On January 28, 2017, I rushed to San Francisco International Airport (SFO). As elsewhere in the United States that night, demonstrations were growing against a travel ban that Donald Trump had issued against visitors from seven Muslim-majority countries. The night was colder than normal and I hadn’t brought a proper jacket. Fortunately, the train to the airport was warm and packed to the brim with nervous, chatty protesters. The airport itself was a noisy scene: taxis and Ubers idling while angry protesters blocked the roads, parking meters still running; Hijab-clad protesters prayed over their protest signs at the baggage claim area, while others shouted at any arriving flyer coming to collect their luggage. Trump was then the most scandalous man in America and his election shocked a wide swath of the world.
After a few hours, rumors of a face worth $150 billion were floating through the crowd: Sergey Brin, creator and co-founder of Google, was there. At the time, he was president of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, which also owns YouTube. The effect was thrilling: one of the richest and most powerful men in the world was registering his displeasure with Trump by physically joining a protest against him. Brin, a Moscow native who came to the U.S. at the age of six, said he came to the SFO that night “because I’m a refugee.” It was a personal rebuke to Trump, the consummate nativist.
Google co-founder Sergey Brin at SFO protest: “I’m here because I’m a refugee.” (Photo by Matt Kang/Forbes) pic.twitter.com/GwhsSwDPLT
—Ryan Mac 🙃 (@RMac18) January 29, 2017
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Google later followed Brin’s lead and condemned Trump’s travel ban. Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Uber and others did it too: almost a hundred technology companies in total. They filed an amicus curiae brief in support of a lawsuit opposing the measure.
It is a show of support impossible to imagine today. The protests against Trump’s second presidential victory have barely had any impact. Silicon Valley has changed course and is going all out with displays of deference to Trump. This particular week, the tech industry completed its genuflection before the president-elect.
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, announced the end of the company’s fact-checking operation in the United States. In 2022, Meta boasted in a blog post that it had built “the largest global fact-checking network of any platform” and spent $100 million to do so.
Three days later, Zuckerberg announced that the company would reverse its efforts to increase diversity, equity and inclusion among its employees, programs that are colloquially and controversially known as DEI. These corporate initiatives have long been the subject of scorn from Trump, as well as criticism from his most prominent backer, Elon Musk. Zuckerberg himself appears to have few personal political beliefs other than ambition, although he has taken up mixed martial arts in recent years. This week he elevated Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Dana White to Meta’s board of directors, replacing an avowed feminist, Sheryl Sandberg, with the de facto ultra-macho sport leader of the Maga movement. Zuckerberg had already dined at Mar-a-Lago weeks ago and gave Trump a pair of Meta Ray-Bans. Meta gave Trump’s inaugural committee $1 million.
Zuckerberg’s show of loyalty came after Trump threatened to jail him for life if the president-elect believed he had interfered in the election.
Meta will also benefit from a friendly Trump administration. The U.S. Justice Department filed an antitrust lawsuit against Meta last year. Trump could leave him by the wayside. Instagram will benefit greatly if the TikTok ban is passed. And whatever your politics, ensuring a friendly regulatory environment for your business is good business.
Other tech CEOs also reached out to Trump. Each tech CEO has given Trump $1 million in their own way: Tim Cook personally and not through Apple’s coffers, as has OpenAI’s Sam Altman; Sundar Pichai ordered Google to donate money, as did Microsoft boss Satya Nadella; Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi gave Trump $2 million, half personally and half professionally. Google, a new Trump target in the election campaign, made its donation just Thursday.
The president-elect has also noted his newfound popularity. In his first press conference since winning the election, he said: “During the first term, everyone was fighting against me. In this quarter, everyone wants to be my friend. I don’t know, my personality changed or something.” When asked later if Zuckerberg made changes to Meta in response to Trump’s prison threat, the president-elect said, “Probably.”
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Giving in to Elon Musk’s threat
Of all the tech leaders, Jeff Bezos had perhaps the toughest line to walk. Still strongly associated with Amazon, but no longer as CEO, he figures prominently at both the Washington Post and rocket company Blue Origin, which scheduled its first launch for this weekend. Amazon is ending its DEI programs like Meta. Bezos’s in-kind donation to Trump over the Post’s lack of support led to a disaster: a quarter of a million readers canceled their subscriptions and top talent left en masse (Bezos’ choice of new top editor may have something to do with it with those outputs too). Blocking publication of the Post’s endorsement of Harris may have been a measure to protect Blue Origin, which is still in an early stage of its quest to compete with SpaceX and is vulnerable to any government intervention. As CEO of SpaceX, Musk still has Trump’s attention and poses a serious regulatory threat to Bezos’ space exploration company. Musk made a surprise appearance during Bezos’ Mar-a-Lago dinner with Trump in a display of dominance worthy of a mafia boss.
Altman is also threatened by Musk, who has filed a lawsuit over the young CEO’s plans to transition OpenAI into a for-profit company. Musk co-founded the maker ChatGPT, but has since bitterly parted ways with Altman.
Nvidia, king of chipmakers and recently one of the most valuable companies in the world, has not yet had the chance to kiss the ring. CEO Jensen Huang said this week that he had not been invited to Mar-a-Lago, but would love to see and be seen there: “I would be happy to go see Trump and congratulate him.”