Broligarchy's Faustian Deal

Why Democrats love affair with Big Tech broke, the broligarchs are now with Trump, and the path forward for progressives

This post explores the unraveling of the longstanding alliance between Silicon Valley and the Democratic Party, tracing its roots in the Clinton and Obama eras, when tech’s ambitions aligned with progressive values and economic priorities and alignment was affordable. As Big Tech monopolies grew to a market-cap equal to 40% of the US GDP and their demands became insatiable, their interests began colliding with the diverse constituencies of the Democratic coalition—unions, environmentalists, small businesses, teachers, parents, and civil rights groups—forcing Democrats to impose guardrails and reshape the “Deal”. Marc Andreessen’s blames Democrats' cultural "radicalization" as the excuse for Silicon Valley's pivot to Trump; but I argue instead that structural economic realities made the original Deal unsustainable. Ultimately, this post calls for progressives to re-embed technology within society through strong democratic institutions, equitable regulations, and a coalition that prioritizes resilience and shared prosperity over monopolistic excess.

INTRODUCTION

Marc Andreessen, the outspoken venture capitalist who once championed every Democratic presidential nominee from Bill Clinton to Hillary Clinton (and Mitt Romney, hedging his bets), has lately devoted his energy to blaming Democrats for “breaking the Deal” that bound Silicon Valley to the party, to justify him and his bro’s newly found Trumpian faith. He claims Democrats went culturally became “radicalized in elite universities” embracing social justice stances and antitrust bluster that scared away even the most progressive tech CEOs, and that cost them the election and the love of Silicon Valley. That’s why, he insists, people like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, and himself have pivoted to Donald Trump—because the Democrats abandoned them.

Yet this tidy explanation, that conveniently puts all the blame of the surely culturally uncomfortable politically choice the tech bros took in supporting Trump on someone else, ignores the fundamental driver: Big Tech’s appetite has simply become too large for any single political party to nurture without fracturing its own internal coalition and voter base. Whereas Bill Clinton and later Barack Obama could welcome the tech sector’s money and innovation with minimal friction—after all, in the 1990s and early 2000s, what the tech world wanted was still modest enough to deliver—the same is no longer true. In those earlier decades, letting tech companies flourish unrestrained and become as big as possible seemed like a win-win: software companies provided thousands of new jobs, funneled campaign donations to the Democratic Party, built philanthropic programs, and made the United States a global leader in cutting-edge technology -all while being environmentally friendly, meritocratic, diverse, smart, sleek, and forward looking. Clinton’s administration offered them trade deals, R&D tax breaks, and a light regulatory touch, a formula that Obama largely continued. For a while, the tradeoff was affordable: the damage to other Democratic constituencies was contained, and tech’s vibrant glow gave the party a modern, forward-thinking aura. But as companies like Google, Meta, Amazon, and Apple ballooned into trillion-dollar colossi with, literally, planetary ambitions, their demands began to collide head-on with other key Democratic blocs—unions and workers, small retailers and main-street, environmentalists, civil rights groups, local communities that felt battered by relentless expansion, but also other industrial sectors traditionally close to Democrats such as entertainment, media, and even finance, that quietly, in private, out of fear of retaliation from tech giants, starting asking the party for action to stop big tech’s ambitions too.

Marc Andreessen’s story of “cultural madness” and vengeful democrats trying to kill technology through antitrustconveniently omits how Democrats faced an impossible choice: either keep coddling Big Tech’s limitless appetite and watch vital factions (like organized labor, main street businesses, or climate activists) defect—or start imposing real guardrails, risking the loss of Silicon Valley’s formidable campaign checks. This wasn’t about the party suddenly flipping ideological switches; it was about the emergence of mathematical and economic imperatives. Any party that wants to govern a vast, diverse electorate simply cannot be the vehicle for every single one of Big Tech’s objectives -given Big Tech’s size it has become a zero sum game, where what tech monopolies gets, someone else loses. Recognizing this, powerful figures in Silicon Valley leapt at Donald Trump’s promise of friendlier regulatory terrain. But even that arrangement may be on borrowed time, because the same structural pressures that ended the original “Deal” are already rearing their head in the Republican coalition: defense contractors will feel threatened by AI-driven upstarts, oil and gas magnates suspect tech’s future energy ambitions might cut them out, and MAGA economic nationalists eye the residual globalism of tech giants with distrust.

A DEAL

The original partnership between Democrats and the tech industry had humble origins that looked genuinely promising in the 1990s. Bill Clinton saw in Silicon Valley a new economic engine—one that could expand exports, create high-wage jobs, and elevate America’s global standing in an increasingly digital world. Laptops and software didn’t produce the same pollution or labor conflicts as older heavy industries, and the internet seemed like a democratizing force rather than a rapacious marketplace. Tech founders, many with libertarian or countercultural backgrounds, found a kindred spirit in Clinton’s willingness to lower trade barriers, expand R&D tax credits, and keep antitrust enforcers at bay for these young, fast-moving companies. Mutual self-interest meshed with a sense of cultural alignment: support for LGBTQ rights, environmental awareness, and an upbeat globalism that fit neatly within the Democratic Party’s broader social values.

