Silicon Valley Billionaires Shift Support to Trump, Raising Concerns About Tech Influence in Politics

Has Silicon Valley gone Maga?

In Silicon Valley, the heartland of US innovation that has long been considered a bastion of liberal beliefs, Donald Trump's victory in the 2016 presidential election provoked despair. "This feels like the worst thing to happen in my life," wrote Sam Altman, the co-founder of OpenAI, on X. "The horror, the horror", said venture capitalist Shervin Pishevar, an Uber investor who made a call for California to secede from the US. Eight years on, the mood has changed. An influential segment of Silicon Valley's wealth and power is now lining up behind Trump to win the White House in November alongside his vice-presidential candidate, JD Vance, a former venture capitalist who lived in San Francisco for almost two years. Over the past few weeks, an unfolding cast of prominent technologists have declared their newfound support for Trump, with momentum growing even faster since the attempt on his life on July 13. "I fully endorse President Trump and hope for his rapid recovery," Elon Musk wrote on X, the platform he owns, just 30 minutes after the shooting. Two days later, Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, early internet pioneers whose venture capital firm controls $35bn, threw their backing behind the Trump-Vance ticket. And Keith Rabois, an early executive at PayPal and LinkedIn, who in 2016 called Trump a "sociopath", pledged $1mn to his campaign. "Biden is the worst president of my lifetime," the Khosla Ventures managing director now tells the Financial Times. They joined a slew of Silicon Valley investors like Chamath Palihapitiya and David Sacks, hosts of the "All-In" tech podcast, and Sequoia Capital partners Doug Leone and Shaun Maguire, who had publicly backed Trump weeks earlier. All of them have made, or are planning to make, large donations to a new pro-Trump political action committee led by Joe Lonsdale, the co-founder of software giant Palantir Technologies and venture firm, 8VC. Pishevar, far from hoping California would leave the union, has instead moved himself and his business to Miami, Florida and become a Trump supporter. "The Democratic party I knew under Obama doesn't exist anymore," he says, in an interview at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. "The shift in Silicon Valley is indicative of the recognition that the Republican party has become much more open to grand ideas to really rebuild America and embrace tech and innovation." Yet the shift is far from universal in a sector, and location, that is still overwhelmingly a Democratic stronghold. Around 80 per cent of donations from internet companies have gone to Democrats so far in this election cycle, according to Open Secrets (though that has dropped from 90 per cent in 2020), and Big Tech veterans like Microsoft board member Reid Hoffman are still backing President Joe Biden, and have urged peers to do the same. In San Francisco, only 9 per cent of people voted for Trump in 2016, rising to 13 per cent in 2020. Some of San Francisco's life-long Democrats believe the trend is being overplayed, the work of a small number of influential figures with big megaphones. "It's a handful of west coast financiers doing what Wall Street bankers have long done -- feathering their nests," says Michael Moritz, the billionaire former leader of Sequoia Capital. "They represent Silicon Valley about as much as the traditional Wall Street types represent the Bronx." What happens in this wealthy enclave of the United States is hardly representative of the rest of the country. But the divide here reflects political rifts being felt nationally, as friends and co-workers disagree over whether a second Trump term represents a threat or an opportunity. Moritz's views are at fierce odds with his colleagues, Leone and Maguire. Hoffman was part of the founding team of PayPal -- alongside Musk and Sacks and longtime Trump donor, Peter Thiel. Lonsdale and Thiel's Palantir co-founder and chief executive, Alex Karp, is a major Biden donor. At the same time, the willingness of some of Silicon Valley's best-known wealth creators to back Trump exposes how parts of the technology industry feel the Democrats have failed to help them thrive. "People who innovate are fleeing. It is an intellectual mistake that the progressive wing doesn't engage," says Karp. "I personally am not thrilled by the direction [of the Democratic Party], but how far can they go before I reconsider? I am voting against Trump." The reasons for the shift are as commercial as they are ideological. Silicon Valley's Trump supporters are betting the former president will lower their tax burden and boost their business profits. Many of them are desperate to avoid Biden's plan to tax unrealised capital gains at 25 per cent for individuals