The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy
By Gil Durán
Avid Reader, 352 pages, $30
Cyberlibertarianism: The Right-Wing Politics of Digital Technology
By David Golumbia
Minnesota, 480 pages, $34.95
The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West
By Alex Karp and Nicholas Zamiska
Crown Currency, 320 pages, $30
Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley
By Jacob Silverman
Bloomsbury, 352 pages, $30
Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed
By Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff
Harper, 242 pages, $30
The Philosopher in the Valley: Alex Karp, Palantir, and the Rise of the Surveillance State
By Michael Steinberger
Avid Reader, 292 pages, $32.50
Of all the signs of the “vibe shift” that reverberated across America when Donald Trump returned to power, the much-photographed presence of nearly every major tech industry grandee near the inaugural dais last January was perhaps the most striking. More than any other major American business sector, tech had overwhelmingly backed Democrats for three decades. In 2016, when Trump first ran for office, 80 percent of tech CEOs donated to Hillary Clinton and her aligned PACs, and from the industry’s employees, Clinton received $60 for every dollar given to Trump. A 2017 survey of 600 tech elites found that just 8 percent of them had voted for Trump the prior year. Regardless of how many of the CEOs present at the 2025 inauguration had actually pulled the lever for or donated to Trump, were eager to give the impression they had.
“How exactly to interpret Silicon Valley’s rightward shift remains open to debate.”
How exactly to interpret Silicon Valley’s rightward shift remains open to debate. The explanations that have been proffered thus far fall into two main categories. The first sort of account focuses on opportunistic alliances and material incentives, while the second identifies the crucial factor in the ideological commitments of the industry’s leading figures. In its simplest version, the materialist account notes that Trump is a uniquely transactional politician, susceptible to flattery by other powerful people; having failed to pursue the advantages of this approach during his first term, many tech leaders decided to change tack. This narrative is accurate enough as far as it goes, but fails to explain why an industry that long sold itself as more idealistic than pragmatic suddenly became unabashed about cutting deals.