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On 28 January 2017, I rushed to the San Francisco international airport (SFO). Like elsewhere in the US that night, demonstrations were growing against a travel ban Donald Trump had issued against visitors from seven Muslim-majority countries. The night was chillier than normal, and I had not brought an adequate jacket. Luckily, the train to the airport was warm, full to the brim with jittery, talkative protesters. The airport itself was a rowdy scene: cabs and Ubers stalled as angry protesters blocked the roads, meters still running; demonstrators in hijabs prayed on their protest signs in baggage claim as others shouted at any arriving flyer coming for their luggage. Trump was the most outrageous man in America then, his election a shock to a wide swath of the world.
After a few hours, whispers of a $150bn face floated through the crowd: Sergey Brin, creator and co-founder of Google, was there. At the time, he was the president of Google’s parent company Alphabet, which also owns YouTube. The effect was thrilling: one of the richest and most powerful men in the world was registering his discontent with Trump by bodily joining a protest against him. Brin, a native of Moscow who arrived in the US at the age of six, said he came to SFO that night “because I’m a refugee”. It was a personal rebuke of Trump, the consummate nativist.
Google later followed Brin’s lead and condemned Trump’s travel ban. Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Uber and others did, too – nearly a hundred tech companies in all. They filed an amicus brief in support of a lawsuit opposing the measure.
It’s a display of support impossible to imagine today. Protests against Trump’s second presidential win have made barely a ripple. Silicon Valley has reversed course and is bending over backwards with displays of deference to Trump. This week in particular saw the tech industry complete its genuflection to the president-elect.
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, announced the end of the company’s US fact-checking operation. In 2022, Meta had boasted in a blog post about building “the largest global fact-checking network of any platform” and spending $100m to do so.
Three days later, Zuckerberg announced the company would roll back its efforts to increase diversity, equity and inclusion among its employees, programs that are colloquially and controversially known as DEI. These corporate initiatives are a longtime target of Trump’s disparagement, as well as lambasting from his most prominent backer, Elon Musk. Zuckerberg himself appears to have few personal political beliefs other than ambition, though he has taken up mixed martial arts in the past few years. He elevated Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Dana White to Meta’s board this week, replacing an avowed feminist, Sheryl Sandberg, with the leader of the ultra-macho de facto sport of the Maga movement. Zuckerberg had already dined at Mar-a-Lago weeks ago, gifting Trump a pair of Meta Ray-Bans. Meta gave Trump’s inaugural committee $1m.
Zuckerberg’s display of fealty came after Trump threatened to throw him in prison for life if the president-elect came to believe he interfered in the election.
Meta, too, stands to gain from a friendly Trump administration. The US justice department filed an antitrust suit against Meta last year. Trump could make it fall by the wayside. Instagram stands to benefit enormously if the ban on TikTok would go through.. And whatever your politics, ensuring a friendly regulatory environment for your business is good business.
Other tech CEOs cozied up to Trump, too. Each tech CEO has given Trump $1m in his own way – Tim Cook personally rather than via Apple’s coffers, likewise OpenAI’s Sam Altman; Sundar Pichai directed Google to give money, as did Microsoft chief Satya Nadella; Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi gave Trump $2m, one half personally and one half professionally. Google, a newfound target of Trump’s on the campaign trail, gave its table-stakes donation only Thursday.
The president-elect too has noticed his newfound popularity. In his first press conference since winning the election, he said, “The first term, everybody was fighting me. In this term, everybody wants to be my friend. I don’t know – my personality changed or something.” Asked later if Zuckerberg made changes at Meta in response to Trump’s threat of prison, the president-elect said: “Probably.”
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Bowing to the threat of Elon Musk
Of all the tech leaders, Jeff Bezos had perhaps the most difficult line to walk. Still strongly associated with Amazon but no longer CEO, he sits astride both the Washington Post and the rocket company Blue Origin, which scheduled its first-ever launch for this weekend. Amazon is ending its DEI programs like Meta. Bezos’ in-kind donation to Trump of a non-endorsement by the Post brought on disaster, with a quarter of million readers cancelling their subscriptions and top talent leaving in droves (Bezos’ choice of new top editor may have something to do with those departures, too). Blocking the publication of the Post’s endorsement of Harris may have been a move to protect Blue Origin, still early in its quest to compete with SpaceX and vulnerable to any government intervention. As the CEO of SpaceX, Musk still has Trump’s ear and poses a grave regulatory threat to Bezos’ space exploration company. Musk made a surprise appearance during Bezos’ Mar-a-Lago dinner with Trump in a show of dominance fit for a mafia don.
Altman is likewise under threat from Musk, who has filed a lawsuit over the young CEO’s plans to transition OpenAI to a for-profit company. Musk co-founded the ChatGPT maker but has since bitterly split with Altman.
Nvidia, king of the chipmakers and newly one of the most valuable companies in the world, hasn’t had the chance to kiss the ring yet. CEO Jensen Huang said this week that he hadn’t been invited to Mar-a-Lago but that he’d love to see and be seen there: “I’d be delighted to go see Trump and congratulate him.”
