Trump’s Re-Election: What It Means for Silicon Valley and Salesforce : Tom M

Trump’s Re-Election: What It Means for Silicon Valley and Salesforce
by: Tom M
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**Summary: Trump’s Second Term and Its Impact on AI and Silicon Valley** On January 20, Donald Trump officially began his second term as President. One of his administration's primary focuses is artificial intelligence (AI). After his victory in November, plans were made to dismantle Joe Biden’s Executive Order on AI, which required companies to report on their AI development practices. Trump argues that these restrictions impede innovation and aims for the U.S. to dominate the AI sector, especially to outpace China, which has been advancing rapidly in AI technologies. China has surpassed the U.S. in AI-related patents, and the Trump administration is determined to change this. Trump has expressed the need for the U.S. to lead in AI, emphasizing a swift development environment. This includes restricting China's access to critical technology, such as Nvidia chips, while also seeking to boost AI initiatives domestically. Interestingly, tech leaders from Silicon Valley, who previously opposed Trump, are now aligning with him, largely due to his pro-AI stance. This strategic pivot allows tech companies to influence regulations and benefit from potential government contracts in AI research, particularly in defense and healthcare. Elon Musk stands out as a key ally for Trump, having invested substantial resources in supporting his campaign. Musk's influence in AI has also grown, especially with his ventures like xAI. This evolving relationship between Trump and tech leaders suggests a significant shift in how Silicon Valley interacts with political power. However, there are environmental concerns regarding the energy consumption associated with AI development, and Trump's administration will need to balance innovation with responsible regulation to mitigate negative impacts. **Key Points:** - Trump focuses on AI supremacy and dismantling existing regulations. - Aims to outpace China in AI advancements. - Tech leaders in Silicon Valley are aligning with Trump for favorable regulations and funding. - Elon Musk is a significant ally, promoting innovation in AI. - Environmental impacts of AI development are a growing concern. **Hashtags for SEO:** #TrumpReElection #ArtificialIntelligence #SiliconValley #TechIndustry #AIRegulations #ChinaAICompetition #ElonMusk #EnvironmentalImpact #Innovation #USPolitics


Today, January 20, officially marks the beginning of a second term in office for President-elect Donald Trump.

When Trump won the presidency last November, one of the first things he and his party addressed was artificial intelligence in the United States. It was quickly announced that existing laws regarding AI in the US – more specifically, Joe Biden’s Executive Order on AI – would be repealed and completely dismantled. 

The order demands that any company training and developing AI models must submit reports that detail their training methodologies, security measures, and testing data – all of which have been criticized by Trump for hindering and restricting the innovative potential of AI. The new regime wants rapid AI development, and to do so, they believe that Biden’s order must be abolished.

With such intense focus, it raises the question: Why is the new President placing such a strong emphasis on AI? The answer is very simple – Trump wants the US to unanimously rule the AI landscape, and more importantly, beat China to the top position.

China has made significant strides with AI over the past few years. According to Govini’s National Security Scorecard, China has outpaced the US in AI and machine learning patents every year since 2021. In addition, China has controversially leveraged Meta’s open-source LLM model to help with their military-focused AI tools and aims to develop their own models to world-leading status by 2030.

For Trump, this needs to change very quickly. Appearing on the Impaulsive podcast, the President-elect said: “We have to be at the forefront – we have to take the lead over China.”

To achieve this, the US have already doubled down on restricting China’s access to their technology. Former President, Joe Biden, has worked extensively to prevent China from accessing Nvidia chips – the brain behind artificial intelligence systems. The motivation behind this is to slow down China’s AI progress – something the new President is very much on board with. However, China have worked actively on their own chips to counter this strategic move.

So if restrictions aren’t going to have their desired impact, then acceleration efforts are only likely to ramp up this year, which will have a tremendous influence on Silicon Valley. We have recently seen numerous tech giant CEOs – Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, and most notably, Elon Musk – “bend the knee” to the new president. But why are tech billionaires supporting the new regime so strongly?

Silicon Valley’s Evolving Relationship With Donald Trump

To tell the full story, let’s revisit 2017. In January of that year, Trump – who was one year into his first term as President – signed an executive order banning people from six Muslim-majority countries from entering the USA as well as other further restrictions preventing refugees from entering the country. This sparked a massive response from the public, leading to protests in San Francisco, where thousands showed up to voice their dismay.

However, no group was more vocal against the decision than leaders from Silicon Valley’s top companies. Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Facebook (Meta) all condemned this order – with the co-founder of Google, Sergey Brin, even going as far as to join the streets of San Francisco in protest.