whose wealth is over $100mn. The tax would "absolutely kill both start-ups and the venture capital industry that funds them," Andreessen Horowitz posted on its website last week. Competition regulators have clamped down on tech companies in recent years, forcing Big Tech into years of paralysis on mergers and acquisitions, and starving venture-backed start-up companies of lucrative exit deals. Lina Khan, chair of the Federal Trade Commission, and Jonathan Kanter, the assistant attorney-general for antitrust at the Department of Justice, have targeted tech monopolies, going after Amazon, Meta, Google, Apple and others in the courts. Rapid developments in artificial intelligence in the past 18 months have made this a particularly pressing problem for tech companies. "We are on the edge of an AI surge that will make the dotcom boom look like spring break," says Boris Feldman, co-head of Freshfields' global tech practice, who advises multiple "magnificent seven" tech companies. "Tech CEOs are concerned that, because of Khan's obsessive hostility towards major tech companies, [the FTC] will be willing to impede developments in AI, placing us at a competitive disadvantage to non-western countries." Trump is unlikely to go soft on tech monopolies, and indeed his running mate Vance has been vocal on his desire to rein in Big Tech. But the sense in tech circles is that a Republican administration will not be nearly as anti-merger as the current government. On top of that, both Trump and Vance, who invested in dozens of fledgling AI companies at his firm Narya Capital, have positioned themselves as strong sceptics of regulating AI. Looser regulation would be a particular boon for the founders and backers of AI start-ups. "American technological pre-eminence lives or dies on the fate of whether start-ups can succeed," said Andreessen last week, explaining that his venture firm's "little-tech" agenda was at the root of his decision to support Trump. Andreessen Horowitz has another major financial interest in championing Trump: cryptocurrency. Trump has pitched himself to tech executives as "the crypto president" and he plans to make a speech, in person, at a major Bitcoin conference in Nashville later this month. The price of Bitcoin surged immediately following the assassination attempt on Trump, with crypto investors increasing their bets he will win. Andreessen Horowitz has an $8bn bet on crypto, making it one of the largest crypto investors in the world. But it has had to fight to influence US politicians as the crypto industry faces heightened scrutiny from regulators after the collapse of crypto exchange FTX and the conviction of its founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, for embezzling customer funds. Gary Gensler, the chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, has been an "existential threat" for crypto investors, Feldman says. "They must get him out. They will spend whatever it takes to accomplish that." There are ideological reasons behind the shift, too. Silicon Valley's culture over the last two decades became defined by progressive attitudes that aimed to root out social injustice, with tech giants adopting mottos such as Google's "Don't Be Evil", Meta encouraging employees to challenge its management on company issues, and tech workers forcing their employers to veto government defence contracts on moral grounds. Over time, that has changed. Google ditched its motto in 2018 and Meta started restricting political speech by staff in 2020. Growing geopolitical tensions between the US and China and Russia's invasion of Ukraine have pulled tech giants such as Google back into government work on defence programmes -- and employees are told to leave if they don't like it. One of the most obvious divides with tech industry culture used to be Trump's stance on immigration. Half of start-ups valued at $1bn or more were started by immigrants. Any proposal to "choke off" immigration "makes me sick to my stomach", said Andreessen in 2016 in a direct response to Trump. But an immigration crisis at the US-Mexico border has fuelled some of the tech swing to Trump since then, particularly from Musk, according to people close to him. "I think it's totally cultural," says Jacob Helberg, a Palantir adviser and former major Biden donor now supporting Trump with his husband Rabois. "Most people are willing to absorb high taxes. I think part of what we're seeing is the perspective of time has led a lot of people to conclude that President Trump's policies were actually more right than wrong." Provocateurs like Musk have railed against "wokeness" for years, and that sentiment has become an increasingly mainstream opinion in some tech circles, with companies reining in their rhetoric and, in some cases, their action on diversity and sustainability. Last week, Musk not only endorsed Trump but