Silicon Valley: Worker activism makes a comeback

Hours after a protester was shot dead by federal agents in Minnesota, a coterie of tech CEOs arrived at the White House for a movie night, said Mike Isaac and Natallie Rocha in The New York Times. Amazon’s Andy Jassy, Apple’s Tim Cook, AMD’s Lisa Su, and Zoom’s Eric Yuan were among those in Washington for a private screening of Melania, a new documentary about the first lady. It was a very different scene “back in Silicon Valley,” where horrified employees were publicly decrying the Trump administration’s immigration tactics. Their activism was reminiscent “of a bygone era” when tech workers were more outspoken. That’s disappeared in recent years, as Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jensen Huang, and others tried to “woo Trump” and “cracked down on employees expressing political views.” But the killing of Alex Pretti “has shaken the status quo.”

That Minnesota shooting “is beginning to look like a turning point,” said John Herrman in New York. More than 800 tech workers signed a petition calling for CEOs to demand that Trump remove Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from cities. Some employees are asking leadership to revisit agreements with companies like Palantir that build tech for ICE. Some leaders, like Cook and OpenAI’s Sam Altman, also appear to be “adjusting their self-preservation algorithms,” issuing statements that denounced the Minnesota shooting. It’s not quite 2017 again, but tech CEOs may start to question “if their herdlike investment in MAGA is going to pay off.”

It’s already paid off, said Lila Shroff in The Atlantic. Trump has given tech
leaders practically everything they’ve wanted, “including relaxed AI regulations and tariff exemptions.” There’s little reason “to believe Silicon Valley’s uppermost ranks will formally break with Trump” now. As midterms approach, “some appear to be doubling down on their support” by opening their fat wallets again for Republicans. “The groveling reads obviously as strategy”—a shortsighted notion that, because of their billions, they can “control Trump.”

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Tech CEOs risk eroding the “social permission” that has kept Silicon Valley alive, said Gautam Mukunda in Bloomberg. Already, their reputation is cratering: 32% of Americans now think that “Big Tech” is the greatest threat to the country’s future. The long-held idea that tech companies will make everyone wealthy is also fading. Rather, voters in California are “flirting with an explicitly punitive tax” on the wealth that tech CEOs and investors have amassed. “Social permission” is the “public tolerance that lets industries scale before legislators decide they need a tighter leash.” Silicon Valley has treated that license as an entitlement, but it needs to be earned.