Oh Dear, Silicon Valley Didn’t Think Through Its Support for Trump

Demonstrating what might euphemistically be described as pragmatism, Big Tech and the main venture capital funds threw their weight behind Donald Trump’s second presidential bid, contributing millions to his war chest.

Their idea was that a president with little political and intellectual baggage and no understanding of the complexity of innovation would be easy to handle, and companies and investors would be free to push ahead with their techno-capitalist acceleration projects. However, as 404Media points out in this article, “Big Tech backed Trump foracceleration. They got a decel president instead”, their plan has backfired spectacularly.

Examples of the Trump administration’s disastrous management are piling up. One of the most visible is the ongoing trade war, which far from stimulating competitiveness and growth, will stifle key sectors such as semiconductors. It’s clear that even the proposed exceptions will have little effect in the face of Trump’s tariff storm. This scenario will create serious tensions in supply chains, slowing down strategic investments in innovation that could have consolidated America’s technological leadership.

The underlying problem lies in the naïve but self-interested conviction of some in Silicon Valley that they could capture the president and hijack the presidential agenda. As Peter Thiel, a supposed champion of disruptive investment turned unscrupulous and unethical politician, explained, “You can either invest in bits or atoms”. However, putting someone so poorly prepared in charge of the world’s most powerful nation, a man with no coherent strategy, has led to executive decisions that have sparked all kinds of international conflicts, damaged the country’s international standing, and ultimately, the economic slowdown Big Tech wanted to avoid.

And it’s not just the tech sector that has been hit: as well as attacking civil liberties, Trump has turned his sights on the scientific community, undermining the foundations on which the United States has cemented its international supremacy in recent decades. Researchers from NASA, Yale and Stanford are considering moving to European universities, while major innovation centers could do the same if Trump’s authoritarian rampage persists, and threatened spending cuts are implemented.

The growing political polarization that has come to characterize Trump’s few weeks in office has already seen foreign students detained, creating an atmosphere of fear in American universities and research laboratories, the main engines of the country’s global competitiveness. The threat to America’s reputation and leadership cannot be overstated, although it is hardly surprising under a president who quite simply doesn’t know what he’s talking about, and is more concerned with publicity stunts than with cementing a consistent policy. His protectionism and cheap patriotism is clearly aimed at isolating the United States, undermining its geopolitical influence and reliability as a partner.

The result, in less than three months, is an economy likely to contract, an unstable outlook that hinders new investment and a clampdown on scientific and intellectual freedom that suggests we are dealing with a de facto dictator who is only interested in staying in office. Big Tech and the venture capital funds that supported Trump now find themselves irrevocably associated with an administration that has sparked a global crisis and looks set to tank the economy.

Their support for a president only interested in short-term measures will not help them accelerate the economy, in fact it has had the opposite effect. Trump’s impact has already been worse than Covid. And this not only damages the income statement of some of the world’s largest companies, as is the case with Tesla, Apple, and many others to come as the markets plummet, but also threatens the country’s position as a leading technological and scientific power, a status that took decades to build and which is being rapidly dismantled.

Silicon Valley’s mistake, and that of many others was to believe that a weak and inexperienced president would be manageable. They did not count on the irrationality and stupidity that would unleash a suicidal agenda that will rob it of its most important asset: innovation and an openness to explore new ideas. In an increasingly global and competitive world, Trump’s inward-looking policies will see the United States left behind as China steadily assumes the role of global leader.

(En español, aquí)

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.