The headlines read, “How Democrats Drove Silicon Valley Into Trump’s Arms” and “Tech kisses the ring at Trump’s inauguration.” But that’s a mirage. The real Silicon Valley, although self-interested as ever, remains liberal to the core, a reality emphatically reinforced by the 2024 November elections.
Silicon Valley, the informal region at the south end of the San Francisco Bay, is recognized universally as the preeminent center of technological innovation and profit. The silicon appellation comes from the 1970s rise of silicon-based semiconductor manufacturing, and the “valley” — stretching south to Santa Cruz and north to San Francisco — remains the global leader in chip design, social media, internet and digital financial services, smartphones and now, artificial intelligence.
Silicon Valley’s tech ecosystem brings together hundreds of thousands of scientists and engineers, startup-backing venture capitalists, attorneys specializing in intellectual property and a host of other services that make it possible for anyone with a good idea, and many with less successful ones, to start a tech company and perhaps strike it rich.
Silicon Valley billionaires and CEOs were in attendance at President Trump’s inauguration in person and as million-dollar donors, but the people who make Silicon Valley successful are more diverse and much more progressive. In a New York Times interview this month, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen attempted to portray the tech industry as embracing Donald Trump.
The reality couldn’t be further from the truth.
In fact, Silicon Valley remains progressive on climate change and the environment, immigration, human rights, reproductive rights and social equity, and its residents vote overwhelmingly Democratic.
In his interview, Andreessen seems to recognize that young tech professionals — the workhorses of Silicon Valley — reject Trump and the political inclinations of his billionaire supporters. He blames elite universities for “radicalizing” the workforce into “America-hating communists,” when in fact he is just complaining about the valley’s widespread support for thoughtful government regulation and equitable taxation.
In seven of the most affluent Silicon Valley cities — Palo Alto, Los Altos Hills, Los Altos, Los Gatos, Portola Valley, Woodside and Atherton — combined, Kamala Harris won 76.2% of the vote, compared with 20.1% for Trump
Indeed, Atherton, considered the wealthiest city in the U.S., voted for Harris 71% to Trump 27%. Atherton is where Andreessen listed his mansion in March for $33 million as he deserted Northern California for Malibu.
Most elected officials in Silicon Valley are Democrats. The region’s congressional delegation includes progressive champions Ro Khanna and Zoe Lofgren, who has pushed to tie CHIPS Act funding to labor and environmental standards.
When tech titans Andreessen, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg align themselves with Trump’s vision, it reveals at least as much about protecting their fortunes as it does any real political evolution in the Bay Area
At a Stanford University conference last fall, Andreessen attacked the regulation of artificial intelligence. AI, the collection of technologies made famous by language models like ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude, represents both immense opportunity and risk. Yet here was a billionaire investor, with massive stakes in more than 100 AI companies, smugly declaring that thoughtful oversight would “kill innovation.” At the same time, as evidenced by union statements, workplace “trust and safety” reports and surveys of AI researchers, thousands of valley professionals support the ethical development of AI.
Similarly, Andreessen attacked the Biden administration’s half-hearted attempts to regulate cryptocurrency speculation, charging that the Democrats were out to kill a powerful — but often rife with fraud — new industry supported by Trump. At the same time, his firm, Andreessen Horowitz, has more than 150 cryptocurrency-related companies in its portfolio. When he rails against “debanking” of crypto founders, isn’t he really complaining about basic consumer protection measures that might affect his portfolio’s value?
Andreessen looks back fondly to the 1990s and Democratic help in funding of the early development of the internet, from which he benefited personally and substantially. In fact, Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurial capitalism would not have been possible without federal research money, product acquisition and antitrust enforcement. The transistor itself, invented at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey and basic to the tech revolution, was only available to Silicon Valley startups because of a 1956 antitrust consent decree between the federal government and AT&T. Now, however, tech oligarchs such as Andreessen expect Trump to free them from federal regulation, oversight and taxes.
Andreessen is just one of a handful of tech leaders who have made a show of aligning themselves with Trump.
While Elon Musk’s DOGE attempts to control federal agencies are now front and center, he has consistently opposed federal regulations that cost his businesses. For example, in November, after the Wall Street Journal documented regulation-defying pollution from Tesla’s plants in Texas and California, Musk co-authored an op-ed article in the newspaper proposing, among other things, that the government stop enforcing environmental rules.
Zuckerberg has often spoken about Facebook’s mission to connect people and build community. However, his decision to bow to Trump and replace fact-checking — censorship, Meta’s leaders, now call it — with crowdsourced moderation will likely amplify Facebook’s role in spreading misinformation, hate speech and other divisive content. Most researchers have found that using crowdsourcing to police falsehoods has mixed effects at best.
Despite reported opposition from employees, Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, has also veered his company abruptly to the right in recent weeks by dropping its diversity goals and its 2018 pledge against applying AI technologies to weapons development or to use in surveillance.
Tech CEOs and money men cozying up to the Trump administration have no shame about the the 180-degree contortions they have to perform to protect their investments. When Andreessen talks about the far-left “radicalizing” Silicon Valley’s college-educated employees and blocking startups with safety regulations, he’s really talking about his own far-right radicalization, and his resistance to the legitimate desire of tech workers and society at large to ensure that powerful new technologies serve the public good.
Democrats have not abandoned Silicon Valley, and the valley hasn’t abandoned the Democrats: Tech oligarchs’ Faustian bargain with Trump draws headlines today, but they are likely to learn that Trump has his own agenda. Soon enough they may find that Trump’s policies — on immigration, trade and tariffs, climate, human rights and more — will undermine the economic environment that has allowed them to flourish.
John Markoff covered Silicon Valley for the New York Times for 29 years. Lenny Siegel is former mayor of Mountain View, the birthplace of Silicon Valley’s semiconductor industry.
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