Revenge of the Nerds

After years of dirty tricks campaigns by politicians and the media, is it any wonder that many in tech are now all-in on Trump?

A lifetime ago, in 2016, almost all of Silicon Valley was united behind Hillary Clinton, eager to endorse, donate, fundraise, and vote for the inevitable first female president. The only other major political faction was comprised of those who were largely apolitical or vaguely libertarian, the “just let me code” coalition. It made sense at the time, as the New York Times was predicting a Clinton win with 91% certainty. The only major figure to buck elite popular consensus who didn't have an established legacy of conservative contrarianism, a pre-Anduril Palmer Luckey, was about to be chased out of Facebook for giving $10,000 to a pro-Trump meme team.

Eight years later, everything is different. Last week, David Sacks destroyed his own fundraising expectations by drumming up somewhere around 12 million dollars for the former president at a sold-out dinner party at his San Francisco mansion, Broadcliff, alongside his All-In cohost (and former six-figure Biden donor), Chamath Palihapitiya. The broad church of attendees, who either paid $50,000 to attend or $300,000 for the VIP roundtable, included Eoghan McCabe, founder and CEO of Intercom, who tweeted a photo of himself and Trump giving a thumbs up, reporting that he had spoken with six people at the dinner, none of whom identified as Republicans. They were all former Democrat supporters, now politically homeless and at least a little curious about what the conservative candidate had come to offer. 

You are formally invited to the vibe shift

Will these fresh apostates from the progressive tech consensus find themselves “canceled” as Palmer was back in the day — losing business and friends, scrutinized by a press eager to cast new villains as wannabe “tech bro alpha men” or “prophets of urban doom”? Likely not. As Shaun Maguire’s massively viral declaration proved a few days earlier, the vibe has shifted; the cowardice that enabled cancel culture has largely dissipated, and it's simply not 2016 anymore. Now, a growing and influential group - which some are calling the “right-wing progressives” - is emerging out of the valley to directly challenge the policies and people they view as anti-innovation and anti-American.

Whether the figures often cited as the vanguard of this nascent movement - Elon Musk, Marc Andreessen, Balaji Srinivasan, Peter Thiel, and David Sacks, to name a few - would even agree that there is enough commonality between them to call it a movement doesn't matter. As members of the now disjointed and disillusioned “Intellectual Dark Web” were inevitably forced to concede, what matters is that everyone else thinks there is. These commentators and journalists — outside the arena as they may be — do have a point. There are some shared similarities between the figures who have found themselves, perhaps unwittingly, perhaps not, proudly building a new enclave for political activism beyond what used to be considered the cordon sanitaire inside tech — the line that divides left from right.

In an X post that went live the day of his fundraiser, Sacks outlined four key reasons that he would be voting for Trump come November: the economy, foreign policy, border, and lawfare. These just so happen to be the most common issues of concern to the growing coterie of Trump-leaning (or at least anti-Biden) techies. Each of these sticking points has particular relevance to the Silicon Valley crowd, on top of commanding mass populist appeal (aka popular with normal people). Everyone is worried about Ukraine and Israel. Whether they support the wars or not, the fear of what rapid escalation in either conflict might entail is universal. So are the feelings of disgust and rage over Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan and the concern that America is stretched too thin to take the looming threat of Taiwanese semiconductor supply being suddenly cut off. For those in tech, Ukraine support takes on a particular relevance given that it is America’s ever-expanding war machine industry and communications ingenuity that allows the Ukrainians to grind on against impossible odds. The barrage of cyberattacks and deployment of killer drones across the war is also of particular concern to anyone focused on the future; with Ukraine, we can begin to map the outlines of warfare for the next few decades, and the increasingly outsized role tech will play in it.

It's no wonder, then, that tech should be concerned with the world outside of America, just as they should be concerned with the outside world coming in, uninvited. Many prominent tech leaders are immigrants themselves - both hosts of the Trump fundraiser are, as is Elon Musk, who has been particularly focused on the overwhelming amount of essentially presidentially sanctioned illegal immigration that has swamped America since the first day of Biden’s presidency. There is a particular sting that naturalized citizens feel when watching the relentless scenes of mass border crossings (I should know; being a naturalized citizen myself). Birthright citizens, as well as those who committed themselves to immigrating legally, know how wrong it is for the best and brightest to work incredibly hard to stay in the country, worrying about those crucial little H1-B details, while millions are able to subvert the system simply by strolling over an intentionally unprotected border.

Of course, the lawlessness at the border is inextricably linked to the lawlessness that now plagues American cities. The overwhelming majority of the tech industry is concentrated in a few population centers that have now been plagued with rising rates of chaos and progressive gaslighting that having your car broken into every few months (or weeks) is just life in the big city. So is watching junkies shoot up on Chinese fentanyl that's trafficked in from down south. Of course, everyone knows that homelessness and crime can be controlled, all it takes is a visit from a foreign leader like Xi. Our domestic leaders? They have to worry about their employees being attacked on the way to work. They know that the politicians who seem responsible to no one could take care of rising crime rates and urban decay/defecation. Instead, their focus is on emotional and financial welfare for their friends and crippling lawfare against their enemies.

