It’s been almost one year since Donald Trump took back the White House. Much has changed. The Rose Garden has been paved over; the Oval Office is covered in gold. National Guard soldiers swarmed Washington, DC, and President Trump has threatened other cities with the same.
Crypto is now king in this country, especially if you’re Trump or one of his sons, who are amassing millions from, in my view, some of the most corrupt financial schemes imaginable. Charlie Kirk’s murder has, once again and with more vitriol than ever, brought political violence to the fore.
You can feel democracy short-circuiting, with every AI-generated edgelord meme posted on official government accounts.
One of the most visible changes of 2025, and among the most consequential, is the tech industry’s embrace of President Trump. The industry’s elite have fallen in line, demonstrating their allegiance with increasingly grotesque displays of submission. So what the hell happened to Silicon Valley? To find out, WIRED editor at large Steven Levy traveled to San Francisco, where he first learned to love tech’s counter-cultural renegades in the early 1980s. The question now is whether the bid to mollify Trump is one big transactional business ploy—or if it signifies a much darker ideological shift.
At WIRED, we once saw ourselves as chroniclers, even champions, of an industry that seemed to transcend politics. This year, though, we’ve been clear about where we stand: We’re profoundly concerned about the United States’ authoritarian turn and the tech industry’s complicity in Trump’s actions. And we’re committed to continuing our coverage.
So committed that we decided to take to the streets: If you live in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin, New York, or Washington, DC, you might notice the cover of this issue as a mural, a digital billboard, or a wheatpasted poster. We wanted you to see what we saw, over many months of covering DOGE, ICE, and the rest of it. Tech leaders got what they wanted—a seat at the table with a would-be king, and a chance to haggle over the rules that govern their businesses. But remember: It’s your future that they just might gamble away.
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