For decades Mark Lemley’s work as an intellectual property lawyer ran on a clear orbit. He teaches at Stanford and has advised Amazon, Google, and Meta. “I always enjoyed that the area I practice in has largely been apolitical,” Lemley told me. His political views matched those of many clients.
In January he did something unexpected. “I have struggled with how to respond to Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook’s descent into toxic masculinity and Neo-Nazi madness,” he posted on LinkedIn. “I have fired Meta as a client.”
This is Silicon Valley in 2025. Mark Zuckerberg, now 41, has been reshaped into a MAGA-friendly mixed martial arts fan who has loosened enforcement of hateful content, complained that corporate America is insufficiently masculine, stopped rigorous fact-checking, and been a frequent visitor to Mar-a-Lago. He is not the only billionaire whose public behavior suggests a preference for protecting company interests over guarding civic norms.
When I met Lemley at his office at Stanford in July he wore a Hawaiian shirt and looked ready for vacation. He had cut ties with Meta six months earlier. Few other leaders followed his public example. Behind closed doors, people told him, you go! In public, they stay. “Everybody I’ve talked to has a potential exit strategy,” he said. “Could I get citizenship here or there?”
The tech sector should be in one of its most prosperous stretches, fueled by an explosion of investment and interest in artificial intelligence. Yet a political shadow has settled over the valley. The workforce still leans left in large numbers, but top executives mostly either decline to criticize the White House or actively seek access. One image that captured this shift came at the second inauguration of Donald Trump, when a clear slice of the tech class, having written large donation checks, took front-row seats near the podium.
“Everyone in the business world fears repercussions; this administration is vindictive,” venture capitalist David Hornik told me. Michael Moritz, a figure many view as emblematic of the old Silicon Valley, put the relationship in blunt terms: “They’re doing their best to avoid being held up in a protection racket.”
Tim Cook learned how real that dynamic can be. In May Apple’s CEO declined an 8,000-mile trip to join a presidential entourage in the Middle East. Trump noticed. In Qatar the president said he had “a little problem” with Cook and the next day threatened a 25 percent tariff on iPhones.
Executives have grown careful about speaking. When I sought interviews this summer, calendar slots were scarce and vacations felt longer than usual. One chief executive I know said he was taking time to “decompress” from politics and added, with a quick pivot, “Any time you want to talk AI or AI agents, please let me know!”
Workers once helped check corporate behavior. Employees at Google famously pressured leaders to resist certain military contracts and to advance inclusion efforts. The implicit threat was that tech workers could find satisfying opportunities elsewhere if a company betrayed its values. Then Elon Musk slashed roughly 80 percent of X’s staff and the platform kept running. Across Big Tech, commitments to diversity appear to have slackened and ties to defense or government projects have strengthened. In April 2024 Sundar Pichai told Google staff not to “use the company as a personal platform, or to fight over disruptive issues or debate politics.” At Meta, one employee described the mood as if it were the 1990s: “When you went to work, you didn’t bring your politics to the office, and you may not like the boss—but you do the job so you get paid,” they told me. “Good luck finding a company that isn’t like that now.”
If you ask what happened, the story has many threads. How did a caste of founders who admired Ayn Rand and hailed libertarian ideals become so aligned with a populist leader who disdains many liberal values? Why did some venture capitalists publish screeds attacking “trust and safety,” “tech ethics,” and “social responsibility”? What is the point of Jeff Bezos owning The Washington Post if the paper’s endorsements and editorial slant shifted ahead of a presidential contest? Why did Tim Cook choose to present a gilded keepsake to the president, a display that read to many like an act of deferential diplomacy?
A long answer begins with the mythology that surrounded the earliest personal computers and the internet. Rob Reich, who teaches social ethics of science and technology at Stanford, described a new configuration of power. “An extraordinarily tiny number of billionaires who control the information ecosystem have made allyship with the most consequential and fearsome political power in the world. There’s never been a time in history when those things have been combined,” he said.
That consolidation makes for fascinating reporting. It also feels dangerous. When I returned to cover the valley, I was surprised at how quickly people I had watched for decades seemed to reorient their loyalties toward a politician who stands in tension with the egalitarian impulses that animated early computing.
I was slow to warm to computers. For the first 30 years of my life I avoided them. Mainframes seemed cold and alien, tied to large corporations and war machines. Then in the early 1980s I took a Rolling Stone assignment on hackers and saw a different picture. The first PC startups had roots in activism and DIY culture. The Homebrew Computer Club sprouted from a community that had been part of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement. Bill Gates and Paul Allen, in their early lives, fit profiles that were hardly corporate archetypes. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak had once sold “blue boxes” that let people make illicit calls. The early computer world had a streak of mischief and a sense of authority-challenging purpose.
