Big Think / Sarah Soryal
Key Takeaways
- In this op-ed, futurist Peter Leyden argues that despite recent headlines, tech has not swung hard right, but shifted from an 80/20 left–right split in the 1990s to a still-left-leaning 60/40 today.
- Leyden contends that Right Tech’s late embrace of Trump was rooted in the belief that he would interfere less with AI just as it emerges as a world-changing technology.
- He believes that gamble will backfire, creating an opening for the left to reclaim national leadership by advancing a tech-positive, future-forward vision of AI tied to shared prosperity and abundance.
In 1999, during the last Burning Man of the last century, I returned to my camp on the edge of the playa after a long night out socializing to find a brand-new tent set up next to my dusty old one. When I crawled out to stretch the next morning, the new tent’s front door zipped open, and Jeff Bezos and his then-wife MacKenzie emerged. They were dressed in matching khaki outfits that seemed better suited for fly fishing in Montana than the hot Nevada desert where most of the people roaming around were half naked and covered in glitter.
Bezos looked like an East Coast finance guy who was out of his element — kind of a dweeb, but a nice enough guy and super smart. MacKenzie seemed more down-to-earth and relaxed with everyone. They had been invited to join the camp at the last minute because its founder was also the founder of Alexa Internet, a web traffic measurement startup that Amazon had just bought. (Yes, the Alexa many of us now talk to had a very wonky start.) My campmates and I treated the two of them like anybody else. They had to do all the same chores and take their turn going to get ice in the central camp. I’m not sure what they did deep in the night.
I bring up this anecdote to illustrate that I’ve been watching the tech world up close for decades now. In the mid-1990s, I moved to San Francisco to work with the founders of WIRED magazine, which was ground zero for the creation of the story of the digital revolution as well as for the parties where many of its tech leaders gathered. I’ve stayed in the San Francisco Bay Area and Silicon Valley ever since, building out my network of innovators and entrepreneurs. I’ve regularly brushed up against world-famous tech titans and have gotten to know the broader tech scene in depth.
I’ve also spent more than 30 years now watching the mainstream media of the East Coast and Europe get the story of the tech world and San Francisco wrong over and over again. It’s mostly amusing, but occasionally infuriating. I loved how all the national media outlets declared San Francisco dead and authoritatively explained how the tech world was decamping to Austin and Miami at about the same time that artificial intelligence (AI), probably the most transformative general-purpose technology ever, was just about to break out big time. (Anybody left in Miami?)
I get particularly upset about the mainstream media’s coverage of the politics of the tech world. Lately, it’s had a general tendency to make blanket statements claiming that those in the tech world are now all right-wing. That Elon Musk is an avatar for the vast majority of people who work in tech. That the tech titans who run the trillion-dollar tech companies speak for tech when they show up for Trump’s inauguration or have dinner at the White House.
No, tech titans like Mark Zuckerberg don’t speak for the entire tech community. In fact, the tech insiders who hold positions in the Trump Administration, like David Sacks, are not representing even a majority of the tech world.
I think the gamble by Right Tech to go all-in with Trump was a strategic mistake.
I’m going to use this essay to give my analysis of the politics of the tech world over the last several decades. I’m going to explain how, from the 1990s until about a decade ago, the political split of the tech community was about 80% left-of-center (for shorthand, we’ll call them “Left Tech”) and 20% right-of-center (“Right Tech”). The Democratic administrations of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama served as the backdrop in national politics during that time. The vast majority of tech loved those guys, and they loved tech back. Those in Right Tech at the time were mostly understood as libertarians, and the two sides generally got along with mutual respect.
I’m then going to explain what happened 10 years ago to shift this political split to what I’d estimate to be about 60/40, with the clear majority of people still left-of-center. I’ll also explain why I think Right Tech made the move they did relatively late in the 2024 presidential cycle game to back Trump.
I’ll end with some speculation on what’s soon to come. Spoiler alert: I think the gamble by Right Tech to go all-in with Trump was a strategic mistake that they will regret over the course of the next couple years. Trump is going to flounder, and he’s going to bring down a lot of people with him and create a lot of reputational damage. In the long game of politics, the pendulum is going to swing, and you want to be positioned to where it’s going — not where it’s been.
The next couple years will be ones of great opportunity for Left Tech. There is a clear opening to make the case that the transformative power of artificial intelligence can be used to create a much better economy that works for all and a society of abundance where all Americans can thrive.
The Democratic Party seems ready to let go of much of the baggage of the past and move beyond its old leaders. Blue America is looking for more transformative ideas about how to make America work better for everyone over the long haul. The time has come for Left Tech to rise again and start making its next moves.
