Silicon Valley spent years building close ties with Donald Trump and his allies. After Democrats crushed Republicans in the midterm elections, that political strategy is facing a hard test, and no tech executive has made the turn more clearly than Palantir CEO Alex Karp.
For years, Karp cozyed up to the Trump administration while Palantir supplied AI-powered surveillance technology to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He mused about legalizing war crimes, made unsavory comments about women, and bragged that he frequently chats with “real Nazis.” Critics accused him of going “full MAGA” after he defended Trump by arguing that the president was not a fascist.
Alex Karp’s sudden progressive vocabulary
Palantir also helped the so-called Department of Government Efficiency as it ripped apart federal government agencies. Karp took swipes at the Democratic Party, calling it “totally irresponsible” while celebrating a “completely anti-woke” agenda.
Now the message has changed. In a post-election interview, Karp used the word “progressive” eight times. After spending years criticizing the left, he said, “I’ve been a Democrat my whole life.” He also said, “I grew up in a far left environment. I know more about being a progressive than almost anybody on the planet, and I absolutely believe Palantir — all of our products are essentially progressive.”
That is a striking pivot for the CEO and co-founder of a company that has become closely tied to government surveillance and federal operations. The reason is plain: Democrats will take control of both chambers of Congress on January 3, giving them committees that can compel executives to testify or hand over internal documents under threat of prosecution.
Lawmakers have already threatened subpoenas for Silicon Valley leaders. Greg Casar, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said, “AI company CEOs should be called to testify under oath.” Senator Ed Markey warned tech executives that they would need to “plant new forests for all of the subpoenas we’ll be printing.”
AI, data centers and the next congressional fight
The political pressure reaches well beyond Karp. In 2020, the heads of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google were called to answer for their market dominance. Musk, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang could now face the same ordeal.
Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, elected senator for Michigan despite more than $5 million spent against him by America PAC, the political committee funded by Musk, wants lawmakers to go further. He is calling for a “full-on pause” in the development of the most powerful AI systems, along with a US-China treaty to “pause and ban superintelligence,” meaning AI that would surpass human intelligence.
Those proposals face serious obstacles. Lawmakers will need to unite a party divided on AI and overcome Trump’s veto. Trump remains president until January 2029, so Democrats may control Congress without having the final say over legislation.
Still, major policy shifts are on the table, including a slowdown in AI development, more data center moratoriums, and efforts to hold tech companies accountable for environmental damage linked to their work. The fight will touch the infrastructure behind AI, not just the software and services people use.
Voters gave lawmakers a clear opening. An NBC News exit poll found that AI and data centers were “a crucial or a major factor” for 56 percent of voters in their choice for Congress. Daniel Cochrane, a senior fellow at the conservative Institute for Family Studies, said concerns about AI’s social and economic effects shifted votes, pointing to data centers, jobs and children.
Tech companies prepare for a different Washington
The tech industry set out to punish lawmakers who crossed it, but the effort united safety hawks, populists and child-safety advocates. It also handed Democrats a 2028 issue. Cochrane described the political response in simple terms: “The tech bros are shapeshifters.” He said voters are “primed to reward whichever political party delivers on holding Big Tech accountable.”
Silicon Valley’s ties to the far right now look like a liability. Elon Musk, the SpaceX CEO, oversaw a catastrophic gutting of federal agencies as a “special government employee.” Sam Altman met with Trump, both publicly and behind the scenes, to advance OpenAI’s interests. Many other tech leaders stayed quiet after the election, while Karp moved to recast his politics.
Musk offered the only comment from a major tech boss as of Thursday, joking, “Data centers in space looking pretty appealing right now.” His political spending has also drawn attention: he spent $250 million to help elect Trump and poured nearly half a billion dollars more into backing Republicans in the midterms.
Parts of the industry had started distancing themselves from Republicans before voters went to the polls. The main pro-AI political fund, financed by OpenAI president Greg Brockman and venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, received no new donations from April through the end of September. Meta hired former Democratic staffers in recent months to represent it in Congress, while Google and Microsoft made concessions to win over an American public that opposes data centers.
Adam Kovacevich, CEO of the Chamber of Progress, warned against reading the election as a full rejection of technology. “Let’s not confuse an anti-Trump wave with an anti-tech mandate,” he said. But he also argued that “the only way to sink the AI trade is to sink the data centers.” Chamath Palihapitiya made a similar warning during an election-night livestream of the All-In podcast, which he co-hosts with other pro-Trump Silicon Valley investors.
The business consequences may already be showing. Market analyst Dan Ives estimates that 10 percent of the 800 to 1,000 new data centers planned in the United States “will not happen.” Cochrane expects Zuckerberg “to have another mea culpa” before an “aggressive Dem congress.” His broader judgment is blunt: “Ultimately, the tech bros are for the tech bros.”
That may explain Karp’s new language. The coming power shift will test whether Silicon Valley’s political flexibility means real change or another effort to protect its influence.
Based on
