Silicon Valley's political muscles
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Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios
Silicon Valley is increasingly determining who gets elected and who doesn't.
Why it matters: While Big Tech companies learned the value of lobbying in the wake of the Microsoft antitrust trial in the 1990s, it's only much more recently that they've started trying to influence the outcome of elections.
Driving the news: The New Yorker's Charles Duhigg this week delivered a 9,000-word essay on exactly what has changed and how.
Follow the money: The crypto industry alone, says Duhigg, is "responsible for almost half of all corporate donations to PACs in the 2024 election cycle" — as Axios reported in August — and is seeking "to prove that its leaders are capable of political savagery in order to protect their interests."
- Fairshake, the biggest crypto PAC, has almost no interest in "explaining how crypto works, or anything like that," one former Coinbase employee told Duhigg. "It's about hitting politicians where they are most sensitive—reelection."
- Beyond crypto, companies such as Airbnb and OpenAI are finding that spending money on electoral politics can generate substantial returns.
- "Silicon Valley will continue to bully and woo politicians by deploying money—and its giant user base—as a lure and a weapon," writes Duhigg.
The big picture: The strength of unions or political parties is that they can "organize and really turn out large numbers of voters," political strategist Chris Lehane, who's now OpenAI's V.P. for global affairs, tells Duhigg.
- Internet platforms, however, tend to dwarf unions and political parties in size — and therefore in political power.
The bottom line: Silicon Valley — which once prided itself on its independence — now arguably boasts "the most powerful political operation in the nation."
- Or, as Duhigg puts it: "Tech has learned how to politick."
