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Tech leaders who are not silent on Trump - list

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We all know the guys, the Bill Gates, the Bezos, the Cooks the Palmer Luckeys

They are in the news when they wish to be, at the very least they are known to write all-staff emails.

Here is the kernel of a living list of those who have expressed an opinion on the direction things are going in.
Tweets or links or news of actions taken are welcome. Searching google news by myself is boring AF.

Update - Sunday Feb 5th
* A long list of tech companies combine legal forces to file an amicus brief to block the immigration changes EO.
The companies include: Pintrest, Yelp, Square, Reddit (no wonder they banned the alt-right group), Kickstarter, Github, Glassdoor, Zynga, Medium, Salesforce.com http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-ne...-amicus-brief-immigration-travel-case-n717146
And more !
https://twitter.com/briangoldman/status/828478743081603072
Here is the brief
https://m.box.com/shared_item/https://app.box.com/s/09dvucfviag1zlwzekupts084xzc8j5g

Update - Late Thursday night Feb 2nd
* Elon Musk is going to raise his "objection level" personally at the next meeting of the trump tech table! https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/02/e...ion-order-at-friday-advisory-council-meeting/

Trump "Tech Council"
* Intel CEO Brian Krzanich - Member of Trump Tech Summit. Crafted a spectacularly cautious tweet: https://twitter.com/bkrunner/status/825832748287877121
* Palantir - Alex Karp - "we have NOT been asked to build a muslim registry". Member of Trump tech summit
* Chuck Robbins, Cisco - He is posting pictures of Muslim employees but probably that is just a coincidence because he is telling CNBC that Trumps tax plans "will be good for business". Member of Trump tech summit
* The Uber CEO Travis Kalanick - he quit the trump tech council mentioning specifically openness and immigration policy concerns.
* Elon musk said the immigration EO was "still bad" but one should always read the source material. Update: going to raise his objection level above quiet murmur
* Tim Cook wrote a company email. http://www.businessinsider.com.au/tim-cook-on-trump-immigration-executive-order-2017-1
* Bezos owner of that lying MSM rag the Washington Post, wrote "note to employees" that outlined his efforts on a lawsuit regarding immigration http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac...-statement-opposing-trumps-immigration-order/.
* Zuck is "concerned" not sure if in response to a question or by his own initiative.
* Larry Page has remained so far regrettably silent he is also part of the Trump Council.
* Satya Nadella CEO of Microsoft has spoken out against trump on immigration policy. Twice.

Others:
* Michael Dell - "We will advocate for immigration reform that supports our business, our customers, our team members and their families". But will it support anyone else Michael?
* Google Sundar Pichai and founder Sergey Brin spoke at a SFO employee rally critical of trump policy. "Outraged".
* Eric Schmidt, former CEO of google, so free of The Man and free of facing angry board members, says Trump will "do evil" http://www.theverge.com/2017/1/31/14450516/eric-schmidt-google-trump-immigration-ban-evil-things
* Howard Schultz (Not tech but I am running out of CEOs so why not) CEO of Starbucks took a stand and won't be making any more lattes for alt-right customers as a result of his stand. their choice, not his.
* Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky has offered free housing to those impacted by the refugee/immigrant EO and has tweeted his discontent.
* Netflix’s Reed Hastings wrote in a "personal" statement on Facebook that Trump was hurting his company and his actions are un-american.
* Pandora - Tim Westergren - Issued company memo that "immigration is central to everything we do", but it does not use the word President Trump anywhere in it.
* Spotify - Daniel Ek - Made a humorous swipe at Trump and invited Obama to be President of Playlists but notsureifserious.gif
* TripAdvisor CEO Steve Kaufer - strong viral linked-in letter condemning immigration order and is raising money for refugees.
the following are cribbed from http://www.recode.net/2017/1/29/14428524/roundup-tech-leaders-opposition-trump-muslim-ban
* Lyft co-founders have decided to donate to the ACLU as a way to protest
* Jack from Twitter tweeted on how successful Syrian refugees have been as business owners in the USA
* Salesforce Marc Benioff has tweeted #noban and possibly donated to the ACLU
* Stripe Patrick Collison has tweeted in opposition to the immigration ban
* Etsty Chad Dickerson has tweeted in support of immigration.
* eBay founder Pierre Omidyar has tweeted that immigration EO is un-american.
* Mozilla has a un-credited statement about diversity and a healthy society, on their home page
* Linked-in CEO Reid Hoffman seems unable to bring himself to make a definitive statement, instead mentioned vaguely how linkedin supports a refugee charity, but is aiming zingers at Trump and the alt-right on his twitter. Good Job! (i guess).
* Edward Snowden - despite living each day only at the grace of Putin, condemns almost everything about Trump and his administration.

