It's Trump's America now: Tech, trillionaires, Taiwan, and TikTok
Bitcoin and Tesla soar, print subs set to skyrocket, all change at the regulators, Vance gets the keys to AI, Google and Zuck sweat, and Musk makes bank (again)
The red wave that crashed across the US on election night will now spread like a tsunami across tech, valuations, AI, policy, antitrust, and the news media.
There are wins and losses across the board. Soaring subscriptions are expected at the New York Times and Washington Post, and Elon Musk’s X will be a big winner.
Substack founder Hamish McKenzie also flagged the election a win for independent publishers, as Trump chose non-traditional outlets to share his message.
A Republican White House will almost certainly mean the departure of Lina Khan from the FTC, where she’s taken Apple, Amazon, and Meta, to book.
And the back of Jonathan Kanter at the Department of Justice, after he brought successful antitrust actions against Google.
But analysts are predicting Google’s fate will not improve under a Trump administration. Zuckerberg is also in his sights. And Trump is now a TikTok fan.
It will be a while before the dust settles, but some of the implications are already breaking the surface. That’s what today is about.
Welcome first to new subs over the past few days from LinkedIn, Ofcom, TikTok, Apple, Newsquest, The Georgetown University Law Center, The Associated Press, Expedia, The Red Cross, Warner Music, as well as Australia’s ABC, Sydney Morning Herald and Nine Entertainment, among others.
OK, let’s go…
Subscriber revival?
Let’s begin with the media, where the foundations of subscription, revenue, readership, and regulation were all shaken overnight.
Australia’s AFR reported that print subs at mass media publications like the New York Times and Washington Post will soar, as will revenue at Murdoch’s Fox News.
The AFR said The Times added “260,000 paid digital subscribers to cross 11 million” during the campaign “and revenue jumped seven per cent to $640 million”.
The WaPo added 300,000 paid subs during the last Trump presidency, to reach 2.7 million, and traffic soared 28 per cent - or 66 million monthly page views.
But owner Jeff Bezos’ decision not to endorse Kamala Harris led “more than 250,000 subscribers – 10 per cent of its customer base” to cancel, Yahoo reported.
Mass media also lost relevance over the campaign, according to Substack founder Hamish McKenzie, as masses of new independent media outlets - like Future Media - stepped up.
"It used to be the case that a news tycoon, such as Rupert Murdoch or William Randolph Hearst, could exert outsize influence on politics.
"If you had aspirations to be President, you didn’t want to get offside with Murdoch, and you needed to talk to the editorial board of the New York Times.
"Their endorsements mattered. For decades, the media elite and the political elite mingled in a co-dependent relationship.?
"Donald Trump and Kamala Harris didn’t have to care about those relationships this election. Instead, they turned to Joe Rogan and Call Her Daddy.
"The winning candidate even joked that he wouldn’t mind if the reporters at his rally got shot first during an assassination attempt.
"Those comments were reported in the mainstream Press but were most talked about on social media.
"It was really happening mostly on X, since Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, preferred to suppress political discourse and leave it to Elon."?
Musk’s decision to buy Twitter now looks like a masterstroke. Semafor reported:
"The big winner is Elon Musk and his vast empire of electric cars, rockets, brain implants and AI data centres.
"Musk was Trump’s most vocal Silicon Valley ally, campaigning for him at rallies and touting his candidacy on his platform, X.
"The billionaire entrepreneur spent election night at Mar a Lago and posted a photo of him huddling with Trump, who has said he would put Musk in charge of making the government more efficient.
"With Republican control of the White House, the Senate, and possibly the House, Musk will likely be a key beneficiary of that sweeping victory.
"The next four years could turn him into something much bigger than he is today, a government-backed industrial titan with few equivalents in American history."
Tech editor Reed Albergotti added:
"It’s easy to see X as a kind of loss leader for the rest of Musk’s government-linked businesses, an investment in politics and in helping the new President.
"But X is also positioned to become -?with Trump’s help -?a central media platform, particularly for right-leaning American audiences who helped build Fox into a profitable juggernaut.
"X has turned out to be the more accurate depiction of reality.
"Under Musk’s stewardship, the platform has relaxed content moderation standards and allowed some unsavoury characters back on.
"There are obvious downsides to that strategy, but the lack of censorship also gives us a more accurate representation of the world as it actually is.
"Costs are also down, and at least some advertisers who fled the crudeness and racial provocation may make their way back to the platform."
Regulatory shift
Hello Trump means bye bye for Lina Khan at the Federal Trade Commission and Jonathan Kanter from the Department of Justice.
Both have polarised markets, politics, media, and tech, as they’ve waged war to break up Big Tech and halt corporate mergers, but antitrust will remain.
Bloomberg reported:
"A second Trump administration is likely to keep up the aggressive pursuit of antitrust cases targeting Big Tech.
"FTC chair Lina Khan will be asked to step down. The Justice Department’s Jonathan Kanter will also step aside."
