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The red wave that swept Donald J. Trump to re-election did not, despite what some podcasters might claim, originate in Silicon Valley.
Here, in bluer-than-blue San Francisco, rank-and-file tech workers still largely vote for Democrats. And while some prominent tech leaders came out in support of Mr. Trump — most notably, Elon Musk and a cluster of right-wing executives and venture capitalists who bankrolled his campaign — many others either supported Kamala Harris or parked themselves comfortably on the sidelines.
But whether they voted for Mr. Trump or not, nearly everyone in tech will feel the consequences of a second Trump term, from social media companies to crypto investors to the companies trying to build next-generation artificial intelligence systems.
Mr. Trump’s first term was wild and unpredictable, creating a noisy day-to-day business environment that even the biggest tech companies struggled to navigate. It’s likely that more chaos and uncertainty lie ahead.
But here are a few predictions I already feel confident making.
Musk vindicated
Mr. Musk, already the tech industry’s most visible and polarizing figure, may have done more than anyone else in America to elect Mr. Trump. He was not only one of Mr. Trump’s biggest donors and his highest-profile supporter on the campaign trail — he turned X, the social network he owns, into a megaphone for the MAGA movement, flooding users’ feeds with pro-Trump content and urging people to vote for him.
No one in Silicon Valley has ever put his thumb on the scale this hard. And no one will benefit more from a second Trump presidency than Mr. Musk, who will become the most powerful businessman in America (if he wasn’t already).
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