The tech industry’s growing dependence on government contracts and its fear of a ‘billionaire’ tax are reshaping political terrain.

Whose side is Silicon Valley on anyway?

That’s what Secretary Hegseth may be wondering, given Anthropic’s refusal to grant the US military autonomy over its Claude model — a stance that makes the company an abject outlier in Silicon Valley. Many tech firms are eagerly building alliances and selling services to the federal government. Government contracts are booming, and patriotism is the new subscription software service. 

Elon’s leadership of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is the highest profile example of bringing tech talent into the government. Although DOGE overpromised a trillion dollars of cuts and underdelivered, it still helped reduce the size of the federal workforce and pared back egregious waste at the State Department. Elon has also played a role in geopolitics by offering Starlink services to Ukrainian military forces and putting a hundred or so US government satellites into orbit via SpaceX.

But Silicon Valley’s realignment behind American interests extends well beyond Elon’s network of companies. Anduril, a major tech defense firm founded by Palmer Luckey, is supplying the US military with relatively cheap next-gen hardware and software. And the meteoric rise of Palantir, headed by Alex Karp, has been revolutionizing government intelligence and law-enforcement operations.

President Trump has aggressively courted the CEOs of Silicon Valley — and not without reason. These are the titans of the US economy managing companies worth trillions of dollars and employing millions of people. They are also on the cutting edge of technological innovation and, therefore, driving the process of creative destruction. And some key tech leaders were instrumental in helping Trump win the 2024 presidential election.

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