Getting Too Close to Trump Was a Mistake
The idea that one of their rivals in the cutthroat race for AI supremacy might be able to strike a deal with the highly transactional clique around Trump was clearly too much for them to bear.
Key points
- Having played a peripheral part in some of the discussions at the time—I announced my (not wholly unrelated) departure from Meta as its head of global affairs a few days before Trump’s 2024 inauguration, when the Valley-MAGA union was consummated—I see several reasons why this extraordinary miscalculation occurred: FOMO.
- Third, tech executives hoped that earning Trump’s good graces would allow them to avoid unwelcome regulatory incursions outside the U.S., especially in Europe.
- Why did tech leaders not anticipate the consequences of joining themselves at the hip to MAGA straight after Donald Trump won reelection in 2024?
Since Silicon Valley pivoted to Trump, then, its scorecard has looked something like this: chief rival (China) strengthened; domestic support weakened; global markets infuriated.
The sight of one tech leader—especially someone as intimidating to his peers as Musk—backslapping Trump and his entourage galvanized all the others to do the same.
Additional details
- Tech leaders had a lot to be angry about in the run-up to Trump’s reelection.
- The Trump administration has undoubtedly helped with this in some ways.
- Stepping into the Trump tent seemed like a good way to even the score.
- In some important respects, China has outpaced America altogether, deploying open-weight models faster, developing a more sustainable energy strategy, and training world-class researchers and engineers at a larger scale.
- As someone who spent nearly two decades in elected office and has spent much of my time since working in and around tech, I am always struck by how eagerly smart and wealthy people expound on subjects about which they know very little—especially politics.
How this summary was made: extractive summary — built from the sources' own reporting. It is drawn only from the reporting of the sources listed below — read the originals for full detail. How we summarize →
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