What to expect from Trump’s techbromance

As Donald Trump prepares to start his second term as President, how will his new friendships with the leaders of Big Tech impact the policies of his administration

Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies, and former employer and early backer of Vice President elect J.D. Vance, has become a leading figure in what he calls a ‘ragtag rebel alliance’ that wants to sweep away the old order of politics. These rebels, deliberately compared by Thiel to Han Solo and his freedom fighter friends in the original Star Wars film, is being recruited from the legions of Big Tech and Donald Trump’s MAGA supporters. However, when you visit the massive office complexes in Palo Alto, California which are home to companies like Meta, they do feel more like a Death Star than the Mos Eisley Cantina.

The new techbromance between Donald Trump and entrepreneurs like Thiel, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg has been one of the most striking features of the transition from the Presidential election in November to the inauguration on 20^th January. Whilst these may turn out to be friendships of convenience, the leaders of the big tech companies clearly see an opportunity to reset policy both in America and around the world, in a way that is not only favourable to their commercial interests, but bad for their opponents. These are variously characterised as woke suppressors of free speech, the establishment media and meddling European regulators, who are attacking America with data protection, online safety and digital competition laws.

Thiel used an article in the Financial Times last week to state that such is the crisis of government in the western world today, that ‘the future demands fresh and strange ideas.’ His recommendation was for a South African style post-apartheid truth and reconciliation process to reveal and adjudicate ‘the sins of those who govern us today.’ He also called out what he believes is a ‘global war’ against free speech, complaining that America has done nothing for example, as the UK ‘arrested hundreds of people a year for online speech triggering, among other things “annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety.”’ That offence in law of harassing and menacing communications of course pre-dates social media, and the well-publicised arrests in the UK last summer were for using social media to incite violence and racial hatred, crimes which should be prosecuted both in the online and offline worlds.

Elon Musk uses free speech on his X platform to attack opponents with increasing ferocity but is far from forgiving when it’s directed back at him. Last year he used lawfare as a weapon against the Center for Countering Digital Hate as a consequence of research they’d produced showing an increase in hate speech on X, since Musk acquired the platform. In dismissing the case, the Judge accused the world’s richest man of ‘punishing the defendants for their speech.’ This is not surprising as X is not about promoting all free speech, but the views of Musk and those he agrees with. The user experience is now more about content selected by the platform being pushed at you, than engaging with friends, family and others with mutual interests. Opinions that clash with the prevailing mood of Musk and his friends are drowned out with abuse, leading to alternative voices being intimidated against either posting or being on the platform at all.

Mark Zuckerberg’s memory has obviously been affected by the conversion process he underwent at Trump’s southern White House, Mar-a-Lago in Florida, which turned him into a MAGA true believer. After announcing an end to fact checking on Meta platforms in America, alongside downgrading the recommendation of trusted news sources, Zuckerberg joined Joe Rogan on his podcast; something which has become a rite of passage for members of the techbromancy. Here Zuckerberg implied that the Biden Administration had directed US government agencies to launch a series of investigations against Facebook, as a form of retribution for the platform’s perceived failure to tackle Covid-19 disinformation. However, the Federal Trade Commission launched its legal action against Zuckerberg’s company for ‘illegally maintaining its personal social networking monopoly through a years-long course of anticompetitive conduct,’ during Donald Trump’s first term as President. This was a response to concerns about Zuckerberg’s kill, copy or acquire strategy against competitors, exemplified by his decision to effectively shut down Vine, the short-form video sharing app, because of its popularity with Facebook users. Zuckerberg’s argument that any challenge to the power of the Silicon Valley tech giants is an attack on America is a new but consistent theme. He told Joe Rogan that the $30billion of fines levied by the European Union against the American tech giants over the past two decades, should be treated like trade tariffs, rather than the charges for illegal activity that they represent. This follows his call for the new Trump administration to lead an international push back against tech regulation around the world.

The tech entrepreneur Marc Andreessen, who was also a major investor in Facebook, was correct with his prediction in November that the new relationship between Trump and Musk, would mark a turning back of the trust and safety investment of the social media platforms. This is presented as a pro-free speech initiative, when in reality it will just make it easier to flood the zone on Facebook and X with disinformation and hate speech. The virality of this content, also happens to be good for their engagement based and advertising funded business model. However, the ‘Little Tech Agenda’ launched last summer by Andreessen’s a16z venture capital firm, may offer some insights for the future direction of the Trump administration, particularly as Sriram Krishnan, the head of their London office, has been appointed as Trump’s AI policy advisor. Like Musk, Thiel and Zuckerberg, a16z’s ‘Little Tech Agenda’ called for a ‘whole-of-government program to drive the success of US technology companies globally, against a hostile China and a regulation-crazed EU.’ However, at its heart was a message that might get a mixed reception in some of the offices of the Big Tech companies – ‘the motto of every monopoly and cartel is, “We don’t care, because we don’t have to.” When this cycle is allowed to play out, when big companies can weaponize the government against startups, the result is stagnation and then decline.’ In response it recommends regulatory reform, open-source AI, embracing the opportunity for AI to modernise the economy and public services, blockchain technologies that could help creative businesses license their data and content to AI developers, and the enthusiastic backing of crypto-currency.

Sriram Krishnan, who previously worked both for Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, has raised his concerns that proposed AI safety regulation will not address any known or self-evident harms which can’t be tackled using existing law. Instead, his colleagues at a16z believe that the ‘true purpose’ of such regulation would be ‘to suppress open-source innovation and deter competitive startups.’ If this is the basis of US government policy, it leaves open the important issue of what powers can be used to intervene when there are legitimate safety, competition and copyright concerns about the use of AI. However the scepticism, even within the tech community, about whether we can trust AI developers to keep things safe and deal with the consequences if they occur, is a result of our experience of trying to engage with Big Tech. Users have legitimate concerns about child safety online, the rising tide of hate speech and disinformation, as well as harassment and incitement to violence. For years these concerns have been raised and as far as possible brushed off. Now, seeing the election of Trump as their get out of jail free card, tech leaders like Musk and Zuckerberg want to see a general row back on safety and competition regulation.

In Star Wars, the success of the Rebel Alliance was based on the fact that the Empire’s Death Star has a simple but fatal flaw. That failing is much more evident amongst the members of the techbromancy than the people they are squaring up to fight. They can use their billions to win political friends with campaign donations and try to marginalise what they call ‘legacy media’, but the regulation and legal actions they hate are a consequence of public concern rather than the private meddling of the old regime. Unless trust is rebuilt, those concerns won’t go away. The opportunity to accelerate the use of technology to reform public services and get the economy growing is huge, and it is innovators and entrepreneurs that build great companies, not governments. Peter Thiel may believe, as he often repeats, that ‘competition is for losers’, but we have long recognised that with the right policies in place, public safety and fair competition are essential components of long-term success.