Scattered among President Donald J. Trump's family members, his vice president, his Cabinet appointments and a handful of his billionaire donors on Monday were a few key faces that sent a clear signal: Big Tech is in the president’s inner circle.
Behind Ivanka and Donald Jr., a pouf of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s strawberry-blonde curls could be seen. Second Lady Usha Vance and Barron Trump provided a similar framing for Elon Musk, the Tesla, X and SpaceX multibillionaire who spent a quarter-billion dollars on Trump’s reelection. Apple CEO Tim Cook, who donated $1 million to the inauguration, sat in front of billionaire entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, the former GOP presidential primary candidate and co-chair of DOGE who is leaving that position to run for Ohio governor.
Billionaire Jeff Bezos, head of Amazon, The Washington Post and rocket company Blue Origin, joined them. So did CEO Sundar Pichai and TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, a day after Trump's pledge to help the China-based app remain in the U.S. (and four years after Trump tried to ban it in the final months of his first term).
To the millions of Americans watching, as well as to Congress, the scene sent a clear signal that the industry Trump once called "dividing and divisive" is now in his good graces. "They have even better seats than Trump's own cabinet picks. That says it all," Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., posted on X.
How long the cozy relationship between tech’s most influential execs and the mercurial president will last is anyone's guess. But those in the industry are hoping it leads to the relaxing of regulations that stifled innovation, they say, particularly in the growing sector of AI.
Chris Farmer, CEO of SignalFire, a venture capital and technology firm based in San Francisco, told the ABC affiliate there that antitrust laws, higher taxes and overregulation have held back progress. Trump has promised to dismantle AI guardrails that President Joe Biden put in place last year.
We need your help to stay independent
Farmer says a clear governing framework is needed, such as "what can and can't be done with AI."
"That helps the whole ecosystem know where it's okay to play ball and where it's not," Farmer told the TV station.
Trump attacked Big Tech throughout much of his first term for what he perceived as online bias against conservatives. His attempts to reduce content moderation on social media stalled in late 2020 as GOP regulators questioned the legality of them.
After Facebook and Twitter (now X) banned him from their platforms following the Jan. 6, 2021 U.S. Capitol attack, Trump called it "a horrible thing for our country." Last March, he deemed Facebook "an enemy of the people." Trump also took aim at Twitter, which has since been purchased by Musk and renamed X; the company scaled back its content moderation following the acquisition.
Still, it hasn’t all been rosy between Trump and Big Tech in recent months. After his reelection, Trump signaled he wouldn’t rule out antitrust enforcement — a particularly sore spot for Google.
Trump has also named three critics of the growing power of tech giants to lead the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice’s antitrust division. But rather than lobbing criticisms at tech’s monolithic presence in Americans’ lives, they specifically take aim at tech companies' content moderation policies, framing their restrictions on certain forms of hate speech and harassment as free speech violations.
Brendan Carr, selected as the FCC's leader, vowed to "dismantle the censorship cartel" in a post on X. Andrew Ferguson, chosen by Trump to lead the FTC, made a similar post: "At the FTC, we will end Big Tech’s vendetta against competition and free speech."
"The more worrisome prospect is that these titans of new industry will be looked to as sources for governmental or political reform, the theory being that what works for Silicon Valley will work in Washington"
Such an approach would be a turnaround from the Biden administration, which regulated the industry but stayed away from debates over free speech, censorship and content.
To curry favor with the incoming administration, Zuckerberg and Bezos have both traveled to Mar-a-Lago and made Trump-friendly adjustments to their businesses.
Meta gave $1 million to Trump’s inauguration, and Zuckerberg co-hosted a black-tie inauguration party on Monday. He ended fact-checking on Meta's Facebook and Instagram platforms earlier this month, rolling back restrictions "on topics like immigration, gender identity and gender."
Amazon gave $1 million to the inauguration and reportedly spent $40 million to secure the rights to produce and stream a documentary about Melania Trump. Bezos pulled the plug on his newspaper's drafted endorsement of Kamala Harris and said it would no longer endorse presidential candidates.
It's an "age-old practice" for powerful businesspeople to cozy up to an incoming president with expectations to benefit, either in terms of shaping governmental policies or advancing their own interests, said Russell Riley, co-chair of the University of Virginia's Miller Center's Presidential Oral History Program.
"The more worrisome prospect is that these titans of new industry will be looked to as sources for governmental or political reform, the theory being that what works for Silicon Valley will work in Washington," Riley said. "My fear as an American institutionalist is that the political adventurers are both untrained in the intricacies of our political order and insufficiently attentive to the structural damage they can do by seeking to hotwire the system to get a quick and efficient outcome they desire."
Shares