That spirit captivated me. The tools those engineers and hobbyists built promised to give ordinary people the power of specialists. Early spreadsheets were not merely business tools; they let clerks and small-business owners test assumptions that had once required expensive analysts. Mitch Kapor, who helped popularize that software through Lotus Development Corporation, told his investor that he valued people over profits and intended to treat employees well. “I was prepared for him to say no,” Kapor said. The investor did not, and Kapor’s bet paid off.
Apple’s famous “1984” spot captured the emotional thrust of the moment: a lone runner hurls a hammer at a Big Brother figure. My Rolling Stone headline back then was “The Whiz Kids Meet Darth Vader,” a framing that painted the clash as righteous. Yet from the outset money and influence have been central to Silicon Valley. Kapor reminded me that commerce and power were always in the mainstream even as countercultural images persisted.
In the 1990s the web accelerated those dynamics. John Perry Barlow’s 1996 “Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace” captured the libertarian mood: “Your legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, and context do not apply to us,” he wrote, staking a claim for the internet as a separate sphere.
Early leaders arrived as idealists. Larry Page and Sergey Brin looked like wide-eyed inventors. Jeff Bezos famously started Amazon with a door for a desk. Mark Zuckerberg was once a lean founder with an apartment barely furnished. Then these companies scaled into global monopolies and the leaders who had once talked about openness began to exert massive control over speech, identity, and access. They amassed wealth at levels that outpaced anything prior in tech history: multihomed estates, yachts, private planes.
Housing in the valley tells a stark story. I sat with Russell Hancock, who runs Joint Venture Silicon Valley, in his Palo Alto living room. He bought his house after the dot-com crash and said that today even modest homes require generational wealth. Page and Zuckerberg have purchased multiple adjacent properties, changing neighborhood character. “The people that are doing fabulously well, they’re really having a terrific time,” Hancock said. For many others, the divide has become brutal. Hancock noted a jump in inequality metrics. “We went from 30 on the Gini to 83,” he said. He added that such disparity creates pressures that history has shown can be explosive.
Technology did not remain aloof from politics because its products began to shape real-world services. Chris Lehane, who has worked on tech policy for Democrats and companies such as Airbnb and OpenAI, pointed to the obvious collision points: software now operates taxis, shifts housing markets through short-term rental platforms, and remaps food distribution via delivery apps. Those disruptions triggered regulatory battles, local resentments, and safety concerns. “The Valley now realizes it can’t ignore politics, because politics won’t ignore you,” a technologist in the current administration told me.
Users turned suspicious of the apps they could not stop using. By the middle of the last decade, tech employees who once enjoyed perks and social capital were an image in the public debate: shuttle buses bringing developers to sanitized corporate campuses, cafeterias that produced gourmet meals, meditation rooms, and open discussions about progressive causes. The contrast between those benefits and the way communities were altered by tech growth produced anger.
There were missteps by the companies themselves. Andy Hertzfeld, one of the original Macintosh engineers, said the culture oversold its benevolence. “We were so idealistic in thinking everyone should use a computer and that we should make them lovable and fun,” he told me. The reality, he said, included teenage attention crises and a thinning of certain civic practices.
Over time the big platforms took on the worst behaviors of entrenched incumbents. They prioritized engagement and profit, eroding product quality and customer service. In a 2024 survey of valley residents, about three-quarters said tech firms had too much power and nearly as many felt those firms had lost a moral compass.
The narrative I had long told shifted from an underdog David-versus-Goliath story to an Icarus fable. Hubris appears in many of the same places I once admired, and that arrogance helped prime a pivot toward a politician who promised a different kind of power.
A broad swath of people in tech came to view Joseph R. Biden as a hostile figure. The intensity of their dislike surprised me. Lehane suggested the administration’s approach looked like a campaign to restrain an industry that had grown too big. He pointed to Lina Khan at the Federal Trade Commission and Jonathan Kanter at the Department of Justice as officials who pursued antitrust enforcement with a zeal that alarmed founders. The agencies filed major suits against Google and mounted pressure on Amazon, Apple, and Meta. Khan rejected mergers that many in the industry had expected to sail through, complicating exit plans for startups and altering the calculus of investment.
Defenders of the Biden approach argue the market coordinate calls for scrutiny. After a decade of dominance, the largest firms seemed to consolidate monopoly-like power. The FTC’s review of Figma’s proposed tie-up with Adobe was intense and messy, though the design tool later staged a notable IPO.
One of the moves that rankled many tech executives occurred early in the Biden years, when Elon Musk was left off a White House electric-vehicle convening. The White House more or less blamed an industry agreement over EV policy; others thought it was about union politics. Reid Hoffman, who has criticized Trump and still speaks up in public, called the decision to exclude Musk a blunder. “You should invite the electric vehicle leader to the electric vehicle summit!” he told me.
