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The TOI analogous from Washington: Among Silicon Valley elites wherever tech titans person mostly aligned with President Donald Trump’s purportedly race-driven MAGA vision, Indian-American task capitalist Vinod Khosla has been an outlier.
Exceptional arsenic his absorption to Trump has been, the billionaire tech savant has acceptable disconnected a governmental and taste firestorm this week with a blunt connection aimed astatine MAGA maverick Elon Musk’s workforce: if you are a non-white worker astatine Tesla, SpaceX oregon X, you should discontinue — and travel enactment for him instead.In a viral station connected X, Khosla accused Musk of advancing a racially exclusionary mentation of Trump’s MAGA question and urged employees who disagreed to locomotion away.
“@elonmusk doesn’t privation MAGA, helium wants WAGA — ‘white America large again’ — arsenic a ‘racism is large and desirable’ paradigm,” Khosla wrote, responding to Musk’s comments astir achromatic radical becoming a “rapidly diminishing minority.” Khosla went connected to invitation “all non-whites… and each decent whites” astatine Musk’s companies to resign and nonstop their LinkedIn profiles to Khosla Ventures.
The bonzer telephone — portion governmental denunciation, portion endowment raid — crystallized Khosla’s presumption arsenic 1 of the precise fewer tech titans consenting to openly situation Trump’s increasing confederation with Silicon Valley’s elite.
While overmuch of the manufacture – including companies similar Google, Microsoft, and IBM, each led by Indian-Americans – has moved to accommodate, oregon adjacent embrace, Trump II, Khosla has chosen defiance, framing the infinitesimal arsenic a motivation trial for American capitalism.The Musk clash did not look successful isolation. For months, Khosla has utilized his societal media beingness to onslaught Trump’s leadership, values and attack to governance. In January 2026, helium described the administration’s docket arsenic “The Undoing Project,” accusing Trump of orchestrating a “rampant, multifarious onslaught connected American values, norms, institutions, laws, and democracy.”
He has warned that fearfulness and cynicism are being utilized to soundlessness absorption and has repeatedly urged Republicans, executives and investors to talk out.Khosla’s hostility toward Trump is profoundly idiosyncratic arsenic good arsenic political. An migrant from India and a co-founder of Sun Microsystems, helium has argued that Trump’s rhetoric and policies undermine the meritocratic ideals that powered Silicon Valley’s rise. In earlier posts that resurfaced during the 2024 predetermination cycle, Khosla said helium despised Trump for his “lack of values, his pathological lying, his selfishness,” accusing him of appealing to “the slightest appealing parts of American society.
”That worldview present puts Khosla sharply astatine likelihood with the prevailing absorption of the tech industry. A increasing cohort of influential “tech bros” has signed up, explicitly oregon implicitly, for MAGA. Musk stands astatine the halfway of that universe, having donated heavy to Trump’s run and emerged arsenic the president’s astir almighty state successful Silicon Valley. Others successful Trump’s orbit see PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, capitalist and podcaster David Sacks, and task superior heavyweights Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, each of whom person praised Trump’s promises of deregulation, taxation cuts and a lighter regulatory interaction connected artificial quality and crypto.Even executives who erstwhile positioned themselves arsenic Trump skeptics person mostly shifted to pragmatic cooperation. Leaders of Meta (Mark Zuckerberg), Amazon (Jeff Bezos), Apple (Tim Cook), Google (Sundar Pichai), Microsoft (Satya Nadella), and IBM (Arvind Krishna) person attended Trump events, accrued governmental donations and pledged billions successful US investments, portion tech lobbying has surged to grounds levels.
The calculation is straightforward: access, power and regulatory alleviation outweigh ideological discomfort.By contrast, unfastened absorption has go rare. Aside from Khosla, lone a fistful of salient figures — including LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and entrepreneur Mark Cuban — person maintained nationalist region from Trump. While dozens of apical task capitalists present thin pro-Trump, outspoken critics tin beryllium counted connected 1 hand.The disagreement carries consequences for tech workers, galore of whom stay politically wide adjacent arsenic their employers drift right. Over 450 employees from Google, Meta, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and OpenAI precocious signed an unfastened missive demanding their CEOs "pick up the phone" to halt ICE excesses. Khosla’s telephone for non-white employees to permission Musk’s companies is tapping into that tension, highlighting a widening spread betwixt enforcement powerfulness and workforce values.
As Trump settles deeper into his 2nd term, Silicon Valley progressively looks similar a assemblage that has chosen alignment implicit resistance. Khosla, by contrast, is betting that dissent inactive matters — adjacent if it leaves him lasting astir alone.
