Vance Boosts AI Industry in France as Trump Embraces the ‘Broligarchy’

The Washington Post

12:57 JST, February 13, 2025

PARIS – During his first weeks in office, President Donald Trump has unleashed a blitz of industry-friendly tech directives that stand to further enrich some of his wealthiest supporters in Silicon Valley.

In rapid succession, he ordered agencies to unwind artificial-intelligence regulations that tech leaders say could dampen innovation. He signed an order intended to make the United States the “world capital” of cryptocurrencies. He established a new sovereign wealth fund that tech investors are eying as a potential vehicle for fresh investment in their companies. Perhaps most prominently, he established the U.S. DOGE Service, which some venture capitalists say will weed out unnecessary regulations and bureaucratic processes that make it hard to build companies.

And on Tuesday, Vice President JD Vance warned world leaders at a global AI summit that regulating the development of artificial intelligence would be “paralyzing one of the most promising technologies.” He also criticized a slate of European Union laws that regulate American tech companies, aligning with U.S. executives who have long called the regulations burdensome for business.

While some proponents argue that the policy changes will benefit American workers, the rise of the self-described “broligarchy” highlights the gap between Trump’s populist rhetoric on the campaign trail and the policies he is pursuing now that he is in office. As Trump crisscrossed battleground states for raucous rallies last year, he focused on the rising prices of food and advocated trade policies that “put American workers first.” The former real estate magnate mused about how he was more comfortable among blue-collar workers than Wall Street executives.

His stump speech rarely touched on the topics du jour of Silicon Valley, focusing on issues discussed at the kitchen table more than in the start-up boardroom. But now, the pro-tech agenda is outshining some of the economic issues that he campaigned on, potentially threatening his political clout with workers who supported his promises to “Make America Great Again” by elevating their interests.

“The deregulation he already has pushed could end up raising people’s costs,” said Darrell West, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “He’s going to have a problem.”

A majority of Americans say Trump is doing what he promised on the campaign trail, according to a new poll from CBS News-YouGov. However, 66 percent of respondents said he is not focusing enough on lowering the prices of goods and services. Only 35 percent of Americans said they think Trump’s policies will make them financially better off.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment. Vance on Wednesday wrote on X that “civil war” between religious populists and tech-bro libertarians was “overstated.”

“(though yes there are some real divergences between the populists and the techies),” he wrote, saying he planned to write a longer piece to address the differences in detail.

As Democrats scramble to find a message to counter the onslaught of action in Trump’s first weeks, they have focused their criticism on his ties to unelected tech billionaires, especially his largest donor turned adviser, Elon Musk.

Trump’s warm relationship with Silicon Valley also marks a radical shift from just a few years ago. When top social media companies suspended his accounts in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, Trump sued them and threatened to throw Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in prison for life. He signed an executive order in May 2020 that sought to overhaul Section 230, a key provision of internet law that shields tech companies from litigation over the posts people share on their sites. And he railed about concentration in the sector, as his Justice Department filed a landmark antitrust lawsuit against Google.

But this time, the same CEOs he once pilloried sat as guests of honor under the Capitol Rotunda at his inauguration, including Washington Post owner and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Trump has given many tech leaders key roles in his administration, including installing prominent venture capitalist David Sacks as the White House crypto and AI czar. Trump has consistently backed Musk’s strategy, even amid a barrage of legal challenges to the unprecedented access that Musk is seeking to government data sources.

Tech CEOs and venture capitalists have been jubilant over the Trump administration’s approach, praising the optimistic outlook following years of criticism of the industry.

“Vice President Vance said a lot of things I really liked,” said Open AI CEO Sam Altman during an event in Paris hours after Vance’s remarks. Altman, who recently visited the White House to tout a $100 billion data center deal, said he was particularly energized by Vance’s focus on the economic opportunity created by AI, which the vice president referred to as “lightning in a bottle.”

“Incredible to see a political leader translate how a new technology can promote human flourishing with such clarity,” Katherine Boyle, a partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, wrote on the social network X. “Exceptional speech.”

Trump has also moved to give tech leaders greater input in policies moving forward, after many said they supported him after feeling shut out by the Biden administration. He signed an executive order establishing a President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, which will include 24 members from the industry as well as government and academia. This group will be led by two tech leaders with ties to venture capitalist Peter Thiel: Sacks and Michael Kratsios, Trump’s nominee for director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy. The White House is also setting up a council of crypto leaders, which top executives are jockeying to join.

Trump signed these executive orders in the Oval Office last month, with Sacks standing next to the Resolute Desk. Afterward, Trump handed Sacks the black marker he used and told reporters that people were constantly asking him how he was able to get Sacks to work in the administration.

“There’s nobody like this guy,” Trump said.

The president’s supporters in the tech industry have fervently supported the rollback of Biden-era rules and the broad efforts of DOGE, or the Department of Government Efficiency, to downsize the federal government. Tech investor Jason Calacanis, who once described himself as a “Never Trumper,” said on the popular tech podcast “All-In” that he would give Trump a B letter grade for his work so far. He deducted points for Trump’s grants of clemency to Jan. 6 rioters convicted of assault on police officers and seditious conspiracy against the United States, as well as his decision to launch a meme coin.

“That’s the stuff that’s going to derail this,” Calacanis said. “He has to stay with the 2.0 agenda, as hard as it is.”

As Musk’s allies cheer on DOGE, critics say its efforts threaten American workers who helped elect Trump. As Musk applies his corporate playbook – slashing personnel and performing tasks with artificial intelligence – to agencies across the federal government, Alondra Nelson, the principal deputy director for science and society at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy during the Biden administration, said this initiative is a test case for Silicon Valley’s vision for the future of the American workforce.

“People who work in the AI industry in Silicon Valley have a future imagining in which you have no workers at all and AI does all of the work,” she said. “That is at loggerheads with a populist agenda that says it’s supposed to be investing in American workers and empowering American workers and supporting the American public.”

By rescinding President Joe Biden’s AI executive order, the Trump administration is undermining efforts to ease that transition for workers, Nelson said. Under that order, the Labor Department developed guidelines for employers to ensure they were protecting workers’ rights as they introduced AI in their businesses. Now, the webpage redirects to an error.

Sacks and other tech leaders have argued that the Biden order created too many regulatory requirements that slowed companies down, allowing China to catch up in the AI race. They say that the recent release of a new artificial-intelligence chatbot from the Chinese company DeepSeek shows the need for these rules to be rolled back.

“It felt like that Biden EO was written in a vacuum in which the U.S. was the only player in AI,” Sacks said on an episode of “All-In,” which he used to co-host. “It’s pretty clear China is competitive.”

Alexandra Reeve Givens, the president of the Center for Democracy and Technology, said it’s a “fallacy” that regulation and innovation are at odds.

“The need has never been more urgent for users to tell what tools they can trust,” she said, arguing that requires regulation.

As Trump finishes his first month, political consultant Abby McCloskey said many of his supporters do not see his alliance with tech as undermining his populist promises because they see Musk as a creative outsider who can “drain the swamp” – separate from who they view as the Washington elites.

“My sense is that the average person still thinks Trump is there for them – whether rightly or wrongly – and is not particularly bothered by involvement with Musk or AI or the rest of it,” she said.