Fast forward to 2021, and the relationship between Trump and Silicon Valley continued to strain. After being accused of inciting the riots on the US Capitol building, the President was banned from Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, in an effort to prevent him from using social media to push his political agendas.

Zuckerberg took to Facebook on his personal account to say: “The shocking events of the last 24 hours clearly demonstrate that President Donald Trump intends to use his remaining time in office to undermine the peaceful and lawful transition of power to his elected successor, Joe Biden.”

Trump’s Second Term and Silicon Valley’s Strategic Pivot

What once seemed like an irreparable divide now looks strikingly different, as Trump begins his second term as President. A group that vehemently opposed his political stances eight years ago is now making significant efforts to cultivate a strong working relationship with him. 

What is the driving force behind this unexpected alignment? Artificial intelligence. If there’s one area where both sides can find common ground, it’s AI.

As mentioned, a key factor for Trump is an acceleration in AI efforts – which means lifting existing restrictions and giving companies the freedom to innovate as much and as fast as possible. Although many Silicon Valley companies have berated him in the past, this particular agenda now works well in their hands. A warming relationship with Trump is largely strategic – but by staying in his good graces, tech companies hope to influence AI regulations, avoiding overly restrictive policies that could hinder innovation or profitability. 

Trump’s initiatives to boost federal funding for AI research, particularly in defense and healthcare, created opportunities for lucrative government contracts. With AI playing a pivotal role in military innovation, the administration’s focus on strengthening defense provided a clear area of mutual interest with Silicon Valley.

Moreover, tech giants benefited significantly from Trump’s corporate tax cuts, which bolstered their bottom lines. Aligning with his administration also opened the door to additional financial incentives, such as subsidies or tax credits for AI research and development. All of these factors have influenced the change of tune that’s been seen across Silicon Valley. 

Mark Zuckerberg – who is now pioneering his own debate for AI acceleration with his open-source LLM, Llama – has been doing everything he can to get Trump on his side, despite banning him from all of Meta’s platforms a few years ago.

In a move that shocked shareholders and users alike, Zuckerberg announced earlier this month that he would be removing third-party fact-checking from Meta’s social media apps as they were “too politically biased”. Posts shared on Facebook and Instagram will no longer be checked thoroughly for accuracy. 

While this may be a strategic move to improve user engagement on posts, many believe that is being done to align with the new administration’s beliefs on free speech. To top it off, Zuckerberg donated $1M to Trump’s inaugural fund in a further effort to improve relations.

Other tech giants also donated generously to Trump ahead of his re-election. Apple CEO, Tim Cook, personally donated $1M, while OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Adobe all donated similar amounts to the fund. Uber’s CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, donated $2M – one half for the fund and the other to keep personally.

To put this into perspective, when Joe Biden was announced President in 2021, Apple donated $43,000, and Amazon gave $276,000 – while Meta and OpenAI didn’t donate anything.

Salesforce and Donald Trump

Although Salesforce CEO, Marc Benioff, claims to have not donated to Trump’s fund due to his desire to be nonpartisan, he has been vocal about his support of the new administration. As owner of TIME magazine, Benioff announced Trump as “Person of the Year” in 2024 – and jokingly commented that it would make up for the lack of funding.

On December 12, 2024, Marc Benioff wrote a post on X congratulating Donald Trump on being named TIME Person of the Year. He added: “This marks a time of great promise for our nation. We look forward to working together to advance American success and prosperity for everyone.”

Benioff has been generally upbeat about the new President, taking to X to openly celebrate Trump’s election: “This marks a time of great promise for our nation. We look forward to working together to advance American success and prosperity for everyone.”

Marc Benioff’s openness to a potential second Trump presidency has surprised many, sparking backlash from both Salesforce users and employees at TIME magazine.

Back in 2016, he was a vocal supporter of Hillary Clinton’s campaign against Trump, and in 2018, he played a key role in backing San Francisco’s Proposition C, a measure that raised taxes on large businesses – including Salesforce – to support homeless services. This effort aligned him with some of the city’s most progressive figures, many of whom are strongly opposed to Trump.

This change of heart came as a surprise of many, so is this another attempt from a Silicon Valley CEO at strategic positioning? Potentially, but there isn’t much to suggest this as of right now.

Amid this shifting landscape, it’s possible that Benioff has aimed to position himself as a key voice in the AI discourse in America, aligning with the growing influence of other Silicon Valley titans in this arena.

