Vox

“In my mind, this isn’t a story about Silicon Valley overall and DC overall,” said Robert Lalka, a professor at Tulane University. “Instead, what’s occurring now involves the influence of far fewer people: a very close-knit network of like-minded Trump supporters, especially if we focus on the PayPal Mafia, and the transformation of the Republican Party and its policy agenda.”

When you think of it that way, Trump’s win on the back of techno-authoritarian billionaires seems less like a seismic shift in the politics of the tech industry and more like a bunch of one-issue voters who donated lots of money and got their way.

One day after Trump declared victory, he asked Elon Musk to join him on a call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. And in the coming months, several more members of the PayPal mafia get to decide what US tech policy will be for the next four years.