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West Palm Beach, FL - November 6 : Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles listen as Republican presidential ...
[+] nominee former President Donald Trump speaks after being declared the winner during an election night watch party at the Palm Beach County Convention Center in West Palm Beach, Florida in the early hours of Wednesday, Nov. 06, 2024. (Photo by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images) Albeit to varying degrees, most of the major players in Silicon Valley have thrown their support behind President-elect Trump.
Big tech benefits from big data, big markets, and big government support. The sector’s playbook is inherently global – even “globalist.” At times, it even intersects with the nation non grata of Trumpism: China.
Trump’s orbit increasingly includes Silicon Valley elites who have managed to overlook the populist rhetoric that is plainly not aimed at them and aggressively embrace the anti-oversight posture that so plainly is. But they are not his only supporters with ties to big tech firms that would seem to fly in the face of the MAGA pitch. Susie Wiles, who will serve as Trump’s Chief of Staff, served as co-chair of Mercury Public Affairs until she started working for his 2024 campaign.
Mercury is a lobbying firm with clients in industries like big tobacco, junk food, and Chinese technology firms . The Chinese video surveillance company Hikvision has paid Wiles’ former employer $5.5 million since 2015, according to Department of Justice filings.
Hikvision is known for supplying surveillance tech to authorities in Xinjiang province, who have used it to target the Uighur ethnic minority. Last year, Amnesty International found the company’s surveillance equipment was also being used in the West Bank. For these and other reasons, Hikviison has been blacklisted in the United States.
The Commerce Department barred U.S. firms from cooperating with Hikvision during Trump’s first term.
But Mercury appears to have circumvented that constraint by contracting with the company’s U.S. division.
Samsung Confirms New Upgrade Choice—Millions Of Galaxy Owners Must Now Decide One Of The Best Netflix Shows Ever Made Is Back For Season 2 Today Best Buy Slashes Samsung Galaxy S24 Price In New Sale Wiles isn’t the only person in Trump’s orbit who worked at Mercury, despite the firm’s clash with Trump’s policy agenda. In 2018, the Trump administration banned Chinese telecom firm ZTE from buying American equipment. ZTE then hired Mercury to fight the ban; Bryan Lanza, a former Trump campaign staffer, contacted White House officials to lobby on behalf of the Chinese firm.
Yet such conflicts are not what Trump is referring to when he talks about “the enemy from within.” In the long term, it may prove difficult to conceal the flagrant incongruity between MAGA’s message of isolationism and the “globalist” business dealings that Trump’s high-level staff embody. That group includes Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of SpaceX, Tesla, X, and other tech ventures.
He has earned his MAGA credentials by talking about the liberal “threat” to free speech and publicly rejecting his own daughter because she is trans. But Musk is not the only far-right ultra-wealthy tech personality to throw his weight behind Trump. Peter Thiel, the conservative founder of defense tech company Palantir , has supported Trump since the start.
His anti-regulatory motives are evident. For their part, Silicon Valley venture capitalists Mark Andreessen and Ben Horowitz each donated $2.5 million to Trump.
“Some of these guys see Trump as their ‘get out of jail free’ card,” Jacob Silverman, author of the forthcoming book Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley , said in the run-up to the election. They imagine a second Trump term means they are free from Department of Justice investigations into their companies, antitrust suits from FTC Chair Lina Khan, and even criminal exposure in areas such as securities fraud. Trump, Silverman said, is viewed as willing to pardon these men and “make their problems go away.
” Billionaires have GDP-sized wallets, and yet they want more. They feel their innovative potential has been limited by Democrats. They hope Trump’s governing style of crass absenteeism will lengthen their leashes.
Some Trump voters might eventually be turned off by his pandering to plutocrats. Even if they are, it likely will not have electoral relevance in 2028..
