Elon Musk, Trump and the rise of the tech right

Of all the groups celebrating Donald Trump’s reelection, maybe no one has more of a reason to celebrate than his boosters in the tech world. Given the key role Elon Musk played in bringing Trump back to office, the newly vocal Silicon Valley right expects a bonanza of industry and “innovation”-friendly de-regulation — and they are celebrating it, very publicly.  Behind the chest-thumping is a real, if not yet completely defined, new style of Republican politics emphasizing state capacity, industrial policy, and closer ties between Silicon Valley and the federal government. Now, the question is: What do Trump’s tech backers actually get for their support?  If you want a laundry list of asks, you can look at the VC giant Andreessen Horowitz’s “American Dynamism” project, which emphasizes a mixture of deregulation and public-private partnerships in fields like defense and education. The “let’s build” crew emphasizes onshoring industrial production, building massive fleets of military drones and getting humanity a foothold in space, all with a laser focus on getting bureaucrats out of the way and letting tech wizards work their magic.