Could Silicon Valley’s Indian CEOs get the Intel treatment?

The problem is a fear, both in Washington and in Silicon Valley, that the US and Chinese tech ecosystems are not complements but rivals. Indian tech leaders have managed to escape similar scrutiny precisely because the tech scene here is seen as providing low-end support to US industry, not high-value competition. But how long will that be true? And what happens if it changes?

By Mihir Sharma

According to President Donald Trump, the rise of Intel Corp.’s CEO, Lip-Bu Tan, is “an amazing story.” That’s as much payoff as Tan can expect from his emergency meeting with Trump, who last week had demanded he “resign, immediately” because he was “highly CONFLICTED.”

We don’t know if Intel will be able to convince the administration to view its CEO with less disfavor. Some in Washington are concerned about Malaysian-born Tan’s long history supporting and investing in the Chinese tech sector. And questions about how Intel intends to live up to government controls on the export of high-end technology under his leadership are, given this history, not unreasonable.

Nevertheless, it’s a problematic precedent. That should worry Silicon Valley’s powerful Indian diaspora in particular.

Take a step back and ask yourself: Is there anything inherently questionable about a tech firm appointing a CEO with an eye for innovative and effective startups? At his venture capital firm Walden International, Tan invested in more than 100 Chinese companies, including an early bet on Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. Normally, this would be a count in his favor.

The problem is a fear, both in Washington and in Silicon Valley, that the US and Chinese tech ecosystems are not complements but rivals. This wasn’t the case in 2001, when Walden put money in SMIC. But it’s certainly the general feeling today.

Indian tech leaders have managed to escape similar scrutiny precisely because the tech scene here is seen as providing low-end support to US industry, not high-value competition. But how long will that be true? And what happens if it changes?

New Delhi is not happy being a supporting player in the AI revolution. The country has begun to stockpile chips — compute capacity has passed 34,000 GPUs in May, according to government officials — and has already selected national champions it intends to support.

Given the relative dynamism of India’s startups, its tech sector will at some point produce a few success stories that challenge the dominance of US companies. That’s good news for Indians. But it might make things more difficult for Indian-Americans in Silicon Valley.

Across corporate America, but particularly in Big Tech, people of Indian descent have been disproportionately successful as leaders, more so perhaps than their colleagues of Chinese heritage. Think of Alphabet Inc.’s CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft Corp.’s Satya Nadella, Adobe Inc.’s Shantanu Narayen and IBM Corp.’s Arvind Krishna, for example. As Intel’s troubles following its choice of Tan demonstrate, this might partly be because their home nation is not considered a strategic competitor to the US.

That image is slowly changing in the Trump era. Indians in Silicon Valley have already discovered that things are bit harder now. H1-B visas, for example, are a political hot-button issue, and provided the first wedge in the relationship between Trump and Elon Musk. Trump has already made it clear that he doesn’t want his backing of Big Tech to mean any jobs for Indians: “Many of our largest tech companies have reaped the blessings of American freedom while building their factories in China, hiring workers in India and stashing profits in Ireland,” he said at a tech summit last month, adding: “Under President Trump, those days are over.”

So far, corporate leaders have not had to answer any questions about their distance from the sector back home. But the political environment will get more difficult to navigate as India’s tech companies achieve greater autonomy and efficiency, and the Trump administration reworks policy. The 50% tariff rate that New Delhi has been threatened with reveals how the president’s mind works: He may not see India’s trajectory as fundamentally different from China’s, and his mercantilist soul rebels at the thought of collaborating with a future rival.

An age of economic nationalism and competitive industrial policy will always be tough on cosmopolitan minorities. “Dual loyalty” accusations gain no traction in an age of prosperous globalization, but have a long and dark history when populists seize power and turn back the clocks.

The diaspora should not look at Tan’s attempts to win over Trump with satisfaction or superiority. They might be next. Nor should they assume that they’ll always be able to avoid similar accusations. The only reason they haven’t faced them so far is that nobody thought their connections back home could ever be a problem. Here’s the hard truth: India’s success will mean the end of Silicon Valley’s Indian-American golden age.