Reid Hoffman urges Silicon Valley leaders to stop bending the knee to President Trump

Billionaire tech investor Reid Hoffman is calling on Silicon Valley’s most powerful figures to do more than express concern over the recent killings of two American citizens by Border Patrol agents. He is urging tech leaders to stop accommodating Donald Trump and to take a clearer, more forceful public stance.

In a series of posts on X and an opinion piece published in The San Francisco Standard, Hoffman warned against what he sees as quiet appeasement. “We in Silicon Valley can’t bend the knee to Trump,” he wrote. “We can’t shrink away and hope the crisis fades. Hope without action is not a strategy — it’s an invitation for Trump to trample whatever he can see, including our own business and security interests.”

Hoffman is not alone in voicing criticism, though outspoken opposition has been limited among the Valley’s elite. Alongside Hoffman, billionaire venture capitalist Vinod Khosla has been one of the most vocal figures, publicly describing the White House and its leadership as “a conscience-less administration.”

Other prominent executives have also responded to the Border Patrol incidents, albeit more cautiously. Sam Altman of OpenAI, Tim Cook, and Dario Amodei have all expressed concern, in some cases through leaked internal communications. However, most of these statements were carefully framed to separate criticism of the incidents themselves from direct criticism of the president.

That distinction is precisely what Hoffman is challenging. He argues that technology leaders wield enormous influence and that choosing not to use it is itself a political decision. According to Hoffman, “sitting on that power is not good for business. It’s also not neutrality. It’s a choice.”

The hesitation among executives is understandable. Many of the largest technology companies rely heavily on the federal government for regulatory clarity, trade policies that affect manufacturing and supply chains, and large government contracts, including defence and AI-related work. Even OpenAI faced scrutiny last November after its chief financial officer suggested — and later retracted — that the federal government could backstop the company’s loans to secure more favourable financing terms.

Hoffman’s position echoes growing frustration among rank-and-file tech workers. Thousands have signed a petition calling on their companies’ leadership to confront the White House directly, demand that Immigration and Customs Enforcement withdraw from U.S. cities, cancel all corporate contracts with ICE, and publicly denounce what they describe as violence carried out by the agency.

While some tech leaders remain open supporters of Trump — including Elon Musk and Keith Rabois of Khosla Ventures — many others appear to be attempting to remain publicly neutral. Hoffman argues that this posture is increasingly untenable.

Cook’s response illustrates the tension Hoffman is highlighting. In an internal memo, the Apple CEO said he was “heartbroken” by the violence and called for “de-escalation.” Yet, within hours of the ICE shooting that killed Alex Pretti, one of the Americans involved in the incidents, Cook attended an invitation-only screening of a documentary produced by First Lady Melania Trump.

It is this kind of contrast — private concern paired with public restraint — that Hoffman is seeking to confront. His message to Silicon Valley’s leadership is clear: remaining on the sidelines is no longer a neutral act, and continued silence, he argues, comes with consequences.