THE FRIDAY READ
‘The Terror Is Real’: An Appalled Tech Industry Is Scared to Criticize Elon Musk
A huge swath of Silicon Valley is horrified by what Elon Musk is doing — but
they’re increasingly afraid to say so.
An illustration of a man sitting at a desk with multiple computer screens.
Computer windows in the background form the shadow of Elon Musk, who is
holding his finger to his lips.
Illustration by Emmanuel Polanco, Colagene for POLITICO
By ISSIE LAPOWSKY
04/04/2025 05:55 AM EDT
Issie Lapowsky is a journalist covering tech, politics and national affairs. Her
work has been featured in The New York Times, WIRED, Fast Company and
more.
Mark was poking around in an online forum for tech-company founders
recently when he spotted a fawning post about Elon Musk’s Department of
Government Efficiency.
As the founder of a tech company himself, Mark is part of a community of
startup types in the Bay Area and considers his politics to be pretty middle of
the road. He understands the instinct to want to modernize government. But
Musk’s approach at DOGE — which he saw as a slash-and-burn rampage
through the federal workforce — seemed, to him, “absurd.”
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He typed up a reply saying as much, arguing that DOGE is a front for purging
political opponents, and he figured at least some of the other founders on the
forum would agree.
Instead, Mark — who we allowed to use a pseudonym to avoid retaliation — was
mobbed. “I was just amazed by the amount of virulence that came back to me,”
he said.
Then something else happened: Direct messages started pouring in from
people thanking him for saying what they were too fearful to say themselves.
One even asked to talk by phone, so long as Mark agreed never to mention his
name to anyone or even enter their conversation in his Google Calendar.
A demonstrator holds a sign.
A demonstrator holds a sign during a protest of President Donald Trump and
Elon Musk policies on Feb. 17 in Los Angeles. There are a lot of people in tech
who view Musk’s handiwork as not just dangerous, but totally antithetical to
running a healthy business. | Etienne Laurent/AP
In both Washington and in California, a narrative has quickly emerged about
Musk’s assault on the federal government: This is what happens when you
bring the Silicon Valley playbook to D.C. As Musk’s young lackeys rifle through
sensitive databases, conk out in makeshift bedrooms set up in government
buildings and gut entire agencies, the implication seems to be that this is how
it’s done in tech. And there is obviously a very loud corner of the tech sector
that agrees.
But in an industry whose workforce overwhelmingly donated to Democrats, in a
region whose voters overwhelmingly backed Kamala Harris, there are also a lot
of people in tech who view Musk’s handiwork as not just dangerous, but totally
antithetical to running a healthy business, let alone the government.
They’re just increasingly terrified to say that out loud.
“Not everyone in tech is supporting Elon Musk,” Mark said. “It’s just that you
don’t hear their side because they’re afraid to speak up.”
Guests including Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai and Elon Musk,
arrive before the 60th Presidential Inauguration in the Rotunda.
Guests including Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai and Elon Musk
arrive before the 60th presidential inauguration in the rotunda of the Capitol in
Washington on Jan. 20. | Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP
“I hate being careful like this. I’m not that kind of person,” said one longtime
tech communications professional who initially planned to use his name in this
article but was granted anonymity prior to the interview after his company
leadership told him they couldn’t risk the exposure. “We provide the livelihood
of over 100 people and all their dependents,” he said.
POLITICO Magazine spoke with a cross-section of investors, engineers, startup
founders and public relations professionals working in tech, many of whom
were granted anonymity to avoid professional or personal backlash. They all
described an industry known for outspokenness and self-assurance suddenly
gripped with a widespread culture of fear when it comes to criticizing Musk or
DOGE.
This chilling effect is, of course, being felt everywhere in the American
establishment and beyond, from university campuses to powerful law firms to
the halls of Congress. But speaking out can feel particularly dicey in tech now
that some of the industry’s most powerful investors and executives — people
with the power to determine whose tech startup gets funded or which workers
get fired — aren’t just cozying up to the Trump administration; they’re running it.
In a statement to POLITICO Magazine, responding to concerns expressed by
tech workers and leaders, White House principal deputy press secretary
Harrison Fields said, “DOGE is actively pursuing President Trump’s agenda, and
while coastal elitists and DC bureaucrats are crying foul, the American people
are overwhelmingly supportive.” A representative for DOGE did not respond to
a request for comment.
Still, Musk is increasingly seen as a liability for the GOP. A recent Fox News poll
found that 58 percent of voters disapprove of DOGE, and Trump is reportedly
telling his inner circle that Musk will soon depart Washington. But until that
happens — and maybe not even then, considering Musk is likely to remain a
force in politics — publicly going against him is a risk.
This reticence among Silicon Valley’s very large liberal contingent is a sharp
turn from the way it’s always been. Not long ago, it was Republicans who feared
coming out as conservative. When Niki Christoff started working at Google
fresh off of a stint on Sen. John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, she said
she was treated “like a foreign-exchange student.”
“I used to joke that they were like, ‘What do you guys eat for breakfast?
Puppies?’” she said of her lefty colleagues. But the cost of being out of
lockstep with the prevailing political ideology back then was a social one,
Christoff said. Now, tech leaders fear losing their livelihoods or else being
publicly harassed by one of the most powerful men in their industry, spurned by
his allies, and attacked by his entire online army.
“The terror is real,” said Christoff, who now consults with tech leaders through
her crisis communications and political strategy firm, Christoff & Co.
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The Google logo is displayed in front of company headquarters.
