THE WASHINGTON POST: Elon Musk isn’t the only tech leader helping shape the Donald Trump administration

During an intimate dinner at his New Jersey golf club last summer, President-elect Donald Trump told the prominent Silicon Valley investor Marc Andreessen that he wanted American tech companies to win a global race against China.

It was the first time Andreessen had met Trump, and the former president’s blunt message resonated with the tech mogul. Andreessen feared that the Biden administration’s crackdown on cryptocurrency and other technologies endangered his multibillion-dollar investment portfolio, he later explained in podcast interviews.

In Trump, Andreessen saw a potential ally whose ambitions to beat China could be a boon to the US tech industry. After feeling shut out of Washington for almost four years under President Joe Biden, Andreessen was taken with Trump’s hospitality during his overnight stay at the Bedminster club.

That meeting sparked a new political alliance between Trump and the godfather of the internet browser and co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz, a venture capital firm that invested in Facebook, Airbnb, Coinbase and many other prominent tech companies. In the two months since Trump’s election, Andreessen has been leveraging the hiring skills he honed scaling start-ups to help build the Trump administration during frequent visits to the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida.

Andreessen has been quietly and successfully recruiting and interviewing candidates for positions across the incoming administration, according to three people familiar with the matter who, like several others interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity to detail confidential personnel deliberations. The venture capitalist’s reach is not limited to decisions related to tech and economics personnel, one person who speaks to Trump regularly said. Andreessen has also advised the incoming administration on candidates for posts at the Department of Defence and intelligence agencies, that person said.

Andreessen’s under-the-radar influence stands in sharp contrast to the highly visible role that Tesla CEO Elon Musk is playing in the transition as the incoming president’s self-declared “first buddy.” And other leaders of large tech companies are making public pilgrimages to Mar-a-Lago. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who owns The Washington Post, recently dined with the president-elect at the club, and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s Sundar Pichai have also visited. Several tech titans have donated to Trump’s inaugural committee, signalling they want a fresh start with the incoming president, who has lambasted the industry for allegedly censoring his views and those of his allies online.

Andreessen represents the shifting attitudes of a cohort of venture capitalists and start-up leaders who have long kept government officials at an arm’s distance. After feeling burned by the Biden administration’s attempts to crack down on the tech sector, these Silicon Valley elites are seeking to ingratiate themselves in Washington and advance interests that Andreessen Horowitz has branded as the “Little Tech” agenda.

Unlike bigger names such as Amazon, Google and Meta, these “Little Tech” companies were mainly unscathed by the political firestorm that engulfed their larger counterparts during Trump’s first term. That changed when the Biden administration began greater oversight of cryptocurrencies and artificial intelligence. After leaving the policy battles to their bigger peers, these smaller firms and their leaders are now leaning in to Washington, getting more personally involved - with some even leaving lucrative Silicon Valley jobs to join the Trump administration.

These companies have a clear agenda - overturning Biden-era policies they view as burdensome to early-stage companies without the personnel or funds to navigate complex regulations. They may, according to multiple people, get some significant early wins in rolling back AI and cryptocurrency regulations.

“It’s felt like a boot off the throat,” Andreessen said of Trump’s victory during a November podcast conversation with his firm’s co-founder, Ben Horowitz.

A representative for Andreessen declined to make him available for an interview, but he has described the work he is doing for the Trump transition in appearances on several podcasts since the election. Andreessen described himself as “an unpaid volunteer” for the “Department of Government Efficiency,” the outside-government commission aimed at cutting waste headed by Musk and former GOP presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy, in a December podcast episode of “Honestly With Bari Weiss.” He also said the calibre of the people he is interviewing for the administration is “very high.”

‘Scattered around all over the place’

After the assassination attempt directed at Trump in July, Musk, Andreessen and a host of venture capitalists publicly broke with historically liberal Silicon Valley, throwing their financial and social-media clout behind Trump.

Some now have direct access to the president-elect, who frequently hosts tech and crypto leaders at Mar-a-Lago. Sequoia partner Shaun Maguire, Craft Ventures partner David Sacks and Palantir adviser Jacob Helberg are among the venture capital and tech elites who have spent time at the club.

Trump has picked Sacks to serve as his AI and crypto czar, and Helberg to work as under secretary of state for economic growth, energy and the environment.

“There has been an effort in the Washington bureaucratic swamp to stifle innovation with more regulation and higher taxes,” Brian Hughes, a spokesperson for the Trump-Vance transition, said in a statement to The Washington Post. “With support from many entrepreneurs who are thrilled to turn the page on the past four years, President Trump and David Sacks will safeguard free speech online, steer us away from big tech censorship, and develop a legal framework so the crypto industry can thrive in the United States.”

Jared Isaacman, who flew to space twice with Musk’s SpaceX, is Trump’s pick for NASA administrator. And many more Silicon Valley investors are lending their time to DOGE.

The tech industry will also be playing a prominent role in the inauguration celebrations. Venture capitalist Peter Thiel is planning to host an inauguration party, according to two people familiar with his plans. On Friday, industry bigwigs will attend a “Crypto Ball” to celebrate “the first crypto president,” according to an invitation viewed by The Post.

At least 10 of Trump’s picks for key administration roles have professional ties to either Andreessen, Musk or Thiel, creating a new opportunity for the tech industry to advance its priorities in DC. Those picks’ public stances on crypto and tech issues mark a drastic departure from those of Biden officials, who cracked down on crypto companies, increased scrutiny of tech mergers and issued new AI regulations.

