Trump brings Silicon Valley to Washington
Silicon Valley is coming to Washington in force, as tech leaders take on prominent roles — both official and unofficial — in President-elect Trump’s second term.
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is the most well-known tech figure in Trump’s inner circle, but numerous Silicon Valley executives are filling out the ranks of the president-elect's administration.
Trump tapped venture capitalist David Sacks earlier this month to serve as the White House czar of artificial intelligence (AI) and cryptocurrency, a new role dedicated to steering the administration’s policy on the two technologies.
“I feel like this is a turning point, and David Sacks here may be just a small part of it, but he represents a connection between the tech community and President-elect Trump,” said Matt Calkins, co-founder and CEO of Appian, a cloud computing and enterprise software firm.
The president-elect also named Jacob Helberg, a senior adviser to the CEO of Palantir Technologies, as under secretary of State for economic growth, energy and the environment.
Jim O’Neill, a biotech investor and close associate of venture capitalist Peter Thiel, will join the administration as deputy secretary of Health and Human Services.
Trump is reportedly considering Shyam Sankar, Palantir’s chief technology officer, to take on the Defense Department’s top research and engineering job, while Anduril co-founder Trae Stephens has also been floated for a Pentagon role, according to Politico.
And most notably, Musk and fellow tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy will lead the brand-new “Department of Government Efficiency,” although Musk’s influence appears to extend well beyond the cost-cutting commission.
The billionaire’s pressure campaign against Congress’s end-of-year funding deal this week successfully tanked the stopgap bill, leading some to jokingly refer to him as “President Musk.”
Many of Trump’s Silicon Valley picks supported his campaign, underscoring the president-elect's commitment to rewarding loyalty with his new administration.
“It makes sense that we're seeing a number of those folks coming into the administration,” said Andrew Lokay, a senior research analyst with Beacon Policy Advisors.
“Trump is someone who's shown that he values loyalty, and so I think he's looking to prioritize loyalty and in making his nominations and his personnel selections,” he added.
Musk contributed at least $250 million to Trump’s bid, with the vast majority going to his own pro-Trump super PAC that played a key role in the campaign’s get-out-the-vote efforts in swing states.
Sacks endorsed Trump in June and hosted a fundraiser for the Republican candidate in San Francisco that raked in millions of dollars. Notably, the venture capitalist, who has previously supported Republicans, backed Trump’s opponent Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Few in Silicon Valley supported Trump eight years ago. Thiel was largely a man on his own backing the Republican candidate at the time, when the tech world was considered solidly blue.
However, Trump and the GOP appear to have made in roads in Silicon Valley in recent years. Several tech executives who had previously backed Democrats supported Trump’s bid for the president this cycle.
Helberg was once a prominent Democratic donor, contributing to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Vice President Harris and even President Biden as they vied for the Democratic nomination in 2020.
Over the past few years, the Palantir adviser began backing Republican candidates in key Senate races. He endorsed Trump this cycle and attended Sacks’s fundraiser, calling it proof that the former president was “creating a generational realignment among technology founders” and other key groups.
“We've come a long way since the Obama era when Silicon Valley was perceived as being really Democratic leaning,” Lokay noted.
The leaders of the world's biggest tech firms have also taken a vastly different approach to Trump ahead of his second term.
In 2016, then-Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos criticized Trump, saying his calls to “lock up” his opponent Hillary Clinton and his suggestion that he would not concede the election “erodes our democracy.”
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, whose company was still known simply as Facebook at the time, also expressed concern about “people and nations turning inward” in an apparent dig at the then-presidential candidate.
“I hear fearful voices called for building walls and distancing people they label as others, for blocking free expression, for slowing immigration, reducing trade,” Zuckerberg said at Facebook’s annual conference in 2016, adding, “Instead of building walls, we can help people build bridges.”
Google CEO Sundar Pichai also spoke out against Trump’s call to halt Muslim immigration to the U.S. in late 2015.
Now, the same tech leaders who once criticized Trump are traveling to his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida to meet with the president-elect, and several have made $1 million contributions to his inauguration fund.
This steady stream of Silicon Valley titans trekking to the Palm Beach resort for meetings has included Bezos, Zuckerberg and Pichai, as well as Apple CEO Tim Cook, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew and Google founder Sergey Brin.
Part of the shift could be strategic, as the industry seeks to avoid Trump’s well-known wrath toward those he views as his opponents. They may also hope the incoming administration will ease up on tech companies, which have faced heavy scrutiny under Biden.
“They've seen what it's like when the tech community is just on the outs from the administration, and they don't savor that,” Calkins said. “And furthermore, seeing what it's like to be on the outside of Trump specifically, I don't think they want that.”
“I think it's a practical gesture,” he continued. “It's a realpolitik gesture, but it's also a constructive gesture.”
Trump has indicated that he may support a lighter touch to regulation, particularly on AI. He has promised to repeal Biden’s AI executive order, and his allies were reportedly preparing a new executive order to cut AI regulations and boost the development of military technology during the campaign, according to The Washington Post.
However, the president-elect's picks for key antitrust roles, as well as his history on the issue, may not entirely provide Big Tech firms with the reprieve they were seeking.