How Election 2024 Has Pit Hollywood Against Silicon Valley

Should you have been to stay a pin in a timeline on the actual second Silicon Valley declared conflict on Hollywood, it could probably land on Aug. 29, 1997. That’s the date Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph acquired collectively in Scotts Valley, about an hour south of San Francisco, and began slightly DVD supply firm referred to as Netflix.

The remainder is historical past: Inside simply a few a long time, all the standard pillars of the outdated leisure order began to crumble. Linear tv, cable TV, theatrical field workplace — nothing was left standing, no less than not as tall because it as soon as had. This everyone knows, all too properly.

However right here’s what’s new. Very lately, simply over the previous a number of weeks, there have been indicators that Southern California as soon as once more is rising — or attempting to, at any price. This time, although, the civil conflict with the north isn’t over digital platform home windows or on-line content material safety; this time, it’s mogul-to-mogul fight on a a lot grander battlefield, as either side — super-rich techno libertarians versus not-quite-as-super-rich outdated guard Hollywood liberals — conflict over what kind of authorities the nation needs to be electing in November. At present, they’re combating over nothing lower than the presidency of the United States.

As one studio govt succinctly sums up Hollywood’s new battle cry, “Fuck these Trump-loving techies.”

He’s referring, after all, to the slew of Northern California robber barons who’ve lately introduced their assist of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, together with Elon Musk, arguably the richest man in historical past, with a web price of $250 billion. Musk had pledged to donate $45 million a month to Trump’s marketing campaign, though he later denied making that pledge, so who is aware of how a lot he’ll finally pony up (he’s now claiming to be channeling his cash into his personal pro-Trump political motion committee, AmericaPAC). However there’s additionally Musk’s fellow PayPal co-founder, Peter Thiel, who went on to develop into CEO of tech funding agency Mithril Capital, the place, in 2016, he employed a younger Yale-educated hillbilly named J.D. Vance, then backed Vance’s 2022 Senate race in Ohio (reportedly spending $15 million on the marketing campaign) and is extensively believed to have helped finagle Vance into his present place as Trump’s operating mate.

Now there nonetheless are loads of liberals in Silicon Valley, like Steve Jobs’ widow, Laurene Powell Jobs, and Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg. There’s enterprise capitalist Reid Hoffman, one other member of the PayPal mafia, who donated $7 million to the Democratic tremendous PAC Future Ahead (and who in July exchanged uncomfortable phrases together with his outdated pal Thiel over their divergent politics on the Solar Valley CEO convention). To not point out Hastings, who lately donated $7 million to a pro-Kamala Harris group referred to as the Republican Accountability PAC.

However, the variety of pro-Trump tech billionaires is almost as startling because the piles of money they’ve been elevating for his marketing campaign: Supporters like Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, the dual bitcoin magnates who in 2004 sued Mark Zuckerberg for allegedly stealing their concept for Fb (they have been each performed by Armie Hammer in David Fincher’s The Social Community); enterprise capitalist David Sacks (who lately hosted a $300,000-a-head fundraiser for Trump); Valor Fairness Companions founder Antonio Gracias (who donated $1 million); Jacob Helberg, CEO of protection expertise agency Palantir (one other million-dollar pledge); tech entrepreneur Joe Lonsdale (additionally $1 million); Sequoia Capital’s Douglas Leone (one other million); Shaun Maguire ($500,000); and tech investor Ben Horowitz (who has introduced plans to make a “important” contribution); amongst a dozen or so others. (Curiously, two who appear to be conspicuously impartial this election cycle are Zuckerberg and Open AI founder Sam Altman, though Trump has mentioned that Zuckerberg promised him that he wouldn’t again a Democrat and Altman, who as soon as in contrast Trump to Hitler, urged Individuals to tone down the rhetoric after the July assassination try on the previous president, promising that the nation can be effective irrespective of who received the election.)

Up till a few weeks in the past, Hollywood’s personal moguls appeared like they is perhaps sitting out the 2024 race. After Joe Biden‘s 90-minute staring contest on the June 27 debate, just about everybody on the town was shutting their checkbooks or, like Endeavor’s Ari Emanuel, saving their largesse for down-ticket congressional races. However then — identical to George Clooney mentioned he ought to — Biden stepped down, endorsed Harris, and actually in a single day Hollywood’s elites have been fired up and able to go. And never simply the elites. Inside the first 24 hours of Biden’s announcement, Harris took in a record-breaking $100 million in donations from throughout the nation. “The passion and assist for the vice chairman has been euphoric,” says embattled DreamWorks co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg, now co-chair of Harris’ marketing campaign (after a protracted stint as Biden’s co-chair). “It’s ignited individuals in a manner I’ve by no means seen earlier than.”