also announced he would move both X and SpaceX from California to Texas in protest at a new state gender identity law for schoolchildren. Even some Democrats in Silicon Valley admit that parts of the liberal agenda swung the pendulum too far one way and alienated supporters. "Political correctness in the party is a huge problem, the Democrats can't yet understand the cost of it," says Palantir chief Karp. There is an even more simple explanation for the sudden outpouring of support, however: Silicon Valley's power brokers now think Trump will win, after the events of the last month, and they want to have credibility with, and access to, the new administration. Big Tech's top executives are staying silent for now, but there are signs of a wider movement happening. On July 12, Meta finally lifted all of the restrictions it had placed on Trump's Facebook and Instagram accounts after the January 6 2021 attack on the US capitol. Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and chief executive of Meta, on Friday said Trump's immediate reaction to the shooting was "badass" -- though added he was not planning to be involved in the election in any way. Now that the public support for Trump that was once taboo in Silicon Valley is broadly acceptable, more might follow. This would be vindication for PayPal co-founder Thiel, who was disavowed by parts of Silicon Valley for his donations to Trump eight years ago, and moved from San Francisco to Los Angeles in protest at the tech hub becoming a "one-party state." He has not donated to Trump this campaign so far, but has been the biggest source of funds behind both the venture capital and political career of Vance. But Silicon Valley's newer generation of Trump boosters may find it harder than expected to gain the access they hope for. "They're all calling and they all want to support me," Trump said of Fortune 100 chief executives in an interview with Bloomberg this week. "And if you knew about politics, whoever's leading gets all the support they want. I could have the personality of a shrimp, and everybody would come."

Some Silicon Valley Billionaires Are Betting Big On Donald Trump

Trump's pick of JD Vance as his vice presidential nominee could help rake in new support from tech investors. When he first ran for president in 2016, Donald Trump infamously enjoyed the support of PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel. But for the most part, Silicon Valley avoided Trump and funded his opponent. However, the weeklong Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, where Trump will give his first speech tonight after surviving Saturday's would-be assassination, has made it clear that a significant number of Silicon Valley bigwigs have hopped on the Trump train. Look no further than David Sacks, the venture capitalist and co-host of the popular "All-In" podcast, who in recent years has become a representative of the increasingly reactionary wing of the tech elite. After Trump summoned a mob to the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Sacks said Trump had "disqualified himself from being a candidate at the national level again." But last month, Sacks and fellow "All-In" co-host Chamath Palihapitiya hosted a high-dollar fundraiser for Trump in San Francisco -- $50,000 per VIP ticket and $300,000 to join the hosting committee -- shortly before "All-In" hosted him for a chummy interview. In a speech Monday at the convention, Sacks sounded like he'd picked up some Trumpian rhetorical ticks. "We still don't know which puppet Democrat party bosses will install as their nominee, but we know what their agenda will be: four more years of chaos and failure both at home and abroad," Sacks said. He later called for voters to replace the "Biden-Harris cabal with a president who is strong and smart, rather than sleepy and senile, or in her case, clueless and embarrassing." That echoed Thiel's case for Trump in 2016. The co-founder of Palantir and Silicon Valley's arch right-winger -- who once wrote, "I no longer think that freedom and democracy are compatible" -- also spoke at the RNC that year. But Trump's tech crowd is growing now that the former president is polling favorably to retake the White House in November. Some tech billionaires are even making their support public and betting big on MAGA. The world's richest man, Elon Musk, endorsed Trump on Saturday and plans to give $45 million a month to America PAC, a new super PAC led in part by Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale and supported by the Winklevoss twins, billionaire venture capitalist Doug Leone and tech founder John Hering, The New York Times reported Monday. Musk has long embraced far-right conspiracy theories and has occasionally expressed support for Republican politicians. But he has also claimed to have voted for Joe Biden in 2020 and Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton before that. For this year's election, he said as recently as March, "I am not donating money to either candidate for US President." (Donation records for America PAC so far don't show any money from Musk through June, but he indicated he planned to start giving this month, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing an unnamed person familiar with the matter. Trump is also reportedly considering some sort of advisory role for Musk should Trump win in November.) The list goes on. In late May, Sequoia Capital partner Shaun Maguire announced a $300,000 donation to Trump, falsely claiming that there was widespread interference in the 2020 election -- despite plainly acknowledging that "there's not public evidence" to support the claim. And Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, two of the most prominent tech investors in the country, also reportedly plan to back Trump with significant political donations. Andreessen voiced his support for Clinton over Trump in 2016 after saying he was deciding between a candidate, Trump, who "doesn't believe in science," and another, Clinton, who "doesn't believe in economics." In an episode of his and Horowitz's "Ben & Marc Show" podcast released Tuesday, Andreessen narrated a long personal history of supporting Democratic politicians before eventually hammering the Biden administration on several regulatory stances. The "final straw," he said, was Biden's support for an unrealized capital gains tax on the super rich. (A partner at Andreessen Horowitz, Elizabeth Gunn, referred HuffPost to the pair's podcast but declined to comment further on their political spending.) Even if Silicon Valley is still mostly blue -- and as Vox noted, it is -- a few high-profile, deep-pocketed defections can add up quickly. On Tuesday, Sacks posted a list on social media that appeared to show tech investors who are backing Trump. "Come on in, the water's warm," he wrote. "It's tempting to paint this with a broad brush and say all of Silicon Valley is getting behind the former president, but what's actually happening is that Silicon Valley's right wing has been activated and persuaded to open their pockets," Max Chafkin, author of "The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Power," told NPR on Wednesday. It's no surprise that tech oligarchs -- or those willing to admit it -- like Trump. He gave rich people the biggest tax break in American history in his first term, and he has said he wants to slash corporate taxes even more if elected again. He's likely to change course from Biden's historic antitrust push. He offers a friendlier ear to cryptocurrency investors. And he supports slashing regulations, particularly around fossil fuel production, which would be an immense benefit to Silicon Valley investors who've bought into the artificial intelligence boom that sucks up energy at an astounding pace. "When we were at David's house and talking to a lot of geniuses from Silicon Valley and other places, [I realized] they need electricity at levels that nobody's ever experienced before," Trump said on the "All-In" podcast in June. "To be successful, to be a leader in AI, the amount of electricity they need is like double what we have right now and even triple what we have right now. It's incredible how much they need to be the leader, and we're going to have to be able to do that. And a windmill turning, with its blade knocking out the birds and everything else, is not going to be able to make us competitive." Some have pet causes, such as Tyler Winklevoss, who announced a $1 million-equivalent donation to Trump in bitcoin and his own endorsement last month because Trump is the "pro-bitcoin, pro-crypto and pro-business choice." Mark Cuban, a Biden supporter, similarly argued that Trump support among Silicon Valley types is "a bitcoin play," though in Cuban's thinking, bitcoin investors are betting on Trump's protectionist tariff policy and tax cuts driving up inflation, weakening the dollar and driving up bitcoin value. Sacks, for his part, worries that America's support for Ukraine will lead to a world war. He got Trump to say on "All-In" that he would not send American troops to directly fight in the conflict. And some may simply embrace Trump's so-called "anti-woke" stance -- that is, defying societal norms on racism, sexism, nativism and science. Vivek Ramaswamy, the investor-turned-presidential candidate who also now owns a portion of BuzzFeed, HuffPost's parent company, lamented in his own RNC speech embracing Trump on Tuesday that "faith, patriotism, hard work and family have disappeared only to be replaced by race, gender, sexuality and climate." If some conservative and right-leaning tech investors were leaning Trump because of their bottom lines and favorable Trump polling, his pick of JD Vance as a vice