Tech Revolution: Why is the Silicon Valley era of tech over? David Sacks, David Sackes, Elon Musk, and the Blue Wall of Tech

There have been reports recently that the Silicon Valley liberal stronghold is shifting its support to Donald Trump. David Sacks, a venture capitalist and friend to Elon Musk, has said as much on his All In podcast. The Trump campaign was able to raise more than $12 million last month due to a groundswell of donations from investors like the Winklevoss twins.

The investor and top Republican donor wrote an email saying that David Sackes has been a Republican for a long time. “Chamath is a recent convert, but not so sure how many new Republicans there are in SV.” (Rabois wrote that, to his knowledge, there were “less than 2 serious tech leaders” at the Trump fundraiser, which his husband attended, and that the donors were mainly old-money San Francisco Republicans.)

Sacks is the leader of the movement, which has included bestie venture capitalists Palihapitiya, David Friedberg and Jason Calacanis. There is no reason to think that Sacks and his group are representative of a larger group.

Assertions like Selkis’ and long-winded missives like Sacks’ have seemed, in recent weeks, to augur a political tide change—and Biden’s recent debate performance provided a perfect pretext for it to take hold. Despite murmurs about how the liberal era of tech is over, though, there’s little evidence of any seismic shift, even in the aftermath of a revolt among donors and elected officials that made it briefly seem as if Biden might well end his candidacy.

“The voters have experienced four years of President Trump and four years of President Biden. In tech, we call this an A/B test,” wrote David Sacks, the tech investor and close associate of Elon Musk who was hosting the reception with the venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya. Trump performed better with respect to economic policy, foreign policy, border policy and legal fairness. The President deserves a second term.

The supposed Silicon Valley revolt happened before the debate. “The Blue Wall of tech is crumbling before our very eyes,” Ryan Selkis, the founder and CEO of Messari crypto, wrote on X last month. He was talking about a reception for the former president that sold out just days after Donald Trump was convicted in a criminal case.

There is a part of it. Every lifelong Democrat in Silicon Valley who has ever been a Democrat is still a huge fan of Biden. Some lifelong Republicans do not like Trump because he is anti-science. He is an insurrectionist.

And some of them have gotten louder about supporting Trump because it’s a contrarian horse that they can ride in and become a truth-teller. So there’s louder voices among the lifelong Republicans for Trump than there were before, but they were there. Last time, they voted for Trump. They’re voting for Trump again.

But speaking with a few Democratic and Republican investors, it seems that not much has changed. Honestly, it sounds like some of the most prominent conservative venture capitalists have just gotten louder about their support for Trump.

Hey, everyone! It’s Makena. I’m back after a charming getaway to the Adirondacks. A lot has happened since I’ve been gone. Namely, what the heck is happening with Joe Biden and the Democratic nomination?