At this point it should come as no surprise, but NBC news is reporting that Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos will attend the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump on January 20.
What do all these technology leaders have in common? All have come out publicly with varying degrees of support for Trump’s incoming administration, and all three have donated money to his campaign or inauguration. It represents a major turnaround from Trump’s first inauguration, when the tech industry shunned him and eventually dropped him entirely after the Jan. 6 Capitol riots.
Zuckerberg, in particular, ended up having a rather acrimonious relationship with Trump, who threatened him with prison over his stance on moderating conservative content, but now feels better with him because Zuckerberg promised loosen content restrictions on Meta’s platforms, got rid of the company’s DEI programs and installed an outspoken Republican to lead its political arm. Bezos, as the owner The Washington Posthe regularly received criticism from Trump on his first tour and saw the possibility of raising USPS prices charged to Amazon in retaliation for his newspaper’s coverage.
Meta and Amazon donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration, and Elon Musk of course spent money aggressively in Trump’s re-election campaign. He will help reduce government spending through the DOGE, or Department of Government Efficiency, and has asked to hire more people from the tech sector to staff the initiative.
According to NBCthe three tech leaders will sit “on a platform near cabinet officials and elected leaders.”
What is perhaps most remarkable about Silicon Valley’s turn toward Trump is how open it all is. While in the past an investigative reporter might have had to do some digging to uncover pay-to-play schemes, here none of the tech leaders are hiding what they’re up to. They are taking every possible step to get on Trump’s good side, prevent any attacks he might provoke, and perhaps get preferential treatment for lucrative defense contracts. And this despite the fact that technical employees usually are much more liberal than their employers. But these leaders must realize that the pros of supporting Trump outweigh the cons. Especially now that the tech industry has gone through mass layoffs in recent years, ordinary engineers don’t have the power they once had.