presidential contender likely helped the calculus quite a bit. Vance, who shot to fame with his book "Hillbilly Elegy," is by now as much a son of the venture capitalist scene as he is of Ohio. After service in the Marines and a stint as a lawyer, Vance moved to San Francisco and became a Thiel protege; the pair first met more than a decade ago when Vance was a student at Yale Law School. Vance later benefited from tens of millions in seed money from Thiel, Google's Eric Schmidt and others when he co-founded his own venture capital firm in 2020 -- it's still Vance's listed job on LinkedIn -- which held stakes in space security, biotech and even Rumble, the right-wing YouTube alternative. Thiel later donated $15 million to a super PAC that backed Vance's 2022 Ohio Senate bid. Vance was in attendance at Sacks' fundraiser for Trump last month, where Sacks and Palihapitiya expressed their support for Vance as Trump's vice presidential pick, the Times recently reported. (Sacks was, in a sense, returning a favor: Vance had introduced him to Donald Trump Jr. a few months prior, the Times reported in a separate story last month.) The recent Times report detailed Vance's deep connections in Silicon Valley, particularly with Thiel, who helped advance Vance's career through several iterations and blurbed his book. Thiel "placed calls to encourage Mr. Trump to choose Mr. Vance," the outlet reported, and Musk encouraged Trump directly to pick Vance. And on top of all that, Vance has self-reported on his federal financial disclosure that he owns between $100,000 and $250,000 in bitcoin, according to NPR. The surge in powerful tech investors backing Trump comes with an open question: He's winning their support, but are they winning his? Trump knows how to work a crowd, whether at a rally full of party-line voters or a closed-door meeting of wealthy big shots. But history has shown that his sweet talk only lasts as long as it's politically expedient. Then, without warning, he can give you the cold shoulder. For tech investors, there's no clearer example than a recent Trump flip-flop on visas for skilled foreign workers. Trump sharply limited these skilled worker visas, known as H-1Bs, during his first term. And on "All-In," co-host Jason Calacanis pressed Trump on expanding businesses' ability to recruit employees throughout the world. "Please promise us you will give us more ability to import the best and brightest from around the world to America," Calacanis said. Trump gushed in support. "I do promise, but I happen to agree, that's why I promise, otherwise, I wouldn't promise," Trump said, pledging support for "automatically" rewarding green cards to college graduates who aren't American citizens and lamenting high-skilled workers who "become multibillionaires" in India or China after being educated in the United States. Trump suddenly sounded like the New York Democrat he was a decade ago. He also happened to be stealing an idea from Hillary Clinton, who supported "stapling" green cards onto the back of advanced degrees. "We all wholeheartedly agree with that," Sacks told Trump, without mentioning that Trump had aped Clinton's homework. After Trump signed off on the podcast, the co-hosts celebrated his "new" visa policy, with Palihapitiya saying Trump's promise was "very positive for our community, meaning the tech industry." But Trump's promise didn't last a day. Quickly, Trump's campaign said that, actually, the promise of green cards for all college graduates would exclude "communists, radical Islamists, Hamas supporters, America haters and public charges." "He believes, only after such vetting has taken place, we ought to keep the most skilled graduates who can make significant contributions to America," Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said. "This would only apply to the most thoroughly vetted college graduates who would never undercut American wages or workers." Needless to say, the policy isn't included in the Trump-aligned Republican Party platform. Instead, it trumpets the "Largest Deportation Program in American History" while only vaguely mentioning "Merit-based immigration" without any mention of college graduates or skilled visas. "Trump has a Lucy with a football quality -- every time it looks like he might change, that he might pivot to the middle and do something more measured, he disappoints," tech journalist Eric Newcomer wrote Wednesday, reflecting on increasing Silicon Valley support for Trump. "Now with Vance at his side and with Silicon Valley titans whispering in his ear, some of Silicon Valley elites seem to believe he'll rise to the occasion." Calling the case for Trump "totally misguided and unprincipled," Newcomer had a warning for Trump's wealthy new supporters: "We shouldn't sacrifice our principles and our country just because a bully says he wants to be our friend."

