Mapping Trump’s connections to tech’s right-wing brotherhood

“They’ve turned profits into power,” said Rob Lalka, author of the book “The Venture Alchemists,” which came out this year and describes many of the figures heading into administration.

Lalka, a professor at Tulane University’s Freeman School of Business, said several characteristics define the technologists around Trump, including their wealth and skepticism toward the heavily online institutions and people they have created. And he said they have a shared history, and that many of them overlapped at Stanford University during and after Thiel’s time there.

“This opposition does not arise from nowhere. “It comes from real-life experiences they had when they were college students,” he said.

In other words: A right-wing faction has coalesced within the generally progressive tech industry, and much of it is preparing to make Washington a second home for the next four years.

Trump’s transition team describes him as a natural choice.

“President Trump’s agenda includes economic, energy and regulatory policies that will allow the United States to regain its global dominance of innovation and technology,” transition spokesman Brian Hughes said in a statement.

“President Trump is surrounding himself with industry leaders like Elon Musk as he works to restore innovation, reduce regulation and celebrate free speech in his second term,” he said.

Musk, Sacks and Thiel did not respond to requests for comment on the transition.

Neil Malhotra, a professor of political economy at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, said it’s notable that many of the tech industry insiders close to Trump don’t come from the biggest tech companies, such as Meta, Google, Apple and Microsoft. .

“This specific group is unique because it comes largely from venture,” he said, referring to venture capitalists who invest in startups. “The risk is very different from the existing technology of the Big Seven. The current big seven tech companies, those people are trying to be very neutral.” The Magnificent 7 collection of technology companies includes Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, NVIDIA and Tesla.

Venture capitalists tend to be less interested in corporate initiatives like diversity programs, he said. Rather, they have a reputation for ruthlessly competing, focusing in their most extreme moments on growth at all costs and disrupting the existing order.

“Silicon Valley’s contrarian culture and risk-taking have rejected the big corporate ideas coming out of the professional management class,” he said.

Trump’s second term will not be the first to be heavily influenced by the modern technology industry. The Obama administration was closely tied to technology, especially Google and its executives, such as former CEO Eric Schmidt.

But there is little overlap between the tech figures who advised President Barack Obama and those now working for Trump. And this time there’s a different dynamic, said Nathan Leamer, a Republican consultant in Washington and CEO of Fixed Gear Strategies.

“Obama was following Big Tech’s lead in 2008, and there was excitement because the Obama administration’s approach to technology reflected the blogosphere and the early days of Twitter and how these companies saw themselves as fitting into the world,” said.

“The difference now is that, with Trump, he is following the lead of the Republican Party,” he said. “Tech is looking at Republican leaders and realizing they have to get in the game. Otherwise, they will be excluded.”

Tech companies that were previously skeptical of Trump, such as Meta, Amazon and OpenAI, are each donating at least $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund, donations that Trump can use for any purpose he wants.

Vance, who worked for one of Thiel’s venture capital funds, Mithril Capital, after law school, will set the tone near the top of the new administration and has since benefited from the partnership. Thiel was a leading supporter of Vance’s 2022 Senate bid in Ohio.

“From above, you see that connection to Silicon Valley,” Leamer said. (He noted that Trump himself now qualifies as a technology investor, with a majority stake in Truth Social’s parent company, Trump Media & Technology Group Corp.)

Leamer said that while some industries rely on Washington-based trade and lobbying organizations to be the faces of their businesses, figures like Musk, Sacks and Thiel follow a different model: cutting out trade groups as middlemen and speaking directly to large audiences through social networks and podcasts.

“These are the people behind the microphone,” he said. “It’s fitting that these famous people are disintermediating the market.”

Trump’s choices for Cabinet-level nominations are generally people with political backgrounds, including members of Congress, Republican governors and campaign loyalists. But just below that level, tech numbers are occupying some of the most important positions.

