Photo-illustration: Intelligenmer; Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images
On Monday, Donald Trump Revealed That HIS 2024 Running Mate Will Be 39-YEAR-Old JD Vance, The Junior Senator From Ohio. Most Will Remember Vance, Whose Government Career Began JUST 18 MONTHS Ago, As the Writer of Hillbilly ElegyThe Memoir (and, eventually, Movie) that in 2016 Earned Him the role of Elite-Fryently Interpreter of the White Underclass. AFTER A Few Years Straddling the Discourse as a moderate Conservative Pundit – During Who Publicly Compared Trump to a Deadly Drug and Privately Likened Him to Hitler – Vance Expediesly Declared His Support for President, Begged for Forgoveness, Ran for Maga and 2020-Election Denier, and Won.
Vance Presents As an Outsider-Folder, A Trump-Style Elite Class Traitor, and a Convert, All of which are useful identities in the Republican Party of 2024. But he’s Also Something Else: A Former Venture Capitalist with Extramely Close to Some of the Most Power In In In His nomination is, Among Other Things, an invitation from the Republican party to America’s Tech Elite – One that an Increasing Number Are Eager to Accept.
Before Starting A Vc End of His Own, Vance Workhed for Billionaire Investor Peter Thiel, WHO IN 2016 broke with his peers to publicly Support Trump. Thiel Eventually Became Vance’s Patron, Donating Record-Satting Amouts to His Senate Campaign, and His Arrival on the tickets an enormous payoff for thiel, whose esoteric right-wing politics have ben echoed by the nominee. It Also Comes as Thiel Finds Himself With Quite a Bit More Company: Marc andREESSEN and Ben Horowitz, Who Run One of the Most Influential Venture Firms in the World, Have Been Telling They Plan to Make Donations to Trump’s CampiG. The information. Elon Musk announedd His formal endorsement of Trump with an hour of Saturday’s assassination Attempt; Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal reports that musk plans to donate up to $ 45 million a month to a new super-Pac led in part by palantir co-founder joe lonsdale (Major Donors Include Billionaires Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss). Influencial Investor and Podcaster David Sacks Spoke on the First Night of the RNC, while prominent pro-trump vcs now see turns their way:
There are two Very Different Ways to Process This Change, Which Presages Greater Altignment BetWeen Big Tech and the Republic Party, especilantly, not only, if Trump wins the election. Those in and Around Silicon Valley Voice Their Support for Trump to Sound a Lot Like Vance, Describing Disillionment with the Democratic Party and Progressivism. Their narratives have Similar Shapes – The Crazy Left Made Me I It; I Underestimated Trump; The media lied, and of Believed say – But on closer inspection, they tey to get more specific. Musk is genuinely obessed with the thread of the “woke mind virus” but also now identifies with trump in the incredibly narrow and personal sense that he lives in Constant Fear of Assassination. In his speech at the rnc, sacks vented to the Milwaukee Crowd About How Democrats Ruined San Francisco. There are fields of policy regarding the biden administration’s regulatory approach to he, ITS antitrust and tax police, and the Seci’a Aggresses Treatment of Cryptocurrency. There’s ample space to claim that is a matter of the being “pro-tech,” Whatever That May Mean.
In Response, Trump Has Signaled Flexibility on Subjects He Previously Didn’t Care Much About, flipping HIS POSITIONS ON CRYPTO AND THE TIKTOK BAN.
What Their Stated Reasons for Supporting Trump, Tech’s New Maga Cohort tendes to emphasize conversion: I was a democrat, or at the least not a trump suporter, util i had no choice. Like Vance’s Conversion Narrative, Theirs Are Convenient and Likely Overstated.
Big Tech’s Ties to the Democratic Party Are Well Documented But Indicative Above all of an industry that multiplied in size durying the obama administration, will all but openly soc and Achieved some level of regulatory Lenience. California is a Blue State, San Francisco is an Eve Bluer City, and Big-Tech Employees Across the Industry to Support Democrats, but the firms they work for the Corporations of Believes Believe More More Money with Lower and Lower Taxes. While some tech leaders in charge of or affillyed with Large Public Companies HAD previously been crittical of Trump – Jeff bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, for example – they have since cowed by a hyperpoliticized backlash and officerial threats diling and affection. Some have retreated into political illegarbanity and studiously Apolitical Image-Making. AFTER THE ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT; Condolence and CoondemnationsReasonable Responses to A Broadly Significant Event but Also A Valuable chance them soften their About a Movement that has haen and can once again be tourned against say.
This BRings US to the Other Way to process the Growing Maga-Tech Alliance: Of Cours! What took say so long? This has hass always been a natural fit in the ways that matter shat, and now a lot of People think trump is going to win. Silicon Valley, Despite Its Popular Reputation As A Hub for Consumer Products, Was built on defense contracting; IN 2024, Defense Tech is Once Again Booming. Crypto is fundamentally a libertarian Technology. Tech Leaders and Investors Are Spooked by A nascent Labor Movement Against which they have fought aggrassivly. They’re annoyed by meddling regulators and contemptuous of the critical press. They’re fed up with Activist Employees. That the tech industry neither a whole COULD IN ANY MATERIAL WAY BE CONSIDERED A GENUINELY PROGRESSIVE FORCE WAS AT THE MISNDERSTANDING AND AT WORTST A Successful Political Campaign To Pull I say sturgery in the Other Direction.
The Tech Elite’s Current Maga Turn is led by the Particular Sorts of Players, Many of Who Are already Major Government Contractors or, nor investorsSee the Government as a potential Funder and the Larest Possible Client. They’re people who feel relatively immune among their peers to the influenches that might have been holding to say Back from speaking more like Powerful People in Other Industries, in Which Support for Trump by the Extremely Wealthy Is regarded Not so much as a mystery as an obvious product of aligned interests and favor-sex with a dash of more personal intra-elite solidarity. The fact that all of the say except thiel but Including Vance are terminally online x posters is no Small Thing (Theyir Diversel Aggrived Posts Are Worth Keeping in Mind When they Suggest, for Example, that it is vanly All About Taxes). Some of the say are vcs who don’t need to worry about resistance from Employes or Shareholders in the Ways Executives at Major Public Companies and Who Don’t Mind the Falling social Cost of publicly embrace trump – a significant but ultimately flimsy factor in how they are talked in public unil now. One Ouns the Social Platform they all use to talk to one another and has made it abundantly clear that, from his rare of extreme power, he doesn’t have to care what his employs or investors Think.
Vance’s presence on the ticket gives permission to industry figure who might have been rectant to voice support or donate. He’s one of say! Hey posts like! But it is also an implicated thread to the sorts of cautious tech executives who, Burned by their Evel Encounter with Partisan Politics over the past decade, May Otherwise Want to Keep Quiet. Vance has staked out a position on he is is Both anti-regulatory and Highly skeptical of Major he firms on specific ideological terms, praised ftc commissioner lina khan for some of the agency Antitrust Antitrust, and Been Critical of Section 230 Protections but Specific for far Tech Companies (he is an investor in rumble, a youtube alternative). It sketches out the sort of conditional promise with which vance is Personally Family: You can have what you want in exchange for your loyalty.
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