How the "PayPal Mafia" Threw Silicon Valley Into a Trump Trance

Inside the Hive

Vanity Fair

News

4.2 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 1 August 2024

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It used to be that Silicon Valley was considered a blue bastion, and supported social causes like education, public health and climate action. But, if that perception wasn’t already crumbling before now, then it was utterly shattered in 2024. This past month has seen countless tech elites flock behind Donald Trump as their candidate of choice in the presidential election, leaving many in the media scratching their heads—and wringing their hands. But not for Roger McNamee, the veteran venture capital investor, who, on the latest episode of Inside the Hive, breaks down all the financial incentives at play and unpacks why tech leaders are “abandoning” the values they seemingly once held. “Their belief in cryptocurrency and their belief that low taxes and lack of regulation are essential to the prosperity of the tech industry,” he says. “These guys historically had an omerta. They did not speak ill of each other. And basically over the past six weeks or so, the political disagreements have come out into the open.”

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, it's Radika Jones, editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair.
0:05.0	If you love digging into the week's political headlines,
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0:10.0	Our reporters take you behind the scenes of some of the biggest stories from the campaign
0:14.9	trail to the halls of Congress.
0:17.5	Just for our Inside the Hive listeners, save 15% on a yearly digital subscription to Vanity Fair with promo code
0:24.4	pod 15 that's vanity fare.com promo code pod 15 for 15% off one year of all you can
0:32.3	read watch and hear.
0:38.8	So it's Tech billionaire versus Tech billionaire
0:41.2	in Silicon Valley these days.
0:43.3	Roger, what the heck is going on?
0:45.4	Brian, what's going on is a battle for the soul of Silicon Valley.
0:50.4	On one side you have billionaires. On the other side you have America, and in the middle you have all the people who create the amazing products in Silicon Valley.
1:00.0	The billionaires want you to believe that this is really a cat fight between people who support Trump or people who support Harris
1:06.7	But really those guys have way more in common
1:10.0	than they do with the needs of the American public.
1:13.0	And they have steered Silicon Valley away from the core needs of America,
1:18.0	which is to fight climate change, to protect public health,
1:21.0	and obviously to boost education.
1:22.0	There are all kinds of real needs in the economy. public health and obviously to boost education.
1:22.5	There are all kinds of real needs in the economy.
1:24.5	Silicon Valley has not been addressing any of them,
	...

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