The tech right-MAGA alliance is far from over

In the aftermath of the Musk-Trump break-up, many are wondering about the future of the “tech right” and its relationship to the MAGA movement. In 2024, the two groups fought together and won.

One definition of the tech right is simply “Technology people who aren’t crazy leftists.” Many in this group shifted right because of the excesses of wokeness and DEI within Silicon Valley. The dysfunction of far-left culture, which attacks merit and excellence, created a lot of apostates. Some were Democrats until quite recently! For my part, I was raised in the tradition of liberty, with an education that included not just Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman, but also Edmund Burke and G.K. Chesterton. Not to insult my friends, but I am not a recent convert. But it’s undeniable that the last decade with its nonsense has red-pilled a lot of leaders in the tech world.

If this was simply a matter of technologists redpilled by the insane left, you could be forgiven to think that issues such as immigration and tariffs, or disputes between Trump and Elon, could break it all up. Surely, that is what the left hopes to see. But a deeper trend in society defines the real “tech right”: the US innovation world is no longer mostly about the internet. We’re building in the real world, trying to fix substantive areas of our society. What forms the deeper substance of the tech right is an optimism about what we can achieve for the entire country, and an opposition to the mountain of cronyist left-wing rules and regulations that have made it so hard, and are being used by special interests trying to stop us.  

Insofar as the tech right is focused on building things for America, solving problems for our citizens and improving their families’ lives, there will be a continued natural alliance with MAGA. 

We have massive cost diseases in the West: costs rise in areas where the government dominates and technology competition is low. Housing, healthcare, defense and education are a few examples. The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ “Chart of the Century” expresses this clearer than any words can. Government regulation raises prices; technology lowers prices. That’s why phones, televisions, internet access and cars are cheaper than ever relative to income.

But in our most regulated areas, such as healthcare and defense, we have the vast majority of all US government debt, driven by Medicare, Medicaid and the Pentagon.

If you aren’t convinced that technology can radically reduce costs in areas where the government exercises strong control, consider rockets. There’s a reason why “rocket science” is the proverbial most difficult thing. Yet SpaceX reduced the cost to launch cargo to orbit by over 99 percent. Everyone in America benefits from that.

The tech right sees clearly how we can improve other areas, too. I’ll focus on a few that are important to people within the MAGA base. Imagine, for a moment, the America that we can build with technology. With AI-enabled services and a regulatory upheaval, Medicare and Medicaid would be far cheaper, and we’d be able to administer much better healthcare to the elderly and the poor. We’d raise life expectancy everywhere, but especially in the places where it lags most: rural areas.

Safe and clean nuclear reactors, alongside other sources, would power the American continent for a teeny fraction of the cost; energy bills in the coldest and hottest parts of the country would plummet. And as the Trump administration rightly notes, energy costs affect allother costs.

Transformed by new primes such as Anduril and Saronic, our military would be able to deter our enemies and accomplish missions as a lean and mean technological machine – without sending American boys to die in faraway conflicts.

New construction technology will make it cheaper than ever to build new homes for families. Families would be able to afford homes in safe neighborhoods with a single income. And if they do choose to live near a city, we can eliminate nearly all traffic with much cheaper tunnels, once government lets us build.

Insiders in the US technology world are experts at seeing the economic future. Across the board, we’re realizing how AI can be applied in the coming decade to make all of these areas of society far cheaper and far better – it’s clear that we are going to be able to cure much of the US’s cost disease. 

But doing so requires policy entrepreneurship to break through the regulatory state, to fix terrible rules that block you from starting a competitor to a health system without a special certificate, or that stop a nurse and AI from performing an action even if it’s shown to be safer and better, because of “scope of practice”; or that force you to wait for a permit from Barbara at the county for 14 months, who thinks you remind her of her ex-husband and doesn’t much like your ambition or how you come across.  

There’s a comical amount to call out, be it cost-plus rules for healthcare payers or defense primes that align their incentives with higher prices, even as they lock out others in a variety of sketchy ways… but the gist of it is that the tech world sees how it can solve many critical problems facing our country. And in general, only the right is willing to boldly stand up to the bureaucracy and government to do so. Even when they want to help, the left’s special interests make it very difficult structurally for it to do the same.

Tech and right is a natural partnership; and as we start to show wins for our citizens, the bonds will only strengthen.  

None of this means that you have to love Google or Facebook, or the people who used to run Twitter – or even Palantir (albeit, among other successes, I’m proud of the many terror attacks Palantir helped stop, and the civil liberties protected). 

But as a patriot, you do have to love the young Americans with a fire in their eyes who want to build things for their fellow citizens – for you and your neighbors. They want to build new factories; engineer better planes and cars; find new therapeutics and cures. They want to make you live longer and have more time with and money for your family. For me, my colleagues and thousands of people I’ve worked with over my career in mission-driven companies, that is what we mean by our work in technology. MAGA and the tech right don’t have to be at odds, and shouldn’t be. On the margin, there may be disagreements, like about what the optimal level of immigration is, how boldly to confront Islamists and communists and the universities or allied countries they’ve infiltrated, or the optimal tax rates on high-earners. And there will certainly be personality conflicts. But as we apply new technology to advance economic productivity – these solutions are for all Americans. 

The US has the top technology sector in the world, and on the patriotic right, we are proud of that fact: we will NOT surrender to dysfunctional government; civilization won’t fail to surmount these challenges on our watch.

The tech right isn’t going anywhere; it’s just getting started helping to make America great again.