life.

Where this stands

This is a working draft. Our board has not approved it, no one has adopted it, and we are deliberately not publishing a priority order yet.

What we want first is your reaction to the list itself. What belongs here that we left out. What we have worded badly. How you would describe these in your own business. The harder conversation about what happens when two of these collide comes next, and it should include you.

We built a tool that lets you put these nine in your own order and see how your priorities line up against real Minnesota technology bills going back to 2005. It starts in random order. Nothing is ranked for you, and nothing you enter is stored.

Put them in your own order

Ten minutes, and it shapes what we carry into the 2027 session.

Also this month

I made this case in the Star Tribune. “AI is too important to fear, and too powerful to use carelessly,” published September 18. Minnesota cannot decide whether frontier AI gets built. It can decide what AI is allowed to do for Minnesotans, and we do that best by regulating outcomes rather than the technology itself. It ends with an ask worth repeating here: ask the candidates in your district not just what they fear about AI, but what they hope it can do for Minnesotans. Read it in the Star Tribune

2027 Policy Agenda development is underway. MnTech and Momentum Advocacy have begun shaping next session’s agenda, and the Public Policy Committee will be asked for input this fall. Member companies that want a seat at that table should reach out.

From the 2026 session, for reference: our session wrap-up covers where things landed on AI chatbot liability, protections for minors on social media, automated insurance decisions, the digital advertising and social media taxes, and data center disclosure rules. Several of those come back in 2027.

Minnesota is unusually well-positioned for this kind of work. We have a real tradition of pragmatic, bipartisan problem-solving and a technology sector that grew through collaboration between industry, labor, and government. On most of the underlying questions, child safety, worker dignity, privacy, and who gets to benefit from new technology, Minnesotans agree more than the debates suggest. The fights are usually about how, not whether.

The election will settle who holds the pen. It will not settle what gets written. That part is still open, and it is the part where your voice actually moves something.

mntech Policy Pulse

Minnesota Technology Association | mntech.org/advocacy

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