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 true Silicon Valley, though self-interested as ever, stays liberal to the core, a actuality emphatically strengthened 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 heart of technological innovation and revenue. The silicon appellation comes from the 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 tons of of 1000’s of scientists and engineers, startup-backing enterprise capitalists, attorneys specializing in mental property and a number of different companies that make it attainable for anybody with a good suggestion, and plenty of with much less profitable ones, to start out a tech firm and maybe strike it wealthy.
Silicon Valley billionaires and CEOs had been in attendance at President Trump’s inauguration in individual and as million-dollar donors, however the individuals who make Silicon Valley profitable are extra numerous and way 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 setting, 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 actually he’s simply complaining concerning the valley’s widespread help 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 of 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 at the very least 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 threat. 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, 1000’s of valley professionals help the moral improvement 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 strong — however usually 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 in opposition to “debanking” of crypto founders, isn’t he actually complaining about primary shopper safety measures which may have an effect on his portfolio’s worth?
Andreessen seems to be again fondly to the Nineties and Democratic assist in funding of the early improvement of the web, from which he benefited personally and considerably. In reality, Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurial capitalism wouldn’t have been attainable with out federal analysis cash, product acquisition and antitrust enforcement. The transistor itself, invented at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey and primary 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, nonetheless, tech oligarchs comparable to Andreessen count on 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 are actually entrance and heart, he has constantly 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 implementing environmental guidelines.
Zuckerberg has usually spoken about Fb’s mission to attach folks and construct neighborhood. Nonetheless, his determination to bow to Trump and change fact-checking — censorship, Meta’s leaders, now call it — with crowdsourced moderation will probably amplify Fb’s position 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 workers, Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief govt, has additionally veered his firm abruptly to the appropriate in current weeks by dropping its variety objectives and its 2018 pledge in opposition to applying AI technologies to weapons improvement or to make use of in surveillance.
Tech CEOs and cash males cozying as much as the Trump administration haven’t any disgrace concerning the the 180-degree contortions they should carry out to guard their investments. When Andreessen talks concerning the far-left “radicalizing” Silicon Valley’s college-educated workers and blocking startups with safety regulations, he’s actually speaking about his personal far-right radicalization, and his resistance to the professional want of tech staff 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 present, however they’re prone to be taught that Trump has his personal agenda. Quickly sufficient they might discover that Trump’s insurance policies — on immigration, commerce and tariffs, local weather, human rights and extra — will undermine the financial setting that has allowed them to flourish.
John Markoff lined Silicon Valley for the New York Instances for 29 years. Lenny Siegel is former mayor of Mountain View, the birthplace of Silicon Valley’s semiconductor business.