Some of the selections are Andreessen confidants such as longtime partner Scott Kupor, who was selected to serve as head of the Office of Personnel Management; and Sriram Krishnan, who announced in November that he was leaving Andreessen Horowitz and was tapped as a senior policy adviser for artificial intelligence.

The tech-friendly picks - who will be placed at the White House, the Pentagon, the Department of Health and Human Services, and other agencies - could provide direct points of contact for venture capitalists and tech executives trying to influence the administration.

“These people will be scattered around all over the place and have their marching orders,” said one person familiar with the plans.

Andreessen and his peers largely want Washington regulators to leave their businesses alone. They have pressed the president-elect to revoke Biden’s October 2023 AI executive order, which invoked emergency powers to require companies to test the safety of their systems and report the results to the federal government. They have called for federal regulators to dial back antitrust scrutiny of tech mergers and acquisitions. And they want fewer investigations and lawsuits against cryptocurrency companies, which they say have been hampered by the Biden administration’s approach to regulation.

Andreessen’s firm is also staffing its Washington operation to advocate these priorities. Andreessen Horowitz now has a DC office, and it’s expanding its DC team to include Josh Arnold, a former executive vice president at the Republican firm Targeted Victory and staffer for Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyoming), as partner.

Andreessen and other leaders have said the drift from Democrats accelerated after the implosion of the FTX crypto exchange in 2022, when banks started terminating services to some individuals and businesses involved in cryptocurrencies - a practice dubbed “de-banking” - as a result of regulatory pressure to follow new reporting requirements from government agencies. Although venture capitalists and tech executives have described specific examples of de-banking, there’s no evidence it was part of a broad effort to limit cryptocurrencies.

“If bank regulators are willing to tell people to stand down from this legal business, what other legitimate legal activities are they willing to force banks to drop?” said Paul Grewal, the chief legal officer at Coinbase, the largest US-based cryptocurrency trading exchange.

Early wins

Sacks and members of the Trump transition team have been working closely with crypto leaders to finalize a legislative strategy, and Trump is expected to issue executive orders on the first day of his presidency that may address issues including de-banking and the repeal of a controversial crypto accounting policy requiring banks holding digital assets to count them as liabilities on the bank’s own balance sheet, according to a person involved with the conversations.

“The Trump team has made it very clear that this is a priority,” the person added.

Sacks previewed the administration’s plans at Mar-a-Lago right before Christmas. On December 20, a group of tech investors flew to Trump’s Palm Beach residence to host a luncheon titled “America First: The future of space, AI, and tech,” according to an invitation viewed by The Post.

At the three-hour event, investors dined on black cod with mushroom miso broth while listening to remarks from Sacks. Hosts of the luncheon included 1789 Capital, a venture capital firm with ties to the incoming vice president, JD Vance that counts Donald Trump Jr. as a partner, and Type One Ventures, which invests in space, AI and financial technologies.

Ark Invest CEO Cathie Wood and 1789 Capital founder Omeed Malik also spoke at the event. A mix of venture capitalists, entrepreneurs and government officials attended, including Helberg, Andreessen Horowitz partner Katherine Boyle and 1789 Capital founder and Chief Investment Officer Christopher Buskirk, according to Type One Ventures partners Tarek Waked and Abdo John Hajj.

During the lunch, Sacks said Trump was committed to revoking Biden’s AI executive order, describing it as an order written by Democratic insiders for Democratic insiders that would have mandated “woke” AI, according to a person familiar with the speech, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private event. Conservatives have long criticised the order for requiring technology that “advances equity” and “prohibits algorithmic discrimination.” He also promised a sensible process to determine what AI needs from government, which he doesn’t think is very much. A representative for Sacks declined to comment.

Waked said people with industry experience are best positioned to regulate technologies because they understand how these complex systems work.

“They know how the sausage gets made,” he said.

The relationship between Trump and venture capitalists marks a change even from Trump’s first administration, when he floated breaking up major tech companies and called crypto “a scam” and a “disaster waiting to happen.” Such friendliness between tech leaders and Washington has not been seen since Barack Obama controlled the White House and embraced Silicon Valley culture.

“It kind of feels like it did during the first Obama term when Google, Facebook and others contributed to the U.S. Digital Service,” one of the people familiar with the matter said, referring to the “tech start-up” within Obama’s first administration that harnessed top tech talent to improve the government’s digital services.

Despite tech’s rising influence with Trump himself, there are signs its agenda isn’t always aligned with the broader MAGA movement.

Obama’s tight ties to the tech industry were broadly criticised in the years after he left office, amid concerns that Washington policymakers had abdicated their responsibility to protect consumers and curtail the power of large companies.

Stephen K. Bannon, a former top Trump adviser and podcaster, has consistently warned against “techno-feudalism:” a socioeconomic system that centralizes wealth and power in the hands of tech companies and elites. Bannon last week referred to Musk, Ramaswamy and Sacks as “sociopathic overlords in Silicon Valley.” He blamed them for “gutting the middle class” after Trump sided with Musk in support of immigration visas for highly skilled workers.

Andreessen has also joined Republicans and Musk in criticising social media companies for allegedly censoring conservative views online. Zuckerberg recently announced that Meta would dismantle its extensive fact-checking program in the United States, saying that the initiative led to “too many mistakes and too much censorship.”

That makes Zuckerberg and Musk welcome allies to some Republicans in their long-standing fight against government regulation and the alleged censorship of conservative views - and aligns them with Andreessen, who has associated himself with the GOP position on those issues since well before Trump’s November victory.

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