During Barack Obama’s presidency, this relationship matured into a full-blown symbiosis. Obama’s campaign famously harnessed data analytics and social media to outmaneuver older political machines, and Silicon Valley leaders responded with lavish donations, and a steady revolving door for ex-Obama aides seeking private-sector gigs. Tech appealed to the Democratic base, and the Obama White House often obliged the industry by deprioritizing tech antitrust talk and championing net neutrality as the only major tech policy agenda, which not by accident advanced the interests of Big Tech against what was perceived as a “legacy” industry, telecom.

But behind that veneer, tensions gradually mounted.

A FAUSTIAN DEAL

In California, politicians could and can still afford to be wholeheartedly pro-tech because there the industry has a tangible impact, very often very positive, in thriving local economies, boosted tax revenue, and a vibrant workforce that helped the state’s finances. At the national level, however, the rest of the Democratic coalition saw a different picture. Union leaders decried the gig economy’s erosion of stable employment and benefits. Local newspapers and professional media, always close to politicians and many close to Democrats, watched Google and Facebook siphon away ad revenues. Small businesses in every corner of the country bristled at the predatory pricing and logistical might of Amazon, which was relentlessly pushing into new sectors. Environmental groups balked at the swelling size of AI data centers devouring water and electricity—an unanticipated twist for an industry once praised as “clean.” . Pharma, health, finance, and even the car industry saw tech slowly entering their domains too (in fact, Andressen’s grudge with Democrats has a lot to do with their internal division on what to do with crypto: the kind of crypto rules that Andressen wants are resisted by significant elements of the Democratic coalition, and also by parts of the financial industry). And as if that weren’t enough, civil rights groups and tech NGOs discovered that social media can be, and often is, weaponized to create division and friction in society, not an automatic tool for democracy via tweets.

These were not trivial frictions. They cut to the heart of the Democratic base: workers, minority-owned businesses, local news outlets, civil rights groups, environmental activists, teachers, and everyday citizens anxious about the behaviour of unconstrained monopolies, of kids online safety. So when progressive thinkers like Lina Khan launched high-profile critiques of platform monopolies, their critiques transcended academic and think tank circles because they articulated the fears, concerns, and uncertainty of many voters, movements, and industrial actors in the democratic coalition -there was a material backdrop to the intellectual power of the new antitrust movement.

Marc Andreessen’s complaint that Democrats “betrayed” Silicon Valley glosses over how Big Tech’s colossal hunger was antagonizing key constituencies that Democrats rely on to actually win elections and govern. Here’s the final, impossible contradiction of The Deal between Democrats and Big Tech: for Democrats to be able to deliver for Big Tech, they first have to win and be able to govern, and increasingly, that meant challenging the power and privilege of tech monopolies. Paradoxically, as big tech’s power increases, a Democratic party that tries to live by the Deal is a Democratic party that can’t uphold to its end of the bargain and is useless for it. Democrats walked away from the deal because its the only sustainable path forward. The limited progress on antitrust and tech regulation during the Biden years was both insufficient in the eyes of those concerned with the power of big tech in the democratic coalition, and too much for big tech to accept. Similarly, the concessions to Big Tech in the form of state sponsored support for their AI ambitions was seen with skepticism by big tech critics -including environmentalists, civil rights leaders, and antitrust champions- and are now described as insufficient or as instruments for state control by who were supposed to be their beneficiaries -Big Tech had grown so much that Democrats blanket to keep it warm in the same bed had turned too short, no matter what a part was going to be out.

Thus, its no surprise than when Democrats inched -timidly- toward imposing guardrails on tech Andreessen and many others regarded this as a mortal sin. Suddenly, top execs like Tim Cook (who’d once campaigned for Hillary Clinton) or Sam Altman (a lifelong Democratic donor) switched allegiances and found a hero in Trump, whose business-first, anti-regulatory vibe promised fewer constraints. Elon Musk, originally put off by Trump’s combative style and disdain for climate change, reversed course, citing “pragmatism” as he poured millions monthly into the Trump campaign. Meanwhile, Sundar Pichai (Google) and Mark Zuckerberg (Meta) both offered subtle olive branches to a president they had previously clashed with.

