DIGITAL LIFE

2025: the year big tech companies bowed to trump

For the past two decades, people have gathered online to celebrate and mourn the end of another year. Until recently, this ritual was performed on platforms that presented themselves as largely supportive of liberal values. But Donald Trump's return to power changed all that. For many critics, 2025 is the year that big tech companies completely bowed down and began to openly appease and collaborate with the far right. Fortunately, there are still many opportunities to reverse the situation. To understand the nature of big tech companies' deference to the right, we need to revisit some history. This will help us not only understand Silicon Valley's recent rightward shift away from liberal politics, but also why this trend may not last beyond the Trump administration.

The first decade of the 2000s was marked by the rise of the commercial internet and the consolidated dominance of several tech giants: Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft. While it may seem like a miracle today, for most of the 2000s, these corporations were widely seen as "cool" advocates for human rights and social justice. Google's original motto, "Don't be evil," made sense for a company seen as a progressive alternative to the evil corporations portrayed in series like "Mr. Robot." Companies like Twitter were seen as facilitators of revolution in the Middle East, while Facebook was praised for connecting the masses.

For critics at the time, the image of big tech companies as progressive masked the predatory exploitation of the tech sector, which dated back to IBM and Microsoft. However, within a few years, this facade crumbled. The Snowden leaks in 2013 exposed how big tech companies partner with the US government to spy on the entire world, even our every online interaction. In 2016, it was revealed that Trump's presidential team hired a British consulting firm, Cambridge Analytica, to extract data from Facebook and run targeted ads in support of his campaign. Although this was quite exaggerated—there is no concrete evidence that this tactic boosted Trump's victory—the episode served as a convenient scapegoat to explain the defeat of liberals to Trump, leading The Guardian to declare 2016 as "the year Facebook became the villain." Distrust increased in 2017, considered the year "the world turned against Silicon Valley," largely due to growing awareness of the monopolistic power of tech giants.

In the following years, the right countered the left, arguing that big tech companies censored their voices and promoted liberal causes. A battle ensued over how to hate big tech companies, with their image being mapped onto the divide between liberal-progressives and far-right extremists. This confused many people: for two decades, big tech companies tended to lean "left" on issues of identity and liberal politics, being considered "left-wing" by mainstream voices, who generally ignore class struggle. But tech giants have always prioritized profit over people. With Trump's return, their loyalty to accumulation and power became evident to all.

If 2017 was the year Americans turned against big tech companies, 2025 will be the year they became pawns of Donald Trump. The transition was swift: during Joe Biden's presidency, Democrats once again served Wall Street at the expense of the average citizen, paving the way for a Trump resurgence. In 2024, most tech capitalists spent more on Harris than on Trump. On the right, Elon Musk tipped the balance of donations to the right with his $260 million in donations to his preferred boss in the White House.

Even before the election, tech executives were already aligning themselves with Trump. In July, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg showed complete subservience, calling Trump's celebratory gesture "incredible" after the assassination attempt in Pennsylvania. Amazon founder and executive chairman Jeff Bezos, once a Trump critic, vetoed an editorial in his newspaper, The Washington Post, that supported Harris for president. Apple CEO Tim Cook approached Trump hoping to gain support against European regulators. Musk bet everything on MAGA. And those already well-regarded, like Peter Thiel of Palantir and Larry Ellison of Oracle, further strengthened their ties with Trump.

After the election, several CEOs invested millions in Trump's inauguration, which famously featured reserved seating for Zuckerberg, Bezos, Cook, Musk, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, and its CEO, Sundar Pichai. The spectacle repeated itself in September when Trump hosted a dinner with leading tech CEOs, who praised their White House boss for his "pro-business" policies (like Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI) and "incredible leadership" (like Bill Gates). Tech giants also contributed to the luxurious White House ballroom, valued at $300 million. The novelty here isn't the willingness of big tech companies to ally with the right, something they successfully did during Trump's first term. Instead, it's their willingness to openly embrace the MAGA movement that has bothered the left.

During Trump's first term, leading tech oligarchs publicly criticized his stance on immigration and climate change. This time, not only are they silent, but many of them are supporting "anti-woke" policies. In January, Zuckerberg announced that Meta would sever ties with third-party fact-checkers (allegedly biased against the MAGA right), while Palantir CEO Alex Karp, who previously called himself "progressive," described his company as "completely anti-woke."

Even during Democratic administrations, big tech companies prioritized profit over people and the planet. But the sector has completed a rightward turn, highlighting three key points that should guide public understanding and action.

No. 1: Big tech companies have become a force multiplier for an extremist administration. Trump's deal with Palantir to develop immigration software is poised to boost the Trump administration's ability to implement mass deportations. The Department of Homeland Security created a task force to monitor the online activities of foreign students for "thoughtcrimes" (such as opposing Israeli genocide) and deport them. Students, staff, and faculty at our universities are increasingly under surveillance, a phenomenon that increases compliance with authority and the status quo. This year, Trump negotiated American control over content moderation at TikTok (puppet of the Chinese Communist Party), giving billionaires like Ellison the ability to shape the flow of information on the popular platform. Ellison, a Trump ally, and his son David are rapidly building a MAGA media empire that incorporates Paramount Global (which includes CBS, whose news operation is now run by pro-Israel extremist Bari Weiss) and, if they get their way, Warner Bros. Discovery (which includes HBO and CNN).

