SILICON VALLEY, Calif. — CNN host and political analyst Van Jones explored the question, “How did Democrats lose the support of Silicon Valley — and can they get it back?” during a fireside chat with McCormack Professor of Citizenship and Self-Government Archon Fung, according to Harvard Magazine. The discussion highlighted the growing political divide between the Democratic Party and major technology leaders as Silicon Valley increasingly aligns with Republican politics.
The chat was co-sponsored by the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics and hosted by the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation.
Jones explained that “in the early 2010s, Silicon Valley and the political left in the U.S. were close-knit, drawn together by geography and a narrative of shared liberal ideals.” He further emphasized that it “didn’t feel like a marriage of convenience… it felt like the future had arrived.”
Rooted in California’s liberal political culture, Silicon Valley positioned itself as a counterweight to Wall Street. Harvard Magazine described how, in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, tech leaders were viewed as innovators generating economic and cultural value rather than extracting wealth from society.
Jones stated that “the idea was that Wall Street is cheating… They’re ripping everybody off. These kids in Silicon Valley are actually making things — and that’s the right way to get rich. The wrong way is Wall Street.”
As the industry expanded, however, “the industry’s growing influence began to draw new scrutiny.” Jones recalled that “as you move through the Obama years, you start to enter a period when the growing power of technology is being taken more seriously, especially by people pushing for greater inclusion.”
At the same time, “the cultural dynamics that some would later label ‘tech bro culture’ were already present, though less explicitly defined.” Jones described “an environment shaped by what he called ‘sins of omission’: an industry that emerged from a relatively narrow demographic base that was predominantly white and male, with a smaller presence of Asian workers.”
Jones noted that “one of the most striking aspects of the tech industry’s growing conservatism is how quickly it developed.” He explained that “Silicon Valley remained firmly opposed to U.S. President Donald Trump as recently as 2020.” Jones pointed to billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk expressing support for Andrew Yang during the 2020 Democratic primaries and noted that after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, “Silicon Valley deplatformed Trump… and they threw him off Facebook.”
However, by the beginning of Trump’s current term, “several influential figures in Silicon Valley — including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg — had distanced themselves from the Democratic Party.” Meanwhile, other prominent tech figures, including Musk, Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen, became outspoken supporters of Trump and the broader MAGA movement. Harvard Magazine reported that Jones and Fung attributed the shift to “a convergence of pressures during the Biden presidency.”
Fung suggested the shift began with a “shift in regulatory posture” during the Biden administration. Unlike earlier Democratic administrations that adopted more collaborative approaches, Fung said Biden’s presidency featured more aggressive regulation, including actions led by former Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan.
According to Jones, the regulatory environment became “pure antagonism,” with “policies, especially around emerging sectors such as cryptocurrency, [being] perceived as inconsistent and punitive, amounting to what critics described as ‘regulation by enforcement.’”
Jones also argued that workplace tensions inside tech companies accelerated the political shift. He said “tech executives faced rising employee activism on issues such as equity and ethics, while also encountering increasing hostility from Washington.” According to Jones, “the industry was caught between a ‘bottom-up woke movement’ and a ‘top-down regulatory motion.’”
Fung additionally “noted that similar tensions are reemerging today, citing resistance within companies like Anthropic and Google, where employees expressed concern about their technologies being deployed for mass surveillance or used to develop autonomous weapons.”
Jones argued that a third factor involved “deeper ideological currents beg[inning] to surface.” He said that “‘libertarian skepticism of government had long existed within Silicon Valley… but had remained contained. Over time, ‘that little virus,’ as he described it, began to grow.”
According to Jones, “as companies matured, their incentives shifted,” with tech leaders increasingly acting as “monopolists” seeking to innovate without friction, acquire potential rivals early, and build closed ecosystems that concentrate market power.
Jones further criticized “what he described as a shift toward moralized conflict on both sides, in which ‘everything [became] a fight,’ with both tech companies and the political left believing they were advancing the broader public good.” He also “extended this critique to contemporary progressivism, arguing that it has become more adept at identifying problems than building solutions.”
Jones additionally “warned that emerging technologies, especially artificial intelligence, are poised to reshape the economy.” To navigate those changes, he “called for a return to coalition-building that would allow Democrats to maintain their progressive values but operationalize them more effectively.”
Furthering his argument, Jones “pointed to the need for a ‘new deal’ between technologists and society that could work to distribute the gains of innovation more broadly.” He concluded by asking, “how do we ensure that technological abundance does not concentrate in a few hands and benefits the many?”
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“How did Democrats lose the support of Silicon Valley — and can they get it back?”
No – they can’t “get it back” – and perhaps they were never actually aligned in the first place.
For the same reason that they financially support the YIMBYs.
Though truth be told, there is no difference these days between Democrats and Republicans regarding support of sprawl at the expense of the environment. In fact, Democrats are “leading the way”, more than Republicans are these days.
If anything, it’s the coastal, Republican-leaning enclaves that are pushing back the hardest.
Political parties change over time.
So perhaps in a sense, Silicon Valley is actually even MORE aligned with Wiener Democrats than Republicans are, these days.
The REAL divide might be between within those who consider themselves “progressives”.
There’s yet another division between (some) “environmentalists” and (some) “progressives” (who would actually throw the environment “under the bus” if it interferes with their perception of social justice.
Overall, environmental groups have been increasingly taken-over by social justice types. Which is the reason that environmental groups have increasingly supported privatizing land for casino-owning tribes, at the expense of public lands. (Also the reason that most of them have lost my support.)
The infiltration of social justice actually started decades ago, with the Sierra Club. There was an internal struggle a long time ago regarding that, and the social justice advocates “won”. And ever since, the Sierra Club has lost credibility (and perhaps support).
At some point everyone eventually gets smarter and shifts to the right.