For a number of technology industry leaders, President Trump crossed the line when he issued a temporary halt to refugee resettlement and a travel ban on nationals from seven countries this month, threatening their access to skilled talent abroad. As of last week, more than 125 companies, almost all of them technology-focused, signed on to court papers opposing the president’s executive order. However, a few of these Silicon Valley giants see promise in working with Trump instead of blocking him out.
One such leader looking to keep an open relationship with the White House is Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. After Uber CEO Travis Kalanick dropped from the president’s 19-member business advisory council after the ban began because he feared his continued membership would be “misinterpreted” as an endorsement of the president and his agenda, Musk, another member of the group, said that bailing was the “wrong” move.
Musk said that at his request, a meeting of the president’s Strategic and Policy Forum this month addressed his and other members’ opposition to the executive order. “[T]he agenda for yesterday’s White House meeting went from not mentioning the travel ban to having it be first and foremost,” Musk said on Twitter, adding, “I believe this is doing good, so will remain on council & keep at it.”
The move has yet to have a noticeable effect, and one editorial from the Verge accused Musk of behaving like a “crony capitalist.”
Other tech executives, such as IBM CEO Ginni Rometty, also a member of the president’s advisory council, and Safra Catz, co-CEO of Oracle, who was a member of Trump’s transition team, have chosen to stay out of the travel ban fight. Some of these companies, such Oracle and SpaceX, are the beneficiaries of large multi-million-dollar government contracts.
Still, the tech community has largely rallied against the president by signing onto the amicus brief that says the executive order “inflicts significant harm” on innovation and growth.
“The order makes it more difficult and expensive for U.S. companies to recruit, hire and retain some of the world’s best employees. It disrupts ongoing business operations. And it threatens companies’ ability to attract talent, business and investment to the United States,” says the document, supported by Apple, Microsoft, Netflix, Facebook, Uber, Airbnb and even Tesla and SpaceX.
While Musk is looking to take a more conciliatory approach in his efforts to fight the ban, other CEOs, such as Google’s Sundar Pichai, don’t seem open to compromise.
“It’s painful to see the personal cost of this executive order on our colleagues,” Pichai wrote in a memo obtained by Bloomberg News. “We’ve always made our view on immigration issues known publicly and will continue to do so.”
Many of these same tech leaders remained largely silent during the presidential campaign when Trump found himself stuck in controversies about sexually explicit comments about women and his promise to build a border wall with Mexico. But a look at the makeup of these companies shows why they are now suddenly taking up arms against Trump now that they see immigration being threatened.
Fifty-eight percent of engineers, the “lifeblood of Silicon Valley,” are born outside the U.S., according to the Silicon Valley Leadership Group. Also, over half of the country’s $1 billion startup companies were founded by at least one immigrant, according to the nonpartisan National Foundation for American Policy. Several leading tech CEOs, such as Google’s Pichai and Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, are immigrants.
While the amicus brief has a strong showing of support from Silicon Valley, it is unclear what effect, if any, it will have in swaying the legal fight being waged on the ban. However, the lawsuit supporting the brief, filed by Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson, may not have been a success were it not for the efforts of three tech companies.
After U.S. District Judge James Robart later ruled in favor of the lawsuit, which slapped a temporary restraining order on the ban while the case moved to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, Ferguson credited Expedia, Amazon and Microsoft for playing an important role in helping to halt the travel ban.
He told GeekWire that declarations of support by Expedia and Amazon and public comments from Microsoft “certainly helped the case” being made on the ban’s negative impact on business in Washington state.