However, of all the Silicon Valley CEOs that have backed Trump, none have invested as much time, resources, and finances as tech mogul, Elon Musk.

Benioff described Elon Musk as “the Edison of our era”, saying the controversial billionaire could “revolutionize government” through DOGE. Benioff wrote: “Imagine $2T in savings, a leaner, smarter system, and a future-ready nation. If Elon makes the USA as innovative as Tesla, SpaceX, and X, it could reshape our country and world.”

Let’s take a closer look at Musk’s newfound relationship with Trump and the strategy behind DOGE…

Trump and Musk’s Vision for AI in America

Elon Musk appears to not only be the world’s richest man, with a net worth of around $219B, but also Donald Trump’s closest ally in the tech world.

During the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, Musk said during Tesla’s Q1 earnings call that the government arresting people for leaving their homes was “fascist”.

The CEO said: “I think the people are going to be very angry about this and are very angry. If somebody wants to stay in their house – that’s great – they should be allowed to stay in the house and they should not be compelled to leave. But to say that they cannot leave their house, and they will be arrested if they do – this is fascist. This is not democratic. This is not freedom. Give people back their goddamn freedom.”

As the pandemic was winding down In May 2022, Musk told a Miami tech conference that he would classify himself as a “moderate, neither Republican nor Democrat”, but Twitter, as it was then called, has a “very far left bias”.

Musk went on: “I have voted overwhelmingly for Democrats, historically. Like I’m not sure, I might never have voted for a Republican, just to be clear… Now this election I will.”

The SpaceX founder and Tesla CEO made the comments ahead of buying Twitter for $44B, which was completed in October 2022. Musk has declared himself to be a “free speech absolutist” and his purchase of the social media site was an apparent attempt to restore freedom of expression on the platform.

Musk granted “amnesty” for suspended accounts in 2022 after he posted a poll to his timeline asking whether accounts that have not “broken the law or engaged in egregious spam” should be reinstated. The yes vote was 72%. In August 2023, the site, now known as X, saw Donald Trump return – more than two years after his account was suspended indefinitely.

While many have speculated about the precise reason Musk bought Twitter, it could certainly be said that, in hindsight, the move helped bring him closer to Trump. From here, the relationship between Trump and Musk seemed to somewhat deepen, with Elon becoming quite a vocal supporter of the Republican candidate.

On July 13, 2024, Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt during a rally near Butler, Pennsylvania. That same day, Elon Musk posted a video clip of the aftermath, which showed Trump holding his fist in the air. 

On November 11, 2024, the Associated Press reported that Elon Musk’s super PAC spent around $200M to help elect Donald Trump, citing “a person familiar with the group’s spending”.

Musk would appear at several Trump rallies – most recently at the President-elect’s Make America Great Again Victory Rally on the event of his inauguration in Washington DC. 

Trump said of Elon: “We have to be protective of our geniuses because we don’t have too many, but that one is a good one.” During the President-elect’s election night party in Florida, Trump also called Elon “a new star”.

Following Trump’s victory, Musk was tasked with leading the new Department of Government Efficiency, or “DOGE” – an acronym which is an apparent wink towards the popular “Doge” meme of a Shiba Inu dog, along with the Dogecoin cryptocurrency.

Trump said on social media that Musk and ex-Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy would “dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure federal agencies.”

But the new project will not be an official government department, but simply provide “advice and guidance from outside government”.

What Musk and Trump’s working relationship means for the tech sector and the world of AI remains to be seen, but it may spell bad news for OpenAI – which was co-founded by Musk and Sam Altman in 2015. 

But since his departure from the non-profit’s board in 2018, Musk and Altman have taken swipes at one another, with Musk expressing concerns that OpenAI was straying from its original goal of conducting AI research for the greater good, according to reports. Musk has accused Altman and co-founder Greg Brockman of misleading him about OpenAI’s direction, claiming that they have abandoned their non-profit aims to go after commercial interests. 

Altman then published a string of emails from the Tesla CEO which apparently reveal Musk’s support for a for-profit initiative. 

In a blog post in March 2024, the team wrote: “We spent a lot of time trying to envision a plausible path to AGI (artificial general intelligence). In early 2017, we came to the realization that building AGI will require vast quantities of compute. We began calculating how much compute an AGI might plausibly require.” 

“We all understood we were going to need a lot more capital to succeed at our mission – billions of dollars per year, which was far more than any of us, especially Elon, thought we’d be able to raise as a non-profit.”

Musk founded xAI, which directly competes with ChatGPT, in 2023, and now finds himself in an influential position as a close ally of the incoming President – at a time when questions about how AI can be used within government departments are being asked. 