There are multiple explanations for Musk’s turn. He had previously given to Democrats. Some people point to the pandemic shutdowns at his California factory, others to the intoxicating feedback loops of social media, and some to sheer personality. By 2024 he was turning X into a megaphone for right-wing content, amplifying his own views and donating nearly $300 million to Trump’s campaign. “Elon made it safe for everyone,” Ryan Petersen, chief executive of Flexport, said of the effect. People who once kept Republican views quiet felt freed to be vocal.
Crypto’s collapse under the weight of fraud and bad bets also pushed a number of industry actors toward Trump. The downfall of Sam Bankman-Fried, once a major Democratic donor, was an embarrassment that hardened enforcement stances. Gary Gensler at the SEC took a tough line. Some in crypto blamed Senator Elizabeth Warren for supporting strict oversight. A senior crypto executive told me Democrats overreacted after SBF’s crimes were exposed and that this overreaction fed the sense of grievance that many in the sector now hold.
The industry poured campaign cash into Trump’s orbit. Paul Grewal, Coinbase’s general counsel and a former federal judge, framed his company’s political activity as focused on industry survival: “We were always focused exclusively on what is good for crypto,” he said. By midsummer 2024 Trump, who had earlier called cryptocurrencies a fraud, attended a Bitcoin conference and promised to dismiss Gensler and make the U.S. “the crypto capital of the planet.”
AI policy pushed some leaders farther still. As investments swelled and the need for computing power grew immense, many executives saw regulation as a brake on growth. Peter Leyden, a writer who has chronicled technology’s rise, described the moment plainly. “In terms of him as a human being or a visionary, nobody’s a big Trump fan,” he told me. “But then AI hits—it's game time. So they decided, ‘Fuck it, we’re gonna hook our tree to this crazy-ass Trump.’”
Marc Andreessen made that calculus explicit on podcasts and in essays. He railed at Biden’s positions on antitrust, AI policy, and corporate diversity, and complained about not getting a personal meeting. He framed the relationship between founders and the public as a pact: start a company, create value, and in return the world will write sympathetic obituaries and praise your philanthropy. He told New York Times columnist Ross Douthat that business leaders expected a cultural allowance for their politics. The idea angered those who saw the internet’s rising leaders as part of a community that had responsibility beyond shareholder returns. In July 2024 Andreessen and his partner Ben Horowitz declared they would donate to Trump.
Anger over workplace diversity programs and cultural policing found a receptive audience in some corners of the Valley. Trae Stephens, a general partner at Founders Fund and a cofounder of defense firm Anduril, said Democratic friends had not shifted parties but were exhausted by identity-focused politics. Sam Altman of OpenAI, who had long associated with the left, said on social media that politically he was “homeless.” He has spent a surprising amount of time around the president.
Zuckerberg’s turn drew attention because of its theatrical elements. I had interviewed him often during Trump’s first term and had seen a willingness to consider progressive humanitarian policies. In the past year he began to utter more favorable remarks about Trump. After the candidate survived an attack on the campaign trail and raised his fist, Zuckerberg called him a “badass.” Later Zuckerberg sat for long-form podcasts with Joe Rogan and visited Mar-a-Lago. A Meta executive told me Zuckerberg privately blamed his former COO Sheryl Sandberg for what he described as overzealous content moderation; Zuckerberg later denied such an accusation. Meanwhile, Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla are reportedly closing the East Palo Alto school they had supported.
“I see Mark as a political shape-shifter whose number one goal is the survival and thriving of the company,” one Meta executive said. “Trump is so transactional that you can fight him and get fucked, or you can try to work with him and get a percentage of what you want.”
Nick Clegg, who was Meta’s president of global affairs until early this year, offered a different framing of why many tech figures feel pulled toward Trump. “A lot of these guys find Trump very familiar,” he told me. “You go down to Mar-a-Lago, and he goes, ‘Let’s do a deal.’ That charm of Trump is incredibly intoxicating to Silicon Valley tech bros.”
Were the Biden-era regulatory moves a mistake? Tim Wu, who served in the administration as a special assistant on technology and competition, defended the approach. “I don’t think we screwed up on policy,” he said. “Our goal was to keep the tech industry healthy by forcing it to continue to innovate.”
The early months of 2025 showed how quickly regulatory relief can change incentives. The Trump White House rolled back several rules and framed an “America’s AI Action Plan” focused on global dominance and looser constraints. Crypto capitalists celebrated the fall of a regulatory opponent and the passage of legislation that codified aspects of their trade. Courts and agencies saw Trump appointees resist Department of Justice antitrust positions and greenlight mergers that had been blocked under the previous administration.
