MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
The biggest names in tech dined with President Trump at the White House last night. The event provided a photo op showing harmony between Washington and Silicon Valley. But NPR's Bobby Allyn tells us, behind the scenes, it's a different story dominated by the Trump administration's aggressive actions against tech in federal courts. Bobby covers technology, and he's with us now. Bobby, good morning.
BOBBY ALLYN, BYLINE: Good morning.
MARTIN: OK. So starting off, who went to this event, and what happened?
ALLYN: So it was the tech industry's top CEOs. That includes Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, Apple's Tim Cook, Google's Sundar Pichai and OpenAI's Sam Altman and dozens of others. Many of them, you might remember, were at the Capitol for Trump's inauguration in January, and that was seen back then as Silicon Valley coming together and showing support for Trump. Last night, they were back together for a dinner at the White House, and that followed a meeting on AI, on education and AI. First lady Melania Trump is chairing a task force on that subject. The one conspicuous absence was Elon Musk. As we know, he formerly was a White House adviser but had a big falling-out with Trump. And Musk claimed on X that he was invited to the White House dinner but that he unfortunately could not make it.
MARTIN: So situate this dinner for us. I mean, people may remember that the relationship between Silicon Valley and the White House during Trump's first term was strained. So what about now?
ALLYN: Yeah. Well, there's what some might call the kissing-the-ring optics - right? - tech executives, you know, promising new U.S. investments, dropping diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. But what's happening under the surface, Michel, is really interesting because it doesn't match what's happening on the surface at all. In federal courtrooms across the country, the Trump administration's lawyers are pursuing really sweeping antitrust cases against Apple, against Amazon, against Meta, against Google. In fact, after a federal judge handed Google a victory recently and would not break up the company, one of Trump's top Department of Justice officials said they are not done fighting Google to rein in its power.
MARTIN: OK. But how tough is the White House really being on tech? I mean, aren't there former Silicon Valley executives in the administration helping to steer things?
ALLYN: Yeah, there are. The White House isn't pushing Congress, say, to, you know, pass tough regulations on AI or crypto. That is something of a win and a bit of a reversal from the Biden administration, which really put the focus on AI safety and consumer protection. But again, if you look at federal courts, it's a whole other story.
MARTIN: So, Bobby, before we let you go, is there any indication the administration will pause or drop any of its cases against these tech companies, which it has done in other regulatory areas, especially cases started by the previous administration in the environmental area, for example, or maybe consumer protection?
ALLYN: When it comes to these tech cases, there's no indication that the administration's planning to back off any of these. Now, if Trump wanted to, he could, right? He could instruct his administration to drop all of them, but he's not doing that. And it's worth noting that these government lawsuits, Michel, cost millions of dollars to defend against. They take years to resolve. They're just a huge headache for tech companies. Some of them are even calling for tech companies to be broken up, so they could be consequential. Now, if Trump gets annoyed with Silicon Valley for some reason, he could have his administration launch even more lawsuits and investigations into them. So that's something these executives may have been thinking about the dinner last night.
MARTIN: That's NPR's Bobby Allyn. Bobby, thank you.
ALLYN: Thanks, Michel. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
