But according to Jacob Silverman, author of the newly released book Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley, the tech industry flourished under Biden as well, benefitting in particular from increased cooperation with the defense sector. Rather, characters like Musk, Andreessen, Peter Thiel and David Sacks found common ground with Trump on many cultural issues, and realized that if they asked nicely, he would deliver them exactly what they wanted from the federal government.

“I would argue the tech industry was doing very well under Biden … What they probably didn’t like were these mild acts of enforcement,” Silverman told POLITICO Magazine, referring to clashes over crypto and AI. “[But under Trump], they are getting pretty much everything they want. … I think [the alliance] is deeply reflective of the culture and politics and attitudes among the tech leadership itself.”

In an interview about how the tech-Trump alliance came to be, Silverman also discussed Musk’s potential involvement in the midterms, why the tech elite is worried about internal dissent and how democracy-skeptical Silicon Valley figures are trying to wall themselves off from American society.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Early on in the book, you describe a meeting between tech leaders and Donald Trump after he was elected in 2016. Explain how things have changed from that meeting, when many tech leaders seemed already willing to work with Trump, to now.

In 2016, that meeting was a bit of a surprise. Tech leaders coming into the open, giving their blessing, to some extent, to Trump. Certainly, I think a lot of people recognized a degree of expediency on the part of tech billionaires, thinking “Okay, we have to deal with the new ruling party.”

Also, as I described in the book, I thought that that meeting was pretty important because of the role of Peter Thiel as basically the kingmaker and the one deciding who was in attendance. It was a real validation of his early and pretty much unwavering bet on Trump. I think now what’s different is it’s a full embrace, and it’s kind of an unembarrassed one. Among senior leadership in tech, there’s kind of an exhaustion with woke politics and social justice issues. They don’t want to have to have opinions on those kinds of things anymore. And there is, I think, somewhat a sense of relief that they could go back to just being craven capitalists and businessmen again.

What you see more now is a lot of talk about cooperation and mutual benefit for the country, the government and industry and basically everyone helping to Make America Great Again and make money along the way. There’s very little moral or political valence to the kinds of discussions or comments that you hear from tech leaders now.