“I wish Donald Trump every success in leading and unifying the America we all love. » Jeff Bezos quickly and warmly congratulated the new American president, the day after his election, Tuesday, November 5. The Amazon founder is far from the only head of a digital giant who has zealously made an act of goodwill with Donald Trump: Google’s Sundar Pichai, Apple’s Tim Cook, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, or Sam Altmanof OpenAI, proclaimed “Looking forward to collaborating” with the new administration to promote” innovation “ and strengthen the “leadership” American.
The contrast is striking with 2016, when the first election of the free Republican electron shook the traditionally Democratic companies of Silicon Valley: their leaders hesitated to respond to the first invitation from the White House. One of its pressure groups was particularly opposed to the questioning, desired by Donald Trump, of visas for foreign workers, common in these technology companies.
If the large American digital multinationals have changed their tone, it is out of caution and pragmatism, because they lived through Trump’s first term. This marked a break, with a clear cooling of relations between the White House and Silicon Valley, previously coaxed by the Obama administration. But, beyond this first aspect, paradoxically the technology giants have good reasons to expect to be beneficiaries of a “Trump 2” mandate.
“New golden age” to achieve
In fact, Donald Trump promises, for example, to strongly support the development of artificial intelligence (AI), a technology that has become central to the sector since the appearance of the chatbot ChatGPT at the end of 2022. “He told us, ‘AI is very scary, but we absolutely have to win.’ Because if we don’t win, China will win.explained venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, in a July podcast, about the future president.
AI is part of “new golden age” come true, Trump declared at the Republican Party convention in July. “AI literally needs twice the electricity available in our country today. Can you imagine? », launched, so he asked “produce enormous amounts of energy.” A surely sweet message for the ears of all the AI heavyweights, who are now seeking to power their greedy data centers with nuclear reactors, like Amazon, which has just seen a US authority limit the power of one of its projects .
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