Trump cracks about cybersecurity to Akamai CEO at roundtable

Shannon Stapleton | Reuters

President-elect Donald Trump speaks as PayPal co-founder and Facebook board member Peter Thiel (C) and Apple Inc CEO Tim Cook look on during a meeting with technology leaders at Trump Tower in New York U.S., December 14, 2016.

President Donald Trump on Monday joked to technology CEOs that the Democratic National Committee “could have used” more cybersecurity.

The wisecrack, which was met with laughs and groans, came as The White House hosted technology CEOs like Tim Cook and Jeff Bezos on Monday.

Tweet: Akamai CEO says his company protects gov’t websites from cyberattacks. @POTUS: “The DNC could’ve used you.” Laughter/groans in room.

Akamai is best known for its content delivery network (CDN) business, which is used by big web sites to deliver content like video more efficiently. But it also offers services that protect against certain types of cyber-attacks that can affect web site reliability.

The DNC was hacked during the last presidential campaign when stolen Democratic material was given to WikiLeaks. Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton, said last month that she believed the technology, including Russian hackings, WikiLeaks, “fake news” and the DNC’s weak database were factors in her election loss.

Trump has previously said, though, that Clinton’s focus on the hack was out of embarrassment for her loss.

Tweet: Only reason the hacking of the poorly defended DNC is discussed is that the loss by the Dems was so big that they are totally embarrassed!

The summit builds on President Donald Trump’s aim to bring a business sensibility to politics, stemming from Trump’s background as a media mogul.

Presidential advisor Jared Kushner said earlier on Monday that the government needed to “unleash the creativity of the private sector,” noting that the U.S. government uses technology that’s more than 50 years old in some cases.

Tweet: POTUS jokes that he’s created more stock market value than the $3T+ in market capitalization of companies present

But it comes at a time when technology companies have more money and influence than ever in many respects.

Apple’s Tim Cook and Alphabet’s Eric Schmidtare among CEOs that have positioned themselves squarely against the administration on issues concerning immigration and the environment. But there are also major “gov-tech” contracts that could be up for grabs, former interim Yahoo CEO Ross Levinsohn told CNBC’s “Closing Bell” on Monday.

— With reporting by CNBC’s Kayla Tausche