It’s ignited them, all proper. Harris, a local Californian who owns a house in Brentwood, already had constructed a strong community in Los Angeles. Supporters of her 2020 run for president — earlier than she dropped out and joined Biden’s ticket — included Steven Spielberg, J.J. Abrams, Ben Affleck, Reese Witherspoon, Reginald and Chrisette Hudlin, Jeff Shell, Donna Langley, Dana Walden, Jessica Alba, Mindy Kaling, Ron Meyer, Jeff Bridges and Shonda Rhimes, to call just some. “Everyone I’ve encountered has been loopy enthusiastic,” says Jenny Frankfurt, a former literary agent who hosted a number of Harris 2020 main fundraisers. “Some are loopy enthusiastic as a result of it’s her, and a few are loopy enthusiastic as a result of they need that contemporary begin that Biden wasn’t giving them.”

And a few, frankly, are loopy enthusiastic to stay it to their archrivals in Silicon Valley. “We’ve had a decade during which the Musks and Zuckerbergs and Sam Altmans of the world have been defining our tradition, and the world will not be higher for it,” says one well-known Hollywood govt who’s supporting Harris. “These guys have already got an excessive amount of energy as it’s. We don’t want them setting coverage and operating the Oval Workplace. I believe this marketing campaign is an opportunity to even the scales.”

A high Democratic advisor agrees: “It’s no secret that Hollywood has by no means been very fond of those guys. No person relishes the considered these individuals in mattress with the Trump administration. There’s a shitload of cash right here in Hollywood, in addition to numerous disdain for these tech bros, and I believe you’ll see individuals placing up numerous dough simply to show these dudes they will’t purchase an election.”

In reality, not all this hostility is over politics. A number of the resentment has as a lot to do with ego as ideology. In spite of everything, these Silicon Valley tech bros have been operating roughshod over Hollywood for years, barging into city with their newfangled subscription companies, busting up conventional broadcast and big-screen enterprise fashions, imposing unusual company cultures on an trade with its personal cherished concepts about office etiquette (what was with these cubbyholes at Amazon that high executives acquired as an alternative of C-suite workplaces?). Some cinephiles in Hollywood (Christopher Nolan, for one) are nonetheless peeved about Mission Popcorn, Warner Bros.’ pandemic-era choice to launch its whole theatrical slate on the studio’s streaming service, HBO Max, a plan cooked up by former WarnerMedia head Jason Kilar, also called one of many founders of Hulu.

Nonetheless, there clearly are philosophical variations between the 2 camps. Hollywood could also be stuffed with scoundrels, liars and backstabbers — however no less than a few of these scoundrels, liars and backstabbers have a social conscience. The city has a protracted custom of classical liberalism, going again to the early days of the Civil Rights Motion (earlier than Charlton Heston turned a gun nut, he accompanied Martin Luther King Jr. to his 1963 speech on the March on Washington). Kirk Douglas, Henry Fonda (and daughter Jane), Gregory Peck, Katharine Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall — the checklist of old-time celeb lefties goes on and on and continues to be replenished with ever-more progressive standard-bearers (Robert De Niro, Alyssa Milano, Larry David, Ryan Reynolds, Jake Gyllenhaal, simply to scratch the floor). Regardless of the fantastical quantities of wealth sloshing round these elements, Beverly Hills and environs has remained some of the indigo-blue spots anyplace within the nation.

Up till lately, Silicon Valley shared lots of L.A.’s values. Though it’s all the time leaned extra towards laissez-faire libertarianism in relation to taxes and rules, it largely agreed with Hollywood on such cultural points as homosexual rights, marijuana legalization and immigration (tech corporations rely on overseas staff; the CEOs of Google and Uber are each from immigrant households). However one thing has clearly shifted within the political winds up north, and it’s not simply Musk’s tweet storms decrying “woke-ism,” transgender activism and the “flood of illegals crushing the nation.” How else to elucidate why so many Bay Space billionaires at the moment are throwing their assist — and their {dollars} — behind an adjudicated rapist with 34 felony convictions who orchestrated an rebel the final time he ran for president?

