Can Trump Hold the Tech Right and Populist Right Together?

The “tech right” and “populist right” united to help return President Donald Trump to the White House, but this is not a natural alliance. Indeed, the two groups could soon splinter due to tensions over several key policy issues. While some have suggested this new counter-elite is strong and could reshape the modern political landscape, the reality is that, as Walter Russell Mead has argued, “the MAGA-populist/tech-lord coalition is a volatile one, and keeping it together will be taxing.”

These challenges were on display in Trump’s first week back in office. Several major technology CEOs attended President Trump’s inauguration and other tech leaders visited the White House to announce a massive $500 billion artificial intelligence (AI) investment partnership called “Stargate.” Media outlets played up this closeness between Trump and his new tech allies. Just days later, however, Vice President J.D. Vance told a weekend news program that, “we believe fundamentally that big tech does have too much power.” Last August, he told that same program that tech companies should even be broken up.

This exemplifies the potential for tension within what Ross Douthat calls the “tech-trad alliance” that could divide the tech right and MAGA populists over time. But there are a few things that could keep them united and working together, at least in the short term, if Trump can only foster unity among these factions.

Here are some of the most important issues that, depending on how things shake out, could either help or hurt the Trump administration’s efforts to keep this tech-trad alliance together.

Immigration

Even before Trump got the keys back to the Oval Office, tensions were already flaring between the populist right and tech right over immigration policy. In late December, a heated debate unfolded over high-skilled immigration following Trump’s appointment of venture capitalist Sriram Krishnan to be a senior adviser on AI policy. Krishnan came under attack from Laura Loomer and various ethno-nationalists on the far right. The debate was nominally about H-1B visas and policies governing high-skilled immigration, but it quickly deteriorated into something much darker, with racial overtones—especially about Indian immigrants like Krishnan—creeping into the spat.

Elon Musk and several other notable tech right figures rallied behind Krishnan and vociferously argued in favor of keeping the door open to skilled workers, who have already helped America become a global powerhouse in numerous tech sectors. Trump himself then made it clear he relied on workers with H-1B visas in his own business operations.

The debate about skilled immigration isn’t over, however. It will likely flare up again and again in Trump’s administration because immigration is such an important issue to both groups.

Automation

Automation fears are nothing new because people have long worried that machines might displace jobs, firms or even entire professions and sectors. In some ways, it is surprising that this concern has so far mainly been secondary in the policy debates about AI. Instead, over the past two years, AI safety issues have dominated, along with worries about algorithmic discrimination and the potential impact of AI on elections.

But automation concerns are likely to reemerge in a major way in 2025. We got a glimpse of what’s to come during last year’s dockworker and 2023’s Hollywood (SAG-AFTRA) strikes. In both strikes, unions and their supporters maintained that their biggest concern was not wages or benefits (although those were important issues too) but job security.

Meanwhile, anti-automation legislative proposals are advancing at the state level. New York recently passed a bill to appease the Public Employees Federation (PEF), which has railed against the use of AI within government agencies. The union hasn’t even tried to disguise its intent. “We need to protect workers from losing their jobs to AI systems,” a PEF official told lawmakers in October. But New York isn’t stopping there. Of the more than 100 AI-related bills the New York legislature introduced in 2024, several of them related directly to limiting algorithmic systems or even imposing “robot taxes” on firms that automate more activities.

There will likely be similar bills in 2025 as horseshoe theory accelerates, with the fringes of the populist right and progressive left meeting and making common cause over the effects of automation on the nation’s workforce. It’s already sometimes hard to tell the difference between the positions of Senators Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) when they start criticizing tech companies. Hawley and Warren have even co-sponsored legislation to break up large tech firms.

And now that President Trump and Vice President Vance are doing more to curry favor with big labor, it is likely that many anti-AI and anti-automation bills will garner support on the populist right. If that happens, it will create problems for many on the tech right, who are busy creating labor-saving applications and technologies that will be in the crosshairs of such policymakers.