Other AI Considerations for Trump’s Presidency

As these factors continue to play out, there are other important considerations that Trump will be faced with in his accelerated effort for artificial intelligence supremacy.

The Environmental Impact of AI Development

It’s no secret that a lot of energy is required to build and run LLM software. In an article we covered last year on Salesforce’s approach to AI’s environmental factors, we discovered that running machine learning algorithms makes up 2-3% of global power consumption – a figure that is likely to triple by 2030.

In a conversation with Musk, Trump addressed his concerns with the topic, saying: “This is shocking to me – AI requires twice the energy the country already produces.”

Despite this, Trump’s recent revival of the phrase “drill, baby, drill” signals a strong push for domestic oil and gas production. The slogan reflects a focus on energy independence and economic growth but also raises concerns about long-term environmental impacts.

Large-scale AI systems require massive computational power – which translates to substantial energy consumption. If energy production continues to rely heavily on fossil fuels, AI’s carbon footprint will only continue to grow.

Also, Trump’s nominee to lead the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Lee Zeldin, has raised concerns among environmental advocates, who fear that the expansion of AI data centers – known for their substantial energy consumption – may lead to increased pollution if not properly regulated. 

Ambitions for Open-Source AI

Open-source AI is all the talk in the tech world at the moment. While many companies – like OpenAI – debate against it in favor of proprietary models (closed-source), others believe that open-source is the most innovative way forward in AI – with Meta pioneering the open-source revolution. Both sides have their pros and cons, but as mentioned throughout, the most important thing for Trump is acceleration – which favors the approaches of open-source platforms.

READ MORE: Is Open-Source AI the Future of Innovation or a Pandora’s Box?

Although Trump hasn’t shared his personal thoughts on the debate, Vice President J.D Vance has been very vocal on his stance. Describing it as “the solution to left-wing biases”, Vance is in full support of open-source systems.

Vance was also quoted saying that companies like OpenAI and Google are ushering regulations that would “entrench the tech incumbents.” Simply put, Vance believes proprietary models help large companies dominate by giving them control, revenue, and exclusivity. 

Meanwhile, smaller companies face financial and operational hurdles, making it difficult for them to compete, innovate, or thrive in markets shaped by proprietary technologies.

This observation from Vance suggests the White House’s existing opinion could shape the future of this debate going forward.

Artificial General Intelligence

Artificial general intelligence (AGI) represents the ultimate milestone in AI development  – a system that is capable of performing any intellectual task a human can do, if not better.

Think of it like the moon landing: getting to space was already a huge achievement, but landing on the moon was the real game-changer. The same goes for AGI; while the race to advance AI technology continues, the real question is: who will be the first to reach this monumental breakthrough?

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman believes that this can be achieved this year and that “AGI will probably get developed during [Trump’s] term.”

However, a survey conducted by AIMultiple, who analyzed the opinions of over 1,700 scientists, believes we are nowhere near that sort of capability, and that a realistic estimate for AGI achievement is 2060.

Trump has not shared his thoughts on AGI, but his administration has expressed concerns about China’s advancements, who have been strategically working towards AGI since 2017. 

If China achieves AGI before the United States, it will secure victory in the race for AI supremacy – much like the U.S. surpassed the Soviets in the space race. So it is likely that we will hear more conversations regarding AGI and how it factors into this accelerated AI strategy.

Final Thoughts 

With Trump back in office, the buzz around AI and its inevitable impact on Silicon Valley’s biggest companies will continue to develop, with big questions surrounding regulation, innovation, and global competition still at large.

Trump’s alignment with the tech industry and his pro-AI stance could usher in a new golden age for the US tech landscape in Silicon Valley. With tech companies already dominating the S&P 500, further growth and innovation could solidify their position as influential global leaders.

However, it’s important to acknowledge the potential risks associated with deregulation – especially in the face of concerns about unruly AI and its potential impact on the world. Inflation, too, remains a significant challenge that needs to be addressed and carefully managed.

On a related note, it will be interesting to see if Benioff continues to push alignment with DOGE and Trump. His recent comments on the new administration heavily suggest a desire to collaborate with Musk –  a relationship that could very well blossom across this next year.

As we move forward, it will be crucial for the President-elect to strike a balance between promoting technological advancement and ensuring responsible regulation to mitigate any potential negative consequences. 

The post Trump’s Re-Election: What It Means for Silicon Valley and Salesforce appeared first on Salesforce Ben.


January 20, 2025 at 09:03PM
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