The bigwigs of the tech and venture are rallying around Donald Trump. But Silicon Valley’s longtime chronicler Kara Swisher is having none of it.
“I think it's really problematic when a very small group of incredibly wealthy people control the access to the person in power,” Swisher said on stage Wednesday at Fortune’s annual Brainstorm Tech conference in Park City, Utah. She added: “I'm not naive, and don't think that rich people don’t control levers of power over the many, many decades or centuries our country has been in power. But this sort of explicit grab for power has worked really nicely for them.”
In the conversation, Swisher raised concerns specifically about former president Trump’s choice for vice president—J.D. Vance—who was introduced to Trump via PayPal cofounder and venture capitalist Peter Thiel. Swisher accused venture capitalists and tech CEOs like Craft Ventures’ David Sacks, Thiel, and Elon Musk of “pushing him up for years” despite what she alleges is a lack of experience needed for the role: “He’s quite inexperienced but now is one second away from power if Trump wins,” Swisher said.
She also weighed in on Tuesday’s announcement from Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, who said in a YouTube video that they intended to back former president Donald Trump in the upcoming 2024 election. The two investors, who run one of Silicon Valley’s most powerful VC firms, argue in the video that a Trump administration would have better policies when it comes to crypto, AI, and other technology issues important to U.S. innovation and startups.
In Swisher’s view, a much simpler motivation is driving the political activism of VCs like Andreessen, who she said she has “spent a lot of time with” over the years. “To say he has any political leanings—He believes in himself. He loves himself and money and that’s pretty much it. And Ben is the same way. They don't care about the other parts of the platforms,” she said. (An Andreessen Horowitz spokeswoman declined to comment.)
The rising political influence of Silicon Valley’s elite, and the sharp and vocal turn to the right, is a notable shift for the tech industry, which historically sought to remain outside the fray of partisan politics. That began to change in 2016, when Peter Thiel spoke at the Republican Convention and endorsed Trump in his first bid for the presidency.
“They're very much interested in power and control of the government, and they have disdain for the government. I wouldn't say hatred, just utter disdain, and they want to burn it down,” Swisher said. “It's been something Peter Thiel has talked about, Marc Andreessen—all of them over the years—and instead of doing it in a violent way, they've done it using their money and power and whatever means they have to do so.”
Speaking at Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech conference earlier this week, Sequoia Capital partner Roelof Botha said the VC firm would remain politically neutral, even as individual partners at the firm have personally endorsed and supported candidates.
Swisher has covered tech—and critiqued it—throughout her three-decade career, taking frequent jabs at entrepreneurs like Elon Musk and Sacks, and conducting memorable interviews with figures like Apple cofounder Steve Jobs and Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates. Referencing “Burn Book,” her recently released account of her years covering the industry, Swisher said that everything tech executives do “ has to do with their business and self-interest…I'd rather they act like investment bankers, who we all know why they're there, which is to make money.
“Don't be fooled,” Swisher said. “They're not here to save you.”
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