Autonomous Systems

We’re finally starting to witness some important progress with autonomous vehicles (AVs) in the U.S. The tech right embraces driverless cars and robo-taxis and plays up their benefits for safety, traffic control and the environment. Many of them also want to see greater innovation with unmanned aircraft systems or drones. But some on the populist right aren’t quite so eager to see autonomous systems take off.

The Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), a leading conservative state think tank, has said of driverless cars that “unfettered deployment of the technology puts Texans in harm’s way and threatens to unseat the autonomy of drivers.” TPPF also calls for more pre-deployment AV regulations and “protecting Texans’ right to drive their own vehicle.”

This makes it sound like driverless cars are agents of chaos meant to terrorize citizens and that the government is going to force them upon us. In reality, autonomous systems have already been shown to significantly enhance public safety when allowed to operate. And the latest crash data suggests that “driverless cars may already be safer than human drivers,” as tech journalist Timothy B. Lee notes. Yet most governments are still throwing up roadblocks to deployment.

Some populist politicians oppose driverless cars by playing on safety fears or concerns about job dislocation, as noted earlier. Republican lawmakers in Indiana and Kentucky have recently floated Teamsters-backed measures that would limit AV deployment in various ways.

Meanwhile, claimed drone sightings in the skies over New Jersey throughout December created widespread paranoia. Commercial drones hold the promise of improving cargo delivery, fighting fires and search-and-rescue efforts, among many other things. But there’s also just a more general unease among some about the idea of drones flying anywhere near their property, with a steady stream of reports about some heavily armed homeowners taking matters into their own hands by attempting to shoot them out of the sky, even as they are warned about the consequences of trying to do so. And some on the populist right view drones with even deeper suspicion as robotic agents sent by deep state forces to surveil and terrorize us.

Yet, many on the tech right are actively supporting, investing in or hoping to develop these same autonomous capabilities that some on the populist right view so skeptically, setting this issue up as another potential source of tension between the two groups.

Child Safety and AI-Generated Content

The tech right and the populist right have worked together in recent years to promote free speech, both on university campuses and social media platforms, which they have correctly identified as being overly censorious. Being anti-“woke” is a great unifier for the tech-trad alliance.

But this free speech alliance has some important caveats. Most obviously, many on the populist right decry digital tech as fundamentally harmful to the young and they want extensive regulation based on amorphous “child safety” rationales. Some on the tech right are willing to go along with certain proposed regulations, but the populist right wants far more extensive regulatory limits on digital technologies and speech, including online age verification mandates and other limits to “win the war against big tech.”

Calls for content controls will likely accelerate as AI tools spread into everyday work and life, are further democratized and are used in creative ways by average citizens, including kids. This expansion of AI-generated content will give rise to more techno-panics and corresponding calls for control.

This will, in turn, bleed over into the current debate about “AI safety” regulation, as is already the case in Texas. During a recent podcast about AI policy in the Lone Star State, two TPPF analysts railed against permissionless innovation in digital technology and claimed that “social media led to dead children.” For such populist conservatives, AI regulation will become part of a broader moral crusade against what they regard as a social scourge. Consequently, TPPF has been lending support to a European-style AI regulatory measure, in the name of protecting children.

These state AI regulations will do more to empower bureaucrats and trial lawyers than anything else, and the new controls they propose are going to land squarely on firms that many on the tech right created, work for or invest in. What’s more, this isn’t just about “big tech.” Plenty of open-source AI upstarts and other “little tech” app developers are going to be hit hard by the tsunami of AI regulatory mandates coming in 2025. Indeed, unlike large technology firms, these smaller actors may not have the resources to comply with the regulatory requirements the populists want to implement. All of this will lead to some serious tension between the tech right and the populist right when they start squaring off in statehouses across America in the next couple of years over amorphous “AI safety” regulations.

