Elon Musk leads parade of tech titans switching to Trump

A shocking party-political shift is taking place in the stratosphere of tech titans: The industry known for its “wokeness” is betting big money on a Republican.

Last week, former President Donald Trump greenlighted the idea of ​​teaming up with billionaire innovator Elon Musk if he wins in November. Hours later, Musk posted a message on X: “I am ready to serve.”

Elon Musk as Secretary of Commerce? Or perhaps as representative of the newly created Free Speech Czar?

Regardless of whether Musk actually joins a Trump administration – Trump himself said on Sunday that the mogul is probably too busy for that but could “consult” – his bold moves to support Republicans signal a shift.

Musk voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020. Yet last month he launched a pro-Trump super PAC that he and several other tech moguls are funding — even though Trump, if he wins a second term, is likely to eliminate government subsidies for electric vehicles, a key industry for Musk.

Investor and “Shark Tank” star Mark Cuban called the phenomenon of tech bosses supporting Trump “crazy.”

Not really: While Democrats tried hard to make “freedom” the theme of their convention last week, tech leaders are betting that freedom of speech, freedom of innovation, and freedom from oppressive government regulations and confiscatory taxes are more likely to be expected under a Trump administration than a Kamala Harris administration.

Among these Silicon Valley heavyweights is Nicole Shanahan, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s vice presidential candidate.

“I would say I have more confidence in the future of this country under the leadership of Trump … than I do currently under Harris,” Shanahan said last week as Kennedy weighed his decision to support Trump in the race.

Harris' economic plans, Shanahan warned – “especially her flawed ideas on food price caps” – resembled “the same policies that caused the famine my family suffered in Mao's communist China.”

The RNC's platform, largely dictated by Trump himself, promises tax cuts and deregulation and describes innovators as national treasures.

In contrast, the Democrats' 2024 platform demonizes corporations as greedy profiteers who do not pay “their fair share” and proposes raising the corporate tax rate to 28 percent and increasing taxes on capital gains.

Andreessen Horowitz, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm, said in December that it would decide who to support as a presidential candidate based on a single issue: “If a candidate supports an optimistic, technology-enabled future, we are with him. If he wants to kill off important technologies, we are against him.”

The company described “bad government policies” as the biggest threat to its industry.

Trump has expressed his enthusiasm for new technologies and even promised to “put America first in AI.”

In July, Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, managing directors of the investment firm, switched sides and supported Trump, declaring that the Republican would reduce regulation and cut taxes.

When Trump chose his vice presidential candidate, JD Vance, a venture capitalist with Silicon Valley experience, technology entrepreneurs applauded.

PayPal founder David Sacks supports Trump and even spoke at the Republican National Convention. Palantir Technologies co-founder Joe Lonsdale and cryptocurrency kings Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss donate to Musk's America PAC to support Trump.

Of course, the technology industry is an industry like any other: it is concerned about how the government might harm the business environment.

Expect more technology leaders to switch sides if Harris and Walz come up with policy proposals as misguided as those we have seen so far, such as price controls.

Big tech companies are responding to bad economic policies at all levels, not just the federal level.

The same political metamorphosis that made Trump a tech giant also led thousands of companies to flee California's high taxes and excessive regulations and move to Texas, trading “woke” for “business-friendly.”

Austin, the state capital, has become a technology hub nicknamed “Silicon Hills.” Musk recently announced that he would move his Companies X and Space X to Texas.

But Musk is more than a titan of Silicon Valley – he is also an advocate of free speech.

Last month, he had to confront an EU bureaucrat who objected that Musk's uncensored two-hour conversation with Trump on topic X could lead to “disinformation.”

“Take a big step back,” Musk replied in a cheeky meme after sharply criticizing the bureaucrat for his “alarming disregard for free speech.”

Musk recently shut down X in Brazil for failing to comply with government censorship there. X is suspended in Venezuela for refusing to remove posts denouncing dictator Nicolás Maduro's false claims of victory.

Ending government censorship is one of Republicans' top priorities. The Biden-Harris administration has deployed agencies from the FBI to the Department of Health and Human Services to pressure social media to do the government's bidding. The RNC platform promises that federal interference will stop.

Musk wants to “promote the principles that made America great in the first place,” and cites meritocracy and free speech as some of the core ideas his America PAC is pushing.

They are not on Harris' agenda – another reason why money from the technology industry is flowing to Trump.

You don't need AI to figure that out.

Betsy McCaughey is a former Lieutenant Governor of New York.