With Musk at the helm, Silicon Valley leans to the right

Since his tumultuous purchase of Twitter, Elon Musk has taken a clear political turn to the right, challenging the tradition of Silicon Valley as a bastion of wealthy liberals committed to Democrats in USA.

Long considered someone without a defined political affiliation, Musk now displays a hardline right-wing vision. On his platform

A recent example was when Musk posted last week that President Joe Biden was importing immigrants for votes, laying the groundwork for “something much worse than 9/11,” a conspiracy theory circulating in far-right chat rooms.

But beyond his posts, what people are wondering is whether the second richest man in the world will use his influence and wealth to help Trump return to the White House.

Rumors grew when The New York Times reported that the two met with Republican donors in Florida last week.

In X, Musk insisted: “To be super clear, I am not donating to any candidate for president of USA”.

But election financing is opaque and complicated, and Biden’s backers are worried that Musk could change his mind or create political committees that fund Trump.

Techno-optimism

Musk is not alone, other Silicon Valley heavyweights also defend conservative causes in what remains a bastion of liberalism. In 2020, the pro-Trump vote in Silicon Valley was lower than 25%.

Some of its billionaires seek to build a political movement that, even without directly supporting Trump, embraces conservative ideas, cryptocurrencies and opposes the Californian trend.

Among the prevailing voices is Netscape founder Marc Andreessen, who now runs the major venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.

Once a typical center-left tech mogul, Andreessen is now a standard-bearer against progressive positions, especially those on equity and inclusion in business.

Last year, Andreessen presented a manifesto “techno-optimist” 5,200 words with a techno-utopian vision for the future that lists regulation and concerns about discrimination and equity among the enemies of technology.

Like many of its fellow investors, Andreessen’s company has invested heavily in cryptocurrencies and last year launched a political financing fund to cause problems for congressmen, Democrats or Republicans, who seek greater controls for that nascent industry.

For technology analyst Carolina Milanesi, this is less about imitating Musk and more about concerns about the demise of the status quo.

“When people talk about liberal and progressive policies, when you also talk about diversity, equality and inclusion, or if you’re talking about sustainability, all of those things are basically a threat to the status quo”Explain.

Musk calls it “progressive mental virus” and the fight against these ideas is what drives a successful podcast called “All-In”in which four technology heavyweights weigh in on the latest technological developments.

“Far Left” AI

With the advance of this conservative influence, technology companies concerned with diversity have been facing criticism, such as that generative artificial intelligence has become too “progressive”.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai himself came under fire after the newly released Gemini AI app generated images of ethnically diverse World War II German troops, among other historical errors.

“The people who run Google’s AI are smuggling in their preferences and biases, and those biases are extremely liberal.” said the podcast host “All-In” David Sacks in a segment he called “Google’s Progressive AI Disaster.”

Pichai said that these problems with his AI tool are “completely unacceptable” and its founder Sergey Brin stated: “We definitely screwed up” by generating those types of “far left” images.

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