I Believed I Understood Silicon Valley, but I Was Mistaken.

Silicon Valley has never been a utopia of peace and love. “Despite its self-image tied to counterculture, the pursuit of profit and power has consistently been central,” remarks Kapor. Additionally, the Valley has long embraced a robust libertarian perspective in its political landscape.

Even venture capitalists seemed to resonate with revolutionary sentiments—as if they had shifted from crafting explosives to orchestrating IPO presentations. When the internet exploded onto the scene, the ideological noise became deafening. In his famous 1996 missive “Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace,” my colleague John Perry Barlow claimed that the internet surpassed terrestrial laws and boundaries. “Your legal notions of property, expression, identity, movement, and context do not concern us,” he declared.

We truly invested our aspirations in the internet. When I first encountered them, Larry Page and Sergey Brin were starry-eyed dreamers. Jeff Bezos came off as affable, eager to share that Amazon employees, himself included, set up their workstations on salvaged wooden doors instead of expensive desks. After my initial chat with Zuckerberg, he returned to a minuscule, unfurnished apartment.

Then, the titans of the internet expanded their empires, imposing their interpretations of expression, identity, and context. Those once modest pioneers amassed unimaginable fortunes. Today, they flaunt their wealth with multiple residences, yachts, and jets.

On a typically pleasant July day, I met Russell Hancock, head of a think tank called Joint Venture Silicon Valley, in the comfort of his Palo Alto home. He acquired it during the tech downturn in 2000; nowadays, purchasing a simple home in Palo Alto requires near-generational wealth. Page and Zuckerberg, dissatisfied with a single residence, have collected neighboring properties, turning serene streets into fortresses.

“Those thriving dramatically are truly enjoying themselves,” Hancock observes. For others in Silicon Valley, the chasm of wealth is growing increasingly harsh and absurd. When Apple went public in 1980, Steve Jobs’ wealth soared to an then-unprecedented $100 million. Now, Zuckerberg is allegedly offering AI researchers that much for just one year of work. Hancock references the Gini coefficient, a commonly used measure of inequality among the World Bank community. Since the ’90s, “we escalated from 30 on the Gini to 83,” he states. “These are the conditions reminiscent of the French Revolution.”

A significant transformation was also underway. For a long while, notes Chris Lehane, a former aide to Bill Clinton who has worked with companies like Airbnb and OpenAI, software “was almost a separate dimension.” Tech leaders could afford to remain aloof from politics. However, software products began to disrupt entire industries. “These solutions manifested in taxis, short-term rentals, and food delivery,” explains Lehane, “clashing with established political systems, beliefs, and laws.” Occasionally, the fallout was deadly. Cherished businesses shut down, and local politicians grew frustrated. To navigate the turmoil, Silicon Valley began to engage with politics. As one technologist currently in the administration tells me, “The Valley now understands it cannot disregard politics, as politics will not disregard you.”