Workers help propel Trump opposition
Immigration ban gets firms to take action
In late September, a group of tech leaders started a wellpublicized effort to raise US$100,000 for Hillary Clinton.
In flush Silicon Valley, that is spare change. But by the time the election was over, t he campaign had pulled in only US$76,324.
For all its visceral dislike of Donald Trump, the tech community did not worry too much about him being elected or, once in office, carrying through with his program.
Lulled by f avourable polls, distracted by its own destiny, Silicon Valley was above all else complacent. No longer. After Trump’s Jan. 27 executive order restricting immigration, high- tech has gone full-tilt political.
Companies are being pushed by their employees, by their customers and sometimes by their ideals.
They are trying to go far enough without going too far.
Nearly 100 companies, most of them in the technology field, filed an amicus brief late Sunday in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which declined to-reinstate the travel ban after a lower court blocked it.
The brief, which was signed by an unusually broad coalition of large and small tech companies that included Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Google, Uber and Intel, said Trump’s order “violates the immigration laws and the Constitution.”
“Silicon Valley is stepping up,” said Sam Altman, who runs the valley’ s most prominent startup incubator, Y Combinator.
“The companies are working on three fronts: They are vociferously objecting to the Trump policies they think are bad, they are trying to engage with him to influ- ence his behaviour, and they are developing new technology to work against policies and political discourse they don’t support.”
It is an improvised and complicated strategy.
The c o mpani e s are among the richest and most popular of U. S. brands, which means they have a good deal of leverage.
Yet they are also uniquely vulnerable — not only to presidential postings on Twitter and executive orders, but to the sentiments of their customers and employees, some of whom have more radical ideas in mind.
Many of the companies initially placed their bets on engagement after an upbeat meeting with the presidentelect in December.
That modest approach, which even the most riskaverse executive can endorse, showed i ts l i mits last week. After widespread customer defections, Travis Kalanick, chief executive of Uber, was forced to step down from one of the administration’s advisory councils.
“People voted with their feet, and Travis listened,” said Dave McClure, who runs the 500 Startups incubator and started the Nerdz 4 Hillary group that tried to raise the US$100,000.
“We need to hold t he other tech leaders accountable in the same way.”
Resistance, McClure said, begins at home.
“You don’t have a voice with the president if you didn’t vote for him,” he said.
“But employees and customers have a voice with the tech companies. Silicon Valley should be demonstrating at the front doors of Google, Facebook and Twitter to make sure they share our values.”
Several factors are propelling Silicon Valley to the front lines of opposition to Trump.
Some have been widely noted: The companies are often founded by and run by immigrants, which made the executive order on immigration offensive and a threat to their way of doing business.
Tech companies frequently stress the importance of talent from other countries to their businesses.
Less remarked on has been the political homogeneity of tech workers.
“It’s not like you have 60 per cent of the employees on one side and 40 per cent on the other,” said Ken Shotts, a professor of political economy at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
“They all have the same leanings.”
Trump does have some support in Silicon Valley, most notably venture capitalist Peter Thiel.
And prominent technology names that did not join the amicus brief include Oracle, the big database company; the two companies that used to be Hewlett-Packard; and Tesla, the electric-car company.