The headlines learn, “How Democrats Drove Silicon Valley Into Trump’s Arms” and “Tech kisses the ring at Trump’s inauguration.” However that’s a mirage. The actual Silicon Valley, though self-interested as ever, stays liberal to the core, a actuality emphatically bolstered by the 2024 November elections.
Silicon Valley, the casual area on the south finish of the San Francisco Bay, is acknowledged universally because the preeminent middle of technological innovation and revenue. The silicon appellation comes from the Nineteen Seventies rise of silicon-based semiconductor manufacturing, and the “valley” — stretching south to Santa Cruz and north to San Francisco — stays the worldwide chief in chip design, social media, web and digital monetary companies, smartphones and now, synthetic intelligence.
Silicon Valley’s tech ecosystem brings collectively lots of of hundreds of scientists and engineers, startup-backing enterprise capitalists, attorneys specializing in mental property and a number of different companies that make it potential for anybody with a good suggestion, and plenty of with much less profitable ones, to begin a tech firm and maybe strike it wealthy.
Silicon Valley billionaires and CEOs had been in attendance at President Trump’s inauguration in particular person and as million-dollar donors, however the individuals who make Silicon Valley profitable are extra various and far more progressive. In a New York Times interview this month, enterprise capitalist Marc Andreessen tried to painting the tech business as embracing Donald Trump.
The fact couldn’t be farther from the reality.
In reality, Silicon Valley stays progressive on local weather change and the atmosphere, immigration, human rights, reproductive rights and social fairness, and its residents vote overwhelmingly Democratic.
In his interview, Andreessen appears to acknowledge that younger tech professionals — the workhorses of Silicon Valley — reject Trump and the political inclinations of his billionaire supporters. He blames elite universities for “radicalizing” the workforce into “America-hating communists,” when the truth is he’s simply complaining in regards to the valley’s widespread assist for considerate authorities regulation and equitable taxation.
In seven of essentially the most prosperous Silicon Valley cities — Palo Alto, Los Altos Hills, Los Altos, Los Gatos, Portola Valley, Woodside and Atherton — mixed, Kamala Harris received 76.2% of the vote, in contrast with 20.1% for Trump
Certainly, Atherton, thought-about the wealthiest metropolis within the U.S., voted for Harris 71% to Trump 27%. Atherton is the place Andreessen listed his mansion in March for $33 million as he abandoned Northern California for Malibu.
Most elected officers in Silicon Valley are Democrats. The area’s congressional delegation consists of progressive champions Ro Khanna and Zoe Lofgren, who has pushed to tie CHIPS Act funding to labor and environmental requirements.
When tech titans Andreessen, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg align themselves with Trump’s imaginative and prescient, it reveals a minimum of as a lot about defending their fortunes because it does any actual political evolution within the Bay Space
At a Stanford College conference last fall, Andreessen attacked the regulation of synthetic intelligence. AI, the gathering of applied sciences made well-known by language fashions like ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude, represents each immense alternative and danger. But right here was a billionaire investor, with huge stakes in additional than 100 AI corporations, smugly declaring that considerate oversight would “kill innovation.” On the similar time, as evidenced by union statements, office “belief and security” stories and surveys of AI researchers, hundreds of valley professionals assist the moral growth of AI.
Equally, Andreessen attacked the Biden administration’s half-hearted makes an attempt to control cryptocurrency hypothesis, charging that the Democrats had been out to kill a robust — however typically rife with fraud — new business supported by Trump. On the similar time, his agency, Andreessen Horowitz, has greater than 150 cryptocurrency-related corporations in its portfolio. When he rails towards “debanking” of crypto founders, isn’t he actually complaining about fundamental shopper safety measures that may have an effect on his portfolio’s worth?
Andreessen appears again fondly to the Nineties and Democratic assist in funding of the early growth of the web, from which he benefited personally and considerably. In reality, Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurial capitalism wouldn’t have been potential with out federal analysis cash, product acquisition and antitrust enforcement. The transistor itself, invented at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey and fundamental to the tech revolution, was solely accessible to Silicon Valley startups due to a 1956 antitrust consent decree between the federal authorities and AT&T. Now, nevertheless, tech oligarchs comparable to Andreessen anticipate Trump to free them from federal regulation, oversight and taxes.
Andreessen is only one of a handful of tech leaders who’ve made a present of aligning themselves with Trump.
Whereas Elon Musk’s DOGE makes an attempt to regulate federal companies at the moment are entrance and middle, he has persistently opposed federal laws that price his companies. For instance, in November, after the Wall Road Journal documented regulation-defying pollution from Tesla’s vegetation in Texas and California, Musk co-authored an op-ed article within the newspaper proposing, amongst different issues, that the federal government cease imposing environmental guidelines.
Zuckerberg has typically spoken about Fb’s mission to attach individuals and construct group. Nonetheless, his choice to bow to Trump and exchange fact-checking — censorship, Meta’s leaders, now call it — with crowdsourced moderation will possible amplify Fb’s function in spreading misinformation, hate speech and different divisive content material. Most researchers have found that utilizing crowdsourcing to police falsehoods has blended results at greatest.
Regardless of reported opposition from staff, Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief govt, has additionally veered his firm abruptly to the proper in current weeks by dropping its range targets and its 2018 pledge towards applying AI technologies to weapons growth or to make use of in surveillance.
Tech CEOs and cash males cozying as much as the Trump administration haven’t any disgrace in regards to the the 180-degree contortions they must carry out to guard their investments. When Andreessen talks in regards to the far-left “radicalizing” Silicon Valley’s college-educated staff and blocking startups with safety regulations, he’s actually speaking about his personal far-right radicalization, and his resistance to the reputable need of tech employees and society at giant to make sure that highly effective new applied sciences serve the general public good.
Democrats haven’t deserted Silicon Valley, and the valley hasn’t deserted the Democrats: Tech oligarchs’ Faustian cut price with Trump attracts headlines at this time, however they’re more likely to be taught that Trump has his personal agenda. Quickly sufficient they could discover that Trump’s insurance policies — on immigration, commerce and tariffs, local weather, human rights and extra — will undermine the financial atmosphere that has allowed them to flourish.
John Markoff coated Silicon Valley for the New York Occasions for 29 years. Lenny Siegel is former mayor of Mountain View, the birthplace of Silicon Valley’s semiconductor business.
