California's would-be governor prepares for battle against job-killing robots

Gavin Newsom has been waiting in the wings for years as lieutenant governor. Now his campaign to lead the state is taking on its golden industry: tech

The graduating computer science students at the University of California at Berkeley had just finished chuckling at a joke about fleets of "Google buses, Facebook shuttles and Uber-copters" lining up to whisk them them to elite jobs in Silicon Valley. The commencement ceremony for a cohort of students who, one professor confided, were worth around $25bn was a feel-good affair.

Until, that is, Gavin Newsom took to the lectern and burst the bubble.