How tech bosses are shaping US politics

Elon Musk (Picture: James Duncan Davidson)

Far right billionaire Elon Musk is helping to drive politics in the United States to the right. But there is a bigger story surrounding the growing involvement of Silicon Valley bosses and the far right.

Musk personifies how economic power under capitalism translates into political power. What we witnessed during Trump’s 2024 campaign was the world’s richest person buying his way into government.

During the campaign Musk became Trump’s biggest donor and most influential promoter. Musk donated £202 million to Trump— which, while eye watering, is still less than 0.05 percent of his overall £351.1 billion fortune.

This is a man whose South African father, Errol Musk, owned a Zambian emerald mine, and once recalled, “We had so much money at times we couldn’t even close our safe.”

And Musk’s grandparents were members of the Canadian Nazi Party, who supported Hitler and who decided to move to South Africa because they approved of apartheid.

Musk’s own turn to the far right became apparent around the Covid pandemic, when he called the restrictions in place in California ‘‘fascist’’ and moved his factories out of the state.

In 2021 Musk was intentionally left out of an electric vehicle summit held by Joe Biden, which left Musk to play his favourite role—the true victim.

By 2022 he was obsessed with immigration and what he calls the “woke mind virus’’, which he claims “killed’’ his daughter.

When she came out and transitioned he vowed to “destroy’’ wokeness. But Elon Musk isn’t a one off—there have often been tech bosses who turned to politics to ensure their economic status.

Peter Thiel, a co-founder of PayPal with Musk, was one of the largest donors to Trump’s 2016 campaign.

Steve Bannon, the former White House strategist, has claimed that Thiel wanted to “change the direction of the country’’. In 1995 Thiel, along with ex-PayPal product leader David Sacks, published a book, The Diversity Myth.

It explores “the debilitating impact that political correctness has upon freedom in the United States’’.

This book claimed that society’s focus on racism has only caused more tensions, and said that rape was “seductions that are later regretted’’.

In 2009 Thiel claimed that “freedom and democracy are no longer compatible’’. For the last 15 years he has funded Republican candidates and figures who are far more extreme than traditional conservatives. This includes US vice president JD Vance.

The pair met when Thiel gave a lecture while Vance was attending Yale Law School in 2011. Vance later called this ‘‘the most significant moment’’ of his early years.

Since then, Thiel has advised and funded Vance, helping him climb the ranks to be heir presumptive to Trump’s hijacked Republican Party.

But Vance’s role here is contradictory.

While publicly playing up his working class Rust Belt childhood, and lamenting the lost traditions of American life, Vance has always been in the pocket of these tech giants.

The ambition of tech bosses is to create the rules by which they play. They want the deregulation of AI and cryptocurrency and the privatisation of government sectors.

The influence of tech bosses on Trump’s administration is already having massive implications on freedom of speech and immigration policy, and could restructure US bureaucracy.

Musk and Vance epitomise two key but contradictory strains in Trump’s politics.

Musk is a filthy rich billionaire who wants to drive up profits and slash government services in his new role as Administrator of the Department of Government Efficiency.

Whereas Vance triumphs bringing back US traditionalism, claiming to fight for the underdog who has been left behind.

These two strands will create tensions within Trump’s administration. Republican officials are already souring at Musk’s unelected influence. And Trump’s revoking of electric vehicle targets and rivalry with China will upset Musk.

Many of Trump’s pledges embody these contradictions. But if Trump’s policies disrupt production and profits too much, tech bosses are sure to turn away.