Kara Swisher says Trump’s Silicon Valley ties expose a risky alliance
kara swisher says Donald Trump’s ties to Silicon Valley oligarchs are forcing top tech leaders into a public dance over AI policy, business deals, and political access. Some are leaning in, while others are keeping their distance to avoid blowback from Trump and the anti-AI movement.
Altman and Musk
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has largely kept quiet about Trump and the extent of his relationship with him, even as OpenAI prepares an initial public offering and Altman faces blowback from the anti-AI movement.
Elon Musk, by contrast, went from a public falling out with Trump over spending bills and blame for political failures to reconciliation, and Musk was one of two executives aboard Air Force One with Trump for the China state visit earlier this month.
Bezos, Zuckerberg, Huang
Jeff Bezos was initially anti-Trump in 2017, especially through his leadership of The Washington Post, but he later killed an op-ed supporting Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election and called Trump a “more mature, more disciplined version of himself than he was in his first term.”
Earlier this month, Bezos also said Trump has lots of good ideas, has been right about a lot of things, and deserves credit where credit is due, while Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang have also cultivated ties with Trump to advance their business interests.
AI policy and protest pressure
Venture capitalist David Sacks is one of Trump’s closest AI advisers, and he is widely regarded as pushing Trump to support the AI CEOs agenda while Trump has worked toward making it illegal to protest the development of AI.
That push lands as more than 1,000 pages of unpublished reports from the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, and fusion centers point to a national shift toward surveilling anti-technology extremists.
The most awkward gap is Altman’s silence, because the alignment between Trump and parts of Silicon Valley is already shaping who speaks loudly, who cuts deals, and who stays close enough to influence AI policy without inviting the backlash that now shadows the industry.
