Transcript
Bel Lin (0:00)
In today's Enterprise? How are CIOs creating more impact in the C suite and with the board? What does it mean to be a blended executive? Learn more on the fourth episode of Techfluential, a podcast from Deloitte and custom content from WSJ. Welcome to Tech News Briefing. It's Monday, January 27th. I'm Bel Lin for the Wall Street Journal. The new Trump administration is shaping up to have profound effects the tech industry, from regulation and policy to artificial intelligence, investment and development. All this week we are exploring what President Trump's second term could mean for the tech industry over the next four years and beyond. And a lot has happened just in the first week. Coming up on today's show, prominent big tech leaders race to praise Trump after his victory. Some donated a million dollars to his inaugural fund and were in attendance at his inauguration. WSJ Global Tech editor Jason Dean joins us to discuss how Trump won over some of Silicon Valley's tech leaders and what it means for the future of Amazon, Google, Meta and other key tech. So, Jason, let's start with President Trump's inauguration, where you had the likes of Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg, just to name a few, of the big tech CEOs with front row seats. It was a pretty striking image to see them at the inauguration. What kind of relationship do you think that signals between the Trump administration and big Tech?
Jason Dean (1:48)
Yeah, it was really striking and a real contrast to the imagery and the substance at the start of his previous administration with the tech industry. There's several factors at work here. Obviously, these companies are very interested in being in his good graces. Part of that is defensive. They all have had crosshairs on them, really, from both sides of the political spectrum, but in many regards, especially from the right. And obviously there's been personal animus on Trump's side towards some of these CEOs historically. So first and foremost, they do not want to be targets to the best. They can avoid that, but they also see an opportunity. You know, many of these companies felt like they were also in the crosshairs in the Biden administration, particularly in regulatory issues. Several of them have been sued by the government for antitrust, and they felt like there was successive regulation governing the tech industry. And they see Trump as someone who could fundamentally change that and embrace policies that are good for them and for their investors.
Bel Lin (2:58)
And what might some of those policies look like? What are some of the changes that would be good for the big tech companies?
Jason Dean (3:05)
I mean, you can see some of them already. I mean, he's been very vocal about embracing policies that favor cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence. It wasn't like the Biden administration was anti AI, but they weren't quite as fulsome in their embrace. And obviously they were quite tough on the crypto industry. And that's a sector that venture capital firms in Silicon Valley have invested enormous sums in and have a lot at stake. I'm sure they hope that these antitrust suits they're facing might go away, or at the very least, that there won't be stricter enforcement or continued strict enforcement of antitrust regulations, so that there might be an ability to do more deals which could be beneficial both for the big companies and for the investors in startups who could see exits on their investment and have really been constrained in that over the last four years.