Big Fans, the biggest:
* Palmer Luckey ☠️, pro trump, is alt-right bonkers and now won't get invited to Zucks executive retreats anymore because He owes him half a billion in I am sorry money.
Softbank billionaire Masayoshi Son ☠️ met with Trump and promised $25 billion in VC funds, matched with $25 billion of Saudi Arabian money https://www.wsj.com/articles/donald...ledges-to-invest-50-billion-in-u-s-1481053732
* Randall Stephenson☠️ CEO of AT&T, which is basically a data center for the NSA, spoke glowingly of Trump, not at all because he can smell the money that would come in from massive market deregulation with only two big players
* Notch☠️, ex minecraft, who still seems very lonely, fallls towards the Palmer Luckey spectrum on trump however he may also just be growing slowly unhinged.
* IBM CEO Ginni Rometty ☠️ is on the Trump advisory panel and IBM issued the the most banal statement imaginable on behalf of openness. http://gizmodo.com/ibms-statement-on-the-muslim-ban-is-embarrassingly-weak-1791814225
* Peter Thiel ☠️☠️ - is 100% the prince of darkness and recently got approved to buy his way into new zealand so he can build a mountain redoubt if the libtards learn how to shoot straight.
* Meg Whitman ☠️, CEO HP, who has been busy buying a football club, issued a note to employees saying she was "working to understand" who might be affected by the immigration ban. You tell em Meg!
* Wikileaks guy ☠️☠️, - I forget his name. I think he promised to go back to the USA if they released Chelsea Manning which Obama did a few weeks ago? which in Trump time is now the jurassic period, so he probably thinks everyone forgot that.

Hesitating or Silent:
* Comcast CEO Brian Robert didn't fire anyone for protesting the Trump plan and instead gave them paid time off "as if they were going to the doctor", however he has to dance around minefields like Baryshnikov as he owns the lying NBC and NBCUniversal execs called Trump "Toxic" and "Pompous" but if Trump helps AT&T, then Comcast will end up benefiting as well. [Sorry perhaps I am injecting too much of my own opinion here].
* Cox CEO John M Dyer :| radio silence I think?
* Verizon - indigestion from trying to eat the part of Yahoo that isn't interesting or valuable, and Charter too, is drooling openly at the future of deregulation of everything especially those unions
* Marissa Myer :| - "Very proud" of not having to release quarterly results that plumb new depths of suck, or announce hackers have been selling hosting on the dark web out of her corporate data center, has remained radio silent on Trump anything.
* Gabe Newell :|, probably entirely unaware that a parody account has a "who would make a better president" poll shows twice the support for Trump than for Clinton (but 84% for him) has remained silent His Jan 17th AMA did not allow any Trump questions.
* Steve Ballmer :|, ex Microsoft CEO, has fallen silent since Dec 26th after a number of tweets being excited about government/tech/poverty cooperation and summits, and NBA picks
* Larry Ellison :| admired Ivanka Trumps foil-heat-blanket-refugee dress at a black tie dinner at the end of January, attended by a number of similar types, but neglected to make any statement about anything, perhaps because he is $1b richer since day 1 of the Trump presidency.
* Michael Bloomberg :| since "thanking Obama for his service", has kept his mouth shut, probably because Trump got ugly in a spat with him late last year.
* Marc Andressen :| - "the 4 lawyers handling the shit I am in do not permit me to say anything. Even alone in my sleep. Don't quote me on this.".
* Jack Ma, founder Alibaba, seems more worried about his business, which makes sense as Trump isn't his president and he has enough despotic regimes to worry about already, predicts a trade war and "wishes everybody luck".
* Bill Gates :| who seems joined at the hip now with Warren Buffet, gave a talk at Columbia U on Jan 29th where they danced around any questions on Trump, the best on record out of Bill was Trump might make his foundation work harder, and Warren mentioned the immigration thing. http://columbiaspectator.com/news/2017/01/29/buffett-gates-visit-columbia-talk-trump-administration
* Snapchat - well they are in their pre-3 billion IPO "shush we're all going to get insanely rich" period so I think perhaps they're not going to lead the way on anything.
* Richard saul wurman - TED Talks - I don't know much about him but this is surprising, he has been silent AFAIK

