REDWOOD CITY, California—In a place normally preoccupied with drafting code and dazzling investors, suddenly everyone in Silicon Valley has an opinion about the presidential election. And it tends to be the same opinion.
The innovation economy has a serious distaste for Donald Trump. The masters of this world complain that his ignorance about their work and its relationship to the global economy is horrifying. Rank-and-file programmers are quick to call him a clown, or worse.
The unity is notable in an environment where group-think is frowned upon and nobody ever seems to color inside ideological lines.
Trump has practically written a playbook on how not to court this well-heeled group that other politicians seem desperate to shower with affection.
Ambitious start-up chief executives who swore off talking politics for fear of offending investors are enlisting in campaigns to discredit Trump. Longtime valley Republican stalwarts who have voted for every GOP nominee for decades say they can’t do it this year. The libertarian-minded innovators who just want to get government out of their way have less faith in Trump than they do in even Hillary Clinton, the Democrat with big plans to grow the bureaucracy.
“At least Clinton is not going to go in and burn the place down,” said Reed Galen, a GOP consultant who advises tech companies. “But Trump comes in, and God knows what happens.”
The grievances that innovation leaders have with Trump are almost too many to list. They are baffled by an immigration policy that they warn would be disastrous for their work force. Trump’s trade agenda, they say, threatens to tear apart global business relationships crucial to tech-industry success. The candidate’s threat to boycott Apple as it tussled with law enforcement over encryption technology will not soon be forgotten.
Chortles
JUST last week, Trump drew yet more chortles with his suggestion that the tech sector was a financial house of cards poised for collapse.
“He has pushed me over the edge,” said Vivek Wadhwa, a highly respected technology entrepreneur and academic who has always avoided engaging in politics, save for the time he spent $500 to dine with another prominent Indian-American, former Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal. (Wadhwa said the event was a waste of time.) “It was unimaginable for me to say this even two weeks ago, but I am going to become very vocal and campaign against him. I feel too strongly not to get involved.”
When it was revealed this month that one of the valley’s most successful entrepreneurs, Peter Thiel, had signed on as a California delegate for Trump ahead of the state’s June 7 primary, the backlash against him was brutal. The buzz in the valley was that Thiel had gone off the rails.
“I’m utterly ashamed we have him as an investor,” wrote Paul Carr, the editorial director of the tech news site Pando. The headline called Thiel a jerk, only in coarser language.
The usual valley liberals are, of course, piling on against Trump. But the uneasiness of many conservative free-marketeers in the tech world has touched off speculation about which of them are primed to start writing checks for Clinton. TNS
3 comments
The term Silicon Valley is sooooo yesterday, and conjures up visions of thousands of H-1B workers that stole American jobs. Yay. Nothing to be proud of.
Of course foreigners took American jobs, because Americans are too busy watching football and drinking beer, while the rest of the world either tries to feed itself or studies hard for good jobs. Nothing to be proud being a lazy fat American
That is truly the reply of a rude, discourteous, ungrateful, obnoxious human being. I hope you do not reside in the USA. Stay where you can practice your illegal, predatory and,nefarious activities disrupting the lives of your countrymen. May God have mercy on your soul.