Billionaire tech mogul Reid Hoffman is urging his fellow tech leaders in Silicon Valley to not only condemn the killings of two American citizens at the hands of Border Patrol agents, but to stop pacifying President Trump.
In posts and an opinion column for The San Francisco Standard, Hoffman writes that those in Silicon Valley cannot bend the knee to Trump. He argues they cannot shrink away and hope the crisis fades, stating that hope without action is an invitation for Trump to trample whatever he can see, including their own business and security interests.
There has been some pushback among the powerful in the Valley against these deaths. Besides Hoffman, a longtime critic of Trump, billionaire venture capitalist Vinod Khosla has been vocal, characterizing the White House and crew as a conscienceless administration. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Apple CEO Tim Cook, and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei have also expressed concern over the Border Patrol incidents, with some doing so in leaked internal memos. However, most were quick to distance their concerns over this issue from the President himself.
That is the distinction Hoffman wants to end. He is making the case that tech leaders have power, and sitting on that power is not good for business. He states it is also not neutrality, but a choice.
Still, many of the largest tech companies depend on the federal government for business. This includes AI regulation, tariffs that affect product costs, and massive, lucrative contracts to supply the U.S. government with technology. OpenAI even faced scrutiny in November after its CFO suggested, and later walked back, that the company wanted the federal government to backstop its loans.
Hoffman is echoing the sentiment of a growing contingent of tech workers. They have signed a petition asking their CEOs to call the White House and demand that ICE leave U.S. cities, to cancel all company contracts with ICE, and to speak out publicly against ICE’s violence.
While there certainly are tech leaders who remain vocal supporters of Trump, like Elon Musk and Keith Rabois of Khosla Ventures, many leaders appear to be, at least publicly, walking the fence. Tim Cook, for instance, wrote that he was heartbroken and urged de-escalation in his internal memo, but also attended an exclusive screening of First Lady Melania Trump’s documentary hours after the ICE shooting of Alex Pretti, one of the Americans killed. This underscores Hoffman’s call to arms.