Trump’s Big Inauguration, Brought to You By Big Tech

Technology Policy Brief #124 | By: Mindy Spatt | January 07, 2025

Photo by The Now Time on Unsplash

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Summary

Donald Trump’s triumphant return to the White House on January 20th will be funded by the same tech billionaires who eschewed him the first time he was president.  Now they are looking to trade their massive financial support for their dream agenda in Washington, an unregulated industry free to make its own rules.

 

Analysis

Donald Trump and Big Tech were not friendly during his first term.  In 2016, Candidate Trump received little to no support from major tech companies or their leaders and criticism flowed both ways.  Trump accused Meta, Google, and others of censoring conservative voices especially because social media companies temporarily suspended Trump’s accounts after the US Capitol was attacked on Jan. 6, 2021.

After Trump took office, tech CEOs butted heads with him over his immigration policies and other excesses.  In 2020, Jeff Bezos said Trump’s refusal to accept the election results “erodes our democracy around the edges.”  Last month, Bezos joined Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, and the many other high-profile tech leaders lining up at Mar A Lago to kiss Trump’s ring, to put it politely, all with millions of dollars in their hands.  

That’s not all Bezos is doing for his new buddy.  In November, Bezos came under fire for refusing to allow the Washington Post, which he owns, to endorse Kamala Harris.  He recently interfered with editorial content at the Post again, nixing a cartoon depicting him kneeling before Trump, prompting its author, editorial cartoonist Ann Telanes, to resign from the paper.

Whatever problems tech CEOs had with Trump 1.0 have disappeared, even though in the interim Trump has been found liable for sexual assault and guilty of 36 felonies and campaigned on lunatic ravings about abortion in the ninth month and sex change operations being performed in schools.  After the Biden Administration’s wariness of Bitcoin, AI, and internet monopolies, tech billionaires are fawning over Trump and the possibility of dramatically loosened regulations.  

Trump has said he plans to reverse President Biden’s 2023 executive order on AI.  That is in keeping with the Republican Party’s platform, which states ‘We will repeal Joe Biden’s dangerous Executive Order that hinders AI innovation and imposes radical leftwing ideas on the development of this technology.’. Those radical leftwing ideas include safety and privacy standards for AI and a watchful eye toward the potential of AI to ‘displace and disempower workers; stifle competition; and pose risks to national security’.  Open AI CEO Sam Altman is on board with his $1 million inauguration contribution.

Consumer protections and labor standards are unlikely to flourish in the new regime.  President Biden’s moves to protect gig workers won’t be continued by Trump, which may be why Uber and its CEO Dara Khosrowshahi forked over $2 million.  In recent years, the Federal Trade Commission has sued Amazon for monopolistic practices and Meta for antitrust violations and has challenged mergers and acquisitions by big tech companies. One of Trump’s first moves will be to replace Lina Kahn, the current chair of the FTC, with someone far less aggressive, an agenda the tech bros have made no secret of.

What will flourish is Bitcoin.  As Trump said at a Bitcoin conference, “The rules will be written by people who love your industry, not hate your industry.”   Case in point, he recently described his pick to head the Securities Exchange Commission, Paul Atkins, as someone who “recognizes that digital assets & other innovations are crucial to Making America Greater than Ever Before’.  

Coinbase likes that idea and contributed $1 million.  A cryptocurrency trading firm with the inappropriate name of Robinhood donated $2 million.  Ripple, another crypto firm, gave the inaugural committee $5 million.  If Trump fulfills his promise to turn America into the “crypto capital of the planet,” they’ll likely get an enormous return on their investment.  As of this writing, the inaugural committee has collected $2 billion and is still open for business.

 

Engagement Resources

 

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