Tech bends the knee

How Silicon Valley turned red

Over the summer I read a piece by Marc Andreessen on tech startups and the third sentence was:

We believe bad government policies are now the #1 threat to Little Tech.

That was my first clue that a fundamental shift was underway in Tech and politics.

Marc is a tech hero - he invented the first web browser which arguably spawned the Internet. Marc holds a key spot in my story about the origins of the internet.

Historically Silicon Valley has been pretty liberal and tech leaders have stayed away from explicit endorsements. However, since the summer we’ve seen tech big and small rally behind Trump.

It’s something I never expected.

You may not have heard of Marc Andreessen, but you know all kinds of things you wish you didn’t about Elon Musk. Right after Andreessen wrote that article, Musk went all in supporting Trump.

Musk, as the richest man in the world and CEO of Twitter/X, Tesla and SpaceX - represents big tech versus Marc’s position supporting startups/little tech.

Musk went cuckoo for cocoa puffs - he turned Twitter/X into a propaganda platform for Trump, he personally (through his PAC) took over running Trump’s ground campaign in swing states, and he danced around Trump at his rallies.

The shift was on. Jeff Bezos, 2nd richest man in the world and owner of the Washington Post, squashed the paper’s planned endorsement of Harris. Bezos wants his passion project Blue Origin’s rockets to be competitive with SpaceX. Here’s an interesting bit - Bezos is still working a lawsuit against the DoD blaming Trump for awarding a $10 Billion dollar cloud deal to Microsoft instead of Amazon. Bet we see that go away.

Other big tech CEOs including Tim Cook of Apple and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook put calls into Trump, voicing their support ahead of the election.

Zuckerberg danced a different jig than Musk - given his history of Facebook fuckery in the 2016 election, he wired up Meta’s algorithms to stay out of politics lest Trump send him to Jail.

Love them, hate them, tech leaders have an outsize influence on our modern world. Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg - they are the corporate titans of our time. I’m pretty sure the business titans of our not-so-distant past - Ford, Rockefeller, JP Morgan - also had strong political ties and influence.

Harris had a few tech billionaires get behind her - notably Marc Cuban and Bill Gates - but they were the exception.

After the election, every tech leader bent the knee sending congratulatory notes to Trump and in many cases congratulating Musk as well and of course they did it on Twitter/X. Cuban, Gates, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai (CEO of Google), Satya Nadella (CEO of Microsoft), etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

This scene was in my head when I wrote the title for this piece. Things go poorly for you when you don’t bend the knee and there are dragons. For a lighter variant check SNL for Trump.

Most of the tech CEO congrats were press-release types, devoid of emotion. However, Bezos got frothy:

Jeff Bezos on X: "Big congratulations to our 45th and now 47th President on an extraordinary political comeback and decisive victory. No nation has bigger opportunities. Wishing @realDonaldTrump all success in leading and uniting the America we all love." / X

Sam Altman, the controversial CEO and founder of OpenAI, arguably the company at the forefront of the next wave of Tech - AI, got pithy:

Sam Altman on X: "congrats to President Trump. i wish for his huge success in the job." / X

How much to buy a capital letter Sam? Did AI write this? Who says stuff like ‘huge success?’ Oh, I know who.

So now what? Well for starters Musk won big so we can expect zero regulatory holdups on Tesla’s new self driving taxis. I’m not going out on a limb predicting a merger of Trump’s social media platform Truth Social and Musk’s Twitter/X.

AI - welp - full speed ahead here, we must beat China. AI tech investments extend into defense industries as well. Startup investment in AI - Marc Andreessen’s world - continues to the tune of over $60B this year and they expect big returns under a Trump administration.

Crypto, sigh, while Crypto Boy is still in Jail, Trump has promised to fire the head of the SEC Gary Gensler who put him there, so we can expect a ton more moves out of Crypto including potentially fundamental changes to legal tender.

Remember TikTok? Yeah they’re not going anywhere now. Trump is a new fan and while it’s hard to square that with tariffs on everything else out of China, TikTok lives to dance another day.

Space - boy howdy, SpaceX and Musk’s dream of colonizing Mars sure made out here. No more annoying FAA holdups for SpaceX launches. Can Bezos/Blue Origin ever catch up? Bezos and his baby rocket and Boeing and their troubles in space just got a whole lot worse.

Our new anti-hero Marc Andreessen made headlines again this past weekend, this time headlining a piece in the New York Times about what comes next for Tech.

The leading quote from Marc:

“It felt like a boot off the throat,” Mr. Andreessen said about Mr. Trump’s victory during a podcast conversation this month with his business partner. “Every morning I wake up happier than the day before.”

How do you think bending the knee is going to work out for tech?

• Will Tech startups flourish or will Crypto bankrupt us as AI kills us?

• Will Elon and Donald be besties forever?

• Will Bezos ever have a rocket as big as Elon’s?

• Will Trump send Mark Zuckerberg to Jail?

• Did I get it wrong and big business in the past stayed out of politics?

Let me know what you think in the comments.

best, Andrew