MAGA’S Marriage To Big Tech

Although to varying degrees, most of the major players in Silicon Valley have endorsed President-elect Trump. Big tech benefits from big data, big markets and big government support. The industry playbook is inherently global – even “globalizing”. At times, it even crosses paths with Trumpism’s nation non grata: China.

Trump’s orbit increasingly includes Silicon Valley elites who have managed to overlook the populist rhetoric that is clearly not aimed at them and aggressively embrace the anti-surveillance stance that is so clear. But they aren’t the only backers with ties to big tech companies who seem to be flying in front of the MAGA pitch.

Susie Wiles, who will serve as Trump’s chief of staff, served as co-chair of Mercury Public Affairs until she began working on his 2024 campaign. Mercury is a lobbying firm with clients in industries including big tobacco, junk food and Chinese technology companies.

Chinese video surveillance company Hikvision has paid Wiles’ former employer $5.5 million since 2015, according to Justice Department filings. Hikvision is known for providing surveillance technology to authorities in Xinjiang province, which have used it to target the Uyghur ethnic minority. Last year, Amnesty International I establish The company’s surveillance equipment was also used in the West Bank.

For these and other reasons, Hikviison has been blacklisted in the United States. The Commerce Department banned US companies from doing business with Hikvision during Trump’s first term. But Mercury appears to have circumvented this limitation by contracting with the company’s US division.

Wiles is not the only person in Trump’s orbit to have worked at Mercury, despite the company’s conflict with Trump’s political agenda. In 2018, the Trump administration banned Chinese telecom company ZTE from buying American equipment. So ZTE employee Mercury to fight the ban; Bryan Lanza, a former Trump campaign official, contacted White House officials to lobby on behalf of the Chinese company. However, such conflicts are not what Trump is referring to when he speaks of “the enemy within.”

In the long run, it may prove difficult to disguise the glaring discrepancy between MAGA’s isolationist message and the “globalist” business dealings that embody Trump’s top staff.

This group includes Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of SpaceX, Tesla, X and other tech companies. He earned his MAGA credentials by speaking out about the liberal “threat” to free speech and publicly rejecting his daughter for being transgender.

But Musk isn’t the only far-right super-wealthy tech personality throwing his weight behind Trump. Peter Thiel, the conservative founder of the defense technology company Palantir, has supported Trump from the start. His anti-regulatory motives are obvious. For their part, Silicon Valley venture capitalists Mark Andreessen and Ben Horowitz each donated $2.5 million to Trump.

“Some of these guys see Trump as their get-out-of-jail-free card,” said Jacob Silverman, author of the forthcoming book. Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley, he said pre-election. They imagine that a second Trump term means they are free from Justice Department investigations into their companies, antitrust lawsuits from FTC Chairwoman Lina Kahn, and even criminal exposure in areas like securities fraud. Trump, Silverman said, is seen as willing to pardon these men and “make their problems go away.”

Billionaires have wallets the size of GDP, and yet they want more. They feel that their innovative potential has been curtailed by the Democrats. They hope that Trump’s brute-force style of government will lengthen their leashes.

Some Trump voters may eventually be turned off by his pandering to plutocrats. Even if it is, it probably won’t matter electorally in 2028.