Big tech's big pivot
Corporate America has a message for Donald Trump: We believe what you believe. In the months since the Republican's election victory, Big Business has been working frenetically to erase any evidence of "woke" or un-Trumpy tendencies. Diversity, equity, and inclusion departments have been axed; climate-change groups have been abandoned; and anything bearing a trans flag has been shredded. Executives who once spouted progressive pablum are now talking like MAGA true believers. Just hours after killing his company's DEI programs and fact-check systems last week, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared on Joe Rogan's podcast to bemoan how society has become "emasculated." It's a positive that America is returning to a culture that "celebrates the aggression a bit more," said Zuckerberg. "Masculine energy is good." He flexed his own masculine energy a few days later, announcing a 5 percent cut to Meta's workforce.
Some liberal Meta employees were stunned by this pivot. "What happened to the company I joined all those years ago?" one wrote on an internal message board. "Wow, we really capitulated on a lot of our supposed values," another posted. Yet you can't capitulate on values you never really held. Zuckerberg has long preached the merits of a connected world, yet is currently building a 5,000-square-foot underground bunker at his estate in Hawaii — complete with blast-proof doors and its own energy and food supplies — to keep that world out. In a 2017 speech to Harvard graduates, he dinged then-President Trump by railing against isolationists who would slow "the flow of knowledge, trade, and immigration." On Jan. 20, he sat on the dais at Trump’s second inauguration and applauded as the new president extolled tariffs and migrant crackdowns. As a surfer, Zuckerberg knows how to read the water and can see the political tide has turned in the Right's favor. But should it shift against Trump in the next few years, you can be sure the Meta CEO will be furiously paddling away, positioning himself for the next big wave.
This is the editor's letter in the current issue of The Week magazine.