GoKawiilHello and welcome to Regulator, a newsletter for Verge readers about tech politics, political tech, and how they’re muddying the waters of Washington, DC. My birthday is this week, and if you’re not a Verge subscriber but would like to wish me a happy birthday, you should subscribe here, because that would be the best gift of all. (Tips sent to [email protected] would be a very good gift, too.)
Last night, I watched Alexis Ohanian, venture capitalist and cofounder of Reddit, stun a room of Washington insiders by criticizing the Trump administration’s immigration policies. This happened in front of at least one senior administration official: Michael Kratsios, the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy and science adviser to President Donald Trump.
Ohanian was being inducted into the Consumer Technology Association’s CT Hall of Fame when he made these remarks at its annual Digital Patriots Dinner. (CTA is more widely known as the group that throws the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.) But at the end of his acceptance speech, Ohanian, whose grandparents had immigrated to America after fleeing the Armenian genocide, made what appeared to be spontaneous remarks calling for a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. After a year of watching tech CEOs supplicating themselves to Trump, this was a bit of a shock to the system. His full remarks, below:
April 24th will be the remembrance day for the Armenian genocide. It’s a sensitive word for some people here, but yes, it was a genocide. [My grandparents] fled and somehow made it through Ellis Island — uneducated, refugees of a foreign war — and this country took them in. And a few generations later, you’ve got me. The other thing is: My mom overstayed her visa for about four years before I was born, and thankfully, ICE did not round her up, because, instead, she ended up getting a green card and became an incredibly proud American citizen. And so, the other thing I’ll also mention, is that if y’all love Reddit, you love $30 billion worth of market cap, thousands of American employees, and tons of innovation — because you know Reddit data basically powered all those LLMs with training data — if you love all those things, then please keep in mind that the son of an undocumented immigrant was the one who helped bring them to life. And please — I’m in DC, I can’t help myself — we absolutely need secure borders. This country absolutely needs secure borders, and, for so many of the people who are here, they need a pathway. And please, before we generalize, and before we demonize, and before we villainize, just remember that the people who appreciate this country, often more than those of us who are lucky enough to be born here like myself, are the ones who had to earn their way in. So let’s not lose sight of that.
Ohanian, who stepped down from Reddit in 2020 and now runs the 776 Fund, has expressed similar views on social media, but it hits differently when he says it in person, to the faces of Kratsios, several other administration officials, and industry lobbyists who need to maintain good relationships with the sitting administration. This is, after all, a White House whose massive economic decisions are based on nothing more than vibes and whether they like the person they’re interacting with.
Other honorees included allies of the consumer tech industry, like Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), and Reps. Jay Obernolte (R-CA) and Ted Lieu (D-CA), who both co-chaired the House AI Task Force. Fun fact: According to Lieu, only four sitting members of Congress have computer science degrees, including him and Obernolte. (Obernolte also has the distinction of holding an advanced degree in artificial intelligence, and being the founder of FarSight Studios, a video game studio.)
Tim Apple is not falling far from the Trump
Not every tech executive is out there critiquing the Trump administration. In fact, this was the week that Tim Cook announced that he would step down as CEO of Apple, and while there’s a lot everyone can say about his relationship with Trump (including the time Cook gave Trump a gold statue), the president has a long-standing habit of bragging about how often powerful people have humiliated themselves and begged for favors, and Cook — or as he called him, “Tim Apple” — was no exception. As he recounted fondly on Truth Social:
“For me it began with a phone call from Tim at the beginning of my First Term. He had a fairly large problem that only I, as President, could fix. Most people would have paid millions of dollars to a consultant, who I probably would not have known, but who would say that he knew me well. The fees would be paid but the job would not have gotten done. When I got the call I said, wow, it’s Tim Apple (Cook!) calling, how big is that? I was very impressed with myself to have the head of Apple calling to ‘kiss my ass.’”
He then goes on to describe how often Cook “would call me, but never too much, and I would help him where I could,” and suggested that he had given Cook and Apple “3 or 4 BIG HELPS” over the years. “He makes these calls to me, I help him out (but not always, because he will, on occasion, be too aggressive in his ask!), and he gets the job done, QUICKLY, without a dime being given to those very expensive (millions of dollars!) consultants around town who sometimes get it done, and sometimes don’t.”
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