Tech billionaires' Trump-Vance dance is missing the point: You can't always get what you want

Elon Musk's swift endorsement of President Trump following a failed assassination attempt on Saturday captured plenty of headlines. A recent story by the Wall Street Journal suggests that Musk is doubling down on his commitment to Trump with sizeable contributions to a Trump-aligned super PAC. In standard fashion, Musk labeled the story "fake gnus," leaving only a meme in the comments of the WSJ's post on his social media site, X. As typical with Musk, his actions have reverberated across the media, fueling over-hyped speculation about the former president's inroads with what has historically been a formidable group of supporters for Democrats: tech titans and venture capitalists. The trending narratives attempt to connect the mercurial billionaire's fresh public support for Trump with a marked change in the political leanings of the tech industry, along with others in the billionaire class. "Musk turbocharges Silicon Valley support for Trump", blared one headline. However, Elon Musk's support for Donald Trump is hardly surprising. President Biden has repeatedly snubbed the Tesla executive in public. SpaceX's meteoric rise has only increased its interest in winning more business from the federal government. Trump has led a major charm offensive aimed at the world's richest man, even pivoting his stance on electric vehicles. One can understand the calculus behind Musk's decision. Then, of course, there are the droves of tech elites switching camps to back President Trump. But where is everyone? For every Joe Lonsdale, Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, and Doug Leone, there are twice as many in the Biden camp, such as Alan Patricof, Reid Hoffman, Reed Hastings, and Bill Gates. Most prominent tech voices are not Trump donors or supporters and have never been, including Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, Satya Nadella, Glenn Hutchins, Ann Winblad, Arvind Krishna, Roger McNamee, and Ruth Porat, just to name a few. That same sentiment is not limited to the tech titans. A recent analysis found that the top 20 venture capital firms, and their employees, have given about two dollars to Democrats for every dollar to Republicans -- above the average of the past 10 election cycles. Looking into the past, similar trends appear. The level of support for the GOP nominee was not different in 2012 when Mitt Romney was on the ticket, only picking up a few major Silicon Valley backers. The same could likely be said for 2016. As LinkedIn Co-Founder, Reid Hoffman, put it, "There is louder voices [for Trump]...but they were there. They probably voted for Trump last time. They're voting for Trump again." Many leaders from tech and other industries are less than enthusiastic about another four years with President Biden, with concerns about regulatory overreach and excessively zealous antitrust enforcement by the insular Biden team. As disenchanted as they may be, these corporate leaders are not Trump converts. The GOP has historically turned off many in tech due to differences in cultural values on abortion, inclusive hiring practices, and environmental sustainability, among other issues. Now, the new GOP -- carefully crafted in the image of Trump -- espouses policies on topics such as global trade, antitrust, and immigration that run counter to the tech community's strategic priorities. Trump's promise to slap 10% tariffs on all imports into the U.S, and 60% or more tariffs on China, would likely incite retaliatory tariffs. Such protectionism would deal a major blow to the tech industry. Conservative estimates suggest U.S. technology revenues from international business are over $1 trillion annually, the most of any industry. Some tech giants, such as Google and Microsoft, draw over half their annual sales from markets overseas, amounting to a total of $260 billion. Silicon Valley also resents Trump's intrusive meddling and personal targeting of perceived opponents. This year, Trump reversed his opposition to TikTok, in part to spite its primary competitor, Mark Zuckerberg's Meta. In his own words, "If you get rid of TikTok, Facebook and Zuckerschmuck will double their business...I don't want Facebook, who cheated in the last election, doing better." Paradoxically, tech leaders who are supporting the Trump-Vance ticket chafe at the Biden administration's "crackdowns on acquisitions by Big Tech" -- but Vance is leading the GOP in supporting more stringent antitrust enforcement. In February, he praised, Commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission Lina Khan, saying: "I look at Lina Khan as one of the few people in the Biden Administration that I think is doing a pretty good job." Vance would take federal regulation and oversight even further. Vance recently partnered with progressive colleagues, such as Senator Elizabeth Warren, to introduce bills ranging from the "Stop Subsidizing Giant Mergers Act" to others that would break up big firms. Such policies surpass the antitrust regime of the Biden administration, threatening to debilitate the venture capital industry, which is reliant on M&A to exit investments. On immigration, Vance has largely followed on Trump's heels, taking hardline stances against immigration. Trump has already previewed his intentions in a second term, calling for the "largest domestic deportation operation in American history" and ending birthright citizenship. Vance, erroneously attempted to educate the American public about labor economics and illegal immigration, claiming "much of the job growth from the Biden administration has gone to the foreign-born," despite a U.S. labor market at full employment and data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics noting most employment gains since 2018 have gone to naturalized U.S. citizens and legal residents. Ironically, even Vance's own in-laws would not have been able to get into the U.S. if his stances were law. The tech industry is uniquely reliant upon skilled immigrants; a quarter of all billion-dollar startups in the U.S. were founded by immigrants, as well as two-thirds of all AI companies. Four years ago, the Rolling Stones and music publisher BMI sent a cease and desist warning to the Trump campaign demanding it stop booming their song You Can't Always Get What You Want at rallies. Perhaps now, the tech community should listen to Mick Jagger's words from the song and recognize this was one of the few times when Trump offered truth in his advertising.

