The lineup left little to the imagination: Donald Trump’s inauguration this week was a who’s who of tech bros and well-established provocateurs and contrarians. This was not just the initiation of the 47th president of the United States, but confirmation that the role of “broligarch” tech billionaires has officially taken centre stage at the White House.
Under the right arm of Elon Musk’s “definitely-not-a-salute”, soundtracked by Carrie Underwood’s painfully awkward rendition of “America the Beautiful”, a new era was sworn in. And its message was loud and clear: the men are in charge, and toxic masculinity is bolder than ever.
It was inevitable – Mark Zuckerberg’s assertion, in his recent appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast, that the “culturally neutered” corporate world needs more “masculine energy” set the scene, as did Musk retweeting a post claiming that only “high-status males” can run a free-thinking “republic” – apparently no women, or “low T men”, are required.
Jeff Bezos, who has been busy with his own pumped-up transformation, got the memo, and The Washington Post refused to endorse Kamala Harris. Next to Trump’s silverback posturing, a very grim-looking boys’ club gathered at the inauguration.
So it’s interesting to consider how this is all going down at home – especially when the partners alongside these men are largely a group of very smart, very savvy women. While Zuckerberg’s cringeworthy ogling of Lauren Sanchez’s white lace bra grabbed the headlines during Trump’s big day – sparking some outlets to analyse “the meaning” of her “power cleavage” in the context of trad-wife-obsessed America – the TWAGs (tech wives or girlfriends) have long been a point of interest.
Back in Silicon Valley’s halcyon early days, the misogynistic trope of the so-called “founder hounders”, who reportedly sought out the owners of start-ups in tech capital was the talk of the town.
According to lore, there was a saying in the 2000s about dating tech bros: the odds are good but the goods are odd. New couplings were newsworthy: Miranda Kerr’s engagement to Snapchat founder and billionaire Evan Spiegel; in 2013 A-lister Lily Cole’s entanglement with former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey; the meet-cute that saw Travis Kalanick, Uber chief executive, meet his partner Gabi Holzwarth, a violinist he hired to play at an event.
These women were all accomplished in their own right; many were on the scene a long time before the money started rolling in, when tech bros weren’t the chest-beating men at the helm today, but were still mostly just the geeky guys in the corner. Priscilla Chan met Zuckerberg at a Harvard frat party while in line for the bathroom in 2003, a full year before Facebook changed the social media landscape.
Neither could have predicted the wild transformations both of their lives have undergone since. Zuckerberg is now worth an estimated $215bn; Chan, a paediatrician and philanthropist, a cool $30bn. They got married, had three girls – Maxima, August, and Aurelia – and began the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a philanthropic venture working in disease eradication research, education and community needs, in 2015. So far, so liberal.
In public Chan appears smart and thoughtful and obviously has a sense of humour considering they survived Zuckerberg gifting his wife a 7ft statue of herself and a recording of him singing their anniversary song – a NSFW version of “Get Low” with T-Pain himself. Their slightly geeky, “aspirational” marriage as it’s often deemed, has been positive in terms of Zuckerberg’s PR and, it looks like that’s still very true.
But what his clever and seemingly left-leaning wife will make of Zuckerberg now singing from the Maga hymn book will remain to be seen. Meta’s Instagram now “hides search results for ‘Democrat’” (later deemed “technical problem” on the site), and Zuckerberg has transformed from “ultimate girl dad” and “wife-guy” into a cage-fighting Trump simp. It begs the question of how Chan will feel about their daughters growing up and entering a workplace where “masculine energy” is championed by bosses like their father.
The media mogul isn’t the only bro to have radically swapped sides and agendas of late. While some, like Google CEO Sundar Pichai – married to Anjali Pichai, a chemical engineer, who is widely credited with influencing his success – maintain they are politically unbiased, others can’t help themselves. In 2016 Elon Musk criticised Trump during his first election run, only to be part of his top team this time around.
It was reportedly Shivon Zilis – a super smart Canadian technology and venture capitalist who is mother to three of Musk’s 12 children – who accompanied him to Washington to attend a pre-inauguration donor party event this week.
The 38-year-old is now a director at Musk’s Neuralink company, and is said to have met him when she was working on the board at OpenAI, the non-profit he co-founded in 2015. A high achiever, she was the youngest board member. They welcomed twins – a boy, Strider Sekhar Sirius and girl, Azure Astra Alice – in 2021, when Musk’s ex-girlfriend Grimes was also pregnant; Zilis had a third child with Musk, a vocal pronatalist who thinks only smart people should procreate, in 2024.
Zilis’s credentials speak for themselves – at her various posts in innovative tech fields, the Yale graduate has trailblazed through a male-dominated industry to lead in some of the most complex and fascinating emerging fields today.
How this all squares with Musk’s “free-thinking Republic”, who knows? As an accomplished woman who would, one would assume, want the same opportunities for her daughters, while she is effusive about her husband’s industry talents, you can’t see her championing the Trad Wife mindset anytime soon.
Trump’s next term with the tech bros in tow already looks set to further embolden the toxic masculinity that women in these male-dominated industries have spent years trying to overcome
Meanwhile, his ex, Grimes, who separated from Musk in 2021 after three years of dating, had something to say about her ex’s odd “nazi-like” salute, performed during his big moment at the Capitol One Arena this week.
Denouncing Nazism and the far alt right, she tweeted yesterday: “I am not him. I will not make a statement every time he does something. I can only send love back into a world that is hurting.”
As for Sanchez, the headlines are still rolling. Despite one newspaper dubbing her “billionaire Bezos’ bombshell” she is in fact an accomplished businesswoman who owns an aerial filming company for film production.
In another life, she was a news anchor and journalist. A curious position for a woman about to marry a man who recently came under fire for blocking his newspaper’s endorsement of political candidates widely seen as a move intended to keep in the good books of a revenge-seeking president.
Trump’s election victory has already accelerated corporate America’s return to more conservative stances. By signing executive orders to axe DEI departments designed to promote diversity, equity and inclusion at work, Trump will have already affected the chances of many women who were being encouraged to thrive in industries where representation is a problem. And in a world of AI operating modelled on a white cis-male worldview, it really is.
Trump’s next term with the tech bros in tow already looks set to further embolden the toxic masculinity that women in these male-dominated industries have spent years trying to overcome. Smart, ambitious women leading the way for younger generations – their own daughters – some of whom met visionary geeks, and now find themselves married into the manosphere.
But it’s the future of their fortunes, rather than their daughters that seems to be the main preoccupation for now. It’s hardly a surprise that Big Tech is cosying up to the Republicans, despite many, including Musk and Zuckerberg, strongly opposing Trump the first time around.
Trump has offered massive tax cuts for billionaires – 12 of his political appointees, including the world’s wealthiest person, Musk, are billionaires; 26 have fortunes that exceed $100m – and promises no limitations on power for the powerful.
In the abyss of unregulated social media, it’s a perfectly manicured hellscape, ripe for the toxic agenda of men determined to create the world in their own image: rich, white and on the right. But will their smart and ambitious wives and partners fall in line? Or will the TWAGs have the other ear of their partners to offer a more female-centred perspective? One thing’s for sure – the world will be watching to see if the Tech Bros are listening.
