All hail the Tech Right: Why Trump’s new bromances are even worse than the last

One of the main questions asked when Donald Trump was elected in 2016 was how he would govern, and to whom would he listen? Eight years on, the same questions have resurfaced.

Eight years ago, Trump surrounded himself with the likes of Steve Bannon, Roger Stone, Chris Christie, Michael Cohen and John Bolton to name just a few who have since fallen out of favour. Populists, right-wing provocateurs and wagon-hitchers willing to go along for the ride to find their own spotlight they may have been, but they also were well versed in politics.

Trump’s leading tech bros: Peter Thiel, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.Credit: Artwork: Monique Westermann

This time around, it’s set to be a different story. Though Trump has pulled together a much more seasoned group of Republican political operatives, reflecting his total control over the party, he’s also brought in a new group of disruptors: the tech bros.

Over the past six months, the rise of the so-called Tech Right has been meteoric. Just a decade ago, the titans of Silicon Valley were generally considered to be left-leaning, in favour of skilled migration, regulation and transparency. Elon Musk publicly supported Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, and following the Capitol attack on January 6, Mark Zuckerberg and then-Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey banned Trump from their platforms.

Now, the Tech Right is ascendant. Led by Peter Thiel, a libertarian Silicon Valley billionaire who endorsed Trump in 2016 and brought many of the titans to his doorstep at Mar-a-Lago, they have seemingly found a fellow traveller in Trump – a man willing to break the rules to get what he wants, who also has a zeal for deregulation.

The most visible of Thiel’s disciples is certainly Musk, who, alongside biotech billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy, is set to co-run the Department of Government Efficiency (named after Musk’s favourite crypto coin, DOGE). Questions aside about the efficiency of having two department heads, Musk is poised to take his Silicon Valley “A-Team” with him to Washington – a mix of long-time deputies and engineering experts from his various companies, as well as his financial backers and ideological partners.

This includes people such as hedge fund billionaires David Sacks and Bill Ackman, and long-time staffers Steve Davis, Omead Afshar and Jared Birchall. Musk has also reportedly recommended at least three other SpaceX employees to Trump for senior government positions, which are yet to be confirmed.

Other Trump appointments include Jared Isaacman – a billionaire astronaut who has worked with Musk on SpaceX projects – as administrator of NASA, and fintech chief executive Frank Bisignano as social security administration commissioner.

Then, of course, there’s Thiel’s mentee, vice president-elect J.D. Vance, who spent five years in Silicon Valley working as a venture capitalist before moving into politics.

As Trump’s former chief of staff Mick Mulvaney recently noted, “the level of sophistication on the issues is so far beyond what it was in 2017 … This is not going to look anything like it did in 2017. This is going to be Trump 1.0 on steroids.”

Of the 4000 political appointments to top jobs across the US government Trump is set to make in coming weeks and months, you can guarantee more will come from this world.

These are the people who will spend the next four years deciding whether to bring antitrust lawsuits or enforce consumer protections and whether to increase or ease AI regulations. They will be responsible for settling Musk’s feuds with multiple agencies, including the National Labor Relations Board, the Federal Communications Commission (which revoked a $US886 million SpaceX deal in 2022), and the Federal Aviation Administration, which in the past year alone fined SpaceX $US633,009.

These are the people who will decide which public projects are axed, which departments do “worthwhile” work, which social protections are of value and which are “red tape”, and how many of the 2.8 million Americans working for the federal government will be laid off.

There is value in shaking up the rusty bureaucratic machine of government to make it work better. But changes should be for public improvement, not to serve the ideological or economic interests of a handful of billionaires who believe that their genius will be the saviour of democracy.

The Silicon Valley ideology can be readily understood if you read any of Ayn Rand’s work. In this world, selfishness is a good thing; the technologies made by its adherents have the power to save the world, and anyone who gets in the way is an enemy of progress.

In this world view, democracy is a disposable byproduct. It’s nice to have, but not at the expense of technological progress. It is the kind of simplistic, doctrinaire mindset most people adopt during university and grow out of by their mid-20s.

While Trump’s first posse may have tested democracy through its sheer chaos, the new guard present a much wider and longer-term threat that expands well beyond America.

Many of the technological innovations and advances to come out of Silicon Valley are doing great things and have moved the world forward. But progress can happen at the same time as protections. Technology can be transparent and accountable. But that requires companies to do more work, and it will require establishing and enforcing regulations in the public interest.

Given that so few legislators in any country seem up to the task of understanding how major tech companies work, or the ideology that surrounds them, this seems unlikely – even less so now that those creating the programs have just been given the keys to the policy castle.

Cory Alpert is a PhD researcher at the University of Melbourne looking at the impact of artificial intelligence on democracy. He served in the Biden-Harris administration for three years.

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