Silicon Valley Disruption: The Tech Landscape Isn’t. Donald Trump’s Debatbate Against the Silicon Valley Revolt
Calacanis wrote that the Democratic party had run a “master class” in alienating the creators of Silicon Valley by being against capitalism and progress. “Silicon Valley likes to present as liberal, but folks here are really libertarian disruptors and free market mavens in their ethos. Trump lines up better on those dimensions in their minds—they just don’t like his personal style on the margins.”
The investor and top Republican donor wrote to WIRED that David Skacs was a Republican for a long time. “Chamath is a recent convert, but not so sure how many new Republicans there are in SV.” (Rabois wrote that, to his knowledge, there were “less than 2 serious tech leaders” at the Trump fundraiser, which his husband attended, and that the donors were mainly old-money San Francisco Republicans.)
Sacks is the leader of this presumptive movement and has been through the megaphone of his popular All In Podcast. There isn’t a reason to believe that Sacks and his group represent a broader group of people.
Assertions like Selkis’ and long-winded missives like Sacks’ have seemed, in recent weeks, to augur a political tide change—and Biden’s recent debate performance provided a perfect pretext for it to take hold. There is no evidence of a change in the tech landscape, despite some murmurs about the end of the liberal era of tech.
“The voters have experienced four years of President Trump and four years of President Biden. In tech, we call this an A/B test, said David Sacks, a tech investor and close associate of Elon Musk who was hosting a reception with a venture capitalist. Trump performed better with respect to legal fairness, foreign policy, and economic policy. He is the President who deserves a second term.”
The presidential debate did not help the Silicon Valley revolt. Ryan Selkis wrote on X last month about the falling of the Blue Wall of tech. He was referencing a then-upcoming event: Just days after Donald Trump was convicted on 34 criminal counts in a hush-money case, organizers of a San Francisco reception for the former president announced that it had sold out, with attendees paying $50,000 and up.
There is a part of it. Every person who has lived in Silicon Valley for as long as they can remember is a huge fan of Biden. Some lifelong Republicans don’t like Trump due to his anti-science views. and he’s an insurrectionist.
Some of them have become louder in their support of Trump due to his ability to be a truth-teller. So there’s louder voices among the lifelong Republicans for Trump than there were before, but they were there. They probably voted for Trump last time. They are voting for Trump again.
But speaking with a handful of Democratic and Republican investors, it seems like not much has really shifted. Some of the most prominent conservative venture capitalists have recently become more outspoken about their support for Trump.
Hey, everyone! It’s Makena. I’m back after a charming getaway to the Adirondacks. A lot has happened since I’ve been gone. Namely, what the heck is happening with Joe Biden and the Democratic nomination?