THE TRUMP BROLIGARCHY

But this new Trump-Broligarchy arrangement also immediately revealed internal contradictions. For one thing, the MAGA movement that powers Trump’s base includes economic nationalists who are deeply skeptical of H-1B visas and globalization, two pillars upon which Big Tech depends for global talent and manufacturing. Within the “broligarchy” itself, major rifts keep emerging: Meta wants Apple to open its protocols so that platforms like WhatsApp or Horizon can access iOS on a deeper level, while Apple resists, citing privacy and user experience. Altman and Musk, once co-founders of OpenAI, now fight online over AI regulation and the future of OpenAI, but more fundamentally about who gets to define the future of the technology.

And that’s just the start: as Tesla or Amazon or Google push further into energy (either producing their own or demanding lower costs to be absorbed by the energy industry itself) they could alienate long-standing Republican donors tied to the fossil-fuel industry. Similarly, defense contractors are already tracking the ambitious of tech as it seeks to expand to their real, knowing that old-school hardware deals could be made obsolete by next-generation software or drone warfare. The simple reality is that Big Tech’s size, with a market-cap now equal to 40 percent of American GDP (compared to roughly 10 percent in 1990), makes it virtually impossible for any single party to give them everything without alienating other power centers and coalition members.

There is, of course, a radical and even more dystopian alternative to the collapse of the Trumpian broligarchy under the weight of its own contradictions: that Big Tech, flush with capital and controlling the communications infrastructure, and fully embraced by the state, is finally allowed to absorb entire sectors of the economy to a point where it effectively both becomes part of the state AND is the sole industry remaining in America -what would mean that the the complex and dynamic US economy becomes something more similar to Saudi or Norway, where one industry is everything. In such a scenario, the lines between government and corporate power might blur dangerously. Instead of merely partnering with whichever party holds the White House, tech firms could build direct alliances with federal agencies, militarize AI research, and incorporate vital social services into their own networks -a kind of techno-feudal arrangement in which platform giants overshadow traditional governance.

CONCLUSION AND A PATH FORWARD

In many ways, the Big Tech’s embrace of Trump can be read through Karl Polanyi’s lens of “disembedding” the market from social constraints . By championing an ever-expanding technology sector freed from meaningful regulation, the “Trump Broligarchy” is poised to alienate workers, erode local economies, and accelerate environmental crises. In this techno-Victorian future, data centers proliferate without regard for community resources, wealth becomes even more concentrated among a handful of billionaire founders, and AI tools intensify labor instability rather than elevate collective well-being. The result is an increasingly fragile society, one in which economic shocks reverberate globally, climate change advances unchecked, and the social fabric frays under the relentless strain of automation and profit-driven imperatives.

Yet Polanyi also reminds us that periods of rampant disembedding can spark a powerful counter-movement—a collective response that seeks to reassert social priorities over the demands of unconstrained markets. For progressives, this presents a critical opening. Instead of longing for a return to the old “Deal” with trillion-dollar corporations, the task is to build a broader alignment that re-embeds technology within the fabric of society.

This means crafting AI policy that enhances, rather than replaces, workers’ skills; it means supporting mall and medium-size tech innovators and companies who can invigorate regional economies; it means insisting on robust antitrust enforcement and labor protections that temper the destabilizing effects of endless consolidation. Done right, technology need not be an engine of hyper-concentration. AI can be a tool for community-driven wealth creation, enabling local solutions and more equitable access to digital infrastructure. Tech entrepreneurs and CEOs, small and medium size tech that feels the uncompetitive pressure of Big Tech, are logical parts of this new coalition, together with the leaders of so many economic sectors threatened by the insatiable appetite of big tech’s expansion.

In that sense, the pathway forward is not about demonizing Big Tech companies and their CEO’s outright but about establishing clearer limits and expectations—precisely the conditions that tech monopolies rail against. We should not overlook the agency of the individuals behind these corporate monoliths. Yes, CEOs face relentless pressure to maximize shareholder returns, but human beings like Tim Cook or Sam Altman can still choose moral or civic priorities over mere profit and responding to shareholders and what is expedient for their companies. Who knows, maybe Mark Zuckerberg, perhaps at some point mindful of anti-Semitic or alt-right tendencies that sometimes surface in the Trump orbit, could decide certain alliances cross a red line. There are civic-minded tech millionaires and billionaires that understand that limits on their power is not a personal attack on them, but a necessary element to ensure that America remains the open, dynamic place that allowed them to succeed in the first place. But we can’t read people’s minds, and therefore we can’t rely on private epiphanies to guide national policy. Hoping for philosopher-kings is no substitute for strong democratic structures, thoughtful regulations, and collective safeguards.

In response to the Trumpian broligarchy, progressives can mobilize the best of entrepreneurial energy while maintaining a genuine commitment to workers, democracy, and the planet, a newly energized counter-movement might yet steer us away from a dystopian techno-feudalism. Progressives, armed with the lessons of Polanyi, can show that real leadership entails re-embedding technology in a way that fosters resilience, inclusivity, and shared prosperity, countering the insatiable appetites that once made the old Deal untenable and now threaten to destabilize even the Trump-friendly alliance.