Silicon Valley’s Trump love affair shows it can’t and won’t regulate itself

With less than 100 days until the US election, Silicon Valley’s investors and elites are rallying behind Donald Trump – even those who were once vocal critics of him.

This shift in the political winds has been brewing for a long time on social media, where figures such as Elon Musk and investor David Sacks regularly criticise President Joe Biden. Tech billionaires even persuaded Trump to pick one of their own, former venture capitalist Senator JD Vance of Ohio, as his running mate.

For critics in Silicon Valley, the Trump ticket represents a chance to preserve American innovation as they know it.

The US and responsible innovation

The term ‘responsible innovation’ was, until very recently, primarily used for marketing campaigns in the US. Biden’s Executive Order on American responsible innovation and his safety-first stance on AI represent a new attempt to define and operationalise responsible innovation within the US, and its private sector innovation.

The Biden administration sent a clear message to Silicon Valley: a regulatory wave is imminent, and adopting responsible practices is crucial to maintaining a competitive edge. But this message may have backfired, fuelling new support for Trump and creating a political rift within a community that was once solidly a Democrat stronghold. 

From the Biden administration’s perspective, responsible innovation is strategically important for US companies to remain competitive in the European market. European regulations are likely to be more stringent than those being developed by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. An estimated 10,000 foreign companies – about a third of which are from the US – are expected to comply once the European Directive is enacted. 

In the EU, responsible innovation has a clear definition and pathways to influence legislation and policy guidelines. It encourages the tech sector to critically reflect on their values and the societal and environmental impacts of their work. It presses companies to engage with stakeholders to avoid marginalising any groups during their projects’ design, development and deployment.  

The US, on the other hand, primarily leverages responsible innovation to drive the social acceptance of new technologies, securing its market advantage. In the year 2000, the US Science and Technology Committee launched the National Nanotechnology Initiative, which promoted ‘responsible development’ to make nanotechnology acceptable and make adoption more likely.

Similarly, with recent innovations in AI, the US is advocating for a framework of ‘Trustworthy AI’ to build public trust, so that AI products and services to be used more extensively, not necessarily responsibly – a push that began during Trump administration.

This economics-focused approach contrasts with EU’s ethics-centric and risk-based approach to Trustworthy AI, which centres on steering regulation to ensure the technology is aligned with human rights, serving the ‘common good’.

Regulation for thee and not for me

Historically, the US government has been hands-off with innovation, allowing entrepreneurship to drive the economy. Meanwhile, big tech companies tend to be against government intervention when it is targeted at them. However, they do support government intervention when it is designed to contain their competition.

As competition within the electric vehicle sector heats up, Elon Musk has called for trade barriers against Chinese EVs to protect US companies. In 2022, Meta was caught funding a Republican consulting firm to push the message that Americans can’t trust TikTok, redirecting scrutiny of privacy and anti-trust issues raised against Meta onto its competitor.

One way to manage (and starve off) regulatory scrutiny when it is directed at big tech has been to delegate responsibility to isolated departments that lack the hefty teeth required to guide innovation. Major players such as Meta, Google, Amazon, Twitter and Microsoft had established responsible innovation departments. But, one by one, they dismantled these teams – laying off employees responsible for ethical oversight of processes and products. These are the same experts who had previously raised alarms about their work being undervalued in an industry where profit always trumps ethics, leading to employee burnout. 

But, as the EU shows, responsible innovation can involve engaging with innovators and tech companies to anticipate and creatively respond to the potential challenges posed by new technologies. Rather than stifling creativity, responsible innovation directs innovation efforts toward socially desirable outcomes, ensuring innovations serve the public good while also improving commercial performance by managing risks more comprehensively.

Silicon Valley’s innovation dilemma

Trump’s appeal in Silicon Valley also reveals something deeper: the American innovation system would favour a version of responsible innovation that allows tech companies to continue business-as-usual.

Big tech has already experienced Kamala Harris’s scrutiny as California’s attorney general and in the US Senate, signalling that new regulations may be on the way. This has led investors like David Sacks to claim on his podcast, All In, that “President Trump can lead us back“.

Other investors, Marc Andreessen and Bradley Horowitz, who have expressed their support for Trump, are concerned about the future of technology under the Democrats. New taxation and regulatory regimes would, in their words, “kill both start-ups and the venture capital industry that funds them”.

Similarly, Elon Musk, who once distanced himself from Trump over climate policy and political donations, has now become a strong ally.

These are the same people who have actively promoted their role in driving societal progress – often through high-profile podcasts and speeches. But for them, regulation stifles innovation. Responsible innovation doesn’t fit into their business models.

The change in political alliance makes clear that the American innovation system has competing priorities. While tech giants publicly announce their commitment to responsible innovation, it’s the financial bottom line and investors’ self-interest that take precedence. This election has exposed the hidden workings of innovation systems, and how their public promises and the source of their private profits are drifting further apart.