In Silicon Valley, anger replaces ambivalence

On Friday morning, Silicon Valley was largely ambivalent about President  Donald Trump. The software programmers, marketing experts and chief executives might not have voted for him, but they were hopeful about finding common ground with the new administration. By Saturday night, much of that optimism had yielded to anger and determination.

Trump’s executive order late Friday temporarily blocked all refugees while also denying entry to citizens of Iran, Iraq and five other predominantly Muslim countries. The directives struck at the heart of Silicon Valley’s cherished values, its fabled history and, not least, its embrace-the-world approach to customers.

Two worldviews collided: the mantra of globalisation that underpins the advance of technology and the nationalistic agenda of the new administration. In response, a significant part of the tech community went to the barricades.

Netflix’s chief executive, Reed Hastings, wrote on Facebook that Trump’s actions “are so un-American it pains us all” and that “it is time to link arms together to protect American values of freedom and opportunity.”

Brian Chesky, chief executive of Airbnb, made the same point. “We must stand with those who are affected,” he wrote on Twitter.

Sergey Brin, a Google founder who immigrated from the Soviet Union when he was 6, seemed to take that suggestion literally, attending an impromptu protest Saturday evening at San Francisco International Airport.

When some of the demonstrators realised that the 10th-richest man in America was with them, they asked for selfies. He good-naturedly obliged. “I’m here because I’m a refugee,” Brin said, according to a Twitter post by Forbes writer Ryan Mac.

The tech companies’ reaction was more forceful than that of other industries. Just about everyone in Silicon Valley came from somewhere else or is a son or daughter of someone who did or is married to someone who did.

That list starts with the most famous Silicon Valley citizen of all: Steve Jobs, the Apple co-founder, whose biological father immigrated from Syria in 1954. Trump’s order proclaimed that “the entry of nationals of Syria as refugees is detrimental to the interests of the United States” and would be suspended indefinitely.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, said that his great-grandparents had come from Germany, Austria and Poland, and that the parents of his wife, Priscilla Chan, were refugees from China and Vietnam. “Like many of you, I’m concerned about the impact of the recent executive orders signed by President Trump,” Zuckerberg wrote on Facebook on Friday.

Even some of those working closely with the Trump administration were critical. Elon Musk, chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX, who sits on two of Trump’s advisory committees, wrote on Twitter that the ban was “not the best way to address the country’s challenges.” Musk was born in South Africa.

Aaron Levie, chief executive of the data storage company Box, wrote on Twitter that “on every level — moral, humanitarian, economic, logical, etc. — this ban is wrong and is completely antithetical to the principles of America.”

Overall, Levie said in an interview, “there was a pretty resounding response from the tech industry showing how unacceptable this is.”

Beyond family heritage and employment, he noted, Silicon Valley cares about immigration because its companies strive to operate everywhere in the world. “Almost every company’s products — Google, Apple, Airbnb — has a global customer base,” Levie said. “These policy decisions have real implications to our partners, our customers, our competitors.”

The Trump administration is little more than a week old, but its relationship with Silicon Valley is already complicated. The tech industry did not like Trump the presidential candidate, despite his embrace of Twitter, and he returned the sentiment with caustic posts on the platform.

Stephen Bannon, his chief strategist, said in 2015 that “two-thirds or three-quarters of the CEOs in Silicon Valley are from South Asia or from Asia,” an incorrect statement that many in Silicon Valley perceived as racist.

Yet a much promoted December meeting between the incoming administration and numerous tech chieftains was decidedly upbeat. “We’re going to be there for you,” Trump promised to a room that included the leaders of Apple, Microsoft and Amazon. By early last week, the companies sensed trouble.

Murtadha al-Tameemi, 24, an Iraqi-born software engineer at Facebook, was told by a company lawyer on Tuesday that he needed to cut short a visit to Canada and return to the US. The company feared that he would not be readmitted to the country because the president was expected to sign an executive order that would keep him out.

“It may be my naivete about how politics and industries interact, but I don’t interpret the tech community’s opposition to the president as a political stance,” al-Tameemi said. “It seemed more like a matter of values and a matter that impacts them.”

The larger tech companies tended to be less forceful in their reactions to the executive order than the smaller ones. Google said it was “concerned.” Apple said, “It is not a policy we support.” Amazon said only that it was committed to diversity. Oracle did not respond to requests for comment.

Strong opposition
On the other hand, Microsoft, which has headquarters in Redmond, Washington, beca­me more forceful as the weekend went on. On Saturday, its executives talked mostly about the virtues of immigration. On Sunday night, the company issued a statement calling the executive order “misguided and a fundamental step backwards” and said it would create “collateral damage to the country’s reputation and values.”

Even before the executive order, pressure had been building on companies to speak out against measures being endorsed by Trump. Some of that impetus came from employees, and some from activists.

At Twitter, a number of workers felt frustrated with the disconnect between their company’s product — a platform for free speech — and the extent to which Trump has used it to attack those who question him and proclaim outright falsehoods to the American public. On Saturday, Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s chief executive, posted and reposted numerous messages denouncing the travel ban.

At Facebook, employees felt a similar sense of discord. Some complained about how long it took Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer, to speak out. Others were upset at the continued presence of Peter Thiel, a venture capitalist and longtime confidant of Zuckerberg, as a director on Facebook’s board. Thiel was a donor to Trump’s campaign and has since become an adviser, and he issued a statement Saturday evening that reaffirmed his support for the president.

Sam Altman, who runs Y Combinator, Silicon Valley’s most prominent startup incubator, said things were changing so fast that it was hard to predict what was going to happen.

“After the election, a lot of people here said give Trump a chance in good faith, and after he started, a lot of people said give him a chance in good faith,” Altman said. “Now they are looking at his policies and saying he is a risk to the republic. Saturday was a good beginning, and I think there is more to come.”

Altman spoke as he was arriving at the airport in San Francisco on Saturday evening. The protest was continuing, and he intended to join.