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What tech CEOs and executives have said about ICE's actions in Minnesota
https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/03/what-tech-ceos-and-executives-have-said-about-ice-in-minnesota/-snip-
The tech industry has always been entwined in politics. Companies like Palantir, Clearview AI, Flock, and Paragon are contracted by U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and assist in the agency’s crackdowns. But as President Trump took office last year, his industry connections have grown. Elon Musk ran a government agency for months, and prolific Silicon Valley investor David Sacks is leading an advisory board on technology for the president. The CEOs behind some of the largest companies in the country — like Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Apple’s Tim Cook, and Google’s Sundar Pichai — had prime seats at Trump’s inauguration and have remained allied with him.
“We know our industry leaders have leverage: in October, they persuaded Trump to call off a planned ICE surge in San Francisco.” ICEout.tech, a group of tech industry workers opposing ICE, wrote in a statement on January 24, the day of ICU nurse Alex Pretti’s death. “Big tech CEOs are in the White House tonight,” the statement added, referring to a screening of a documentary about Melania Trump where Cook, Amazon’s Andy Jassy, and Zoom’s Eric Yuan were in attendance. “Now they need to go further, and join us in demanding ICE out of all of our cities.”
Some of tech’s biggest players have since spoken out, to mixed reception from their employees and the industry. Below, we are keeping an ongoing list of what tech leaders have had to say.
-snip-
The tech industry has always been entwined in politics. Companies like Palantir, Clearview AI, Flock, and Paragon are contracted by U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and assist in the agency’s crackdowns. But as President Trump took office last year, his industry connections have grown. Elon Musk ran a government agency for months, and prolific Silicon Valley investor David Sacks is leading an advisory board on technology for the president. The CEOs behind some of the largest companies in the country — like Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Apple’s Tim Cook, and Google’s Sundar Pichai — had prime seats at Trump’s inauguration and have remained allied with him.
“We know our industry leaders have leverage: in October, they persuaded Trump to call off a planned ICE surge in San Francisco.” ICEout.tech, a group of tech industry workers opposing ICE, wrote in a statement on January 24, the day of ICU nurse Alex Pretti’s death. “Big tech CEOs are in the White House tonight,” the statement added, referring to a screening of a documentary about Melania Trump where Cook, Amazon’s Andy Jassy, and Zoom’s Eric Yuan were in attendance. “Now they need to go further, and join us in demanding ICE out of all of our cities.”
Some of tech’s biggest players have since spoken out, to mixed reception from their employees and the industry. Below, we are keeping an ongoing list of what tech leaders have had to say.
-snip-
They started with a quote from an editorial LinkedIn cofounder and Democratic donor Reid Hoffman wrote for the January 29 San Francisco Standard, which you can find here:
https://sfstandard.com/opinion/2026/01/29/reid-hoffman-silicon-valley-can-t-neutral-any-longer/
-snip-
In the year since President Donald Trump took office, too many Silicon Valley leaders have divested themselves of the responsibility to speak out against the administration’s excesses. They’ve spent the last year telling themselves, “We need to work with whoever’s in power” or, “Getting political risks alienating people.”
January’s tragic events in Minneapolis should end that posture. We leaders in tech and business have power — economic, social, platform power — and sitting on that power right now is not good business. It’s also not neutrality. It’s a choice.
-snip-
The America we love will survive the current authoritarian push (not to say putsch) only if enough of us — especially those of us fortunate enough to be in positions of leadership and influence — choose to condemn it, and loudly.
We in Silicon Valley can’t bend the knee to Trump. We can’t shrink away and just hope the crisis will fade. We know now that hope without action is not a strategy — it’s an invitation for Trump to trample whatever he can see, including our own business and security interests.
-snip-
In the year since President Donald Trump took office, too many Silicon Valley leaders have divested themselves of the responsibility to speak out against the administration’s excesses. They’ve spent the last year telling themselves, “We need to work with whoever’s in power” or, “Getting political risks alienating people.”
January’s tragic events in Minneapolis should end that posture. We leaders in tech and business have power — economic, social, platform power — and sitting on that power right now is not good business. It’s also not neutrality. It’s a choice.
-snip-
The America we love will survive the current authoritarian push (not to say putsch) only if enough of us — especially those of us fortunate enough to be in positions of leadership and influence — choose to condemn it, and loudly.
We in Silicon Valley can’t bend the knee to Trump. We can’t shrink away and just hope the crisis will fade. We know now that hope without action is not a strategy — it’s an invitation for Trump to trample whatever he can see, including our own business and security interests.
-snip-
They mention what Sam Altman.of OpenAI and Dario Amodei of Anthropic have said, which they did an earlier article about, which I posted about here: https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143606295
They don't mention Amodei's recent blog post, which I posted about here because it's relevant to Anthropic's disagreements with the Pentagon: https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143607941
TechCrunch did point out a January 26 X post from Amodei about his recen blog post: "I've been working on this essay for a while, and it is mainly about AI and about the future. But given the horror we're seeing in Minnesota, its emphasis on the importance of preserving democratic values and rights at home is particularly relevant."
They mention Tim Cook of Apple sending an internal memo to staff on the 27th, saying it's "a time for deescalation" but then talking about his "good conversation" with Trump and praising his "openness to engaging on issues that matter to us all." That craven statement came after Cook attended the WH screening of "Melania" hours after Pretti was murdered.
They quote statements on X from Meredith Whittaker, president of Signal, saying that she wants "everyone in tech who’s ever intoned about freedom, or their love of privacy, or their commitment to liberty, to join me in an unequivocal condemnation" of what ICE is doing.
They link to and quote the statement on Threads about the national strike from Tony Stubblebine, CEO of Medium, whose Threads profile includes this: "Pro virtue signaling. Radically Antifa (like my both of my granddaddies were in WWII)."
They quote Jeff Dean, chief scientist at Google DeepMind, calling what was done to Pretti "absolutely shameful" and adding, in that post on X, "Every person regardless of political affiliation should be denouncing this."
They quote the January 24 X post from James Dyett, OpenAI’s head of global business: "There is far more outrage from tech leaders over a wealth tax than masked ICE agents terrorizing communities and executing civilians in the streets. Tells you what you need to know about the values of our industry."
Khosla Ventures partner Keith Rabois has, shamefully, supported ICE and Trump, but Ethan Choi, another partner, made it clear he and others at Khosla Ventures don't agree. And founder Vinod Khosla called ICE agents "macho ICE vigilantes running amuck empowered by a conscious-less administration." And he said he agrees with Reid Hoffman that more tech executives need to speak out.
