Singapore Prime Minister tours Silicon Valley, smiles like a kid in a candy store (photos)

Prime Minister Lee with Google head honchos Eric Schimidt and Sundar Pichai. Image credit: PMO.

Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong is touring Silicon Valley, joining a tradition undertaken by world leaders such as India’s Narendra Modi and Japan’s Shinzo Abe. Heck, it’s becoming such a thing that there’s even a non-profit called Silicon Valley Office of Protocol to educate tech companies on international diplomacy.

Prime Minister Lee’s visit included meetings with Elon Musk of Tesla Motors and SpaceX, Eric Schimdt of Google’s parent company Alphabet, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Apple CEO Tim Cook, and more.

It’s unclear if these meetings have implications on Singapore’s technology policies. Tesla shut shop in Singapore in 2011 because it couldn’t obtain a tax break from the government, which made its cars too expensive. Did Elon broach the possibilities of a re-entry with the Prime Minister?

Singaporean Google staff also had a chance to mingle with the Prime Minister, and they talked about how to make engineering a more attractive career in the country. I wonder if Singapore’s engineering shortage is on his mind, and perhaps he’s considering more means to draw engineers into the tech industry?

Whatever the agenda, the Prime Minister, who’s quite the geek himself, must feel at home. We’ll update this post with more photos as they get published on his Facebook page.

Apple CEO Tim Cook. Image credit: Kenji Soon.

Lee Hsien Loong trying the Oculus Rift at Facebook. Image credit: Kenji Soon at MCI.

Prime Minister with Singaporean Facebook employees. Image credit: Kenji Soon.