As I write this, Musk’s enormous, performance-based Tesla pay package that was rescinded by the Honorable (?) Kathaleenn McCormick has just been reinstated by shareholders. Populism / Popularity reigns triumphant once again, and rather than stay in hell (Delaware, a fake state), Elon has decided to take his company and elope to Texas, a move championed by the company's shareholders and Governor Greg Abbott. Abbot is not the only conservative governor or mayor making friends with the tech barons looking to cast a vote in the most impactful way possible - with their feet (not to mention their fleet of employees and accompanying families' feet as well). Millions of Americans have migrated internally over the last four years, fleeing blue states for that strange red expanse that exists beyond the coastal cities, citing cost of living, climate, culture, and a bit more civil security as some of their top priorities.

And civil security, or the assumption that laws will be enforced equally and city streets wont need to be boarded up in advance of elections, is a concern, one that Americans across all social strata are only growing more worried about. The threat of lawfare looms across the land, stalking those who would make a challenge to democracy (aka democrat rule). Tech founders are concerned about what might befall their companies should they fail to censor the right story, just as voters are outraged about their candidate being potentially incarcerated in advance of election day. Just as these concerns fuel internal migration into classically right-wing areas, they also drive donations to Republican politicians willing to stick up for fair play under the law and, eventually, ballots being cast in support of Trump, or at least in opposition to Biden.

Regardless of foreign wars, warzone cities, rampant illegal migration, and the ongoing bananafication of our republic, every election is largely decided by one stupidly simple factor: the economy. While two of the All-In co-hosts, Jason Calacanis and David Friedberg, were not present at the recent SF fundraiser, all four “besties” and every other person with a bank account are being impoverished in real-time by the rampant inflation that has gripped America. Trillions have been added to the national debt since Biden took office, resulting in a situation, as Sacks pointed out, where “average Americans have lost roughly a fifth of their purchasing power over the last few years. Moreover, any American who needs a mortgage, car loan, or credit card debt faces much higher interest costs.” There is no level of wealth that protects you from the economic downturn America has seen under Biden; inflation at this level impacts every single economic dimension. People see the prices going up everywhere, just as they can remember being richer under Trump in the not-too-distant past. They may even remember checks arriving with his name on them. They remember all of this most acutely at the pump, the supermarket, and when paying their taxes.

What are these taxes going towards, anyway? For those focused on productivity and efficiency, it is particularly galling to watch California build train tracks to nowhere and see public bathrooms budgeted at 1.7 million dollars. This enforced inefficiency is only matched by the cavalier recklessness of spending under Biden - America is currently adding a trillion dollars to its debt every hundred days. Many, both in and outside of tech, are embracing crypto as a countermeasure to this. Trump now hopes to cash in (both financially and in cultural clout) on the countless voters who feel like they have lost control of their financial future thanks to the fed and with tech-focused donors eager to invest in a president that seems open to innovation. This attempt at consolidating the Cryptonians into the big tent of conservative voters, especially now that they have been more or less abandoned by Biden, appeals to many in tech and even some within the political movement that, until recently, was most associated with the blockchain: libertarians. Trump went so far as to promise to commute the sentence of Ross Ulbricht, founder of the infamous Silk Road, at the Libertarian National Convention in a move that was cheered by many at the conference (despite booing him for nearly everything else) and across tech online.

Dont Forget: 16 October, 21

On May 30th, nearly a week after making that promise to end Ulbricht’s life imprisonment, Trump was himself convicted in a sham trial based on novel legal theories that look like pure political persecution to everyone who is not an overt left-wing partisan. Conveniently for said partisans, the former president will be sentenced on July 11th, four days before the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. Even for those wary of Trump's flaws, this is a bridge too far. For all those like Shaun Maguire or David Sacks who have come out since then in public support of Trump, everyone knows there are dozens more across tech who will quietly but firmly cast their vote for the Don come election day. Many won't say anything explicitly, or even side with Trump publicly, but still, the times are changing. The right to be apolitical, once seen as a somewhat violent silence, is back. DEI is out. And MEI — or merit, excellence, and intelligence - may be on its way now that the madness of 2020 has more or less passed us by.

Will the Democrats decide to alienate more of the tech vote between now and November 5th? Probably. Will Trump make additional promises and deals in the hopes of courting some more of this dissident Silicon Valley faction? Definitely. Will this burgeoning group find, somewhere down the road, that their foray into national right-wing politics has been, like others have found before them, disappointing? Only time will tell. What we can be sure of is that this influential cohort of former Democrats now turned to the “dark side” is only going to grow. So too is their collective realization that they can tell their own story while charting a political path forward that suits their own distinct ends. For a group defined in large part by their shared drive to build a better future, there will be many elections after this November, ready to be influenced as they see fit.