Tech CEOs are just postponing their Trump 2.0 reckoning

In Silicon Valley, a million bucks doesn’t exactly count as vast riches. Still, it’s a nice, round figure pregnant with symbolic value. And so it meant something when major tech companies and their leaders lined up to donate that amount to Donald Trump’s fund for his second inauguration.

Members of the Trump $1 Million Club include Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Uber, and—via personal donations—Tim Cook, Sam Altman, and Uber’s Dara Khosrowshahi, the last of whom matched his company’s corporate gift. The gifts were in line with the flurry of congratulations offered by tech executives after Trump’s Election Day victory. Cook, Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai, and Mark Zuckerberg have also reportedly broken bread with Trump during Mar-a-Lago visits since his reelection.

In some cases, executives have gone out of their way to laud the president-elect in public. Their compliments have sometimes been hard to square with the man we’ve come to know so very well: At a New York Times conference, for example, Jeff Bezos described the new Trump as “calmer” and “more settled,” suggesting that either he hasn’t been paying attention, or thinks we haven’t. Last week, when Zuckerberg announced that Meta would dramatically roll back moderation of its platforms, he characterized the election results as potentially ushering in a healthy new era of free expression. Never mind Trump’s long history of calling for those he perceives as his enemies—such as, for example, Mark Zuckerberg—to be silenced or even arrested.

It’s easy to see why the people who run tech companies would give into the temptation to praise Trump, or at least avoid provoking him. The president-elect, who told Fox News’s Sean Hannity in 2021 that he liked Putin, Putin liked him, and “That’s a good thing,” has always framed his politics and power in terms of his personal relationships. Apple, Google, and Meta are all currently targeted by antitrust cases that have profound implications for their respective futures, with Microsoft reportedly also in the Department of Justice’s crosshairs. As quoted in a story by The Verge’s Lauren Feiner, Chamber of Progress CEO Adam Kovacevich stated that the new administration’s approach to such cases could be subject to a “‘Trump Welfare Standard’: Is this company nice to Trump?”

All those companies, and others, are also highly incentivized to seek carve-outs from Trump’s promised tariffs, which could crush consumer demand by raising the price of electronics manufactured outside the U.S. Notably, as The Wall Street Journal’s Chip Cutter and Aaron Tilley wrote in November, Cook quietly engaged with Trump during his first administration to secure a tariff exemption that protected the iPhone—an act of self-interested diplomacy that many in the industry see as a model for dealing with Trump.

Regardless of who won the election, tech companies would have been eager to influence future policy in areas such as AI and cryptocurrency. That’s another powerful force influencing the rush to get on Trump’s good side. Last month, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen said he was spending half his time at Mar-a-Lago; the incoming administration has already named Yammer founder David Sacks as AI/crypto czar and Sriram Krishnan—a former general partner at Andreessen’s firm as well as a veteran of Meta, X, Snap, and others—as an AI adviser.

For all the incentive to see Trump’s return as, in Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff’s words, “an opportunity for a new chapter,” the present era of good feelings could be short-lived. As president-elect, Trump’s powers of office don’t extend much beyond his ability to bloviate on Truth Social. Come January 20, however, his administration—which reportedly has 100 executive orders already queued up—will spring into action. Maybe one thing Trump’s critics and fans can agree on: There will be consequences.

Corporate America’s public response to the worst excesses of Trump’s first term was far from a profile in courage. But tech leaders did occasionally feel obligated to chime in, such as when the administration’s policies at the U.S. southern border resulted in family separations. A Who’s Who of executives decried the situation, albeit usually without criticizing Trump directly: Google’s Sundar Pichai, for instance, tweeted that its impact was “gut-wrenching.” With Trump promising U.S. history’s largest deportations in his second term, Pichai and his peers may be expected to speak up once again.

Tech’s most punitive rebuke of Trump to date came after the U.S. Capitol riot on January 6, 2021. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, and other platforms responded to his role in the ugly event by banning his accounts—in the case of Twitter, supposedly forever. As Trump inched his way back to power, however, his ousting from the public square faded. Most of the bans were eventually lifted, the most damning proof imaginable that they were about expediency, not ethical resolve.

Will Trump’s second term be devoid of roiling controversy? That’s vanishingly unlikely. Can companies compartmentalize their response, continuing to pursue self-interested objectives by publicly buttering up the president while also pushing back as necessary? They may well try. Silicon Valley may not be pampering its employees like it once did, but it still can’t steamroll over their concerns. Nor can it expect Trump-averse customers to applaud any fancy footwork: Already, Zuckerberg’s MAGA Lite rebrand has some users of his platforms eying the exits.

Trump pacification is not a viable overarching rule of engagement for the next four years. Whether for days, weeks, or months, kindly sentiments and $1 million donations amount to kicking the can down the road—a fact the executives issuing them must know, even if it would be impolitic to admit it.

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A screen-saver epic. Despite its name, occasional Fast Company contributor Ernie Smith’s Tedium newsletter isn’t the least bit tedious. Smith is remarkably adept at delving into aspects of tech history and culture in general that have touched all our lives but rarely get documented. His new piece “Saving One Screen at a Time” is a magisterial history of the computer screen saver, an unassuming bit of technology that goes back further than I realized and has all kinds of implications I’d never considered. It’s a great read.

You’ve been reading Plugged In, Fast Company’s weekly tech newsletter from me, global technology editor Harry McCracken. If a friend or colleague forwarded this edition to you—or if you’re reading it on FastCompany.com—you can check out previous issues and sign up to get it yourself every Wednesday morning. I love hearing from you: Ping me at hmccracken@fastcompany.com with your feedback and ideas for future newsletters. I’m also on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads.

Tech CEOs are just postponing their Trump 2.0 reckoning

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