The 80/20 norm from the 1990s
Big Think / Sarah SoryalWIRED magazine was founded in 1993 primarily by Louis Rossetto, a libertarian who perfectly captured what Right Tech meant at that time. The vast majority of the young people who worked at WIRED, though, were politically left-of-center, including me. The rough split in the company was about 80% left-of-center and 20% right-of-center.
I loved Louis, as did almost all of us who worked there, and I especially loved having political conversations with him, of which he and I had many. There was always a mutual respect for each other and our different positions on various issues because we shared two key principles: We were both tech-positive and future-forward.
I maintain that these two key principles are shared by everyone working in the tech and innovation economy regardless of their politics to this day. They are “tech-positive” in that they believe that technology is more of a force for good than a danger. And they are “future-forward” in that they believe that a better world can be built now with enough forward-motion innovation if we get beyond many of the constraints of the past.
The two sides differentiate on the values that they emphasize while embracing those two universal principles. Those in Right Tech are more concerned with maximizing the freedom of the individual, while those in Left Tech are more concerned with the broader societal consequences for the majority of people.
These are both valid concerns, and keeping a focus on both is healthy for any society. You want an ongoing conversation about how what you are building is good for the individual and for the collective group. But when those perspectives go to extremes, you start running into problems. Maximizing the freedom of the individual can end up leading to greed and vast inequalities. The idealism of looking out for everyone can end up leading to over-regulation and centralized control.
That 80/20 political split in the WIRED staff was generally reflective of the whole tech world at that time and until about 2015. That ratio can be partially explained by the facts that the digital revolution attracted relatively young people (a demographic that typically leans left) and that we all lived in the San Francisco Bay Area in a California that was turning increasingly blue.
In national politics during that period, the Democrats were also the ones who were the most tech-positive and future-forward. President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore loved the possibilities of new tech and the internet. They were relatively young Baby Boomers and focused on letting go of the past and innovating towards a better future. The Republican leaders and presidential candidates of that time were mostly older and did not get tech. They were conservative, which may have made them business-friendly, but they did not talk the language of revolution, the digital revolution.
Then came Barack Obama, and the vast majority of tech, the 80%, fell in love. I actually was involved in an organization called “Tech for Obama” that supported him very early in the 2007 primary season when he was polling 30 points behind the establishment favorite, Hillary Clinton, whom he later beat for the nomination. I then served on his Tech and Media advisory board for the national general election campaign — I know from up close that Obama really “got” tech.
The recent shift right
Big Think / Sarah SoryalThen about a decade ago, as Obama headed toward the exit, things began to change in the politics of Silicon Valley. Many analyses of what happened — particularly from those outside the Valley — have focused on the changing mentalities or values of tech leaders and employees. There may be some truth to that perspective, but it misses other factors that started to change around 2015.
First, there’s the objective fact that tech companies that had been goofy startups of little consequence became trillion-dollar companies at the commanding heights of the global economy around this time. We had never had private companies valued at a trillion dollars before, but we now have an increasing number of tech companies each worth many trillions.
The media that had loved covering these adorable young startup founders realized they were the new powers that be, and the public genuinely started getting worried about big tech having too much money and power. Democrats in federal politics changed their attitude, too, in subtle but meaningful ways.
The short answer to what happened is that the national Democrats became less tech-positive and less future-forward.
Hillary Clinton finally got her turn to run for president in 2016, and it really felt like the Democratic establishment handed it to her. This appeared emblematic of the rise of the identity politics faction in the party and in the culture. She never seemed to get tech, and there was no love lost between the two sides. That said, tech reluctantly got behind her in the 2016 election because Trump seemed worse.
When Joe Biden became president, he brought in an administration that seemed controlled by the old left from the East Coast, stuck believing in 20th-century solutions. This appeared emblematic of the rise of the anti-corporate factions of Democrats, who were becoming increasingly anti-tech. They seemed to think they were best positioned to regulate tech from Washington, much like Europe was attempting from Brussels.
There was little tech enthusiasm for the aging Biden in his 2020 run, and literally zero for his attempt to run in 2024. Kamala Harris, a Californian, could have tried to make some break from that stasis with a tech-positive, future-forward message, but she did not. In fact, she said she would change almost nothing the Biden Administration did.
Few people in tech, regardless of their politics, actually admire Donald Trump.
Given this backdrop, the tech world started looking for those who were speaking the tech-positive, future-forward language in politics. They found it in the 21st-century manifestation of the libertarian right. To be clear, Right Tech over the last decade has not been a tech version of the populist movement of MAGA, and they can’t be considered traditionally conservative, as in “preserve the past and go slow.” They aren’t even classic libertarians because many of them see the need for a strong state to drive big change. But what they are for sure is tech-positive and future-forward.
