Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:01:27] Rachael Myrow is a senior editor for KQED.
Rachael Myrow [00:01:31] Silicon Valley is not a monolith, but up at the tippy top, it does seem like the biggest tech bros break down into three camps. Libertarians, thrilled their time has come. Classic example would be Marc Andreessen, general partner of the legendary venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.
Marc Andreeson [00:01:54] Are you happy? Very happy. It’s morning in America.
Rachael Myrow [00:01:59] The media have largely focused on Elon Musk in the run up to President Donald Trump’s inauguration. But since the election, Andreesen has also been commuting to Mar A Lago in Florida and helping to build the Trump administration. So that’s group number one, the libertarians. Number two, those who tend to kiss the ring, whoever is in power. And I think the primary example of this would be Mark Zuckerberg.
Marc Zuckerberg [00:02:30] And it’s one of the things that I’m optimistic about with President Trump is I think he just wants America to win.
Rachael Myrow [00:02:36] And then the third category is dyed in the wool liberals like Marc Benioff of Salesforce. They’re being very very quiet about Trump and they’re finding other things to do this week like be in Davos for the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:03:00] Rachael, this seems new for some reason. I mean, I don’t remember this in, say, the first Trump term, right? What exactly would you say has shifted here?
Rachael Myrow [00:03:17] I think the shift is from resistance to deference. That has a lot to do with the global awareness at this point of Trump’s transactional nature. I think many tech titans see the value in extending a hand in friendship, hoping at the very best for profit and at the very least, not to have Trump see them as an enemy.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:03:48] Yeah, well, let’s step back just a little bit, Rachael, because Silicon Valley, as you’ve been talking about, is not a monolith, but some of the most powerful people in Silicon Valley and Trump seem to have been getting cozier and cozier over the last year. Can you walk through some of the biggest examples of this?
Rachael Myrow [00:04:12] To my mind, it’s absolutely stunning how free, how open Silicon Valley leaders like Mark Zuckerberg and others have been with their personal political opinions, either as guests on other people’s podcasts and vodcasts. I’m thinking of Joe Rogan, for instance.
Marc Zuckerberg [00:04:31] If the US tech industry is going to continue being really strong, I do think that the US government has a role in in basically defending it abroad, and that’s one of the things that I’m optimistic about will will happen in this administration.
Rachael Myrow [00:04:45] Or they’ve started their own podcasts like All In. It’s hosted by four venture capitalists Jason Calacanis, Chamath Palihapitiya, David Sacks and David Freiberg .
Chamath Palihapitya [00:04:58] And the intention with Trump isn’t to find some person to keep running things the way they have been run in the past. His mandate from the people who elected him, based on the message he put out there, is to do the opposite, which is to go in and be as disruptive and damaging and destructive as possible. Maybe this is what has to happen.
Rachael Myrow [00:05:16] Elon Musk perhaps did it most spectacularly by taking Twitter and used it as his megaphone in the run up to the November election. And many of Musk’s expressed opinions appear to be political posturing that mirrors the needs and the wants of Trump and his followers. I think it’s important to understand that this is about the protection and the growth of money and power.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:05:47] So it’s not surprising to you then, that this is happening?
Rachael Myrow [00:05:51] No, not at all.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:06:05] I mean, I want to talk about Rachel, what this means materially for the people who aren’t as rich as the people we’re talking about. I mean, Mark Zuckerberg, before Trump’s inauguration had actually announced that he was ending fact checking on Facebook, for example. And it just so happened to be after he left a meeting with Trump in Mar a Lago. I mean, I can’t help but sort of draw a connection there between his meeting and this really big decision he made that’s going to affect a lot of people who use Facebook.
Rachael Myrow [00:06:52] Well, yes and no. I mean, this is this is a company that has blood on its hands from more than one genocide where people were stirred to murder each other on media platforms. Right. So so, okay, now now he’s going to loosen up content moderation even further. It’s already a cesspool. Children can buy drugs on Instagram now. I’m not, you know, breathing heavily from fear at the thought that the Zuckerberg is loosening content, moderation controls. They’re not working now.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:07:30] There’s also the new Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE. And the idea is to have this new agency led by Elon Musk to do what, exactly?
Rachael Myrow [00:07:45] This is a libertarian dream going years back. The idea that the federal government is way out of proportion. And what if we could just get rid of a huge percentage of the infrastructure and frankly, the people, and also all of these regulations that have built up over more than a century at this point. Right. It’s this dream to clear the decks as much as possible. The fact that people like Elon Musk are not elected by the people to do any of this is going to be the subject of, I’m sure, more than one court battle. But DOGE is going to be an advisory body. And then it’s a question of to what extent the Trump administration can push each of these ideas that DOGE comes up with through Congress. What’s really worrying to me is, again, the people making the decisions about what to cut are political newbies with a very inflated sense of their intelligence and an understanding of what the practical impacts of each of these cuts will be. And it’s just going to be a rollercoaster ride. We’re going to have to wait and see what happens.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:09:09] I mean, Rachael, going back to what this all is going to mean for people, especially people here in the Bay Area. I mean, I know that Trump vows to go really hard on immigration and has vowed to do so pretty immediately. And Silicon Valley relies very heavily on immigrants and in particular, H-1B visa holders. Any sense what can happen with that, given these Silicon Valley leaders new relationship with Trump?
Rachael Myrow [00:09:44] Well, I think it’s important to point out that Trump is not a creature of the traditional GOP. He’s MAGA. Right? But the hallmark of Trump’s political philosophy is flexibility. Depending on his sense today of what he wants today and what his supporters want. So there’s a philosophical split between the people closest to Trump in the White House. There are camps. Musk, as you might expect, is pro H-1B visa, right? To to bring in the best and brightest from countries elsewhere these days, primarily from India and China. But White House deputy chief of staff for policy is Stephen Miller, and he is most decidedly anti-everything immigration, everything. So it’s really anyone’s guess how this is going to play out. I couldn’t tell you today, but I think it’s worth noting that whatever happens, Silicon Valley’s companies, biggest companies anyway, are international conglomerates now, and they have offices everywhere Chennai, Dublin. They don’t need H-1B visas to thrive. They don’t need the San Francisco Bay Area to thrive. If things go Stephen Miller’s way, I anticipate that we’ll see tech employment diminish locally in the Bay Area. But it’s really hard to say this early on.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:11:20] Is the idea that Silicon Valley hates when the government gets all up in his business and that Trump explicitly promises not to, and that that is really at the heart of all of this. Like, why is Trump, I guess, the kind of person that Silicon Valley would align itself with?
Rachael Myrow [00:11:43] I think it plays a very big role, even for people who are not libertarian by nature. There is no question that Biden’s pick to head the FTC, Lina Khan, and and the SEC Gary Gensler created a lot of headaches for techs, army of lawyers, army of lobbyists. Who wants regulation? Who wants legislation? Not the companies that dominate the field currently. And they’ve made that abundantly clear, not just in Washington, DC, but also in Sacramento. I got to tell you, Ericka, I think we’re all part of a giant experiment that’s been continuing largely unabated since the 1990s. What would it be like if Silicon Valley remade the world in its image without any controls from government or really very, very limited controls?
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:12:39] Rachael, thank you so much.
