San Jose, California – Like many in the technology industry, Jeremy Lyons used to be considered a relatively apolitical type.
The only time he had participated in a demonstration before was now in the first days of Donald Trump’s First presidential term, when he joined other Google workers who left the company’s Silicon Valley campus to protest against immigration restrictions. The co -founder of Google and its executive director joined them.
Last weekend was Lyons’s second, also against Trump, but he had a very different feeling.
The man who directed thousands of protesters with an ox in downtown San José on April 5 was another technological worker who would not give his full name for fear of being identified by Trump sponsors. Protesters were urged not to harass the drivers of Tesla vehicles, which have gone from a symbol of Silicon Valley’s environmentalism to a Pro-Trump icon. And technology executives were not seen, just a few months after several had joined Trump at its inauguration of January.
For Lyons, 54, the change says so much about what happened to Silicon Valley during the last quarter of the century as it does about the atmosphere of fear that surrounds many critics of Trump today.
“One of the things I have seen at that time is a change of a nerd utopia to first money, move quickly and break things,” Lyons said.
The political loyalties of the technology industry remain divided. But as some at the upper levels of Silicon Valley began to change politically, many of the daily workers of the technology industry have remained liberal, but also more and more nervous and disappointed. His mood contrasts with the prominent technological leaders who have adopted a conservative populist ideology.
“I think you are seeing a real gap between the leadership elite here in Silicon Valley and its workforce,” said Ann Skeet, who helps direct a center at the University of Santa Clara, studying the ethics of the technology industry.
“The change has not been for many people,” said Lenny Siegel, former mayor of Mountain View and liberal activist for a long time in the valley. “He is a handful of people who have received attention.”
The biggest example of that is ELON ALMIZCLEThe richest person in the world and the CEO of the best -known electric car company in the world that has assumed a prominent role that reduces federal agencies in the Trump administration. Musk has joined several technological billionaires, including investor David Sacks, who helped raise funds for Trump’s campaign and became the artificial tsar of intelligence and cryptocurrencies of the White House, and risk capitalist Marc Andresen. The CEO of Google, Slándar Pichai, and the CEO of Meta Mark Zuckerberg also attended Trump’s inauguration in Washington.
Zuckerberg began Praising Trump After the then candidate, angry at the money that Zuckerberg directed towards the local electoral offices in some states in 2020 during the Coronavirus pandemic, threatened last summer to imprison him. Zuckerberg too donated $ 1 million to the opening fund of the president and Co-organized an inauguration reception For multimillionaire republican donors.
Trump has filled several publications from his administration With billionaires And his support from the rich technological leaders led Democratic President Joe Biden To warn that the United States risked to become an oligarchy governed by elites. During Trump’s first mandate, the Valley and its leaders were a bastion of Republican resistance, especially about immigration, since the industry extracts its workforce from around the world.
It is in that context that thousands of people attended the recent rally in a park in downtown San José to protest Trump and Musk’s actions.
Santa Clara County, which includes most of Silicon Valley, launched 8 percentage points towards Trump in the November elections against Democrat Kamala Harris, matching the change in California. Even with that swing, the county voted from 68% to 28% for the then vice president and remains a democratic strength.
“We are still in the belly of the beast,” said Dave Johnson, the new executive director of the Republican Party of Santa Clara, who said that the party has won some new members in the county but few of the technology industry. “If the lake were frozen, there is a small shine on. I would not say that there are cracks on the ice.”
The valley has been inclined for a long time democratic, but with an unusual political mixture: a general disgust of getting too involved in the Washington business, along with a contradictory mixture of libertarian individualism, activism of the bay area and belief in the ability of science to solve the problems of the world.
That has persisted even when the technology industry has changed.
The technological boom was fed by new companies that attended to their workers’ dreams of changing the world for the better. Google’s motto was “Don’s Be Evil”, a phrase that eliminated its code of conduct for 2018, when and other companies such as Meta, owner of Facebook and Instagram, had become multinational giants. Companies have had dismissal In recent years, a shock for an industry that has not seemed ready for unlimited growth.
The businessmen once dreamed of building new companies that would change the world, said Jan English-Lueck, professor at San José State University who has been studying the culture of Silicon Valley for more than 20 years.
“Now,” he said, “if you are part of a startup, hopes to be absorbed in a way that is profitable.”
Even before some prominent technological leaders were changed towards Trump, there was a growing discontent among some in the industry over their direction. Idarose Sylvester directs a business that promotes a Silicon Valley style approach to entrepreneurs in other countries.
“Now I feel ill of the stomach,” he said.
Sylvester was already disenchanted with the growing inequality in the valley and the environmental cost of all the energy necessary to feed the cryptographic, AI and data centers. She participated in protests against Trump in 2017, but felt that energy faded once she lost the 2020 elections against Biden.
“I saw many people getting out of politics once Biden won. There was the feeling that everything was fine,” Sylvester said. “Not everything was fine.”
It’s worse now, he said. She helped organize one of several demonstrations throughout the Valley last weekend during a national day of protests against the new administration.
At first glance, the center of San José could have been a typical anti-Trump protest anywhere. A large multitude of people to a large extent of medium age and older had signs against the president and the musk while singing against oligarchs.
But it was clearly a multitude of Silicon Valley, one still staggering not only of Trump’s challenges to the system of controls and balances of the country, but also of the actions of the senior executives of the Valley.
“Money is changing the richest, and that terrifies me,” said Dianne Wood, who works in a startup. “Unfortunately, you have the Zuckerbergs and Elon Musks of the world that are taking charge.”
“I just came here, everyone says they turn off the facial recognition of their phone,” Wood added. “We are all scared.”
Kamal Ali, who works at AI, said he felt betrayed by that change.
“Trust is broken. Many employees are very upset about what is happening,” he said. “It’s going to be different forever.”
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Associated Press Sarah Parvini writer in Los Angeles and the video journalist Haven Daley contributed to this report.