Trivia Round
* Brock Pierce: bitcoin entrepreneur. Brock believes Trump will drive people to bitcoin because of uncertainty fear etc. Trivia: Brock Pierce was the owner of a 2005 WOW gold farmer, IGE, that used Chinese workers to make bank. Steve Bannon sniffed it out and joined the board in 2005 and used his old rolodex to flog it to Goldman Sachs a year later, dazzled by money in gaming, were IMO hoodwinked to pay $60m to buy everyone out, only to see the whole edifice crumble to dust in their hands. I doubt Steve Bannon has any good business leads at GS anymore https://twitter.com/maxkeiser/status/823927944271851524 A real fascinating story this whole period was too! https://twitter.com/brockpierce/status/785903487619993604 <-- a link that Brock, like all good bitcoin evangelists for whom all news is good news, is not afraid to promote.

I have marked the powers of darkness with the handy-dandy and totally unbiased &#9760;&#65039; emoji. If this bothers you, pretend it is an angel.
The ones that are keeping it zipped so far are denoted by :|

Anyone else?
By all means tech hedge fund billionaires too.

I can edit the OP with input received.

If this is an inappropriate topic for Gaf to be hosting please delete it and I am sorry for raising it.
 
Palmer Luckey is an alt-right nutjob.

I don't want to be accused of being one-sided so statements either way are just fine. I just want to know if this is ever over, who had a spine and when they grew it, and who was absolutely and only concerned about money.

(Cue someone telling me that's their fiduciary duty).
 
Elon Musk's reaction wasn't as harsh as I would've expected. Lots of rich folks driving Teslas I suppose.

He had to be prompted, he was so proud of showing off how superior a technique "reading the source material" was and how that showed the EO wasn't as bad as sloppy thinkers thought.
He had to be prompted to get a "still bad" out.

Mind you I don't want the list to judge, just link to whatever we got. Let the readers decide.
 
Elon Musk's reaction wasn't as harsh as I would've expected. Lots of rich folks driving Teslas I suppose.

I'm still convinced Elon Musk is taking a muted pragmatic approach with this administration at the moment in a hope to have some influence. He's taken his shots at Trump. I don't think he's as concerned with selling Teslas to rich people as he is about pushing against climate change.
 
I'm completely convinced Elon Musk is taking a muted pragmatic approach with this administration at the moment in a hope to have some influence. He's taken his shots at Trump. I don't think he's as concerned with selling Teslas to rich people as he is about pushing against climate change.

That may be the case, but with that seismic graph of a signature trump can seriously damage his battery car and solar business. Or lean on NASA. So I personally think he is terrified.
 

Red

Member
I wonder how much the immigration EO was meant to specifically target the tech industry. Bannon's "civic society" is antagonistic to the current makeup of tech leaders and employees. The administration is acting in hostility toward the culture that has promoted this industry.
 

E-Cat

Member
I'm completely convinced Elon Musk is taking a muted pragmatic approach with this administration at the moment in a hope to have some influence. He's taken his shots at Trump. I don't think he's as concerned with selling Teslas to rich people as he is about pushing against climate change.
Also, don't forget that Musk founded PayPal together with Peter Thiel. It's like he lucked into a very exclusive clique with the president and pals. It's a good observation spot to inform his broader strategy, even if not directly influencing Trump.
 

cwmartin

Member
Our CEO (4k employees, 1b+ revenue company) wrote an email in solidarity and against the ban. I give him the benefit of the doubt.
 
Why would you think this? It's a completely normal conversation to be having.

I think so. But I am not the owner of the site and I would completely understand if they prefer to keep discussion focussed on current affairs, rather than marking lists of powerful people in some way.
 
I think so. But I am not the owner of the site and I would completely understand if they prefer to keep discussion focussed on current affairs, rather than marking lists of powerful people in some way.

Lol, dude relax. You can talk about whatever you want on here (within sometimes vague reason)
 
I wonder how much the immigration EO was meant to specifically target the tech industry. Bannon's "civic society" is antagonistic to the current makeup of tech leaders and employees. The administration is acting in hostility toward the culture that has promoted this industry.