Trump is also pushing to control the content of artificial intelligence models. In July, he issued an executive order titled "Preventing Progressive AI in the Federal Government," which would prevent the government from acquiring "models that sacrifice truthfulness and accuracy in favor of ideological agendas." This month, he issued an executive order prohibiting state AI laws that conflict with federal policy, paving the way for the government to impose its vision of AI on the tech ecosystem.

#2: The centrality of large technology companies in society is unprecedented and can no longer be treated as just another sector of the economy. No less than 92% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth in the first half of 2025 came from investments in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and other technologies, leaving only 0.1% of growth outside the tech sector (which would have been higher were it not for the AI ​​boom). In September, the "Ten Titans" of technology represented almost 40% of the S&P 500 index. Big tech companies and AI are on everyone's lips, from teenagers to baby boomers less familiar with technology. As big tech companies chose to align themselves with the Trump administration, everyone is feeling the effects.

#3: Trump's fawning challenges the popular notion that corporations simply rule everything. Trump reversed the roles, ensuring everyone understood that he is the boss. When the world's richest man, Elon Musk, publicly criticized Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill" in July, Trump threatened to cancel government contracts with Musk's rocket company, SpaceX, and deport him. Although their relationship remains "fragile," Musk responded by deleting some derogatory social media posts (for example, suggesting that Trump's name was in Epstein's files) and issued a public statement of "regret" for his tweets "going too far."

In January, Meta agreed to pay Trump $25 million for the suspension of its social media accounts following the January 6, 2021 protests. In August, Trump exempted Apple from a 100% tariff on semiconductors after the company announced a new $100 billion investment in manufacturing in the United States, bringing its total investment in the country to $600 billion over the next four years. Trump also imposed deals on tech giants like Nvidia and AMD, who agreed to pay the government 15% of their revenue from select chip sales to China. The Trump administration also acquired a 10% stake in struggling chip giant Intel after calling for the resignation of its CEO.

Tech billionaires like Bill Gates, the late Steve Jobs, Sundar Pichai, and Satya Nadella are portrayed as relatively likeable nerds. They manage to feign concern for human rights even while relentlessly pursuing market dominance and wealth. Trump, on the other hand, presents himself as a brute: he says that immigrants “aren’t human, they’re animals,” calls African countries “shithole countries,” compares Somali immigrants to “trash,” rambles on without caring about anything, and so on. With the exception of Musk, it’s difficult to imagine many Silicon Valley leaders making such vile comments.

It’s unlikely that the tech giants would prefer an unpredictable and vile authoritarian, with an inflated ego and personal vendettas, wielding power in the White House. Many of Trump’s policies are also antagonistic toward big tech companies: he has drastically cut funding for scientific research and government science agencies, imposed $100,000 fees on foreigners with H-1B visas (who make up part of the skilled workforce for the tech sector), discouraged foreign researchers from entering academia while pressuring qualified American researchers to leave the country, and is thoughtlessly politicizing timelines and expectations in entire fields of research through his “Genesis Mission” AI initiative. Democrats, on the other hand, offer Silicon Valley predictability, stability, responsible governance, and a humanitarian public image that undoubtedly neutralizes the aggressiveness of the left.

It is also true that big tech companies are not entirely under Trump’s control. They do not give in to all his demands and maintain enough room for maneuver to move closer to the Democrats again.

Where does this leave us? Would we be better off with a more openly right-wing Silicon Valley, one that takes off its "mask," than with a successful "liberal" Silicon Valley that promotes false humanitarianism?

To this, I believe there are two important answers. First, rightward shifts benefit no one. Remember when some said, "Let's hope Trump gets elected so people wake up and oppose the system"? It didn't work. The same applies to big tech companies: attacks on diversity, government support for right-wing censorship and media mergers, the establishment of new, regressive legal precedents in the courts, and the like not only harm people in the short term but also institutionalize right-wing inertia in the future. We must oppose such movements at all costs.

Secondly, we must all recognize that Trump's power is fragile and drive the fight against big tech companies from the left. This includes timid liberal reforms. If we don't challenge the norms of the last few decades, the Democrats will come to the negotiating table and offer more of the same: a purer capitalism (antitrust laws), lenient regulations (AI safety measures, privacy laws), and more litigation. The digital ecosystem will remain a private, for-profit enterprise run by wealthy American billionaires. But there is a more grounded movement against Big Tech, capitalism, and US imperialism simmering beneath the surface. It can be seen in the working class's rejection of Trump and the billionaire class. It can be seen on social media, where anti-capitalist and anti-Big Tech videos are going viral.

by: Michael Kwet---Michael Kwet is a Visiting Fellow at Yale Law School and a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Johannesburg. He is editor of The Cambridge Handbook of Race and Surveillance (2023), host of the Tech Empire podcast and founder of the forthcoming website, Peoplestech.org. His has written for Al Jazeera, NY Times, VICE News, The Intercept, Wired, Mail & Guardian, and Counterpunch. Michael received his PhD in Sociology from Rhodes University, South Africa.

Michael Kwet books--Digital Degrowth: Technology in the Age of Survival