Silicon Valley has officially gone MAGA. As evidence, the co-founders of Andreessen Horowitz, one of the most influential venture capital firms in the tech industry, have quietly announced that they will be sending large sums of money to the Trump team.
Marc Andreessen and his longtime business partner Ben Horowitz are both planning to contribute an undisclosed amount of money to the Trump campaign, according to people familiar with the situation. told The Information (Axios later confirmed). This is apparently the first time either of them has contributed to a presidential candidate’s campaign. Both men are among a growing number of Silicon Valley tech executives who have recently expressed support for Trump, a surprising turnaround for those who may have considered the tech industry a predominantly liberal town.
However, it seems that the main motivating factor is economics, not ideology. told Axios that Andreessen and Horowitz are looking for the leader they believe will be most conducive to their business interests and that the donations are therefore “driven by areas like cryptography and AI regulation, without regard to other issues like abortion or the Supreme Court.”
It may be difficult to understand at first why anyone would think Trump is an ideal candidate in this regard. After all, the billionaire has already said he was “not a fan” of cryptocurrencies and has, for the most part, appeared to have little interest in artificial intelligence, except to occasionally claim that his campaign has made gaffes. were the result of thisIn recent months, however, the Trump campaign has shifted its focus on technology issues significantly, aligning itself more with the core interests of Silicon Valley.
Indeed, Trump recently suggested that he would throw Biden’s relatively mild executive order on AI issued last year, which aims to unblock the floodgates in AI developmentwhich allows big tech names like Andreessen to pursue their stupid goal of “techno-optimism.” Trump, whose campaign recently reaped a small in Dogecoin donationshas also turned to cryptography and is scheduled to deliver a speech At a Bitcoin conference in Nashville later this month. Could the influx of cash from tech industry coffers and this sudden ideological pivot have something to do with each other? I’ll leave that up to you to decide, dear reader.
Marc Andreessen’s support for Trump, on the other hand, seems pretty straightforward. Indeed, the two men get along well. Aside from the idiot, manifesto filled with greed on capitalism and technology that he published last year, Andreessen has recently focused on supporting nationalist movements, Pro-American defense startups. This all seems very much in line with the MAGA worldview, which, in general, is pro-defensepro-deregulationand of course, the pro-rich people (just look those trump tax cuts). Andreessen and his team want someone who won’t interfere at all with the more ridiculous ambitions of their industry, and right now Trump seems to fit that profile.
Even less surprising is that Elon Musk, Silicon Valley’s most prominent billionaire, now appears to be pouring an absurd amount of money into a PAC aimed at electing Trump. The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday reported that Musk would begin distributing “$45 million a month” to America PAC, a political action committee that, as the New York Times reports reportedwas founded by some of Elon Musk’s “closest friends,” the newspaper cites “people familiar with the matter” as evidence.
On Tuesday, Elon Musk appeared to disavow the report, tweeting a meme in response to the article that read: “FAKE GNUS.” However, when a commenter on the post said that Musk had gone “from an Obama voter to pledging $180 million to elect DJT,” Musk responded: “Yeah.” Elon’s apparent conversion has been a long and noisy process, filled with many red flags. One of the most significant of those red flags was Elon Musk’s decision in 2022 to buy Twitter, rename it Xand efficiently convert it into a scaled version of 4chanSince then, Musk has used the platform to propagate a stream of far-right conspiracy theories, anti-woke diatribes, and stupid, pro-capitalist musings — an ideological current that, for the most part, is highly compatible with Trump’s base. I’ve been friends with Trump for a long time.but he also has clearly despises Biden and on Saturday, after the assassination attempt on Trump, Musk officially endorsed Trump for president.
The same PAC that was founded by Musk’s friends (and reportedly receives funding from Musk) is also backed by a number of high-profile tech industry moguls, including the co-founder of Creepy Palantir, defense contractor Joe Lonsdale and the two idiots who want to get screwed on Facebook, the Winklevoss twins, the Journal writes. In short: prominent members of Silicon Valley’s power elite have has officially joined the ranks of the MAGA faithful. In addition to the economic interests at stake, various social panics in the rarified confines of the San Francisco Bay Area could also be at play. Given the outrage in San Francisco over homelessness, “wokeness,” and Biden’s “hostile” approach to business interests, I wouldn’t be surprised if this is just the beginning.
