We all know Donald Trump’s return to the White House has been incredibly lucrative for his multibillionaire benefactor Elon Musk. But the Tesla and SpaceX CEO is not alone. Other conservative tech bros are getting in on the action—not just by siphoning that sweet, sweet taxpayer money, but also by burrowing into the agencies that oversee their companies. The end result is regulatory capture at its worst.
The Wall Street Journal is out with a story on the four conservative horsemen of the Silicon Valley apocalypse: Musk, Marc Andreessen, Peter Thiel, and Palmer Luckey. It details how all four have managed to install loyalists within multiple government agencies that regulate their industries.
Palantir Technologies founder and chairman Peter Thiel spoke at the Republican National Convention in 2016.
While Musk’s SpaceX has gotten most of $6 billion in new government contracts, Thiel’s data company, Palantir Technologies, and Luckey’s defense start-up, Anduril, have also inked new federal contracts. Andreessen’s role at the moment is mainly as a moneyman, investing in his pals’ companies and reaping the benefits that way.
Thanks to his role at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, Musk now has people planted in over a dozen agencies, many of which regulate his industries. Before Trump’s election, Musk faced multiple agency investigations over everything from securities violations to workplace discrimination to his habit of wildly overstating the capabilities of Tesla vehicles’ self-driving mode. Now, Musk loyalists, along with the feral children of DOGE, are everywhere, ensconced at every agency that could possibly cause Musk a problem: the FAA, NASA, NOAA, the Departments of Transportation, Labor, and Energy, and more.
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Thiel now has friends in high places at the Department of Health and Human Services, which the Journal reports has given his data company Palantir almost $376 million since 2010. Luckey got an Anduril director nominated to a high-level position at the Department of Defense, the agency that Anduril, Palantir, and SpaceX are all courting. Fun fact: That director has already said he’ll keep all his Anduril stock while working for the government, at the agency that has the power to give Anduril contracts.
Things are about to get even more profitable for this Unfab Four. Trump is obsessed with missile defense, and SpaceX has partnered with Palantir and Anduril to bid to build the Golden Dome missile shield. In theory, they haven’t landed the contract yet and are just the frontrunners, but there’s no reason to pretend that Musk and friends won’t be getting the lion’s share of federal money here. Estimates for the cost of the Golden Dome project range from $119 billion to $6.4 trillion, depending on how much is ultimately built. The House Armed Services Committee set aside $24.7 billion for the Dome for fiscal year 2025. That’s a lot of federal money sloshing around, and Silicon Valley wants it.
According to the Journal, these four tech bros now have high-level people at agencies that awarded their various companies a total of $24 billion since 2010. Since their puppets now control the purse strings, you can expect that number to grow.
Several tech titans backed Trump in the 2024 presidential election, in no small part because Trump promised a laissez-faire economic wonderland with endless profits and little to no regulations. After he won, they donated millions to his inauguration festivities. Democrats sounded the alarm about how Trump was happily taking seven figures from companies currently under investigation by federal agencies, to no avail.
Related | Why some Silicon Valley billionaire bros want Trump to be the ‘CEO of America’
So, while these four were already doing pretty well in the endless profits category, they also now have the equally valuable ability to neuter agencies that could normally regulate or investigate their companies. Musk has openly attacked the Federal Aviation Administration and overseen mass firings there. But even better, Musk put a SpaceX senior engineer, Ted Malaska, in at the FAA while Malaska continues to work for SpaceX. On day one of Malaska’s tenure at the FAA, he threatened employees by saying anyone who impeded his work or the work of DOGE risked losing their jobs.
Meanwhile, former Thiel lieutenant Michael Kratsios is now overseeing the Office of Science and Technology Policy—and is therefore in charge of the Trump administration’s AI strategy regarding China. You will probably not be surprised to learn that Kratsios’ previous gig was running an AI startup.
None of these technocrats will do the right thing and put the interests of the taxpayers and the country above their own. Indeed, they’re valuable to Trump precisely because of that. People who actually value the work of government and its role in regulating companies pose a problem for Trump, as he sees the presidency only as a vehicle for personal profit and a means for revenge. Now, he has four incredibly rich and terrifyingly amoral friends to help.
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