Why tech’s titans are moving right

Last week, the media discussed Bill Gates’s $50 million donation to a Super PAC supporting Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign for president. It was his first major donation supporting a presidential candidate.

But in reality, this announcement of support for Harris is becoming the exception to the rule. The striking trend this election cycle is that Silicon Valley is moving to the right.

Silicon Valley is home to dozens of the world’s most influential companies, such as Google, Meta and Nvidia, not to mention countless startups. As a result, San Jose has the third highest GDP per capita of any city on Earth.

Silicon Valley’s tech titans punch well above their weight economically and politically — and increasingly they are using that to boost the GOP.

The shift come slowly but surely, since the start of the Biden administration four years ago. Elon Musk — who says that he voted for Joe Biden in 2020 — saw an increasingly illiberal approach to free speech. He was so alarmed that he actually bought the public square — Twitter, now X — and is actively campaigning for Trump.

Mark Zuckerberg isn’t getting involved in the election this year. That is essentially a $400 million loss for Democrats compared to 2020. Zuckerberg’s first major investor — and Musk’s fellow Paypal Mafia member — Peter Thiel has been a prolific funder of right-wing causes. 

Legendary tech investors Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz have now invested their own millions into electing Trump. A Financial Times analysis found that, in contrast to the overall woke-ifying of corporate America, Silicon Valley has split into two factions: one liberal, and one outspokenly conservative.

This rightward shift may come as a surprise to some. When most people think of Silicon Valley, they picture young "bro-grammers" bringing Ivy League woke sentiments with them when they move west after graduation. And in many cases, this is true. But this cycle’s red shift shouldn’t be surprising, and not just because California — and especially nearby San Francisco — has turned into something more closely resembling Venezuela. 

Silicon Valley CEOs are overwhelmingly male, a demographic Democrats have been losing since Lyndon Johnson. The prominent millennial generation of these tech entrepreneurs, like Mark Zuckerberg, is growing into family life, an experience well known for moving people to the right. 

Left-wing sacred cows like DEI and affirmative action are completely antithetical to the cutthroat, dog-eat-dog meritocracy of the tech startup world — a contradiction hilariously lampooned on the HBO series “Silicon Valley.”

But perhaps the best example of left-wing ideology clashing with the tech world is the left’s self-destructive, Luddite-esque approach to climate change. To put it mildly, modern technology — especially artificial intelligence — requires a lot of energy. Liberals’ attacks on American energy production thus pose a direct threat to many of Silicon Valley’s tech breakthroughs.

Silicon Valley tends to attract optimists — people who believe that science and human creativity will yield more effective results than giving a speech or passing a bill. They seek to change the world not through the blunt force of government — those types move to the D.C. swamp — but through advancements in knowledge and innovation. 

Those advancements can only come through the speed and efficiency of markets, which the left seems to detest in favor of the bureaucratic command-and-control approach. 

Tech types are not doom-and-gloom lefties like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-N.Y.) or Harris’s climate czar, Camila Thorndike. Just listen to the way Musk — who actually has a physics degree and is the chief engineer of the world’s most valuable electric vehicle company — talks about the environment. He is optimistic, and he is taking action that will actually make a difference. 

Now compare that with the way Ocasio-Cortez, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Joe Biden talk about it. The difference couldn’t be clearer. One side sees opportunity that necessitates abundance, the other sees hopelessness that demands scarcity.

Tech leaders tend to believe in trying new things and taking risks. And despite his support for Harris, Bill Gates is also making landmark investments in nuclear power in Wyoming that have the potential to begin transforming our energy grid. Amazon and Google have also recently moved to embrace nuclear energy, an idea bitterly opposed by left-wing activists and for decades a Republican idea thwarted by Democrats.

The leading state for renewable energy is not high-tax, high-regulation California but ruby-red Texas. Texas’s renewable energy growth is attracting energy-intensive Silicon Valley companies, including heavyweights like Hewlett Packard and Tesla. Other Silicon Valley companies are fleeing for red states like Tennessee and Florida.

Technology has enabled humanity to overcome countless problems that had once seemed permanent and unsolvable, from aqueducts to astronomy. Unlike the “climate anxious” on the Harris campaign, tech-minded people tend to see climate change as just the latest instance where science can unleash humanity’s potential. They are right — and they are moving to the right.

Whatever the outcome of this election, Democrats should realize that Silicon Valley is fleeing from them — and for good reason. One lesson the Democrats could learn from Silicon Valley is the need to adapt and keep up with a changing world. Otherwise, liberals will find themselves left behind.

Chris Johnson is a GOP strategist who serves as a senior adviser to the National Federation of College Republicans, focusing on energy issues.