This story appears in the June 2026 print edition. While some stories from this issue are not yet available to read online, you can explore more from the magazine . Get our editors' guide to what matters in the world, delivered to your inbox every weekday. The courtship between Silicon Valley and MAGA was consummated on June 6, 2024, in San Francisco's Pacific Heights neighborhood, on a street known as "Billionaires' Row," at the 22,000-square-foot, $45 million French-limestone mansion of a venture capitalist named David Sacks. Along with Chamath Palihapitiya, a fellow venture capitalist and a colleague on the podcast, Sacks hosted a fundraiser for Donald Trump. He knew that other technology titans were coming around to the ex-president but remained in the closet. "And I think that this event is going to break the ice on that," Sacks said on the podcast the week before the fundraiser. "And maybe it'll create a preference cascade, where all of a sudden it becomes acceptable to acknowledge the truth." Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read. A few years earlier, Sacks had described the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol as an "insurrection" and pronounced Trump "disqualified" from ever again holding national office. "What Trump did was absolutely outrageous, and I think it brought him to an ignominious end in American politics," he said on the podcast a few days after the event. "He will pay for it in the history books, if not in a court of law." Palihapitiya was more colloquial, calling Trump "a complete piece-of-shit fucking scumbag." These might seem like tricky positions to climb down from--but the path that leads from scathing denunciation through gradual accommodation to sycophantic embrace of Trump is a well-worn pilgrimage trail. The journey is less wearisome for self-mortifiers who never considered democracy (a word seldom spoken on the podcast) all that important in the first place.

Silicon Valley's top CEOs have been noticeably silent after the Minneapolis shooting. Hours after Alex Pretti was killed by federal agents in Minneapolis on Saturday, Apple CEO Tim Cook and Amazon CEO Andy Jassy showed up for a movie night at the White House. Along with other business executives and several prominent Donald Trump supporters, they attended a private screening of, a new documentary about the president's wife. The moviegoers were treated to buckets of popcorn and sugar cookies frosted with the first lady's name. Silicon Valley's top executives have seemingly taken every opportunity to cozy up to Trump.

On Inauguration Day, fans of the All-In Podcast gathered in a billiards room in Washington DC to watch Donald Trump's swearing-in – and a few miles away, the podcast co-host and PayPal Mafia alum David Sacks prepared to ascend to his role as Trump's AI and crypto czar. Very popular in Silicon Valley, All-In is fiercely pro-capitalism and enthusiastic about the world of tech start-ups and investments. Last summer, its co-hosts, Sacks and Jason Calacanis in particular, became vocal in their support for Trump and attempted to rally other tech leaders, including their listeners, behind the candidate. Now, Sacks has a seat at the table in the White House, as do many others in tech, including a former Uber executive, a senior adviser at Palantir, and a PayPal co-founder, who was picked to be ambassador to Denmark (Greenland, a territory Trump wants to seize, is part of Denmark). It's a watershed moment for relationships between Silicon Valley and Washington and, more broadly, what's often described as the tech right.

COVID-19 accelerated the deployment of Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies – reshaping how we work, shop, learn, socialize, even visit the doctor in ways likely to stick around long after the virus is under control. Even when we are able to safely return to "normal" life, continued acceleration of these innovations will be critical to recovery and making progress on our global goals. However, the pandemic also underscored the need for public and private sector governance to address emerging challenges and ensure tech works for everyone. As a recent World Economic Forum report explained, the pandemic "exposed even more clearly the gaps that still exist in digital access." Responsible technology governance is needed to protect against discriminatory algorithms, unethical use of data and job displacement.