Bannon hates the prevalence of Asian Americans at the top of tech and completely over estimates the percentages. Trump is more pragmatic as he worships at the alter of money, but bannon is whispering about the dilution of heritage, h1b jobs gifted to Foreigners etc etc.
 

Linkura

Member
Well I thought about focusing on all famous people but the task seemed daunting. If you want to start with authors, JK Rowling is doing amazing things.

Rowling being British probably feels she can say what she likes but if she carries on could easily see trump imposing a 100% tax on all things Harry Potter to shut her up
 
Rowling being British probably feels she can say what she likes but if she carries on could easily see trump imposing a 100% tax on all things Harry Potter to shut her up

I am 100% confident she would find such a baby reaction hysterically funny. She is also exceedingly rich already.
 
They can all relocate to the UK. We are desperate enough to give them an Irish 0% tax deal. We know you like not paying tax more than anything babies. Aw yeah.
 
Perhaps consider making a list of CEOs / corporations that are pro and contra Trump and his administration? That would make it easier for everyone to identify which side of the fence each of them stand on.

Sure, I'll do that before lunch.
In the mean time I'm still trying to pin down which big names have said what, or definitely not said squat.
 

EMT0

Banned
You're doing good work OP. I'll need this info to know who to support and who to give the finger.
 
Of course most of the tech ceo's issues are all anti-immigration related. From what I understand, both legal and illegal immigrants from other countries are in many ways the life blood to these companies.
 
Of course most of the tech ceo's issues are all anti-immigration related. From what I understand, both legal and illegal immigrants from other countries are in many ways the life blood to these companies.

As a litmus test to see if they are jelly fish like me or have some fight in them, it is a good one though.
 
My sister was at a dinner party with Bill Gates and all she would talk about after is how much Bill despises Trump. Wish he would make a statement but he hasn't gone over to the other side or anything.
 
My sister was at a dinner party with Bill Gates and all she would talk about after is how much Bill despises Trump. Wish he would make a statement but he hasn't gone over to the other side or anything.
Woah, seriously? I wonder if he will make a statement soon.
Bill Gates is one of my idols. Such a fascinating man.
 

BlueTsunami

there is joy in sucking dick
Palmer Luckey is an alt-right nutjob.

Dude seems to only wear sandals. Should have been the reddest of flags.

My sister was at a dinner party with Bill Gates and all she would talk about after is how much Bill despises Trump. Wish he would make a statement but he hasn't gone over to the other side or anything.

His altruism is amazing. I'm not surprised he despises Trump.

Of course most of the tech ceo's issues are all anti-immigration related. From what I understand, both legal and illegal immigrants from other countries are in many ways the life blood to these companies.

Thats how I read all this. Hard to determine who is legtiminately outraged at the inhumanity of it, or is clutching their sacks of cash.
 
Thats how I read all this. Hard to determine who is legtiminately outraged at the inhumanity of it, or is clutching their sacks of cash.

It is however it is useful to know because if Trump shakes things up (trade wars import taxes yada yada) then the ones already on record may be the most willing and least freaked out by the idea of the Don silencing them with an IRS investigation or something.
 
Also it is remarkable that by merely inviting a bunch of key titans to sit on a tech council that hasn't done shit yet, he effectively bound them up unless they had the balls to resign it.
Like a reverse shark tank, he put them in a row, dominated the room with his invention, then dismissed them knowing they can't object too much to anything going forward without resigning first. And if one resigns, the other might get a competitive advantage.
 

x3sphere

Member
* Gabe Newell :|, perhaps considering his pinned tweet "who would make a better president" poll shows twice the support for Trump than for Clinton (but 84% for him) has remained silent His Jan 17th AMA did not allow any Trump questions.

I don't think Gabe Newell has a twitter account? There's just a parody one, which seems to have the poll you referenced
 

Linkura

Member
For what it's worth, my boss is on an advisory council (not for Trump of course) and I'm pretty sure she never would have voted for the guy in a million years. It's to get visibility to the cause. Though you could certainly be on one of those councils and be pro-whoever it is.
 
List needs to be separated into pro-Trump, anti-Trump, and neutral.

I kinda like the emojis do they not work?
but yes if it wasn't text, a venn diagram would be nice or a 2d chart... x axis trump attitude from plus to minus, Y axis actual action from zero to lots.
 
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