Growing Wave of Silicon Valley Workers Condemns ICE as C-Suites Split Over Fear of Trump
Former Block executive Mike Brock, who now writes the Substack Notes from the Circus, wrote that many tech workers stopped speaking out after the 2024 presidential election because “they understand they’ll lose their job.”
In the wake of the killings in Minnesota, that wary discretion is evaporating in favor of open rage and upset.
Last week, more than 200 Silicon Valley staffers published an open letter urging tech leaders to use their platforms to call for ICE’s removal from U.S. cities. As of this story’s publication, the letter has roughly 1,000 signatories, including employees from Google, Amazon and TikTok — although many declined to list more than their job titles.
“The killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti were a breaking point,” wrote tech executive Lisa Conn, a signatory of the ICEout.tech letter. “And, this isn’t one corner of the industry. Signers include engineers, VPs, startup founders, and people at AI labs — many who’ve never been politically active before.”
Industry watchers say there are two key factors reflected in this new agitation among Silicon Valley workers.
“Workers know that many of them and their coworkers could be targets and/or be affected by dramatic changes to the immigration system — including the implementation of new fees and restrictions associated with H1B visas,” UC Irvine law professor Veena Dubal wrote to KQED.
Last week, more than 200 Silicon Valley workers published an open letter urging tech leaders to use their platforms to call for ICE’s removal from U.S. cities. By publication, the letter had drawn roughly 1,000 signatures, including from employees at Google, Amazon and TikTok, though many signatories listed only their job titles. (Michel Spingler/AP)
“Perhaps more importantly, it is a collective moral recognition about how their own labor may be contributing to the horrors of family separation, detention, deportation, and recent assaults on protestors,” Dubal said. “The reality is that ICE could not engage in their operations without technologies supplied to them through contracts with Palantir, Amazon, and Microsoft.”
For all the energizing impact of organizing among rank-and-file employees, ICEOut.Tech and the Alphabet Workers Union both call for Silicon Valley leaders to use their political leverage, too.
“When CEOs called the White House in October over the National Guard threat to SF, Trump backed down,” Conn wrote. “We’re asking them to use that access to do the right thing now.”
And it’s not just the groups making those calls.
James Dyett, an executive at OpenAI, chided his peers on X over the weekend. “There is far more outrage from tech leaders over a wealth tax than masked ICE agents terrorizing communities and executing civilians in the streets,” he wrote, referring to California’s proposed tax on billionaires that’s prompted some Silicon Valley tech moguls to publicly warn they’d rather leave the state than pay the tax. “Tells you what you need to know about the values of our industry.”
