The big techlash is coming, and we will deserve it
I am in tech. I am also pro e/acc in the literal sense: I want the rate of scientific and economic progress to go up. I want more experiments, more iteration, more infrastructure, more bets that look unreasonable until they work.
That is why watching tech leaders tie themselves to the current administration feels so bleak. It's strategically dumb.
In the last year, a bunch of people at the top of AI, Crypto, and VC firms have treated politics as a procurement channel. Donate, flatter, show up, signal alignment. In return get deregulation, get permits, get favorable enforcement, get SEC off their backs, get to write the rules, get government contracts. They realised they must do it now, "because the window might close later".
“we are just being realistic.” “we are building important things.” “we cannot afford hostile regulation.” “if we do not shape policy, someone worse will.” these are the kinds of sentences you can repeat while you cash the check.
The problem is that politics is not a neutral surface you can treat as a set of levers. Politics is a legitimacy machine. If the public decides tech is not building for them anymore, the legitimacy evaporates fast. and once it goes, it wouldn't come back just because you hired a better PR firm.
The bargain looks good only if you ignore the bill
Start with incentives. This administration has been explicit that it wants American dominance in AI with minimal burden, and it has pushed a national framework that discourages state regulation and mobilizes federal action against state AI laws it dislikes.
If you run an AI company, this sounds great. Fewer constraints. Fewer patchwork rules. More freedom to ship. More room to scale.
The pitch to silicon valley is increasingly transactional: build massive compute, secure massive power, build your own energy, get approvals faster. it is not hard to see why certain executives lean in.
It also doesn't help that Trump is a heavy quid-pro-quo, give/take, owe/favour President, do good to him, he'll do good to you. For him, you're either with him or against, and the againsts shall face the wrath. It isn't hard to see why the executives would cave in. The short-term incentives are now in place.
So the bargain becomes: "we help you move fast, you help us look modern, rich, and backed by the future."
This bargain is how you get a techlash, because to everyone outside the room who isn't cashing in on this, reads it as capture.
The easiest mistake is to think the techlash will come from one ideology. It will not. It will come from several directions that do not agree on much, except that they do not like you.
Some people are angry about monopoly power and extraction. Antitrust pressure does not vanish because you made friends in Washington. If anything, it becomes more volatile, because enforcement starts to feel political. The FTC is still pushing major cases, including continuing efforts against Meta over Instagram and Whatsapp.
Some people are angry about privacy and surveillance. Some are angry about labor displacement and wage pressure. Some are angry about kids and attention. Some are angry about AI risk. Some are angry about "hate speech" and moderation. Some are mad that their electricity rates are allegedly going up because of these data centers in their backyard eating the grid.
These groups do not need a single coherent theory. A shared enemy is all it takes, and tech keeps offering itself as that enemy.
Even in AI, where there is a real argument for speed, there is also a real fear that the winners will centralize power even further (the permanent-underclass meme is a real moderate sentiment).
If the public sees AI becoming another story about concentrated power, and they also see executives hugging the state, the conclusion writes itself.
The Tech CEOs have become the cartoon villains
I have talked to many, they don't think they are cartoon villains. Many of them think they are protecting progress, many of them think the alternative is worse.
When tech leaders pour money into politics and visibly cultivate power, they help legitimize the entire package.
They also teach politicians a lesson: tech is easy to squeeze. it has concentrated wealth, concentrated decision makers, and a culture that respects “winning.” If you can offer a few policy favors, you can extract Silicon Valley loyalty.
The short-term advantage is obvious: you get favorable policy. you get access. you get less friction.
The long-term cost is that you help create the narrative that tech is an arm of the regime, whichever regime is in power.
That narrative is a deadly poison because it turns every future tech-policy fight into a referendum on tech’s right to exist at scale.
and the eventual backlash is not going to be a polite correction. it will be blunt.
It will look like some combination of: harsher antitrust remedies that go beyond fines, bans or forced changes around default distribution deals, stricter privacy rules with real teeth, constraints on AI deployment, training data, and model behavior, higher taxation framed as punishment for concentrated wealth, procurement hostility and nationalization vibes around key infrastructure, aggressive state-level rules if the federal government is seen as captured, or if federal rules are perceived as shielding industry.
Even if you personally like deregulation, you should fear unstable politics. uncertainty kills investment. uncertainty kills long-term research. uncertainty kills the kind of infrastructure buildout AI actually needs.
So if you are pro e/acc, you should be pro legitimacy.
Right now, both big and little tech is acting anti legitimacy.
Why the backlash will feel “rightful”
I said “we will deserve it,” and I mean it in a narrow sense.
The techlash will not be fair in every detail. Politics is never fair in that way. some good projects will get hit. some bad projects will survive. some rules will be stupid.
but the direction of the backlash will make sense because tech has been running a playbook that creates distrust:
- Externalize costs,
- centralize power,
- treat regulation as an enemy rather than a boundary condition,
- talk about democratizing the future while building toll roads to it
- and acting surprised when people notice.
- add visible political alignment with an administration that many people already distrust
Even the most charitable reading is still ugly: it tells the public that the future is being negotiated in private by a few executives and a few politicians.
People will not accept that forever.
ICE and Israel are the ultimate litmus test
A certain cluster of very online tech elites has had endless time to rage about the billionaire tax, and to treat certain left-populist politicians as existential threats to civilization. California’s proposed billionaire wealth tax has been a magnet for public freakouts, threats to leave the state, and nonstop discourse.
When Zohran Mamdani rose into the national conversation, you could watch the same machine spin up again: investors, pundits, founders, and adjacent figures turning him into a symbol and a target.
Meanwhile, federal immigration enforcement has gotten visibly more violent, including cases where people have been killed during confrontations with immigration agents. In Minneapolis, Alex Pretti was murdered in daylight by ICE thugs on their way to kidnap people from the streets, and all reporting, videos and evidence suggests this was not an isolated escalation.
I don't think that everyone must comment on everything. For me, it is about consistency, how conistent are your ideals?
Loud outrage when taxes might touch billionaires. Loud outrage when Mamdani did the smallest of small for-the-people populist messaging.
And then, for many of the same loud voices, near silence when the state starts doing things that should terrify anyone who cares about liberal democracy, civil liberties, and basic human decency.
Many of those voices now appealing to pseudo-"nuance" instead of memes. Hypocritical much because this entire time since 2024 they cheered the cruel memes and the "vibes". Now they want "nuance" back when the tides (memes) have inevitably turned.
Yes, some tech and business leaders did speak out after the ICE murders, especially @paulg (imo, one of the only few left with a spine). but the asymmetry still matters, because it reveals priorities. It tells normal people that the moral bandwidth in tech is reserved for self-defense. For everything else ⸻ tech leaders preferred to be morally bankrupt.
That is how we earn hatred.