It’s
Silicon Valley vs. Silicon Valley as Political Fights Escalate
Elon Musk,
Reid Hoffman and other tech billionaires, many of whom are part of the “PayPal
Mafia,” are openly brawling with one another over politics as tensions rise.
Ryan MacErin Griffith Mike
Isaac
By Ryan MacErin Griffith and Mike Isaac
Ryan Mac reported from Los Angeles, and Erin Griffith and
Mike Isaac from San Francisco.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/29/technology/silicon-valley-politics-elon-musk-reid-hoffman.html
July 29, 2024
Updated 11:05 a.m. ET
Less than an hour after a gunman in Butler, Pa., tried to
assassinate Donald J. Trump this month, David Sacks, a venture capitalist based
in San Francisco, directed his anger about the incident toward a former
colleague.
“The Left normalized this,” Mr. Sacks wrote on X, linking to
a post about Reid Hoffman, a technology investor and major Democratic donor.
Mr. Sacks implied that Mr. Hoffman, a critic of Mr. Trump who had funded a
lawsuit accusing the former president of rape and defamation, had helped cause
the shooting.
Elon Musk, who leads SpaceX and Tesla and previously worked
with Mr. Sacks and Mr. Hoffman, then weighed in on X, name-checking Mr. Hoffman
and saying people like him “got their dearest wish.”
In Silicon Valley, the spectacle of tech billionaire
attacking tech billionaire has suddenly exploded, as pro-Trump executives and
their Democratic counterparts have openly turned on each other. The brawling
has spilled into public view online, at conferences and on podcasts, as debates
about the country’s future have turned into personal broadsides.
The animus has pit those who once worked side by side and
attended each other’s weddings against one another, fraying friendships and
alliances that could shift Silicon Valley’s power centers. The fighting has
been particularly acute among the “PayPal Mafia,” a wealthy group of tech
executives — including Mr. Hoffman, Mr. Musk, Mr. Sacks and the investor Peter
Thiel — who worked together at the online payments company in the 1990s and
later founded their own companies or turned into high-profile investors.
Other tech leaders have also been pulled into the political
spats, including Vinod Khosla, a prominent investor, and Marc Andreessen and
Ben Horowitz of the Silicon Valley venture firm Andreessen Horowitz.
Their unabashed vitriol is stark. While tech leaders often
criticize one another in private, they rarely do so publicly for fear of
upsetting a potential deal partner or future job prospect.
“Until a year or two ago, there was something like an omertà
in Silicon Valley,” said Roger McNamee, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist,
using a word popularized by the Italian mafia for a code of silence. “People
had fights all the time and leaders would disagree, but you wouldn’t disagree
in public.”
Mr. McNamee jumped into the rumpus on Wednesday by calling
out Mr. Andreessen and Mr. Horowitz, who both recently endorsed Mr. Trump, for
their “antidemocratic” values on X. Mr. McNamee had previously invested in a
company that Mr. Horowitz led.
Mr. Horowitz shot back on Thursday, invoking his 25-year
business relationship with Mr. McNamee. “Really Roger?” Mr. Horowitz wrote.
“Your very first idea when we disagree is to attack me in a tweet?”
The altercations show how Silicon Valley’s identity is
fragmenting. For years, the nation’s tech capital was seen as a liberal
bastion. But Mr. Sacks, Mr. Musk, Mr. Andreessen and Mr. Horowitz all broke
from that view by endorsing Mr. Trump in recent weeks.
Many of them were unhappy with President Biden’s tech
policies and regulatory appointees, who have pursued more rules and lawsuits
against tech companies. They prefer Mr. Trump for his push to lower taxes and
his support for the cryptocurrency industry, which some of the tech
billionaires have invested in.
“There’s been shaming and canceling on the left for some
time,” said Trevor Traina, a Republican in San Francisco who served as
ambassador to Austria during Mr. Trump’s presidency and is close to Mr. Sacks
and Mr. Hoffman. “And now you’re starting to hear strong voices on the right in
Silicon Valley.”
Democratic tech executives and investors have countered that
Mr. Trump is not good for tech. They say Mr. Trump and his allies have talked
about throwing Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, in prison;
suggested breaking up big tech companies; and proposed strict immigration
policies, which could hinder the industry’s hiring of skilled workers.