The regulators’ aggressive stance has irked the billionaire class. LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman publicly called for Khan to be fired.
But incoming Vice President JD Vance has called her the best thing in the Democratic Party, and backed her mission to break up Big Tech.
Either way, Khan and Kanter disappear at a gallop, and the new administration installs its own people.
What happens to the antitrust agenda is less clear cut, but breaking Big Tech up has bipartisan support.
On the campaign trail, Trump called for Google to be prosecuted for bias and suggested Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg be “jailed for life”.
The open question though is how Big Tech’s big personalities fare with Musk and JD Vance, a welfare state kid and billionaire sceptic, at Trump’s right hand.
It seems unlikely to be boring, so let’s look at them singularly.
Google’s prognosis: Not at all good.
Trump has accused it of “blatant interference” in the election and pledged to prosecute “when I become President of the United States”.
He posted a claim on Truth Social that “it has been determined that Google has illegally used a system of only revealing bad stories about Donald J Trump, some made up…”
Many also forget that it was Trump who instigated the DOJ’s investigations into Google during his earlier term.
The Verge also quoted Trump as recently as August, saying he “had a feeling Google is going to be close to shutdown.”
He was slightly more conciliatory at a recent rally, with Ars Technica quoting him saying: “I’m not a fan of Google. They treat me badly, but are you going to destroy the company?
“What you can do, without breaking it up, is make sure it’s more fair.”
Meta’s prognosis: Sleepless nights ahead.
Politico names Zuck as being on Trump’s hit list.
“Trump and allies have been sharply critical of Zuckerberg after he and wife, Priscilla Chan, gave $420 million in 2020 to improve election infrastructure,” it wrote.
“Trump backers contend the money was a thinly veiled plot to undercut his re-election.
“In a book, Trump accused Zuckerberg of a “shameful plot against the President” and warned: “We are watching him closely, and if he does anything illegal this time he will spend the rest of his life in prison.”
Trump’s accused Facebook of leaning Left, and censoring coverage of Covid-19 and the New York Post exclusive about President Joe Biden’s son Hunter’s laptop.
It worked. Zuck shut down political coverage across Facebook, Threads, and Instagram, as I detailed in my multi-part Meta series last month.
The AFR reported: “Trump told New York Magazine that he received a call from Zuckerberg shortly after he survived the bullet to his ear in July.
“Zuckerberg was alleged to have said “there’s no way I can vote for a Democrat in this election”. It’s a claim Meta denies.”
Zuckerberg did go on to tell Bloomberg in another interview that he thought Trump’s fist pump reaction to the shooting was “badass”.
Another big risk is Trump’s growing love affair with TikTok. He had proposed to ban it during his last term unless it was sold to a US buyer.
But now he sees it as a viable method to rein in Meta. Worse, electors have softened on TikTok as more of them use it, with less than one in three wanting a ban.
It means TikTok might get a reprieve, and that’s sounding alarm bells at 1 Hacker Way.
Amazon’s prognosis: Run silent, run deep.
Founder Jeff Bezos owns the political bible the Washington Post and has had a troubled relationship with Trump.
The New York Times recalled: “The president-elect has been openly hostile to Mr Bezos on social media, and Amazon sued the Trump administration in 2019, blaming Mr Trump’s animosity for its loss of a $10 billion cloud computing contract.”
Bezos is treading carefully.
He controversially canned a Harris endorsement by the WaPo days before the election. An estimated 250,000 Post readers cancelled subscriptions.
Australia’s AFR reported: “It later emerged executives at Bezos’ aerospace company Blue Origin met with Trump on the same day Bezos pulled the editorial.”
Bezos has invested millions in the political campaigns of both sides of politics, and called Trump after July’s assassination attempt to say it was the “most incredible thing”.
After the election result, Bezos fawned on X: “Big congratulations to our 45th and now 47th President on an extraordinary political comeback and decisive victory.”
Newsweek called the post “a benediction” and pointed out WaPo had endorsed presidential candidates since Jimmy Carter in 1976.
The new editorial team at the Post now face the job of threading the needle of covering the epicentre of US politics, with an owner and a President in the wings.
Tough gig.
Apple’s prognosis: A west-side story.
Apple’s an American company that relies on China for its supply chain. Latest data shows 157 of its 187 suppliers are based there, according to the South China Morning Post.
Trump aims to introduce tariffs to force US companies to use US suppliers, and of all the foreign suppliers, China carries the most political stigma.
So far, Apple has been able to lobby to avoid these charges, but the LA Times reports Trump’s mandate comes from hard-up, jobless, middle-America, so that might change.
Apple CEO Tim Cook has previously supported Democrats and was considered a potential Vice President had Hillary Clinton won in 2016.
This time around, he declined to spend any of his $2.2 billion wealth on backing either candidate.
The AFR reported: “On a podcast, Trump revealed he received a call from Cook last month to complain about a $US2 billion antitrust fine from the European Union, in addition to another $US14 billion in taxes Apple owes to Ireland.”
