Big tech and Trumpism share the same ideology

Fellow tech workers, let’s be honest with ourselves: our labor has been used to destroy society for the benefit of a few very rich men. 

There is a direct line between the draconian welfare cuts and authoritarian law enforcement funding in the recently passed GOP budget bill and the work we’ve done building big tech companies.

Big tech, particularly social media and marketplace tech, once promised to bring about world peace by connecting the world and removing expensive friction. Instead, our work poisoned the global information ecosystem, eroded our political systems, clogged our streets, gutted our transit systems, enabled the modern surveillance state, and destroyed millions of working-class careers.

We were promised big things in return for these sacrifices: clean, ultra-fast travel, solutions for climate change, even the end of death itself! What we got instead was Donald Trump.

Big tech isn’t solely responsible for Donald Trump. But it’s no wonder he was able to exploit people’s grievances with “coastal elites” like you and me to build the MAGA movement. Instead of improving lives, big tech’s intrusive software and abusive business practices are being used to rig almost any market you can think of—from tractors to eggs and potatoes—against the common person. And our labor enabled it.

Now, Trump is actively undermining all of big tech’s promises, from defunding high-speed rail to greenlighting harmful emissions and shutting down medical research. Instead of recoiling, big tech’s oligarchs are cozying up to him, despite risks to reputation and revenue. Why?

For a long time now, big tech’s real mission hasn’t been to improve people’s lives, but to propagate itself. We now know that the promises tech leaders make to justify our work’s worst abuses are mostly lies. Lies wrapped in the myth of abstract user research, as if anyone asked to be addicted to comparing themselves to their friends. Lies designed to allow big tech to spread its corrupt, surveillance-driven business models throughout society (as Cory Doctorow has documented). Lies made to divert investments in public transit, education, housing, and healthcare systems to private alternatives.

In pursuing this mission, the big tech oligarchs discovered that they share the core ideology of Trumpism: to eliminate any semblance of the public sphere so they can rule as kings of their own personal fiefdoms.

That’s why the budget bill contains billions of big tech handouts for surveillance technology. And it’s why the tech oligarchs are so busy trying to replace the civil society they helped destroy with cryptocurrencies, the metaverse, network states, and AI agents. Like any technology, these tools can be used for good or evil, but these men are using them to create private surveillance states. It may sound like a crazy conspiracy theory, but they’re saying it out loud.

Artificial general intelligence is the latest big promise. The Trump regime is already justifying its ongoing destruction of the federal government with the promise of more efficient AI replacements.

Are we going to fall for this again? Do we really believe that super-intelligent machines that will save us from ourselves are just around the corner when today’s multi-billion-dollar versions can’t beat a 48 year-old video game console at chess? Are we going to ignore the mass theft of intellectual property that enabled them and the inherent privacy nightmare every user of them is exposed to? Are we really going to keep working for these transparently corrupt people?

I know what you’re thinking, because I am, too. Tech has afforded me wealth, security, perks, and prestige. I have a nice house in a nice neighborhood in a great city. My kid (expected in November!) will go to a great school. A tech job is how I’ll stay afloat through what’s coming.

Except that you and I both know that plan is quickly becoming a fantasy. The perks are going away and the big tech layoffs — sorry, “voluntary exits” — are in full swing. The jobs that remain will be miserable, low-paying AI babysitting gigs.

Even if you do manage to stay afloat, what will life be like when the full effects of big tech and Trumpism’s joint project to destroy civil society are realized? Will the newly sick, hungry, and homeless roam the streets? How about unaccountable masked ICE agents? Will the gutted transit system still function? Will the defunded schools be open? Will your kids’ vaccinations that you got in Canada protect them when too few of your neighbors’ kids can afford the shots?

What you should be asking yourself isn’t whether you think you’ll be okay, but what kind of society you want your kids to grow up in.

If your answer is a better one than what we’ve got now, you only have one choice: opt out, like so many cookie banners. Sell your stock, grab as many microkitchen snacks as you can on the way out the door, and never come back.

Here’s the good news: what we’ve built, as powerful as it can be, is also incredibly brittle, and adding mistake-prone AI everywhere will only make it worse. Their fiefdoms require our labor to function. If enough of us refuse to maintain the infrastructures that sustain them, they’ll quickly crumble to dust.

And then what? You already have more options than you think. We all have friends who have moved on and are doing just fine. It might look like selling your house, moving to one of America’s many great small cities or towns, and opening the shop you’ve always dreamed of starting. If that’s not for you, opting out of big tech doesn’t have to mean leaving your home, or even tech. 

Scores of companies are thinking critically about applying technology in service of people and society. Researchers are working on alternative approaches to AI rooted in partnering with people rather than replacing them. Some VCs and billionaires are investing in efforts to rebuild civil society. Finding these folks is far less difficult than passing a FAANG interview.

Imagine what would happen if we let big tech fail. Imagine if we ditched the concept of users altogether and actually got to know the people we serve as human beings. Imagine if we applied our talents to building products that actually made a difference in people’s lives, rather than enshittified junk designed to trap them in some oligarch’s attention dungeon. Imagine the new tech industry we could create.

You might make less, but I suspect only at first. There’s good money to be had building things people actually want. In the meantime, having to cook more and travel less for a bit is no different than what most startup founders have been through. Unless you’re already truly set for life, it’s coming for us all anyway in the increased costs and decreased opportunities that the hollowing out of our government and civil society will bring.

We have only two choices: opt out and build a new tech industry on our terms, one that serves society, or keep toiling away at our increasingly painful jobs while society falls apart around us, in the hope that one day our overlords will let us rest because we’ve been so, so good to them.

I know which option I’m choosing.

Many thanks to Ed, Ariel, Chuck, Zach, and Lindsay for the edits and feedback on this piece.