{"id":66427,"date":"2026-01-27T19:49:19","date_gmt":"2026-01-27T22:49:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tech.einnews.com\/article\/887034976"},"modified":"2026-01-27T19:49:19","modified_gmt":"2026-01-27T22:49:19","slug":"a-reckoning-for-the-tech-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/2026\/01\/27\/a-reckoning-for-the-tech-right\/","title":{"rendered":"A Reckoning for the Tech Right"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Hours after Alex Pretti was killed by federal agents in Minneapolis on Saturday, Apple CEO Tim Cook and Amazon CEO Andy Jassy showed up for a movie night at the White House. Along with other business executives and several prominent Donald Trump supporters, they attended a private screening of Melania<\/em>, a new documentary about the president\u2019s wife. The moviegoers were treated<\/a> to buckets of popcorn and sugar cookies frosted with the first lady\u2019s name.<\/p>\n

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Silicon Valley\u2019s top executives have seemingly taken every opportunity to cozy up to Trump. During his inauguration a year ago, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai, Elon Musk, and Cook sat smiling behind the president<\/a> in the Capitol Rotunda. The obsequiousness has not stopped since: In August, Cook presented Trump with a custom plaque atop a 24-karat-gold base in the Oval Office. At a White House dinner the next month, the Google co-founder Sergey Brin praised Trump\u2019s \u201ccivil rights\u201d work, and OpenAI\u2019s Sam Altman described Trump\u2019s leadership as a \u201crefreshing change.\u201d Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, and Google are among the companies that have made donations to fund the new White House ballroom.<\/p>\n

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Tech has a long history of making moves<\/a> to appease politicians in power, including ample campaign donations. But the industry\u2019s leaders have not distanced themselves from Trump even as his administration has shattered constitutional and democratic norms<\/a>. In Minneapolis over the weekend, an American citizen was shot in the street by masked federal officers after recording them with his phone. In the immediate aftermath, top Trump-administration officials blamed Pretti for his own death, despite contradictory video evidence<\/a>. The uproar has been loud, and not just<\/a> among Democrats. So far, Silicon Valley\u2019s top CEOs have largely remained silent.<\/p>\n

In some ways, tech\u2019s rightward shift in 2024 was overstated. The embrace of Trump was mostly concentrated among a small pack of investors and executives, who had a quieting effect on the rest of the industry. In the past few days, the gulf between the top brass and the rank and file has grown. Hundreds of employees from major companies including Apple, Amazon, OpenAI, and beyond have signed a statement asking the industry\u2019s CEOs to call the White House and comment publicly against the violence. Several well-respected voices in the industry have spoken up: \u201cEvery person regardless of political affiliation should be denouncing this,\u201d Google\u2019s chief scientist, Jeff Dean, posted on X<\/a> after the shooting. \u201cThe video was sickening to watch,\u201d wrote<\/a> the investor Vinod Khosla, who called out the administration\u2019s \u201cstorytelling without facts or with invented fictitious facts.\u201d Anthropic\u2019s Dario Amodei, one of the few major Silicon Valley CEOs to have expressed his condemnation, took the opportunity to warn against<\/a> the \u201creluctance of tech companies to criticize the US government.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Altman reportedly<\/a> rebuked the administration in an internal post to OpenAI employees, writing that \u201cwhat\u2019s happening with ICE is going too far.\u201d He added that the president is \u201ca very strong leader\u201d who he hopes \u201cwill rise to this moment and unite the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Yet there is little reason to believe that Silicon Valley\u2019s uppermost ranks will more formally break with Trump. If anything, as the midterm elections approach, some executives appear to be doubling down on their support. This fall, Greg Brockman, the president of OpenAI, and his wife, Anna, donated $25 million to Trump\u2019s super PAC. And Elon Musk recently signaled his political return with a $10 million donation to the pro-Trump candidate running to succeed Mitch McConnell\u2014the Tesla CEO\u2019s largest-ever single contribution<\/a> to a Senate candidate. (Jassy, Cook, and Greg Brockman did not respond to requests for comment. OpenAI, which has a corporate partnership with The Atlantic<\/em>, has previously said that the Brockmans\u2019 donations were made in a personal capacity.)<\/p>\n

During Trump\u2019s first term in office, a number of these tech leaders were outspoken in criticizing him: In 2017, Brin showed up to a protest<\/a> against Trump\u2019s Muslim ban, and Altman spoke<\/a> with 100 Trump voters across the country to figure out what it would take to \u201cconvince them not to vote for him in the future.\u201d Greg Brockman previously donated<\/a> to Hillary Clinton\u2019s 2016 presidential campaign. It\u2019s conceivable that these leaders\u2019 political views changed, of course, but the groveling reads obviously as strategy. Trump is a dealmaker, and playing to his administration is good for business. Already, tech companies have gained a lot by cozying up to Trump, including relaxed AI regulation<\/a> and tariff exemptions<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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This all risks being a short-term, transactional game. In the long run, tech executives\u2019 alignment with the president could easily backfire. \u201cThe Trump supporters in Silicon Valley are making the same mistake as all powerful people who back authoritarians,\u201d the venture capitalist Michael Moritz warned<\/a> in 2024. \u201cThey are, I suspect, seduced by the notion that because of their means, they will be able to control Trump.\u201d But Trump is mercurial: He will do as he pleases. As tech executives continue schmoozing with the president, there are no guarantees that they will get anything in return.<\/p>\n

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About the Author<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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Lila Shroff<\/a><\/div>\n