It’s a second Trump presidency and what it means for tech
Can we trust Donald Trump? A note from the tech companies of the Day of the Tech World (with a preview on Wednesday, July 21)
On Wednesday, the chief executives of the leading Big Tech companies congratulated the President-elect. Sundar Pichai (Alphabet), Mark Zuckerberg (Meta), Tim Cook (Apple), Andy Jassy (Amazon), and Satya Nadella (Microsoft) have all sparred with Donald Trump before, but they were quick to get behind him as their companies face a fresh four years of operating under an influential politician who has proved volatile.
Personal grievances could be the reason for Trump’s approach to antitrust enforcement. According to a report by a senior litigation analyst, enforcement could be random based on Donald Trump’s view of companies. Adam Kovacevich, CEO of the left-of-center tech industry group Chamber of Progress, bluntly said we’ll see a “‘Trump Welfare Standard’: is this company nice to Trump?”
Betsy Cooper is the director of the Aspen Policy Academy and she says it might be a perfect time to pick favorites amongst the big tech players.
Trump has promised mass deportations and China tariffs will cause severe price hikes for imported goods that would cause many people’s lives to be thrown into chaos. Predicting the future with any certainty is difficult, and one of the open questions is how far the administration will go.
Bernstein said in a note on Wednesday that Apple is less vulnerable than initially thought, because of its ability to absorb higher tariffs. Apple has moved its production to different parts of the world, like Vietnam.
What Do We Need to Know About Online Speech Laws and the Future Prospects Under a Trump Presidency? Commentary on the Children’s Online Safety Act
The Section 230 immunity shield could be reworked to allow the legislature to penalize companies for making moderation decisions. In addition to the option of passing actual laws changing Section 230, Brendan Carr suggested in his Project 2025 chapter that the FCC could narrow its protections for a broad range of content moderation decisions. Ultimately, any executive or legislative changes to online speech rules could face the Supreme Court, which has so far upheld the right to conduct content moderation, although it signaled openness to potential legal changes in the future.
The leading congressional bill on this subject is the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), but no one has said much about where Trump stands on it. The bill that was passed through the Senate with an update to children’s data privacy law has not been advanced in the House. Current Republican House leadership has expressed concerns that KOSA could unduly limit speech, so a Democratic House might be more open to giving it floor time, but ultimately, the concerns with the bill don’t fall entirely down partisan lines.
The leader of a group that opposed the bill suggests Democrats shouldn’t pass it under a Trump presidency. “Democrats will have to decide whether they want to hand Trump & MAGA state law enforcers a powerful new censorship tool,” he writes.
Electric vehicle tax credits and other climate-focused policies will likely be in jeopardy under Trump, though that might be somewhat complicated by his connection with Musk, with Tesla standing to gain from EV-friendly policies. Still, Wedbush analyst Dan Ives previously said that Tesla’s “scale and scope … could give Musk and Tesla a clear competitive advantage in a non-EV subsidy environment.”
The bipartisan CHIPS Act was passed by Congress during the Biden administration, which experts say is important to keeping control over the supply chain for important technologies including medical tech. But Trump called the bill “so bad” during his appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast, and soon after, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said he was open to repealing the law (though he later walked back those comments). The Commerce Department could possibly be instructed by Trump to slow-walk aspects of the law.
Trump made a big overture to thecryptocurrencies industry by going to a major conference this summer which brought in several prominent investors like BenHorowitz. With Trump’s election, the industry is likely to get its top wish: the ouster of Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler, whom the industry views as its chief antagonist. Expect more hands-off regulation in this industry as Trump wants the US to be aBitcoin superpower.
Conservative leaders, including Trump, have long complained about the suppression of conservative speech on social media platforms, and accused them of succumbing to the pressure of government to remove things like vaccine misinformation. Even before his reelection, platforms like Meta had heeded Republican pushback and loosened their moderation standards.
Source: What a second Trump presidency means for tech
What a Second Trump Presidency Means for Tech? An Analysis by Wall Street and Bloomberg Intelligence Analyst Nathan Dean
The Universal Service Fund, which helps Starlink’s competitors, is something Musk may want to limit in his government efficiency role. That program helps service rural communities with broadband — places where Starlink is well positioned to move in.
The FCC is likely to permit more concentrated control of TV stations under a Republican FCC, writes Dean. Republican FCC commissioner Brendan Carr suggested punishing TV networks under broadcasting rules when he was in the first Trump administration, and called for big tech companies to pay into the Universal Service Fund.
Net neutrality is unlikely to be resuscitated by a Trump administration. Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Nathan Dean predicts a 90 percent chance Trump’s Federal Communications Commission abandons the effort to reclassify broadband providers as common carriers and subject them to greater regulatory scrutiny.
That could have big implications for companies dependent on China for a large part of their business strategy like Apple and Tesla, or for companies that make components in China. But because of that connection, this is another area where Elon Musk’s influence could be a wild card.
