As President-elect Donald Trump assembles his second administration, the influence of Silicon Valley is clearer than ever.
There’s the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, a time-limited commission on government waste and cost led by entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. Like many others in the Trump camp in 2024, Musk got his start in the so-called PayPal Mafia, joining the financial technology firm at an early stage of its formation.
Another PayPal cofounder, venture capitalist and political theorist Peter Thiel, mentored venture capitalist and Vice President-elect JD Vance.
David Sacks, also a member of the PayPal Mafia, is the incoming White House czar on cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence.
Meanwhile, a pro-crypto voice, Paul Atkins, is set to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission, likely upending the less friendly regulatory environment established under current SEC Chair Gary Gensler.
In the weeks since Trump’s election, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Apple CEO Tim Cook have traveled to Mar-a-Lago to dine with the president-elect.
And many insiders are excited by what they are seeing.
“Tech has, without contest, produced the most value of any sector in the last two decades because it’s attracted the most innovative and capable people in the country, particularly the PayPal Mafia,” Augustus Doricko, founder of the cloud seeding startup Rainmaker, told The Epoch Times.
“We obviously should want such people in government.”
Marc Andreessen, cofounder of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, was a major donor to the pro-Trump Right for America super PAC.
There is skepticism too, including from some pro-Trump voices.
Kevin Lynn of U.S. Tech Workers, an activist group for Americans affected by outsourcing, said he worries that Silicon Valley could pressure the president-elect to soften his policies on immigration.
He drew attention to Trump’s June appearance on Sacks’s “All-In Podcast,” an influential forum for discussion in Silicon Valley.
“The reality is, we have the workers. We’ve simply cut them loose,” Lynn told The Epoch Times, noting that visa programs such as the O-1 already exist for truly outstanding immigrants.
He said he is concerned about whether the tech-influenced transition will serve the interests of Americans working in tech.
“Everything I’m seeing I’m finding to be reassuring,” Lynn said. “It’s what I’m hearing that I’m finding to be problematic.”
Lynn said that other selections, including Stephen Miller, Tom Homan, and Robert Lighthizer protégé Jamieson Greer, make him more confident in the administration now coming together.
Tech and Thiel Connections Abound
The list of Trump appointees with backgrounds in, or close connections to, the technology world is long. Those selections are downstream of a transition process reportedly shaped by many tech insiders, including investor and PayPal alumnus Joe Lonsdale, former U.S. Chief Technology Officer Michael Kratsios, and Andreessen, among others.
Jacob Helberg, Trump’s choice as undersecretary of state for economic growth, energy, and the environment, has been an adviser to the CEO of Palantir, Alex Karp. Thiel also cofounded that software company, which produces the defense and intelligence product Palantir Gotham. Helberg is married to Keith Rabois, another PayPal mafioso.
And Jared Isaacman, space entrepreneur and founder of the payment processor Shift4 Payments, is Trump’s nominee to lead NASA.
Doug Burgum, the likely future interior secretary and head of a new National Energy Council, launched his career with Great Plains Software, a business software firm eventually acquired by Microsoft.
George Glass, Trump’s pick as ambassador to Japan and ambassador to Portugal during his first term, cofounded the tech bank Pacific Crest Securities, an active underwriter for Facebook’s initial public offering. Troy Edgar, his choice as deputy secretary of homeland security and the department’s chief financial officer during his first term, is currently an executive at IBM.
Even those outside the tech world have links to technology power brokers on the right.
During a speech at the National Conservatism Conference in 2021, Thiel described Jay Bhattacharya, now on pace to lead the National Institutes of Health, as “a good friend ... from undergraduate days at Stanford.”
Lynn, of U.S. Tech Workers, said he hopes Trump’s approach to the U.S. technology sector factors in national security. Foreign nationals, he noted, work across many universities and national laboratories.
“That’s how you do tech transfer,” he said. “You don’t need a lot of clandestine operations. You just interview the foreigners working in these laboratories.”
Doricko lauded the Silicon Valley coalition coalescing behind Trump 2.0.
“Technologists are in power because they deserve to be in power,” he said.
