📱⏩ Why the Tech Right probably has few regrets about Trump (for now)

No startup effort goes perfectly at first

My fellow pro-growth/progress/abundance Up Wingers,

Has the Trump GOP been the party of “acceleration” that the new Tech Right was expecting? Not exactly. Even before the unseemly public spat between the American president and the world's richest man from Starbase, Texas, at least some MAGA converts from Silicon Valley must have been questioning their return on investment.

I can make plausible case that the burn rate of techie goodwill has been high. The first global trade war in a century hardly suggests a government ready to race into the future. Also surely unsettling: slashing federal R&D budgets, ejecting Chinese graduate students, and torpedoing the NASA nomination of a fellow technopreneur (and Musk pal). This is not the stuff of exponential progress or golden ages for a sector built on science research, foreign talent, and networking effects. Michael Moritz, the storied venture capitalist who backed SpaceX in its early days, reckons the Washington reality must feel "mortifying" for Musk and friends.

Reasons for stickin’

Yet even if Moritz has called it correctly — and I suspect he has, whether or not that feeling will lead to action — the smart money here is to expect most of the Tech Right to ride out the Trumpian turbulence for the time being.