Trump said he replied: “Tim, I’ve got to get elected first, but I’m not going to let them take advantage of our companies. That won’t be happening.”
It has filed a suit alleging that Apple wraps itself “in a cloak of privacy, security, and consumer preferences to justify its anticompetitive conduct”.
But the Financial Times reported: “Trump could direct the DoJ to discontinue its monopoly lawsuit against Apple” and “Trump has made no secret of his contempt for the EU regulator.”
It quoted Boris Feldman, from analysts Freshfields saying: “An interesting question is whether Trump or Vance will tell the EU and UK to stop punishing US companies, especially in light of challenges from China.
“Biden didn’t push back on it. If the tech companies feel they are building a relationship with Trump, that might be their ask: Help us get the Europeans off our backs.”
Microsoft’s prognosis: Nothing to see here.
Satya Nadella’s giant continues to deliver a masterclass in growing, leading AI, and somehow remaining largely out of sight.
It’s the only one of the major tech companies not facing an antitrust action, yet it’s still the third most valuable company in the world.
The strategy will be for more of the same. It’s not publishing content, so it avoids allegations of bias, and it’s emblematic of US supremacy at the forefront of AI.
From the perspective of the Trump administration, it’s manipulated OpenAI into a for profit company, creating new opportunities for investors to drive stock market growth.
The market soared yesterday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average surged 1,400 points, its largest gain in two years. The S&P rose 2.4 per cent and the Nasdaq 2.8.
Microsoft will now have freedom to buy more AI risers, as the corporate takeover freeze under Khan disappears. Perplexity will be among those most up for grabs.
It explains why investors are pouring in at a bloated $9 billion valuation.
Perplexity earned just $50 million this year, meaning investors are gambling on a 180x growth in a company that’s still loss-making.
Many know it’s also a race against time before its buffoon of a founder eats his foot.
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Feldman, from analysts Freshfields told the Financial Times: “The dealmaking has begun, conversations are already happening among boards of directors.
“There will be a flood, knowing that when it’s time for regulatory approval, Khan will be back at Yale Law School.”
Goldman Sachs said: “We are thrilled. The flood gates are about to open and we’re going to print money.”
The big question though, is Elon Musk, who has a broken relationship with OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman…
We now need to add Musk and his tech companies to the list. I’ve avoided him as a nonsense-monkey, but now he’s the White House’s tech mandarin.
X’s prognosis: The sky’s the limit.
The FT’s coverage anointed Musk as “Trump’s emissary to the tech world” this morning. Trump called him a “super-genius and promised him a wide-ranging advisory role”.
Cementing his inside-man status, it was left to Musk to post American flag emojis in reply to Apple’s Tim Cook’s and Microsoft’s Satya Nadella’s congrats on X.
“America is a nation of builders. Soon, you will be free to build,” Musk then posted.
Musk made the biggest bet, and won. His $44 billion acquisition of Twitter - almost universally derided - might be the smartest deal in history.
By controlling the news, he controlled the message for Trump - and played a major part in delivering the White House.
“A star is born. Elon!” Donald Trump said during his victory speech. “We have to protect our geniuses. We don’t have that many of them.”
Semafor reported: “The big winner is Elon Musk and his vast empire of electric cars, rockets, brain implants and AI data centres.
“Advertisers might not come back to X, but any losses could be erased by NASA contracts, tariff decisions and other political favours.”
Tesla stock soared in the hours after the vote, as markets priced in the likelihood that Trump will heap tariffs on cheap Chinese imports.
Markets also expect Trump to green light self-driving and robotaxis.
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SpaceX is NASA’s go-to and now set to become humanity’s link to the stars, and sideline Bezos’ rival Blue Origin. From a Mars shot to Starlink satellites replacing telcos, Musk’s rocket ship looks a good bet.
xAI: Musk aims to win the AI race but needs to get around environmental regulators to produce enough power. He has asked for taxpayer funds to modernise the energy grid.
Trump, Vance and Musk have also said they will make AI a national security priority, building a new technological wall against China.
That will also kill Biden’s executive order that put safety guardrails in place, replacing it with voluntary security and privacy guidelines. Trump said during the campaign that AI development is “rooted in free speech”.
Nvidia’s prognosis: Sitting pretty.
Semiconductors are the foundation of AI, and the virtual frontline in a proxy war with China over technological supremacy.
Biden poured tens of billions into US chip manufacturing and used trade and investment restrictions to counter China’s efforts.
Trump has supported sweeping 50 per cent tariffs on foreign chips, but as Bloomberg reported, this brings into question how Trump will approach Taiwan.
It makes 90 per cent of AI chips, and America relies on its output. A Chinese invasion would be a $10 trillion hit to the global economy.
Finally, bitcoin soars. Trump wants the US to be “the crypto capital of the planet”. Bitcoin hit a record high hours after Trump’s victory.