The First Silicon Valley Election

California Über Alles

With Biden out and Kamala likely in, the Californiazation of the 2024 election looks almost complete. Silicon Valley’s embrace of Trump, along with the selection of Peter Thiel-backed JD Vance as his running mate, already signaled that the home of Big Tech (and “little tech”, but we’ll get to that later) would play a much bigger role in this election than it ever had. Immediately after a bullet grazed Trump’s ear in Butler, Elon Musk took to “X” to endorse him. (Musk has also reportedly been showering the Trump campaign with $45 million in donations per month.) A few days after the assassination attempt, Mark Zuckerberg described Trump’s fist pumping, telegenic “fight, fight, fight” as “one of the most badass things” he’d ever seen. Co-founders of the Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, spoke about their support for Trump on the presidential election episode of their podcast. Venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya, who was a Biden donor during the 2020 election, has recently started hosting fundraisers for Trump; he was also reportedly among those who backed Vance as a candidate for VP. Other big name entrepreneurs like David Sacks are open Trump supporters. But Kamala, who was born in Oakland, is not without her own connections to Silicon Valley. Her brother-in-law, Tony West, is Uber’s chief legal officer.