Silicon Valley’s political involvement began long before Musk and Bezos

The 2024 election has been described as the first Silicon Valley election. Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are the latest tech moguls to dominate the headlines for their political positions.

Bezos, owner of the Washington Post, vetoed its endorsement of Kamala Harris. Musk has donated $75 million to his pro-Donald Trump super PAC and has been rallying for the former president in appearances from Pennsylvania to Madison Square Garden.

Musk’s newfound embrace of Trump and Bezos’s hedging of bets between Trump and Harris are undoubtedly linked to the billions of dollars of government contracts that they seek, particularly in the context of their space ventures. Some Silicon Valley entrepreneurs also endorsed Trump this summer in response to Biden’s proposal to increase capital gains tax.

Big tech’s political activism is being treated as a new phenomenon. Popular opinion holds that until recently, Silicon Valley had been “happy to stay out of politics” and that its tech legends had “heroically resisted politics.”

This construct of the tech guru who levitates above politics is a myth. In reality, Silicon Valley has been foraying into politics since the 1980s, the decade which also marks the beginning of our current age of tech. By the 1990s, tech had already taken the White House and was well on its way to becoming deeply enmeshed within government.

Big tech politics is driven by its interests, which center on enlarging its pools of capital and expanding its markets for its primary products. In the 1980s, these were personal computers. In the 1990s it was e-commerce. Today, it is artificial intelligence and space commerce. Government has long been an important investor and customer, which is why political access matters.

As the high-tech industry soared in the 1980s, CEOs such as Steve Jobs of Apple, Dave Packard of Hewlett Packard and Robert Noyce of Intel started participating in commissions on tech, established by California Gov. Jerry Brown. They pressed for increased investment, capital gains tax cuts and deregulation. Brown’s archives expose the burgeoning political voice of the tech industry in state government as well as its pursuit of government contracts.

In 1983, following Apple’s launch of its first personal computer, Steve Jobs campaigned for a computers in schools bill. It failed in Congress but passed in California. By 1984, over three quarters of the state’s public schools possessed computers. Jobs had successfully created a new education technology market, courtesy of government. Think of this as precursor to the Bezos and Musk approach to building a new space market.

Silicon Valley’s leap from state to presidential politics took place in 1992. It was facilitated by Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton’s courtship of the tech industry. Before then most tech CEOs had quietly voted Republican. But President George H.W. Bush’s lack of enthusiasm for tech created an opening for Clinton, who sought Silicon Valley funding and endorsements.

Clinton’s efforts at courting Silicon Valley were led by former Apple CFO Dave Barram. Barram suggested that the best way to woo the techies would be to have them draft a national technology policy for Clinton.

Barram created a CEO policy team, comprising of over a dozen of Silicon Valley’s most influential CEOs, including John Sculley of Apple, John Young of Hewlett Packard and Larry Ellison of Oracle. Archival findings reveal the creation of Silicon Valley’s first presidential tech policy, made by tech for tech.

Clinton released the “Technology Policy for America” just a few weeks ahead of the 1992 election, following which Silicon Valley top players endorsed him for president. Clinton pledged to change “America’s tax, trade and regulatory policies” in order “to help restore America’s industrial and technological leadership.” This would later include cutting the capital gains tax, a key techie issue both then and now.

Clinton’s presidential victory vaulted tech to the White House, as he placed Apple’s John Sculley on the Hillary Clinton's right at his first State of the Union. He appointed Dave Barram as deputy Commerce secretary. Within his first month in office, Clinton unveiled a comprehensive technology plan, based on the one drafted by the CEOs.

Clinton played a crucial role in championing the Internet and the e-commerce boom of the 1990s. Yet, in the presidential elections of 1996 and 2000, the tech CEOs made it clear that they needed to be wooed afresh. Clinton and Vice President Al Gore’s commitment to the tech industry had been steadfast but the CEOs always found more to want.

In 1992, the ask had been big — a technology policy for America. In 1996, the industry secured a securities litigation victory. In 2000, the techies persuaded Clinton to limit liabilities and expand their protection from litigation. White House archives disclose that in the run up to the 2000 election, Gore held over 20 private meetings with techies including Jeff Bezos, and the founders of Netscape and Yahoo! The “Gore-Tech” sessions took place behind closed doors and official notes were not taken.

Silicon Valley has created a mythos of being apolitical and apart from government. Yet, today as in the 1980s and 1990s, big tech continues to rely on government as funder and purchaser. The tech CEOs have remained single issue voters, focused on furthering commercial interests.

Paying attention to the political history of Silicon Valley shows us how its titans have long tried to game presidential politics to maximize their own gains. It also sheds light on the pivotal role government plays in aiding the growth of big tech.

Instead of getting pulled into the spin about Bezos and Musk’s support of Trump, we should focus on seeking more transparency in how the White House makes tech policy and more accountability in the workings of the government-tech relationship, much of which is just beginning to come to light.

Nur Laiq, Ph.D., is a Technology & Geopolitics Fellow and an Ernest May Fellow in History & Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.