Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
How Democrats Drove Silicon Valley Into Trump’s Arms
Sun, 6 Apr 2025
The tech investor Marc Andreessen and his fellow Silicon Valley giant Elon Musk weren’t always the Donald Trump supporters they are today. In this episode, Ross asks Andreessen, a founder of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, about what led to Silicon Valley’s rightward shift and the new agenda of the tech-right faction. Editors’ note: This episode originally aired on the “Matter of Opinion” podcast on Jan. 17, 2025.(A full transcript of this episode is available on the Times website.) Thoughts? Email us at [email protected]. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Chapter 1: Who are the hosts and guests of this episode?
Hey, listeners, it's Ross Douthat. We're hard at work developing my new show, which is going to be called Interesting Times, a reference to the curse disguised as a blessing, or maybe the blessing disguised as a curse. May you live in interesting times, which we are. And our first few episodes will be coming out soon.
But before then, I wanted to reshare the interviews that started it all, a set of conversations that attempt to map out the new political order with some of the people at the forefront. So enjoy, and please subscribe to Interesting Times wherever you get your podcasts. From New York Times Opinion, I'm Ross Douthat.
So listeners, I'm going to be hosting some one-on-one conversations to help you, and quite frankly, me, understand the factions and the players that are likely to shape the incoming Trump administration. And today, we're going to start with Silicon Valley and the so-called tech right. I'm someone who follows politics primarily and Silicon Valley secondarily.
And to me, the alliance between that industry and the Democratic Party has always seemed like a pretty solid fact of American politics. I could definitely see the leaders of the tech industry souring on certain aspects of progressive politics, especially the parts that cast them as special villains.
But I really didn't expect so many figures in Silicon Valley, starting, of course, with Elon Musk, to throw their support and their money and their social media clout behind Donald Trump in 2024. My guest today is one of those tech leaders, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen. For decades, he was, in his words, a good Democrat.
But now he's been spending time at Mar-a-Lago and advising on the Trump transition. Mark Andreessen, welcome to the show. Thank you, Ross. It's great to be here. So I'll start by introducing you. You're the co-founder of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, whose portfolio includes Airbnb and over 100 AI companies.
A long time ago, you co-founded Netscape, the web browser that first brought many of us to the internet in the 1990s. And just as a political matter, you supported Barack Obama for president. You voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016. And then in 2024, you supported Donald Trump. And we're going to talk about that evolution.
But I wanted to start by just going way back in time to the origins of your career, because you were present for... the early days of the internet, not really the beginning of Silicon Valley itself, but the beginning of Silicon Valley as a crucial influence in American life, I would say.
And since we're talking about how the tech industry has changed, how it's interacted with big shifts in American politics, I was hoping you could just talk a little bit about what it was like for you to go from It's a small town in Wisconsin where you grew up, New Lisbon, right? Yeah, that's right.
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Chapter 2: What was the early relationship between Silicon Valley and the Democratic Party?
And so those changes you're talking about, are they fundamentally about Trump? policies being made by the Obama White House, or are they fundamentally about sort of the big shift leftward among young people that clearly starts in that era?
So I would say both, because the unifying thread here is, I believe, it's the children of the elites, right? The most privileged people in society, the most successful, send their kids to the most politically radical institutions who, you know, teach them how to be like America-hating communists. They fan out into the professions.
Our companies hire a lot of kids out of the top universities, of course. And then, by the way, a lot of them go into government. And so we're not only talking about a wave of new arrivals into the tech companies, we're also talking about a wave of new arrivals into the congressional offices. And of course, they all know each other.
And so all of a sudden, you have this basically this influx, this new cohort.
And my only conclusion is what changed was basically the kids, in other words, the young children of privilege going to the top universities between 2008 to 2012, they basically radicalized hard at the universities, I think primarily as a consequence of the global financial crisis and probably Iraq, throw that in there also. But for whatever reason, they radicalized hard.
But when you say they radicalized, what did that mean for Silicon Valley? What did they want? I mean, at this point, just sort of listen to know, you're a venture capitalist. You're no longer a startup guy, right? So you're investing in a lot of different companies. So you have a pretty, I assume, pretty wide view of the action.
What was it that was desired from the new left-wing politics pre-Trump? Because we'll get to post-Trump in a minute.
revolution. I mean, what it was, what I now understand it to be historically is a rebirth of the new left, right? So it's very analogous. I've spent a lot of time actually talking to David Horowitz about this because he lived through it 40 years earlier. And it turned out to be a coalition of sort of economic radicals.
So, and this was, you know, the rise of Bernie Sanders, but like, you know, the kids turned on capitalism, like in a very fundamental way, they came out as sort of, you know, some variation version on radical Marxist. And, you know, the The fundamental valence went from capitalism is good and an enabler of the good society to capitalism is evil and should be torn down.
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