During the first Trump administration, Google employees walked off the job en
masse to protest the administration’s ban on people coming from Muslim-
majority countries. | Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
For tech employees, the feeling of being muzzled is particularly stark, given just
how much freedom the industry’s wealthy, privileged workforce has previously
known. For years, as tech companies declared their commitment to diversity in
the workplace, threw their support behind progressive policy issues like
immigration reform and LGBTQ+ rights, and claimed to prioritize free speech,
tech workers enjoyed wide latitude to speak out about injustices they saw in
the world and at work. During the first Trump administration, Google employees
walked off the job en masse to protest the administration’s ban on people
coming from Muslim-majority countries, emboldened by the fact that both their
CEO Sundar Pichai and Google’s co-founder Sergey Brin were right there with
them.
This year, both men stood dutifully on the dais behind Trump as he was sworn
into office.
It’s not just their billionaire bosses who have changed. It’s the tech labor market
itself. One reason why tech leaders tolerated dissent during Trump’s first term is
because the hiring market was so competitive that companies couldn’t afford
to alienate talent. Now, more than half a million estimated tech workers have
been laid off since 2022 and good jobs in the industry are getting harder to
find.
“There’s a greater personal cost if you sacrifice your position,” said one current
Tesla employee.
The employee said he’s gone from being proud of where he works to
apologizing for it — but only in private.
“We’re all embarrassed by [Musk] at this point, but it’s just quiet muttering over
lunch,” the employee said.
It’s not just that much of the tech world is opposed to Musk’s politics. They’re
also appalled by the idea that his approach is being framed as a reflection of
how their industry works. Some who have worked for him argue it’s not even a
good example of Musk’s own abrasive, but effective, management style, which
helped him build more than one multibillion-dollar company.
There are, of course, aspects of Musk’s DOGE strategy that feel familiar. His
doomsday rhetoric, micromanagement, office sleeping arrangements, and
firings followed by rehirings are part of a well-documented playbook Musk has
deployed at his own companies.
But in other ways, current and former employees say, his approach was
different at Tesla. For one thing, said Nathan Murthy, who worked as an
engineer at Tesla for nearly seven years, he hired people with expertise.
Elon Musk, head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), stands
as U.S. President Donald Trump (R) speaks during a Cabinet meeting.
Elon Musk attends a Cabinet meeting at the White House on Feb. 26 in
Washington. Musk's doomsday rhetoric, micromanagement, office sleeping
arrangements, and firings followed by rehirings are part of a well-documented
playbook he has deployed at his own companies. | Andrew Harnik/Getty
Images
“Once you trust people and trust they know certain things, they can provide
answers for how to build things — or tear things down — in your company that
are consistent with the systems you’ve built,” said Murthy, who is now head of
engineering at the tech startup Verse. Murthy compared DOGE’s operations to
“Chesterton’s fence,” the philosophical principle that you should never tear
down a fence until you know why it was put there in the first place. “They’re
doing the opposite of that,” he said.
Firing the experts and giving government neophytes so much power, the
people who spoke to POLITICO Magazine said, is leading to sloppy mistakes
that would never fly in the business world — even the world of fast-moving,
winner-take-all tech startups.
Already, DOGE’s claims about 150-year-olds collecting Social Security benefits
collapsed after the acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration
corrected the record. And the group’s “Wall of Receipts,” which it uses to track
spending cuts, has been riddled with errors, including one line item that
mistook an $8 million ICE contract for an $8 billion one. During the first month
of its existence, each of the biggest cost cuts listed on the site was later
revealed to be a mistake.
“If Elizabeth Holmes did that she’d be run out of town,” said one early-stage
investor, referring to the Theranos founder who’s now serving an 11-year prison
sentence for defrauding investors. “When you’re dealing with people’s lives and
deaths, errors and fraud and deception land you in jail, not in the Oval Office.”
Suddenly gutting an organization on the assumption that it will become more
efficient that way is also a “catastrophically risky thing to do” the investor said.
“You would only do that if the risk of the company failing was low.”
And though there are some exceptions, he added, “in general, when there’s a
strip-down-to-the-bone cost cut, it is not followed by success. It is followed by
a slow spiral of deterioration.”
DOGE’s approach is much more of a “private equity play,” said Samuel
Hammond, chief economist for the right-leaning tech policy think tank
Foundation for American Innovation. “It’s sort of liquidation nation,” he said,
referring to the way private equity firms strip companies down for parts. While
he said DOGE isn’t “universally praised or condemned” among the
conservative technologists he knows, he said more people in those circles are
starting to “talk about the DOGE that could have been.”
Even some of the crypto executives Christoff works with, who view Trump as a
champion for their industry, are souring on Musk’s approach. “They see this
administration as a path to achieve their worldview,” she said, “but that’s really
different than them thinking that this is any way to run an operation effectively
or efficiently or successfully.”
A place marker for White House Senior Advisor, Elon Musk on table.
Even some crypto executives, who view Trump as a champion for their industry,
are souring on Musk’s approach. | Win McNamee/Getty Images
As a communications professional, though, Christoff isn’t advising her clients to
pipe up — nor are they asking her whether they should. But she said she is
seeing some cracks begin to form, driven in part by growing frustration with the
way DOGE’s mission is running up against tech leaders’ own business interests.
Part of what’s driving their code of silence, after all, is pure self-preservation.
No cybersecurity company or IT provider wants to be blacklisted from
contracts with a current or potential client as gigantic as the federal
government.
But that instinct is increasingly at odds with the fact that DOGE is actively
cutting contracts. “It’s a 13-figure total addressable market that they’re
intentionally making smaller,” she said. “From a pure business perspective,
these are all capitalists. It doesn’t make a lot of economic sense.”
The more DOGE’s reductions undercut their own success — and Trump’s — the
more those tech leaders might feel encouraged to speak up. “I think that there’s
a moment where this could become safer for people to say something,”
Christoff said. “But that time is not quite yet.”
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