With Trump’s new H1B policy, tech executives kiss the ring yet again

When will Silicon Valley be embarrassed to be in the administration’s pocket?

In early September, executives at some of the biggest tech companies in the world took turns praising President Trump at a White House dinner. Microsoft’s Satya Nadella complimented Trump for creating a global platform for U.S. technology. Google’s Sundar Pichai said he looked forward to working together. Just weeks after this display of fealty, President Trump announced a new hoop for the tech industry to jump through: his administration would be requiring a $100,000 fee for each new applicant for H1Bs, the coveted visa type that allows people from all over the world to work in the United States in specialized roles. While hospitals, financial institutions, and other industries make use of these visas, the tech industry is known for its reliance on the visas to bring in global talent; Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, Apple, and Google are the top companies sponsoring new H1Bs this year. Both Nadella and Pichai famously once held H1Bs themselves.

By now, tech executives must be exhausted from contorting themselves into whatever new shape Trump desires that week. They’ve acquiesced to brutal tariff costs and the deals required to gain exemptions from them, they’ve gutted DEI programs to meet the administration’s tastes, and publicly praised the President to win government contracts and favorable terms. But it’s clear that the demands and the extortion won’t stop no matter how many times executives kiss the ring. Now that the administration has come for H1Bs, the foundation of so many tech company’s hiring strategies and success stories, the Nadellas and Pichais of the world should be standing up to protest. Instead there is support or silence. When will the tech industry finally feel shame at becoming the abused lapdogs of a fascist dictator?

There’s no question whether the big tech companies can pay each new cost of doing business with the Trump administration. With record profits and unfathomable cash reserves, they can cover the $100,000 fee per H1B applicant—what essentially amounts to a bribe. The stated intention of the new policy is to encourage companies to hire more U.S.-based candidates. But the executive order makes explicit that as with the new tariffs, exemptions are allowed and at the discretion of the administration. That means that rather than making any meaningful change, President Trump has created a loophole big enough for tech companies to crawl through on their knees, cash in hand—as long as they’re doing work that the administration supports.

OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Netflix’s Reed Hastings, and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang have all come out in favor of the move. Elon Musk, who only months ago made sure Trump knew he’d “go to war” over any restrictive new H1B policy, is now silent. So are Pichai and Nadella. However, tech workers are speaking out. Tech workers put together a petition against the new policy, and H1B holders spoke to journalists about the stress and expense the abrupt executive order has already caused them.

Tech executives today are proving that they are no better than German factory barons in the 1930s. Standing alongside President Trump at his fancy dinner and in support of his chaotic and illegal policies is baldly unethical. But beyond being wrong, their inaction is embarrassing. These titans of industry, who fashion themselves innovators and disruptors, these obscenely wealthy middle-aged men who can change the way society operates with the tweak of an algorithm, are falling over themselves to flatter and follow a leader who cannot pronounce the name of a common medication during a press conference. They come when called. They pay when asked. What will the new executive order make them do? Hand over equity in their companies? Oh wait.

What we’re reading

• Great look at the San Francisco AI culture in NY Mag. It’s a gold rush that’s attracting a whole range of interesting characters. (side note but why did it take a NY Mag to capture what’s going on so well? )

• 400 celebs put pressure on Disney to change course on taking Kimmel off air. Disney shareholders also argued the decision was against company fiduciary duty.

• Organizers and workers forced Microsoft to break from the Israeli military. Wow. Just shows what consistent pressure can do. Kudos to everyone who made it happen

• OpenAI published a blog comparing their models with 45 different jobs. In one summary they claim their AI is 100x faster and 100x cheaper: “we found that frontier models can complete GDPval tasks roughly 100x faster and 100x cheaper than industry experts”, in the next sentence they admit this is a completely bogus comparison: “However, these figures reflect pure model inference time and API billing rates, and therefore do not capture the human oversight, iteration, and integration steps required in real workplace settings to use our models.”

• One of the novelists, Andrea Bartz, who sued and won in a fight against Anthropic has an op-ed in the NYT today: “The settlement isn’t perfect. It’s absurd that it took an army of lawyers to demonstrate what any 10-year-old knows is true: Thou shalt not steal.”

• Brad Pascale is getting paid $6m to provide 4 months of work to the State of Israel to ‘to map out Gen-Z influencers and distribute a narrative about antisemitism in the United States.’ via All-Source Intelligence.

• Wondering how many data centers are getting built in the U.S.? Michael Thomas at Cleanview did the work for you.