The First Tech Right

The term “tech right” seems to have been coined by Richard Hanania in a 2023 Substack post that heralded the rightward turn of various Silicon Valley luminaries, most prominently PayPal mafiosi Elon Musk and David Sacks and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, all of whom would go onto form close alliances with Donald Trump and throw their support behind his 2024 campaign. To many observers, the who’s who of tech CEOs at Trump’s second inauguration was the culmination of a shocking development: the rightward shift of a sector of the US economy that had been closely aligned with progressive causes and the Democratic Party for decades. Since the turn of the millennium, Silicon Valley had donated to Democrats, to the tune of 70 to 80 percent, as compared to other major industries like banking and finance, which were either GOP-dominated or evenly split.