The who’s who of the golden age of silicon

The biggest in Silicon Valley Power players traded their hoodies for suits and ties this week as they sat front and center to watch Donald Trump take the oath of office.

Seated in front of Meta’s new cabinet are Mark Zuckerberg, Google’s Sundar Pichai, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, and Trump confidant and head of the so-called Department of Government Effectiveness, Elon Musk. Apple CEO Tim Cook, Openai’s Sam Altman and Tiktok CEO Shou Zi Chew also reviewed.

For an industry once skeptical of Trump, this dramatic shift in political allegiance foreshadows changes for the country — and the world. From relaxing hate speech rules on meta platforms to simply banning Tiktok, to billions of dollars the government committed to building data centers to power AI, it’s still not as the beginning of this realignment.

On this week’s episode of The Intercept Briefing, Justin Hendrix, CEO and editor-in-chief of Tech Policy Press, and Intercept politics reporter Jessica Washington dissect this quarter.

“Three of the people sitting in front of the cabinet are estimated by Oxfam in its latest report on wealth inequality to be on track to potentially become billionaires in the next few years: Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk,” says Hendrix. “Musk is estimated to be the planet’s first trillionaire, perhaps as early as 2027.”

Washington says there’s more at stake than just personal wealth. “These are people who see themselves as switchers, as people who create reality in many ways. Aligning with Trump and power in this way is not just about their financial interests, it is about pushing their worldview. »

For more on this conversation, check out this week’s episode of The Intercept Briefing.