Friday
night, after President Trump signed an executive order closing the U.S. to immigrants from
seven largely Muslim countries and refugeesfrom every country, the tech journalist Kara
Swisher wrote on Twitter, “Will tech leaders come
out strongly and publicly against Trump’s Muslim ban? I’m taking names.”
Earlier that day, Mark Zuckerberg had written on Facebook that Trump’s action “would make all
Americans less safe by diverting resources, while millions of undocumented
folks who don’t pose a threat will live in fear of deportation.” He’d noted,
too, that his wife’s parents had been refugees from China and Vietnam. By and
large, Zuckerberg’s tone had been polite: he was, he said, “concerned.”
By
the end of the weekend, though, as it became clear how far-reaching Trump’s
order would be, Silicon Valley C.E.O.s seemed eager to have their names taken.
Trump’s actions “are so un-American it pains us all,” Reed Hastings, the C.E.O.
of Netflix, wrote. The co-founders of Lyft pledged a million
dollars to the American Civil Liberties Union, which has sued the government on
behalf of refugees, and told customers, in an e-mail about the executive order,
“We stand firmly against these actions.” Brian Chesky, the C.E.O. of Airbnb,
said that his company would house refugees for free. Sergey Brin, a co-founder
of Google, showed up at a protest at San Francisco International Airport, where
he noted that he was himself a refugee, having fled the Soviet Union as a child.
Amazon and Expedia gave their support to a lawsuit filed by the Washington
State Attorney General against the executive order. Even Travis Kalanick and Elon Musk, who are, respectively, the C.E.O.s of Uber
and Tesla, and who belong to a council that advises Trump on business issues,
came out, if tepidly, against the President’s policy, and said that they’d talk
to him about it.
Tech
companies were far from the only ones speaking out against the immigration
order, but they were, as a group, the most vocal. They had reason to be. Before
taking office, Trump held a high-profile meeting with some of Silicon Valley’s
most well-known executives, promising to hear them out on the policy issues important
to them. But whatever good will the meeting might have generated seems to have
evaporated when the immigration order took effect. Immigrants make up a large
part of Silicon Valley’s workforce, and employees at some of Silicon Valley’s
biggest companies are from the seven Muslim-majority countries targeted
specifically by Trump’s order. (Google even recalled some travelling staffers back to the
U.S.) Some Silicon Valley companies also may have decided that they have little
reason to avoid antagonizing the Trump Administration. Hastings, of Netflix,
was perhaps the most direct in his criticism of Trump; it so happens that, less
than a week earlier, Trump had appointed Ajit Pai, a critic of the
net-neutrality rules that Netflix favors, as the head of the Federal
Communications Commission. Hastings, perhaps, didn’t have much left to lose.
Silicon
Valley C.E.O.s tend to command disproportionate attention in popular culture,
so when people like Hastings, Brin, and Zuckerberg speak out, we take notice.
But plenty of businesses have more to lose by criticizing the President, and
many of their leaders have been conspicuously restrained over the past several
days. For example, telecommunications companies have been silent, according to Recode; some of these corporations need regulatory
approval for mergers they have planned, and must stay in the White House’s good
graces. Andrew Ross Sorkin, of the Times, described C.E.O.s frantically calling one
another in recent days, to confer about how—or whether—to comment. Not everyone
has played it safe: the C.E.O.s of Ford and Goldman Sachs are among the
high-profile non-tech executives who have already taken stances against Trump’s
measure. Howard Schultz, the C.E.O. of Starbucks, made an especially striking
promise to hire ten thousand refugees worldwide over the next five years,
beginning in the U.S.
On
Monday, I asked the top ten U.S.-based contractors to the federal government if
they could say anything about the order, and if their executives had been in
touch with the Trump Administration or other government officials about it.
Lockheed Martin and Boeing, the biggest government contractors, both declined
to comment. Spokespeople for Raytheon, McKesson, and United Technologies also
declined to comment. General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, L-3 Communications,
and the Bechtel Group didn’t respond to my e-mails. Only BAE Systems, the
tenth-largest contractor, had a comment, and it addressed only a question on
how the executive order might impact BAE employees. “I don’t think we’d
experience any impact,” a spokesman wrote. “As a defense contractor supporting
many military and security agencies most of our employees are citizens and
actually many of them hold security clearances.” Among large corporations that
also have significant contracts with the federal government, General Electric’s
Jeff Immelt was perhaps the highest-profile C.E.O. to speak out, and that was
only in the form of an internal blog post for employees, in which he wrote, “I
share your concern.”
Under normal circumstances, contractors like
G.E., given their close ties to the government, might have more sway than those
in sectors that, like the tech industry, mostly cater to private consumers. But
our current circumstances are decidedly abnormal. However much President Trump
rails against coastal élites, he has shown himself to get most rankled by
criticism when it comes from influential, popular sources—CNN, the New York Times, Meryl Streep. The opinions of executives at well-liked,
consumer-oriented companies might be of special interest to Trump, given his
self-image as a high-level businessman himself. As Sam Altman, the president of Y Combinator, wrote in a blog post encouraging tech
companies to take action, “The tech community is powerful. Large tech companies
in particular have enormous power and are held in high regard.” However
unpredictable Trump has shown himself to be, he has been steadfast in his
regard for the powerful and popular. Reed Hastings and his colleagues might be
onto something.