What did you think they thought?

The divide between Trump’s tech team and traditional MAGA forces

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What did you think they thought?

Via Igor Omilaev

We are now starting to see the divide between the technology folks excited about a second Trump administration and the returning President’s traditional MAGA support base. This was always going to happen, the two camps only united in their belief that they alone are able to control Trump, but I did think that they would manage to play nice until at least they got back into the White House.

No such luck. Before Cautious Optimism took a few days off to eat and sit on the couch, we covered Sriram Krishnan’s appointment as “Senior Policy Advisor for Artificial Intelligence at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy,” to quote the release. Here was our initial take:

Krishnan’s job working for [incoming AI czar David Sacks] isn’t one that I have any beef with. If memory serves, I met Krishnan back before I quit drinking, so the timeline thereof is a little hazy, but I’ve heard nothing but good things about the man. Fair enough, and having smart folks inside key policy roles doesn’t bother me.

Notably since we wrote the above, we’ve heard from several people that Krishnan’s various tenures at brand-name Silicon Valley institutions were less successful than they appeared externally. Whatever the case, Krishnan’s appointment kicked off a pretty nasty run of racist complaints about his nation of origin and personal views regarding high-skill immigration.

• CO is in favor of a huge, populous, diverse, and vibrant America. That means we’re in favor of more high-skill immigration than we have today and wider legal doors for lower-skilled immigration as well.

Because I know you want to see the tweets, here’s the anon post in question, and here’s mouth-breathing Laura Loomer’s own inane complaint.

Normally, a few folks publicly demonstrating that they are useless eejits would not be cause for us to sit up and take note. But Loomer is a very recent Trump co-traveller, including joining him on the campaign trail late in the last electoral cycle. She’s a real member of Trumpland, in other words, so her views carry weight with his followers.

So much so that David Sacks figured he had to respond. Not, sadly, by telling Loomer that her bigoted views could circle the toilet, but instead to argue policy nuance.

They went back and forth for a while. Here’s the back half of the conversation:

That Loomer hit Sacks with a Rumble link is hilarious. But let’s not digress.

Loomer, part of the America First ideological group broadly speaking, doesn’t want people from other parts of the world coming to the United States. It’s about as un-American a view as I can imagine, but it’s not an uncommon view here in the States, especially amongst supporters of the incoming President.

In contrast, Sacks favors at least some high-skill immigration because it is the area of immigration that he’s the most familiar with and therefore appreciates. I presume that if Sacks was a farmer, rancher, or construction worker he’d have different views on immigration drawing from a different set of lived experiences. But, all the same, I have to ask: What did you think that they thought?

Anyone who felt that the incoming Trump administration was primed to improve, or expand high-skill immigration didn’t pay attention to the first Trump White House. Sacks, however, is stumped:

Thankfully, fintech venture investor Sheel Mohnot was on hand to explain:

What’s doubly ironic in the entire shit sandwich of stupidity that we just dragged you through is that Sacks saw in real-time how Trump’s political machine operates. Recall that on Sacks’ show All In, Trump swung by. And Jason Calacanis — my co-host on This Week in Startups — asked the then-candidate what he would do regarding green cards for high-skill folks.

More, was the gist. Trump said what the podcast friends wanted to hear before his campaign quickly ran clean up to delete the floated policy point.

Did we expect the anti-immigration Trump fans were going to be in favor of folks not born in the United States earning positions of influence? At least some of the time, as Musk and Sacks are themselves immigrants, but there’s an ugly strain of full-fat racism in many right-wing circles that was always going to bubble to the surface. This isn’t the last time it will, and the immigration debate inside the Republican party is going to be nasty.

And not helpful to the nation. Folks claimed that Krishnan wants to rip the cap off H1-B visas. Sacks doesn’t seem to think that that is the case, but I wonder if it wouldn’t the smartest thing we could do as a nation. We have lots of room in the nation; let’s build new cities and pack them with the world’s brightest and win the future.

4, 6, 6.6

It being a slow holiday news week — Bluesky added a new trending section to its service is the second-highest story on Techmeme — xAI’s announcement that it has completed its latest funding round is among the only things of note to discuss.

TechCrunch has a good rundown of the details, including the round’s investor list. Venture funds, chip companies, and Kingdom Holdings provided the capital. Expect more GPUs, more models, and more contra-OpenAI agitation from the Musk outfit.

It’s incredible that three American tech companies have raised $16.6 billion for their AI efforts in such quick succession. OpenAI closed $6.6 billion in October, Anthropic landed $4 billion from Amazon in November, and xAI snagged $6 billon of its own in December. It was a Q4 to be proud of from US-domiciled AI concerns.

The $16.6 billion in question was more than all European startups raised in Q3 2024 ($12.5 billion, per KPMG), and more than all Asian startups raised in Q3 2024 ($15.6 billion, per KPMG). I think that when we consider the advantages that the United States may have in the global technology race, it’s easy to underestimate the power of the mountains of cash that our domestic concerns can raise from global sources.

It’s a superpower to attract the best and brightest. It’s also a superpower to be able to fund them with both domestic and foreign purses. Combine the two, and it’s hard to worry much about domestic technological dynamism, no matter which AI model giant manages to eventually win the most market share.