Not every CEO approached the White House with bowed heads. Jensen Huang of Nvidia led an aggressive charm offensive. At a time when export controls and trade with China were key issues, Huang traveled from Mar-a-Lago to Saudi Arabia, pledged large U.S. investments—$500 billion, by his estimate—and criticized Biden before congressional committees. Trump embraced Huang as an ally and eased some restrictions on chip exports. At a July AI summit the president introduced Huang and praised him. Huang, onstage, framed the country’s strength around the president: “America’s unique advantage that no other country could possibly have,” he said, “is President Trump.”
Power can be reciprocal. Huang later discovered the administration would take a share of gross sales to China, about 15 percent, and Trump moved to acquire a stake in Intel. The spectacle suggested that proximity to power can come with its own costs. Bradley Tusk, a longtime political operative for tech companies, warned that Trump’s approach undercuts the institutional framework that made American innovation possible. He listed independent markets, stable institutions, free speech, intellectual property, strong universities, and sensible immigration as pillars of U.S. tech success and said the president’s policies moved counter to all of them. “Trump is doing the opposite of every single one of those things,” Tusk said.
Immigration was especially fraught. The hosts of the All In podcast, a group of high-profile venture capitalists, included several people born overseas and have long argued that U.S. tech depends on foreign talent. Chamath Palihapitiya and David Sacks hosted a fundraiser with tickets that reportedly went up to $300,000. Sacks has since taken a formal role in the administration on AI and crypto policy. When Trump agreed in a podcast appearance to consider an automatic green card for any foreign student who finished a U.S. degree, venture capitalists rejoiced. Hours later the campaign distanced itself from the statement and the core MAGA base pushed back.
The administration’s on-again, off-again posture left recruiters and founders uncertain. The Department of Homeland Security floated a rule limiting student visas to four years, a period that would make doctoral study impractical and could prevent many students from finishing undergraduate degrees. Harj Taggar, a managing partner at Y Combinator, said the change had a chilling effect. International founders who had previously been eager to come now hesitated. Some applicants for YC’s programs told him they might pursue startup paths in London instead of the U.S. “They feel it’s maybe not as safe to be here,” Taggar said.
Cuts to federal science and research funding deepened alarm. Hornik warned that policies framed as punishing “woke-ism” risked hobbling the very innovation engine responsible for recent economic gains. “In the name of punishing woke-ism, we’re going to absolutely hobble the innovation engine that has created the economic gains of the last 50 years,” he told me.
That pattern—choosing short-term favor over institutional stability—mirrors behavior in countries where patronage replaces merit. Once power flows through presidential favors and ad hoc grabs rather than through law, winners are chosen for loyalty instead of performance. Zuckerberg had once pointed to the rule of law as a meaningful advantage for U.S. business, saying that at least the country offered a neutral framework for defending firms. The current environment tests that claim. Companies that thought they could trade influence for protection may find the balance tilted against them once personal ambitions of high office intrude.
The people I interviewed across the valley were mainly center-left and deeply dispirited. Many were reluctant to predict what might shake executives from their current posture. Some thought an electoral or economic shock could do it. Others offered half-formed hopes, like a small number of Republican senators unexpectedly asserting independence.
There is a different kind of civic remedy: a contingent of powerful executives deciding to stand up. Ten major CEOs could alter the incentives of the moment by refusing to play along. They could also choose to refuse contracts that would enable mass surveillance or to press for rules that protect privacy and public goods. A number of sources I spoke with suggested those options existed, even if the will was in short supply.
Maybe I was naive about the industry’s moral center. The founders I used to write about seemed fearless and idealistic, but I mistook their technological bravado for character. Michael Moritz pointed out that many leaders believe a transactional deal with Trump protects shareholder value. Tim Wu expressed a sharper critique: “I think they have made a bad deal,” he said. “Everyone who thought they could work some deal with Trump ends up getting burned, if not imprisoned.”
A reckoning could arrive. It might not. Wealthy executives have options beyond staying in a country that feels unstable. Reid Hoffman talks openly about contingency plans; one source told me he is pursuing Portuguese citizenship. That is a rational response to risk. It is, however, a loss for a place that once drew bright, hungry journalists and young entrepreneurs seeking a sense of possibility.
The valley that nurtured the personal computer and then the web was built on an odd mix of libertarianism, reformist zeal, and earnest optimism about tools. That spirit has frayed as concentration of wealth, political capture, and short-term calculation reshaped incentives. People I once saw as part of a rebellious culture now look more like participants in a system that trades long-term public goods for immediate security.
Sam Altman summed up an emergent feeling when he wrote that, politically, he was “homeless.” As I walked through streets that used to feel electric with promise, the absence of that energy was hard to shake. The people and places that once represented hope for broad social change now sit inside a tableau where access to power and the willingness to curry favor can matter more than invention itself.