Silicon Valley's support for Donald Trump and what it means for India

That Donald Trump will return to the White House is now looking increasingly likely. While the failed assassination bid is one thing many commentators believe has gone in his favour, it's also the support from Silicon Valley that is fuelling that belief. Earlier this week, Elon Musk and the co-founders of Andreessen Horowitz spoke out in support of Trump marking a significant shift in Silicon Valley's political landscape. These developments are being watched in India closely because if he wins the presidential race, Indian diplomats will have a complex balancing act to do. ALSO READ- Trump's new MAGA call puts unity in focus At the heart of Silicon Valley's support for Trump lies the promise of economic policies that are pragmatic and favour them. During his first term, the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act lowered corporate tax rates from 35% to 21%. This significantly boosted the bottom lines of major tech companies. If re-elected, he has promised to bring it down to 15%. For sectors such as technology that are investment hungry, such fiscal policies are irresistible. It allows them reinvest in more cutting-edge technologies, from artificial intelligence to quantum computing. An equally compelling reason for Silicon Valley's support to Trump is his approach to regulation. The tech industry is wary of increased antitrust scrutiny and privacy regulations. Trump's earlier administration's showed reluctance to break up tech monopolies or impose stringent data privacy laws on giants such as Meta, Google, and Amazon. These companies are wary of the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and similar initiatives, and they see in Trump a bulwark against 'restrictive regulation'. ALSO READ- Donald Trump in first speech after assassination attempt: 'I had God on my side' Geopolitics also plays a significant role in this alliance. Trump's confrontational stance on China, including tariffs and tech restrictions, resonates with Silicon Valley's strategic interests. The trade war, while disruptive, has underscored the need for tech sovereignty and the risks of over-reliance on Chinese manufacturing and markets. By aligning with Trump, Silicon Valley is signalling its support for a recalibration of global tech dynamics. This means a diversification and strengthening of alternative hubs such as India, to begin with. A conversation with Prof G Venkat Raman, a Sinologist and a Fulbright Fellow who teaches geopolitics at IIM Indore only cements this view. "One thing we can take for granted if Trump comes to power is that like in his earlier tenure, Indio-US relationships will get closer." There are second order outcomes to this, he explains. The tech rivalry between China and US will get ratcheted further, he says. "It is inevitable then that tech investments will come to India." To make his case, Raman points out to certain precedents. Apple was forced to build new supply chains for its non-China consumers because of the antagonism between the both countries. India's demography and cheaper skilled labor offered natural advantages that attracted Apple to come and build a new supply chain. The Taiwanese company Foxconn followed soon after. "With the coming of Apple and Foxconn and new tech supply chains being built, it is inevitable more technology players will emerge and make India a highly competitive place to manufacture products," he says. On the other side, India's demographics are such that the appetite to consume technology is on the rise. This makes it even more attractive for American companies that choose to invest here. ALSO READ- Melania Trump makes her first appearance at RNC without Donald Trump Ironically, while India and China have been at loggerheads on most counts, when it comes to Green Tech, both countries are on the same page. This is what the Americans have a problem with and this will be exacerbated if Trump becomes President. The Biden administration had announced massive taxes on Chinese green tech companies in May. This will go up even more if Trump assumes power. This is why Indian diplomats will have to do a tightrope walk, says Raman. "Trump does not believe in global warming or climate change". In the past, Trump has walked out of such conversations. Him doing this again in the future cannot be ruled out either. "Trump can be very transactional with everyone he deals with. How India deals with him to further its cause to promote tech, should he win, will become a textbook case for students of geopolitics," he says. Things can't get more interesting than this.