Newsweek

Donald Trump Is Right About Silicon Valley

Tech companies played a major role in creating the wealth gap between digital and analog America.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Alphabet CEO Larry Page, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, Vice President-elect Mike Pence and President-elect Donald Trump at Trump Tower on December 14, 2016. Trump met with top tech executives—including several of his sharpest critics—to mend ties after a divisive election in which the majority of Silicon Valley backed Hillary Clinton.
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When Donald Trump met with technology leaders in December to tell them he wanted them to create jobs in the U.S., their heads probably tilted to the side, as if you tried to explain physics to your dog and she just watched your lips moving and wondered when, among all those unfamiliar sounds, she was going to hear the word treat.

Tech leaders aren’t in the business of creating jobs. They’re in business to help us do more with less. They like innovation and disruption and software eating the world. But people—eh, not so much.

In his own Chance-the-gardener , the president-elect might be onto something. His victory was a middle-finger salute from those people out by yet more lower-level jobs while creating only high-skilled jobs. It’s becoming clear that if tech doesn’t change that trajectory, the consequences might look something like the Visigoths attacking Rome in A.D. 410.

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