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Trump and tech
System crash
Silicon Valley is right to be worried about a Trump presidency, but it helped get him elected.
“I’D LIKE to wake up now please,” tweeted Sam Altman, who heads Y Combinator, Silicon Valley’s foremost startup school. The sentence neatly encapsulates the mood in the high-tech hub. To many in the technology industry, America under Donald Trump means dystopia. Perhaps no other sector regards his victory with less enthusiasm.
The main reason is that his stated views are antithetical to the beliefs that most entrepreneurs and tech types hold on a range of topics from trade to offshoring to policy on immigration. By one estimate the tech industry gave nearly $8m to Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Silicon Valley also worries that it will lose its direct lines to the administration in Washington. According to the Campaign for Accountability, a transparency group, no fewer than 22 former White House officials have gone to work for Google since Barack Obama moved in. Under Mrs Clinton the door would have kept revolving.
Only one noted Valleyite is likely to have the president’s ear: Peter Thiel, a venture capitalist. He alone supported Mr Trump, speaking at the Republican convention and donating $1.25m to his campaign. He will now be in high demand to help with damage control for the industry.
Mr Trump may limit immigration of the skilled workers and assorted entrepreneurs upon which the tech business relies. He has criticised Apple for having its iPhones assembled in China. He has also lambasted the smartphone-maker for not helping the FBI to crack a device belonging to a terrorist, which suggests he may push for “backdoors” in encryption software for governments to access. And he may go after big tech firms on antitrust grounds (of Amazon, for example, he has said, “If I become president, oh do they have problems”). But if Mr Trump cuts the tax rate firms have to pay if they bring home earnings kept abroad, that would especially benefit tech giants, who sit on much of the more than $2.5trn stashed overseas.
His victory also offers an opportunity for introspection. Silicon Valley treated Mr Thiel shabbily: some called on Facebook to eject him from its board. The industry also indirectly added to populist fury. Its own firms have not created enough well-paid jobs and its algorithms have ushered in an age of anxiety about many more being automated away. And it does nothing to ease resentment of elites. Last year tech firms handed out more stock-based compensation than Wall Street paid in bonuses, and the streets of San Francisco are a Trumpian brew of some of America’s most expensive property and soaring homelessness.
n. 怨恨，愤恨