Jacob Helberg, an adviser to government contractor Palantir Technologies and husband of another former PayPal executive, Keith Rabois, is Trump’s nominee for assistant secretary of state for economic growth, energy and the environment. One technology investor, Trae Stephens, co-founder of defense contractor Anduril and partner at Thiel’s Founders Fund, has been considered for positions at the Department of Defense, according to Politico and The Wall Street Journal. Jim O’Neill, former CEO of the Thiel Foundation, is Trump’s pick for the No. 2 job at the Department of Health and Human Services. Trump appointed Emil Michael, a former Uber executive, to the Pentagon’s top research position. Vance economic adviser Gail Slater, who worked for Fox Corp., Roku and a now-defunct trade group called the Internet Association, is Trump’s pick to lead antitrust enforcement at the Justice Department.

In announcing his choice of Slater on Truth Social, Trump highlighted the conflicts between established big tech companies and new tech companies backed by venture capitalists:

“Big Tech has run amok for years, stifling competition in our most innovative sector and, as we all know, using its market power to stifle the rights of so many Americans, as well as those of small tech!”

Trump has also appointed people friendly to the same tech faction to run the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Trade Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

But there are still hundreds or thousands of potential appointments to come at the mid-levels of bureaucracy where other tech figures could end up. Vance said in a 2021 podcast interview that if Trump were to win another term, he should replace all federal officials with “our people,” meaning conservatives.

Tulane University’s Lalka said that despite all the rhetoric about meritocracy coming from right-wing tech entrepreneurs and investors, Vance’s vision for the federal workforce is pretty much the opposite.

“That’s literally ‘to the victor goes the spoils’ of the 19th century,” he said. “It’s not about how to attract top talent.”

Stanford’s Malhotra said an outstanding question is how many tech figures will take full-time government jobs rather than part-time jobs. Sacks’ role in the White House, for example, is expected to be only part-time, and Musk’s task of co-chairing an efficiency commission won’t be his day job either.

“That will really limit their power,” he said of part-time roles. “This is a very good way for Trump to marginalize these people and give them the facade that they are powerful.”

Despite his part-time role, however, Musk has lately made his mark on the transition by helping block a government funding bill and traveling the world with Trump to meet with foreign leaders.

There is a long list of actions that Trump’s tech appointees are expected to take on, including deregulation of the cryptocurrency industry, fewer restrictions on the development of artificial intelligence, easier environmental approval for projects such as Musk’s SpaceX rockets, a shakeup in antitrust enforcement, a review of military procurement and, with Congress’ approval, low tax rates for corporations and wealthy individuals.

Adam Kovacevich, executive director of the Progress Chamber, a Democratic tech industry organization, said that despite Vice President Kamala Harris’ loss to Trump in November, he is trying to see potential upsides for technology overall, in part because of who advises Trump.

“We must face the new administration with optimism,” he said.

“A lot of these people who have supported Trump, have supported Democrats in the past, so we’re not necessarily talking about people who are always on the Republican side,” he said.

Tech figures in that category include Musk, Sacks and investor Marc Andreessen, who recently said he spends half his time at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida advising on the transition. Kovacevich said he believes his alliance with Trump is best viewed as a narrow reaction against President Joe Biden, a longtime skeptic of the tech industry, rather than an outright rejection of Democratic policy.

Kovacevich said he believes Trump will not be able to carry out some of his most radical ideas on technology, including forcing social media platforms to further reduce their content moderation in favor of conservative users.

“Any effort along those lines will likely run afoul of the First Amendment,” he said.

One question being watched closely: How much money will Trump’s tech allies make during his administration? Musk’s wealth has soared 70% since last month’s election, to about $450 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, fueling progressive theories that he and others in the tech sector are motivated by a desire for increase your net worth.

The stock price of Palantir Technologies, a government contractor, has roughly doubled since the election, and defense technology startups like Anduril have also expressed optimism about increasing sales under the new administration.

Leamer, the Republican consultant, said he believes Trump’s tech allies have a different motivation: to prove themselves right.

“I think they see it as an opportunity to put their ideas into practice,” he said. “These people have been thinking about these ideas and they really have an interest in entrepreneurship and the future of the country.”



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