Dozens of Silicon Valley Sycophants Now Work at Regulatory Businesses

Silicon Valley’s wealthiest and most galaxy-brained executives and enterprise capitalists went all-in on Donald Trump through the 2024 presidential election, and their funding is beginning to repay. According to the Wall Street Journal, greater than three dozen individuals who have both labored beneath or are associates of Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, and Palmer Luckey have been positioned in roles at federal businesses that oversee the companies of their Silicon Valley bosses.

Per WSJ, a minimum of 18 federal businesses, together with the Client Monetary Safety Bureau, Division of Labor, Treasury Division, and Division of Protection, all make use of a minimum of one particular person with ties to one in every of Trump’s 4 favourite tech bros. Musk’s community is essentially the most strong, with connections now occupying greater than a dozen businesses. However the entire execs are positioned to profit, as they’ve managed to position their very own individuals—present and former staff, legal professionals, buyers, and monetary advisors—in positions that oversee, regulate, and award authorities contracts to their firms.

The WSJ found that firms based, owned, or invested in by Musk, Thiel, Andreessen, and Luckey have already snagged about $6 billion value of federal contracts simply since Donald Trump took workplace. And whereas among the bidding course of began earlier than Trump’s second time period started, these firms are presently pitching themselves for a lot of extra contracts value billions of {dollars} and can probably discover themselves with a leg up within the procurement course of.

There have been some high-profile wins for these firms in that point. Palmer’s Anduril Applied sciences took over a government contract originally awarded to Microsoft to construct mixed-reality goggles for the Military, which might finally pay out $22 billion. Musk’s SpaceX scored $5.9 billion to launch Area Pressure missions. Thiel’s Palantir obtained tapped by Immigration and Customs Enforcement to build software for deportation processing.

That’s a stable payout for the billionaires, who’ve poured their very own cash into Trump’s campaigns. Musk spent $290 million on the challenge of getting Trump again to the White Home, whereas Andreessen gave at least $2.5 million, and Luckey gave at least $400,000. Thiel, not like these extra not too long ago Trump-curious opportunistic ghouls, has been a long-time Trump backer and gave around $1.5 million to Trump-related teams going again to the 2016 election.

All of that is on high of the cuts that Musk has managed to make in any respect of those businesses by way of the Division of Authorities Effectivity, which is able to probably scale back the resistance these firms will see in regulatory pushback. It’s laborious to say a few of these cuts didn’t appear a minimum of partly focused. USAID, which Musk tried to shut the doorways on fully, was reportedly investigating Starlink contracts on the time it obtained axed. Workers on the Meals and Drug Administration tasked with overseeing evaluations and purposes associated to Musk’s Neuralink were fired. Staffers on the Nationwide Freeway and Site visitors Security Administration who have been researching the protection of self-driving expertise like Tesla’s FSD have been forced out, too.

Trump has at all times claimed his aim was to empty the swamp. As a substitute, it appears he’s simply handed management of the swamp over to tech titans, who’re fortunately swimming in it.