So, over the last decade, people who work in the tech and innovation economy of the San Francisco region have begun to shift rightward. This has accelerated as newcomers flocked to San Francisco to become part of the recent boom in AI. I would put the current proportions at 60/40, with 40% now identifying with Right Tech — that’s a significant shift, but Left Tech is still the majority.
Which brings up the 2024 election. I can tell you that few people in tech, regardless of their politics, actually admire Donald Trump and respect him for the normally valued traits, like intellect, knowledge, or vision. But American politics offers a binary choice every election, and in 2024, there was the Democratic option, as described above, and there was Trump.
The key factor in deciding which way to go was that the 2024 election coincided with the arrival of generative AI and the beginning of the AI Age. Almost everyone in tech understood that AI is the most important and transformative general-purpose technology of our lifetimes so far and that the next four years would be absolutely crucial in getting that world-changing technology up and running.
So Right Tech decided to bet the house on Trump, thinking he would probably keep his hands off the AI industry at the very least. At best, they could get him to advance their cause. Right Tech won the bet, for now.
Left Tech’s next moves
Big Think / Sarah SoryalI think Right Tech made a bad bet by going all-in with Trump and that the gamble will be seen as a mistake in the long game of politics.
The short explanation for why I think this is that I believe Trump is going to fail to transform America along the lines of his MAGA, right-wing populist movement — and he’s going to create a lot of enemies along the way. He’s well on his way there after his first year in office, and his current polling reflects that a sizable majority of Americans do not like what Trump is actually doing.
Trump is going to continue to go down, and he’s going to take down a lot of other people with him. I think he will severely damage the Republican Party and the conservative movement that have so closely embraced him. And I think the damage will extend to those in Right Tech and the other billionaires who backed him, too.
The longer explanation for what I think will happen can be found in this essay I wrote last spring, which seems prescient and even more relevant today. I made the case that what Trump seems to be doing during his second term has strong parallels to what conservative Republican President Herbert Hoover did during the last reinvention of America, which took place 80 years ago. Hoover so screwed up the country and so damaged the Republican Party brand that he cleared out the political space for Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Democrats to dominate politics for the next 25 years — a period that served as the great Post-War boom that remade America.
Left Tech needs to seek ways that AI can benefit the vast majority of people rather than the few at the top.
The next two election cycles will provide a huge opportunity to present a new way forward for America after the carnage of Trump’s world. The 2026 congressional election will start shifting the momentum, but the 2028 presidential election cycle will be where new visions can be fully laid out.
This gives Left Tech a big opening to help craft a tech-positive, future-forward vision for America. That vision has to start with embracing the positive potential of AI as an extraordinary tool that could enable us to reinvent America and make a much better world.
Left Tech needs to get back in touch with its core values and seek ways that AI can benefit the vast majority of people rather than the few at the top. They need to resuscitate the idealism of tech that’s out to make things better for all.
How could the economy be redesigned to drive the great wealth that will be generated by AI to everyone? Tech leaders see the power of giving all their employees an equity stake in a company. Could we implement systems like Universal Basic Capital to give all citizens a piece of the AI game?
How could we design a society of abundance that makes the most of AI? Could we give all students access to a virtual personal tutor to transform our educational system? Or give every citizen a virtual doctor to remake our broken healthcare system?
These big, future-forward ideas match the big ambitions that the tech world brings to the development of its technologies. The tech community now has to broaden the scope of its ambition to support those who are trying to use those technologies to transform the economy, the society, and the world.
These are the kinds of big swings that will attract the next generation of young people in the tech and innovation economy. This is what might start to shift the balance to more like a 70/30 split between Left Tech and Right Tech in the next decade. And then both sides of the political spectrum will be competing to be more tech-positive and future-forward, and an era of mutual respect and dialogue might appear again.
There are signs that those in Left Tech are gearing up for these kinds of big, bold moves. They were the ones behind the YIMBY (“yes in my back yard”) movement that helped drive historic housing legislation through the California legislature in recent years. Those moves should help make housing more affordable for all — not just those on tech salaries.
Left Tech plays a big role in the abundance movement gaining influence in the Democratic Party, too. The whole concept of abundance has roots in the tech world. After all, tech takes things that are expensive and scarce, and makes them cheap and abundant. Why not do that for everything in society?
The next generation of political leaders in California are more tech-positive and future-forward, too. Governor Gavin Newsom is about as tech-savvy and plugged into the tech world as any politician in the nation. And Congressman Ro Khanna represents Silicon Valley, but also co-chaired Bernie Sanders’s left-wing populist presidential campaign in 2020. Both are seen as among the top contenders potentially running for president in 2028.
The national media might now be obsessed with Right Tech whispering in Donald Trump’s ear in Washington. But I think the next big story in politics is about to play out in San Francisco with the rise of Left Tech. We’ll soon see.
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