• by Gord Hotchkiss , Featured Contributor, April 1, 2025

Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and Tim Cook must be thanking their lucky stars that Elon Musk is who he is. Musk is taking the brunt of any anti-Trump backlash and seems to be relishing in it. Heaven only knows what is motivating Musk, but he is casting a smoke screen so wide and dense it’s obliterating the ass-kissing being done by the rest of the high-tech oligarchs.  In addition to Bezos, Zuckerberg and Cook, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, Google’s Sundar Pichai and many other high-tech leaders have been making goo-goo eyes at Donald Trump.

Let’s start with Jeff Bezos. One assumes he is pandering to the president because his companies have government contracts worth billions. That pandering has included a pilgrimage to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago, a $1 million donation to his inauguration fund (which was streamed live on Amazon Prime), and green-lighting a documentary on Melania Trump. The Bezos-owned Washington Post declined from endorsing Kamala Harris as a presidential candidate, prompting some of its editorial staff to resign. At Amazon, the company has backed off some of its climate pledge commitments and started stripping DEI programs from its HR handbook.

Mark Zuckerberg joined Trump-supporting podcaster Joe Rogan for almost three hours to explain how the company was realigning Facebook to be more Trump-friendly. This included canning its fact-checkers and stopping the policing of misinformation. During the interview, Zuckerberg took opportunities to slam media and the outgoing Biden administration for daring to question Facebook about misleading posts about COVID-19 vaccines. Zuckerberg, like Bezos, also donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund and has rolled back DEI initiatives at Meta.

Tim Cook’s political backbend has been a little more complicated. On the face of it, Apple’s announcement that it would be investing more than $500 billion in the U.S. and creating thousands of new jobs certainly sounds like a massive kiss on the Trumpian posterior -- but if you dig through the details, it’s really just putting a new spin on commitments Apple already made to support its development of Apple’s AI. And in many cases, the capital investment isn’t even coming from Apple. For instance, that new AI server manufacturing plant in Houston that was part of the announcement? That plant is actually being built by Apple partner Foxconn, not Apple.

As far as the rest of the Big Tech cabal, including Microsoft, Google and OpenAI, their new alignment with Trump is not surprising. Trump is promising to make the U.S. the undisputed leader in AI, and he would probably be more inclined than the Democrats to look the other way when it comes to things like antitrust investigations and enforcement.

So Big Tech’s deferment to Trump is both entirely predictable and completely self-serving. I’m also guessing all of them think they’re smarter than Trump and his administration, providing them a strategic opportunity to play Trump like a fiddle while pursuing their long-term corporate goals free from any governmental oversight or resistance. All evidence to date shows they’re probably not mistaken in that assumption.

This could play out one of two ways. First, what happens if these High Tech Frat Rats' bets are wrong? There is an anti-Trump, anti-MAGA revolt building. In one scenario, a significant percentage of Republicans decide their political future (and, hopefully, the future of the U.S. as a democracy also factors into their thinking) is better off without a Donald Trump in it, so they start the wheels turning to remove him from power. If this happens, expect recrimination and finger-pointing everywhere. And some of those fingers are going to be pointed at the Big Tech leaders who scraped the ground bowing to Trump’s bluster and bullying.

Will that translate into a backlash against Big Tech? I’m really not sure. To date, these companies have been remarkably adept at sloughing off blame. Will we care about Big Tech’s obsequiousness when it comes time to order something from Amazon or get a new iPhone?

Probably not. 

But the other scenario is even more frightening: Trump stays in power and the Big Technocrats are free to do whatever the hell they want. Based on what you know about Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos and the rest, are you willing to let them be the sole architects of your future? Their about-face on Trump has shown that they will always, always,  place profitability above their personal and professional ethics.