“What makes me query humankind is the variety of tech-bro billionaires who maintain their noses and again Trump solely to earn more money,” marvels Meridian Photos CEO Eric Paquette, a longtime Democratic fundraiser in Hollywood. “I don’t get it. You’ve acquired $10 billion within the financial institution, and also you’re nonetheless going to assist Trump as a result of he’s going to decrease your taxes much more than he already has? There’s no justifying it. It’s a tragic commentary on the lengths individuals go to guard their wealth on the expense of defending our democracy.”

The very fact is, there are causes in addition to decrease taxes which may clarify why so many in Silicon Valley have gone full MAGA — a lot, a lot weirder causes. “It’s not simply concerning the cash,” explains Christopher Wylie, the Cambridge Analytics whistleblower who testified through the 2018 Senate hearings on on-line disinformation within the 2016 Trump marketing campaign and who is aware of the northern tradition properly. “It’s about ideology. What you’re coping with here’s a cult. These tech billionaires are constructing a faith. They imagine they’re creating one thing with AI that’s going to be essentially the most highly effective factor that’s ever existed — this omniscient, all-knowing God-like entity — they usually see themselves because the prophets of that future.”

Consider it or not, it’s will get even creepier. In accordance with Wylie and others — like Émile Torres, a professor at Case Western Reserve who’s written books on the topic — this “faith” features a complete vary of far-out beliefs even past these present in sacred writs like “The Techno-Optimist Manifesto” (during which Mosaic creator Marc Andreessen predicts that “we’re poised for an intelligence takeoff that can develop our capabilities to unimagined heights”). Ideas like “transhumanism” (the concept individuals needs to be fused with expertise to usher within the subsequent section of human evolution, presumably a race of brain-chipped borgs plugged into the omniscient ChatGPT hive thoughts), the rise of “the community state” (a web based entity that sooner or later will exchange conventional geographical nations) and “radical life extension.” That’s proper, these dudes plan on residing eternally.

“Their concept is to develop superior applied sciences to radically reengineer themselves in order that there’s no dying,” says Torres. “Immortality is a key a part of this perception system. In that manner, it’s very very similar to a faith. That’s why some persons are calling it the Scientology of Silicon Valley.”

Others in San Francisco are calling it “The Nerd Reich.”

To be clear, there’s no proof Trump believes any of these things, or is even conscious of it — though Vance is possibly extra of an open query. As a former Thiel protégé, Vance comes from the tech world, and Thiel himself has been an outspoken believer in Silicon Valley’s eugenic TESCREAL screed (an acronym for … oh, by no means thoughts). So far as the tech bros are involved, Trump doesn’t have to be a believer; all he must do is take their donations and comply with their coverage directions — like shutting down the FDA and different regulators whose outdated restrictions on issues like human experimentation are slowing down progress towards a technotopian paradise.

To this point, Trump has proved greater than desirous to play ball. In July, he spoke at a crypto confab in Nashville, promising to make america the “crypto capital” of the world. This is similar man who as president declared bitcoin “not cash” and criticized it for being “based mostly on skinny air.”

“They see Trump as a helpful fool,” says Wylie. “He’s any person who’ll do what they need.”

There are a lot of in Hollywood who agree with that evaluation, even when they’ve by no means heard of transhumanism, and it’s one of many issues they discover so chilling about Silicon Valley. “I believe these guys see Trump as an empty vessel,” says the well-known exec who’s supporting Harris. “They see him as a option to pursue their political agenda, which is survival of the fittest, no regulation, burn-the-house-down nihilism that lacks any empathy or nuance.”

These phrases might sound vaguely acquainted. You’ve heard one thing like them earlier than, in an outdated Arnold Schwarzenegger film a few transhuman killing machine from the long run who additionally didn’t really feel “pity or regret or worry.” Oddly sufficient, that date talked about earlier, when Netflix began taking on Hollywood — Aug. 29, 1997 — additionally occurs to be when Skynet achieved self-awareness in The Terminator.

And we all know how that turned out.

Lachlan Cartwright, Degen Pener and Scott Feinberg contributed to this report.

This story first appeared within the August 7 challenge of The Hollywood Reporter journal. Click here to subscribe.