The Emperor's New Code: Silicon Valley's Naked Identity Politics

After publishing my thoughts on the upside down world of Silicon Valley right now in Through the Looking Glass: A Silicon Valley Story, I've spent weeks talking with people in the Valley at all levels who feel equally displaced in this strange new reality. One question keeps emerging:

How can Musk, Thiel, Andreessen, Sacks, and their cohort claim to reject "identity politics" while being so clearly united by their own shared identity?

This is the colossal contradiction at the heart of Silicon Valley's rightward shift.

The False Narrative of Economic Alignment

The tech oligarchy wants us to believe their support for Trump represents a potential realignment based more on economic policies than social values. This narrative suggests they're principled libertarians focused on deregulation, innovation, and economic efficiency.

But this story crumbles under the slightest scrutiny.

If this were truly about economic policy, we would see entirely different behavior from these leaders. They would be actively engaging with pro-business Democrats like Senator Mark Warner or moderate Republicans—politicians with real business expertise who could advance their regulatory goals without the chaos. They would propose structured AI governance frameworks that balance innovation with necessary safeguards, recognizing that thoughtful regulation builds public trust and prevents harsher restrictions later.

Most tellingly, they would distance themselves from Trump's extreme immigration policies, which directly contradict Silicon Valley’s reliance on international talent and pose an existential threat to their own business models. Their willingness to overlook these fundamental economic interests reveals that something beyond business concerns is driving their alliance.

Silicon Valley's Selective Amnesia

This willful blindness extends to Silicon Valley's origin story, which bears little resemblance to the techno-libertarian mythology now being constructed. As Alexander Karp and Nicholas Zamiska recently noted in The Atlantic, "The rise of the American software industry in the 20th century was made possible by a partnership between emerging technology companies and the U.S. government."

When I joined Google in 2007, this history wasn't considered controversial. We understood that the internet began as ARPANET—a DARPA-funded project. Semiconductor innovation flourished through government-academic-industry collaboration. Hewlett-Packard grew from Stanford’s research ecosystem. Apple integrated technologies developed across multiple sectors. Google’s search algorithm built upon National Science Foundation-funded research. The open-source movement—perhaps the Valley’s most powerful innovation engine—explicitly rejected centralized control in favor of distributed creation.

Today’s tech aristocracy has erased this history of public-sector dependence. Their selective amnesia serves a purpose: it obscures the role of shared resources and collaborative networks that enabled their success. By rewriting history, they justify dismantling the very systems that made their fortunes possible.

The Unspoken Agreement

The real motivation behind this alliance becomes clear when Marc Andreessen complains that their grievances about not getting personal meetings with President Biden drove them "right into Trump's arms." This isn't about economic policy—it's about perceived status and access to power.

The unspoken agreement binding this tech cohort to Trump isn't libertarian economics. It's identity politics – the very thing they claim to reject. While they position themselves as champions of economic rationality opposed to "woke" identity concerns, their actions tell a different story.

The tie that binds them to Trump isn't economic philosophy but shared identity and values: a coalition of predominantly wealthy white men who feel entitled to unconstrained power, who resent accountability to those unlike themselves, who fear diversity as a threat to their dominance.

These men's actions reveal a blatant pattern of misogyny, racism, and hostility to human rights—issues that cannot be dismissed as partisan interpretation.

Elon Musk, now Administrator of the Department of Government Efficiency, has a long history of misogynistic behavior. He has repeatedly mocked women in positions of power, once responding to Senator Elizabeth Warren's criticism of his tax practices by calling her "Senator Karen" and implying she was a nagging woman who "reminds me of when I was a kid and my friend's angry mom would just randomly yell at everyone for no reason."