Mr. Hoffman, Mr. Thiel and an Andreessen Horowitz
representative declined to comment. Mr. Sacks and Mr. Musk did not respond to
requests for comment.
Political tensions began escalating into personal attacks
last month after Mr. Sacks held an ornate fund-raiser for Mr. Trump in San
Francisco. Days later, Mr. Hoffman, who gave at least $10 million to bolster
President Biden’s campaign, chided Mr. Sacks in a blog post for following
“pro-Trump groupthink” and backing “a convicted felon.”
At a conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, this month, Mr.
Hoffman got into a heated exchange with Mr. Thiel, who has funded Republicans,
according to a person briefed on the conversation. The longtime friends
bickered over Mr. Hoffman’s stance against Mr. Trump, leading Mr. Hoffman to
sarcastically say that he wished he had made the former president “an actual
martyr,” the person said. The exchange was reported earlier by Puck.
After the assassination attempt on Mr. Trump, Mr. Sacks and
Mr. Musk used Mr. Hoffman’s words to criticize their former colleague. Mr.
Hoffman responded last week by pointing out that some current supporters of Mr.
Trump, including Mr. Sacks, had disavowed Mr. Trump in 2021 after the Jan. 6
riot at the U.S. Capitol.
“If you have integrity and you’re supporting Trump in this
election, you should address that,” Mr. Hoffman said in a podcast appearance on
Wednesday.
This month, Mr. Sacks shared a list of pro-Trump techies on
X and spoke at the Republican National Convention, which grated on Democratic
tech investors and entrepreneurs, said Siri Srinivas, an investor at Gradient
Ventures. After President Biden withdrew from the race and Vice President
Kamala Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee, many of those
investors and entrepreneurs were energized and felt more emboldened to speak
out, she said.
“Weeks of private hand-wringing likely helped many to
urgently and emphatically show their support for Harris and opposition to
Trump,” Ms. Srinivas said. On Tuesday, she mimicked Mr. Sacks’s list by posting
a roster of the industry’s Harris supporters on X.
Mr. Sacks has since continued his verbal attacks, taking aim
last week at Reed Hastings, a Netflix founder who is a major Democratic donor.
On X, Mr. Sacks called Mr. Hastings a “useful idiot” for supporting the
Democratic Party.
Mr. Hastings did not respond to a request for comment.
Some tech luminaries have stayed out of the fray, including
Mr. Zuckerberg. In 2016 when Mr. Trump was elected, Mr. Zuckerberg posted on
his Facebook page that “progress does not move in a straight line,” alluding to
Mr. Trump without naming him. But this time, the Meta chief has not talked
about politics.
The exception was an interview with Bloomberg this month, in
which Mr. Zuckerberg complimented Mr. Trump’s “fist-pump” moment after the
assassination attempt. Mr. Zuckerberg’s decision to take a less vocal approach
to politics could improve strained relationships in Washington and potentially
with Mr. Trump if he is elected, two people familiar with the discussions said.
A Meta spokesman declined to comment.
Some tech entrepreneurs are reacting to the politicking.
Merci Grace, a start-up founder in San Francisco, said she felt “betrayed” by
Mr. Andreessen’s and Mr. Horowitz’s endorsements of Mr. Trump and would not
work with their venture firm. Ms. Grace, who supports abortion rights and once
had surgery after a life-threatening ectopic pregnancy, said she opposed the
stance against abortion from JD Vance, Mr. Trump’s running mate.
“The way in which Ben and Marc are claiming they’re
single-issue voters for Trump is so galling to me, because men have been
throwing that line in my face for years as a way to dismiss the life-or-death
stakes of abortion access,” Ms. Grace said, referring to the investors’ support
of Mr. Trump because of what they said were his pro-tech policies. “Yes, I’m a
single issue voter, too. Being alive is my issue.”
But Mr. Khosla, who supports Ms. Harris, said the fights
over politics would not leave lasting fractures in the tech industry, where
innovation ultimately reigns supreme.
“I’ll work with almost anyone if what I’m working on can
change the world,” he said.
Ryan Mac covers corporate accountability across the global
technology industry. More about Ryan Mac
Erin Griffith covers tech companies, start-ups and the
culture of Silicon Valley from San Francisco. More about Erin Griffith
Mike Isaac is a technology correspondent for The Times based
in San Francisco. He regularly covers Facebook and Silicon Valley. More about
Mike Isaac
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