Energy Diversification

The tech right is interested in tapping a diverse array of potential energy sources to meet rising demand. Much of this is driven by the explosive growth of the data centers needed to support rapidly expanding AI and crypto innovation. Tech entrepreneurs and investors are seizing the moment to broaden the nation’s energy portfolio. And because many in tech want to use cleaner energy sources that don’t contribute to climate change, they are even helping nuclear energy make a comeback after decades of regulatory-induced stagnation. Meanwhile, no one has done more to advance the electric vehicle (EV) revolution than Elon Musk, who has attained “first buddy” status after energetically supporting Trump during the campaign.

The populist right is not uniformly opposed to clean energy or EVs, but many of them remain skeptical of the motives and policies behind these technologies. In particular, populists generally oppose anything that seems like an EV mandate or a policy that hinders the growth of America’s booming fossil fuel sector. Alternative energy backers face new political realities as a result. The Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) investing wars have been raging for many years now, and some on the right have not been fond of government efforts to force renewable energy sources like solar, wind or EVs on the public.

Much of that anger is understandable, but if the populist right pursues a full-blown “war on woke capital,” and clean energy providers in particular, it will create still more tension with some on the tech right.

Can Trump Hold Them Together?

Whether the tech right and populist right alliance represents a lasting long-term coalition or simply a short-term marriage of convenience remains to be seen. The extent to which one side dominates depends greatly on Trump’s mercurial nature and how “America First” gets defined in various contexts. Will he come down more on what the Wall Street Journal editorial board calls “the side of enlightened nationalism, as opposed to the blinkered, declinist version” of nationalism supported by people like Loomer, Steve Bannon and some others on the populist right? Right now, the answer is unclear.

Trump might be able to find a way to keep the factions working together, at least for a time. The easiest way for him to do so is to keep their collective attention focused more squarely on two common enemies that the tech right and populist right share: the Democratic Party and China.

It is unclear if that’ll be enough, however. At the moment, Democrats find themselves in disarray and don’t seem to have a clear leader like Joe Biden or former Vice President Kamala Harris who will attract the focused ire of the right. That will change once the midterm elections approach and new Democratic party leaders emerge, but for now, the populist right and tech right aren’t too worried about the progressive left. In the interim, we might witness some in-fighting as they struggle for more of Trump’s attention and allegiance.

In the short term, China could turn out to be the unifying issue that binds the tech right and populist right together, especially in the wake of Chinese company DeepSeek launching a powerful but inexpensive new AI model that shook U.S. tech stocks upon its release. There’s more agreement there and the two sides might be willing to make peace on various policy objectives in an effort to maintain a unified front on China. Yet, it is not clear what that means concretely. Is more industrial policy like “CHIPS 2” in the cards? It’s unlikely that move would win as much support as the original CHIPS and Science Act, with a new budget-conscious Congress coming to town. Additional unilateral actions against China could help unify both groups, but Trump recently changed his position on banning TikTok, which made it unclear how much tougher he will get.

What about expanded trade restrictions or more export controls? Populists love them, but the tech right seems to have more mixed views. So, perhaps anti-China sentiments and actions only get us so far in terms of promoting unity.

Ironically, perhaps more big tech-bashing and antitrust intervention will help keep the coalition together. Many leading Silicon Valley investors are enamored with the idea of advancing a “little tech” agenda to promote startups and open-source AI companies, and Trump and Vance have made punishing “big tech” a continuing priority. But there are limits to that strategy. Neither the tech right nor the MAGA populists will likely want to return to the Biden administration’s Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission antitrust crusades against big tech. After all, it’s not little tech companies making $500 billion domestic investment promises at White House ceremonies. The Trump administration could, however, stop short of supporting more punitive actions against big tech and instead push for more investigations into how Biden administration officials engaged in heavy-handed shenanigans with various large tech firms during their years in power.

The cadre of tech right luminaries now steering policy in the new administration—David Sacks, Michael Kratsios and Krishnan, among others—will need to keep Trump focused on a positive, pro-innovation tech agenda to ensure that declinist narratives and grievance politics do not derail the rising counter-elite movement of pro-American tech optimism. At the same time, Trump and his tech allies will have to do a better job explaining the benefits of a robust tech sector to his populist base. That approach could promise to revolutionize politics for the better—if Trump can keep these two factions from going to war with each other first.