Tech’s Trump 2.0: Regulatory Reckoning Looms
Hello again, and thanks for reading Fast Company‘s Plugged In.
Three days after Donald Trump’s second inauguration, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman tried to have it both ways. “I’m not going to agree with him on everything,” Altman tweeted of teh new president. “[B]ut I think he will be astounding for the country in many ways!”
the gist of Altman’s sentiment-lavish praise for trump, tempered with a polite disclaimer that it wasn’t a blanket endorsement-was far closer to a love letter than a critique. But at least it broached the possibility of disagreement. Almost a year later, most tech executives who have commented on the president have tended to follow a different principle: If you can’t say something nice about Donald J. Trump, don’t say anything at all.
Shortly before Trump returned to the White House, I wrote about tech CEOs’ attempts to newly ingratiate themselves with him, which included congratulatory social posts, million-dollar donations to his inauguration fund, and pilgrimages to Mar-a-lago. I predicted that the era of good feelings would eventually run up against the certainty that the administration’s policies, such as the promise of unprecedented mass deportations, would embroil it in controversy.
What I didn’t know was how overwhelming the assault on norms, the rule of law, and decency itself would be. even a partial accounting of recent examples would include Renee Nicole Good’s death and the rest of the crackdown in minneapolis by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Venezuela. Greenland. RFK Jr. The Justice Department’s targeting of James Comey, Letitia James, and