Trump's inner circle of Silicon Valley advisors exhibits similar tendencies. Peter Thiel, who holds no official title yet has direct access to top government officials, once wrote that women's suffrage “has rendered the notion of 'capitalist democracy' into an oxymoron." Alongside fellow appointee avid David Sacks, newly appointed White House AI & Crypto Czar (the irony of "Czar" – a title rooted in authoritarian rule – seems lost on these self-proclaimed libertarians), he co-authored The Diversity Myth, which downplayed racism and included multiple instances of rape apology, even dismissing date rape as "seductions later regretted" (a sentiment they later apologized for, but as the Maya Angelou said"When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.)

The Ideological Masquerade

This pattern of behavior isn't merely offensive—it reveals the fundamental contradiction at the heart of their alliance. The tech aristocracy claims to value data, logic, and consistent reasoning, yet their political alignment makes no logical sense through an economic lens.

The inconsistency is jarring. These are men who built empires by disrupting inefficient systems, now aligning themselves with the most inefficient government imaginable. They're innovation champions embracing an administration openly hostile to science and evidence-based policymaking. They're self-proclaimed meritocrats supporting a president who personifies nepotism and cronyism.

The Identity They Police

Perhaps the most revealing aspect of this hypocrisy is how aggressively they police others' identities while denying their own identity-based coalition.

When employees ask for more diverse leadership, they're condemned for practicing "identity politics." When women speak up about harassment, they're attacked for playing "victim cards." When people of color point out systemic barriers, they're accused of being "divisive."

Yet their own economic alignment narrative collapses when confronted with actual data. The U.S. tech industry remains 60%+ male in a workforce that is 49% male, 54% white and 29% Asian, while Black professionals make up just 5% of tech (vs. 13% of the U.S. population) and Latin professionals just 7% (vs. 19%) .

These aren’t natural meritocratic outcomes. A truly free market for talent—one that values competition and global excellence—would produce different results.

When Marc Andreessen dismisses concerns about “way too many white men on management teams,” he isn’t defending meritocracy. He’s defending a structural failure that contradicts the efficiency principles he claims to champion.

The Truths We Hold Self-Evident

In the face of this contradiction, we can reject their premises entirely and assert these set truths:

Truth 1: There is no tradeoff between climate action and economic prosperity. Addressing climate change isn't an expense—it's an investment. In the long run, you cannot have one without the other, because there is no such thing as a rich, unlivable world. [I cannot recommend this conversation highly enough - Sustainable Leadership: Creating a Climate for Change with Rebecca Henderson and Spencer Glendon; thank you Alicia Seiger for sharing it with me].

Truth 2: Human dignity and economic success are interdependent. Ensuring people have access to education, healthcare, food, shelter, water, and good jobs isn't charity—it's the foundation of a functioning economy. As Jon Stewart said recently, “The greatest restriction to freedom in this country isn’t DEI and pronoun pressure, it's f-ing poverty and struggle!"

Truth 3: Democracy and business prosperity require each other. Free and fair elections, rule of law, and civic participation aren't obstacles to economic success—they're prerequisites.

Truth 4: Inclusive societies create lasting prosperity for all. When leadership reflects the full diversity of society, better decisions emerge from broader perspectives. Research consistently shows representative and inclusive teams and organizations outperform homogeneous ones. The success of inclusive societies isn't despite their diversity but because of it—societies that concentrate power in a single demographic inevitably miss innovations that arise from different lived experiences.

Beyond the False Binary

The tech oligarchy wants us to accept a false choice: their vision of concentrated power without accountability, or defending broken systems.

But Silicon Valley was built on rejecting false binaries. The real choice isn’t between their backlash and the status quo—it’s between honest versus dishonest approaches to solving complex problems.

Those who most loudly denounce “identity politics” have formed the most explicit identity-based coalition in Silicon Valley’s history. Their economic alignment argument isn’t just incomplete—it’s deliberately misleading.

Their ideological masquerade isn’t just intellectually dishonest—it’s a fundamental betrayal of the analytical rigor that true innovation demands.

No sustainable future can be built on such a fractured foundation.