The legislature would need to do the process over if the court struck down the law due to a violation of the First Amendment. It seems more likely that Congress would not spend time on a bill that may not be signed by the president, now that he has said he does not support a TikTok ban.
Source: What a second Trump presidency means for tech
The Next Four Years of Tech Policy: Trump’s Failure to Agree with the Feds, Amazon, and Meta, and Google, or the Last Invention
While business leaders may be relieved if Khan leaves the FTC, Rie says we shouldn’t expect “a return to the relaxed antitrust climate of 10 years ago … some aspects of the current aggressive approach will stick. Republicans are no longer more business friendly than Democrats. Still, while she says it largely depends on Trump’s appointments, merger approvals could become swifter and recently revised merger guidelines could be unraveled.
During his first term, Trump filed two lawsuits against Meta, Apple and Amazon. But it could pursue more modest remedies, depending on who he appoints — and how Trump feels about a company like Google on any given day. If cases don’t seem to be going well for the agencies, there could be a slight increase in settlement prospects down the road. “Trump doesn’t believe Google should be broken up, though we didn’t expect this to happen anyway.” Kovacevich also says Trump could use the cases “as leverage over the companies to get favorable treatment on speech and content concerns.”
It is not clear how much sway or dedication Trump will give to the stance of the Federal Trade Commission Chair. If he does get a say in it, we could expect a continued campaign against the big tech companies that benefit the little tech companies.
Also, those of us covering tech will definitely wind up reporting on the Trump presidency; policy as always affects the course of technology. (Remember, the US government produced that thing called the internet.) Right now a debate is raging about how, or whether, we should regulate or restrain AI, a technology which some refer to as “the last invention.” The new administration is considering nixing the executive order that Joe Biden ordered about artificial intelligence. A lot of people are worried that the new president’s biggest adviser, Musk, will have excessive influence over government policies and contracts. I’ve also heard speculation that the movement to regulate AI might be, um, trumped by the threat of China’s full-throated efforts in the field. The ground rules of the technology may affect whether the worst fears of the technology come true.
All this to say, the next four years of tech policy will be unpredictable and erratic. But even as Trump tries to expand his authority, he’ll need support from the courts and Congress. These are the policies we’ll be tracking as Trump reassumes the presidency and what he could realistically do.
While Trump will have more power than before, he has removed former supporters from his team who encouraged restraint during his first term and has big plans for reorganizing the administrative state.
The November US election results eight years ago shocked the staff at Backchannel, a tech publication I headed. The morning after, an editor posted on our Slack that working on a technology story seemed tone-deaf, if not futile. I wrote a column on the plane from New York to San Francisco to answer that impulse, directed as much to myself and my colleagues as it was to readers. I argued that regardless of the enormity of this event, one thing hadn’t changed; the biggest story of our time was still the technological revolution we were living through. Disruption politicians may come and go. The chip, the network, and the mobile device are changing humanity in some way. Our job was to chronicle that massive transformation, no matter who was in charge. The headline of my column was “The iPhone Is Bigger Than Donald Trump.”
This week, Trump once again was elected president. I will not go into the list of disqualifiers that would seem to be slam-dunk. You’ve heard it all, and to the majority of voters it doesn’t matter. There is a story that will be the stuff of history over the next few years. Perhaps not in a good way. It may not be a good way for a country to celebrate its continued values on America’s 250th birthday. (In the spirit of unity, I’ll use the “maybe” qualifier since losers should be humble, and who knows what’s ahead.)
Yet I’m not budging from the thought I had in 2016. As Stewart Brand once said, “Human nature doesn’t change much; science does, and the change accrues, altering the world irreversibly.” Technology and science remains the activity that will have the biggest impact on our species. Future generations will look back at this time and identify the period when computer chips and neural net software changed everything. And who was that strongman with the funny hair who crashed the country that used to occupy real estate in the Western Hemisphere? I no longer run a publication and instead represent but a single voice in a much larger staff. Please note the words of my boss for WIRED’s institutional view. So, speaking for myself, I emphatically reprise my 2016 statement of purpose, with a slight tweak: Artificial intelligence is bigger than Donald Trump.
Of course journalists must cover Trump’s second presidency vigorously, with relentless demands for accountability. In the short term—for some of us codgers it may be all of our remaining term!—what happens in our community and country will have a bigger influence on our daily lives than the latest version of Claude, ChatGPT, or even Apple Intelligence. (Sorry, Tim Apple.) If you lose your health care, or your reproductive rights, or find yourself in a deportation camp or a prison cell because of the policies of our returning president, the knowledge that AI, mixed reality, and quantum computers might one day redefine us won’t lessen the pain.
That’s why, the day after Donald Trump got reelected, I visited an AI company and interviewed one of its leaders and a top engineer. Yes, on the walk back to the office I thought about the election results and got depressed all over again. I will finish the article about that company and then do another as long as my broken heart keeps beating. The biggest story in town is still about Artificial Intelligence.