The MAGAfication of Silicon Valley

"I was writing this article and he just...tweeted it out"

Yesterday afternoon, I started constructing an outline for a post that would focus on the sudden and abrupt confidence that Silicon Valley tech leaders* suddenly have in expressing their political and financial support for Donald Trump.

*this includes Keith Rabois, even though he claims to be “not a Silicon Valley resident” despite owning a multimillion-dollar home there, spending a few days per month there…walks/talks like a duck, etc.

Anyway, as I pushed my toddler in his stroller, brainstorming on the examples I wanted to raise in this discussion, someone sent me a text:

…and yep, there he is:

oh

All said, it certainly made it a lot easier for me to tie everything together.

About a year ago, I wrote about the silent acceptance of Ron DeSantis’ run for the Presidency, a candidate whom I’ve considered even more dangerous than Trump. Within, I wrote:

“Sacks, for what it’s worth, is a longtime supporter of little-c conservative efforts, so his involvement in the above campaigns, and hosting the DeSantis announcement, were of little surprise. My befuddlement is with Tan and others, whom have spent the past several years placing San Francisco’s dubiously-progressive label on a pedestal and shooting paintballs at it all while being self-proclaimed “moderate Democrats”.

It should be of no surprise that the ringleader in all of this public shift toward Trump is David Sacks, whom never attempts to hide his flip-flopping nature and mea culpas. Accordingly, you’ll notice in the All-In crew’s debrief that Jason Calacanis makes mention of the fact that they didn’t get a chance to cover a few topics that he had wished, instead deferring (likely to Sacks’ preference) to topics around economy, national security, and (strangely) a long, meandering discussion around China, Dr. Fauci, and our COVID response.

One of those topics? The fact that Donald Trump is under Federal indictment for engaging in election interference while President.

For me, the amount of ignorance around this fact amongst tech leaders is absolutely baffling and infuriating. At some point, the collective Silicon Valley crowd determined that an economy with fewer guardrails (which Trump will likely implement) is worth the consequence of political persecution of anti-conservatives, erosion of individual and familial rights, dwindling of climate-protecting laws, and whatever type of fresh hell that Project 2025 throws at us.

However, it only takes a glimpse back into the late 19th century to get a better sense of the playbook they’re operating from: Robber barons (of whom the esteemed Leland Stanford was a member) did a fantastic job of building an inception-style worldview which broadly decried regulatory policy and the obfuscation of progress in order to have political leaders do their bidding.

It’s pretty apparent, to anyone observing, that the tech leaders of today are not backing Trump due to some kind of moral framework. They’re backing Trump because they don’t have a moral framework, as far as we can tell. Their framework centers squarely on the idea that the human spirit of ingenuity is only worthwhile if they profit handsomely from it; as far as they can tell, Trump is the golden goose who will bring that to their doorstep.