On Saturday evening, top technology executives gathered in Washington to attend a screening of “Melania,” a documentary produced by Amazon about the first lady, Melania Trump. Among them was Andy Jassy, the chief executive of Amazon; Tim Cook, the chief executive of Apple; and Lisa Su, the chief executive of chip maker AMD.
Back in Silicon Valley, the scene was very different.
Hours after immigration agents in Minneapolis shot and killed Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse, a growing chorus of tech executives, investors and engineers started speaking out against the Trump administration’s deployment of federal officers across American cities.
“Every person regardless of political affiliation should be denouncing this,” Jeff Dean, the chief scientist at Google’s DeepMind and a longtime Google executive, wrote in a social media post, calling the killing “absolutely shameful.”
Mr. Dean soon joined others in signing a letter, ICEout.tech. The letter — which was spun up by some tech employees and spread quickly over social media — has since amassed more than 500 signatures from engineers, venture capitalists and other tech workers calling for the industry to demand that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials leave U.S. cities, cancel contracts with the agency and to not remain silent, even if it may be politically risky.
The actions were reminiscent of a bygone era in Silicon Valley. When Donald J. Trump took office in 2017 for his first term, tech workers were outspoken and urged their employers to use their political clout against the administration. At the time, engineers from companies like Google openly organized inside of their workplaces against Mr. Trump.
But in recent years, top Silicon Valley executives and investors including Elon Musk, Marc Andreessen of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, Apple’s Mr. Cook, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang wooed conservatives to form political relationships that could benefit their companies. Some tech giants cracked down on employees expressing their political views and fired those who broke the rules. Defense tech companies including Palantir and Anduril landed contracts to supply products to the federal government.
Yet the killing of Mr. Pretti, along with that of Renee Good, another protester in Minneapolis this month, has shaken that status quo.
“Every day, we are asked to put our trust in tech companies, who shape our lives and our futures in profound ways,” Galen Panger, a user experience researcher at YouTube who co-signed the letter, said in an interview. “But what future are they asking us to imagine now?”
Katie Jacobs Stanton, a venture capitalist and former executive at Twitter and Google, said in an interview that the videos of Mr. Pretti’s killing have driven a “real public backlash.” She added, “Speaking out for human rights, basic decency and the defense of our democracy should not be hard. What’s the point of power and privilege if you don’t use it when it matters most?”
The split screen of tech chiefs attending the “Melania” viewing while others condemned ICE’s actions underline a divide between many of the industry’s leaders and its workers. Mr. Musk, Mr. Huang, Mr. Zuckerberg and others have been frequent visitors to the White House. Greg Brockman, a co-founder of the artificial intelligence firm OpenAI, and his wife, Anna Brockman, each donated $12.5 million this month to a pro-Trump super PAC called MAGA Inc.
David Hornik, a partner at the venture capital firm Lobby Capital who has criticized the Trump administration, said industry leaders are a vocal minority and the vast majority of Silicon Valley tech workers remain largely liberal. The workers have been drowned out in recent years by the small contingent of pro-Trump conservatives, he said.
“They helped get this administration elected and then they helped this administration to decimate the norms of the U.S. democratic government,” Mr. Hornik said of tech billionaires and industry leaders. “Frankly, we’re in a situation caused by them.”
Inside some tech companies, workers are considering more action. Some employees at Anthropic, Google, Meta and OpenAI have discussed whether to urge their bosses to review their agreements with military contractors or defense companies like Palantir, four people familiar with the discussions said. In the past, tech chiefs have defended the contracts.
Other workplace disputes have spilled into public. In a social media post over the weekend, Keith Rabois, a partner at the venture capital firm Khosla Ventures, defended ICE and the administration, saying that “no law enforcement has shot an innocent person” and that “illegals are committing violent crimes everyday.”
Two other partners at the firm, Vinod Khosla and Ethan Choi, publicly denounced Mr. Rabois’ comments, saying that his views did not represent their own.
Most tech chiefs have not commented on the killing of Mr. Pretti, even as the chief executives of Target, Best Buy, General Mills and Cargill were among more than 60 large Minnesota companies on Sunday to issue a public letter calling for an “immediate de-escalation of tensions” in the state.
One exception was Dario Amodei, the chief executive of Anthropic, who called the events in Minnesota a “horror” on Monday. An Anthropic spokeswoman said the company did not have contracts with ICE.
Amazon, Apple, Google, Nvidia, SpaceX, Andreessen Horowitz and OpenAI did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A Meta spokesman declined to comment.
Before Mr. Pretti was killed, some tech leaders had started wavering on their messages to Mr. Trump in the face of pushback. Last year, Marc Benioff, the founder of Salesforce, called for Mr. Trump to send the National Guard to San Francisco to reduce crime in the city. After a widespread backlash from tech workers, he recanted.
Salesforce did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“I think there will be many others, like Benioff, who made a choice that I think they will deeply regret in the face of 5-year-old kids being taken off the street and American citizens being shot in the street,” Mr. Hornik, the venture capitalist, said. “No one can sit back silently and watch this and think it is OK.”
Mike Isaac is The Times’s Silicon Valley correspondent, based in San Francisco. He covers the world’s most consequential tech companies, and how they shape culture both online and offline.
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