Tech Stands to Benefit From Trump's Executive Order Bonanza – But Silicon Valley's Ethos Needs to Prevail
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Tech’s Trump Embrace Should Be About Solving Big Problems, Not Get Rich Quick Schemes
It’s a new day in Washington D.C. — and a new era for Silicon Valley.
President Donald Trump kicked off his second term with a host of executive orders and flashy announcements, including putting his name on OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank’s $500 billion plan for AI data centers, dubbed “Project Stargate.”
Investors aren’t putting $500 billion in upfront, of course: OpenAI and SoftBank are each committing $19 billion this year, with the full price tag projected over four 4 years, and a portion of SoftBank’s investment will be funded by debt. The project also involves Microsoft, Arm, NVIDIA, and the UAE, and was underway long before the announcement, but it’s another way for tech execs to suck up to a president who’s deliberately asked for praise, as Matt Yglesias points out.
Trump’s election has some tech leaders hopeful that it’s “Morning In America” for builders and innovators. All across the nation’s capital, founders were rubbing elbows with new Trump administration officials or anyone connected to Elon Musk, hoping to get closer to the new President’s new best friend and position themselves to do business with a tech-friendly administration.
David Sacks hosted a top-dollar reception ahead of the Crypto Ball held in the same D.C. venue, courtesy of media firm BTC Inc. and advocacy group Stand With Crypto. Industry celebrities ls like Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong mingled with politicians ahead of the inauguration.
But while the mood is currently rosy, we should all be watching how Trump shapes the culture of the new administration. His actions — rather than his words — will show his true priorities.
We need Trump to be pushing us down the path of grit and not grift. And he’s not off to a very good start in that regard: his $TRUMP crypto token, along with the one for his wife, is at best a crude pump-and-dump — and at worst a cynical scheme to enable the bribing of the president. It embodies everything that serious VC proponents of cryptocurrency argue it isnt: a mechanism with no purpose other than facilitating scams and other criminal behavior.
The crypto industry spent $170 million to help get Trump elected, and the SEC’s new crypto task force will presumably deliver industry-friendly regulations. But the legitimacy the crypto world so desperately seeks will be elusive if the President himself is hawking meme-coins for his own account.
Trump’s about-face on TikTok also has the whiff of graft. His decision to grant TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew a prime spot on the inauguration podium, while delaying a ban on the app passed by Congress, appears unrelated to policy considerations. But it does look related to the company’s value. U.S. investors, led by Trump mega-donor Jeff Yass, have tens of billions at stake, and Trump’s talk of the U.S. government owning 50% of the app makes it sound like a financial play more than a considered national security decision.
His willingness to end-run a law passed by Congress with an executive order of questionable legality also doesn’t bode well for rule-of-law government, which we feel pretty strongly about.
His other executive orders so far are also a mixed bag for the innovation economy.
His revocation of Joe Biden’s executive order on AI safety is music to the ears of effective accelerationists across the tech industry. Many criticized the EO for favoring big tech companies over startups, pointing to reporting standards that required many companies to give the government details of AI models that met a certain performance threshold before they were released publicly.
Marc Andreessen and other VCs argued the reporting regulations slowed progress and put America at a disadvantage relative to China. Glowing reports this week about the capabilities of the Chinese open-source model DeepSeek point to the urgency of staying ahead.
On the other hand, Trump’s likely unconstitutional EO revoking birthright citizenship for children of illegal and legal immigrants is extremely unfriendly to startup workers on H-1B visas who were hoping to have children in the U.S.
Policies limiting or curtailing immigration from large allied countries like India will no doubt become a fault line for tech industry leaders. Mark Zuckerberg may love the optics of getting rid of content moderation and dumping on DEI, but he likely won’t want his workforce hurt by punitive immigration laws.
Trump’s supporters in Silicon Valley mostly tout the policy issues, but the cultural agenda of the administration will matter quite a lot too. Amazon and Meta are quickly rolling back the DEI initiatives that have fallen out of favor, but Microsoft and Apple have pushed back against the pressure to shutter support for diverse employees.
Tech and entertainment companies were at the forefront when it came to gay rights in the workplace. They also stood opposed to the far-right agenda on abortion and limiting women’s rights. Some tech executives seem too eager to cast off tech’s great achievements on social progress, but hopefully their employees won’t be so quick to lose their sense of self.
Whatever Musk’s faults and dangerous behaviors, he builds real things and demands tangible results from his companies, from world-beating SpaceX rockets to state-of-the-art electric cars. He’s a serious man when he wants to be, even when it comes to winning at video games.
Silicon Valley needs to hold firm that it’s championing this dimension of the new Washington — support for builders, and for American competitiveness, and for less regulation, and for letting talent and imagination bloom.
The red-meat politics of exclusion, or flipping scammy tokens to make a few extra bucks, will only undermine the promise of the innovation economy.
Is Tech Going Down a Path of Grit or Grift In Washington?
Eric and Madeline unpack the issues facing the tech elite in the Trump era even further in the latest episode of The Newcomer Podcast.