The scene opens confusingly. The camera zooms too close to the president’s face; the table at which the tech executives are seated seems far too long. Mark Zuckerberg is there, and Bill Gates and Tim Cook and Satya Nadella and Sam Altman and on and on, a baker’s dozen or so of Silicon Valley’s most powerful people—cutthroat competitors all—united here to pledge allegiance to Donald Trump.
The introduction from Trump is characteristically both overgilded and confusing: “It's an honor to be here with this group of people. They're leading a revolution in business and in genius and every other word.” And then, about 90 seconds in, the pandering begins.
This was Donald Trump’s dinner with tech leaders at the State Dining Room in the White House on Thursday evening, broadcast in part for all to see on C-SPAN. It’s in many ways a remarkable document, the culmination of months of Big Tech cozying up to the administration.
One by one, Trump asked the executives how much they were investing in the United States. One by one, they obliged, praising Trump’s leadership along the way. The president has run this play previously with his cabinet members, powerful people tripping over themselves in the race toward Trump’s good graces. But there was an eeriness to seeing that same dynamic among Big Tech’s braintrust, like passing a camera around to take turns wishing a distant, unloved uncle a very happy Thanksgiving.
“It’s going to be something like $600 billion through ’28,” said Zuckerberg about Meta’s domestic infrastructure investments. Sergey Brin congratulated Trump on “applying pressure” in Venezuela, two days after a US drone operator extrajudicially murdered 11 people on an alleged drug cartel boat.
Everyone else praised the administration’s AI policy. Microsoft’s Nadella shouted out Melania Trump in particular for her leadership in “skilling and economic opportunity that comes with AI.” (The first lady launched a Presidential Artificial Intelligence Challenge last month and hosted an education-themed AI task force meeting prior to the dinner on Thursday.) Google CEO Sundar Pichai and AMD CEO Lisa Su praised the Trump administration’s AI initiatives.
“I want to thank you for setting the tone such that we could make a major investment in the United States,” said Cook, referring to Apple’s pledge to put $600 billion into US manufacturing. Given that Apple made that commitment under threat of crippling tariffs on smartphones, it was a bit like thanking the school bully for setting the tone such that you can give him your lunch money.
For enthusiasm it was hard to beat Oracle CEO Safra Catz, who had previously served as a member of Trump’s transition team. “You've unleashed American innovation and creativity. All the work you're doing in basically every cabinet post in addition to what's coming out of the White House is making it possible for America to win,” Catz said. “I think this is the most exciting time in America ever.” And with that, after a quick joke about his rumored demise, Trump opened up the floor to questions from the media. If you watch closely, you can catch Zuckerberg giving someone across the table an eyebrow raise for the ages.
Trump loves a banquet, which presumably means he loves a seating chart. Zuckerberg sat directly to Trump’s right, while Gates scored a chair next to Melania Trump on the left. Sergey Brin and his “really wonderful MAGA girlfriend”—Trump’s words—Gerelyn Gilbert-Soto sat directly across from the president. (Gilbert-Soto comes by that praise honestly; in addition to being an ardent supporter of Trump online, she has posted on X that “this world is a spiritual battlefield built on pagan roots, you can’t escape it,” specifically calling out Burning Man, Halloween, Christmas, and the US government as evil. This was on Wednesday.)
Emily Post fans will have already read into the significance of who sat where. “The host or hostess of an official luncheon or dinner seats the guests according to rank,” according to the etiquette guide. “Guests who have no protocol ranking are seated according to the unspoken rank the host assigns to them.” Pity Nadella, seated in the table’s hinterlands.
(You may have noted the absence of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang. It’s unclear whether they weren’t invited or had a scheduling conflict, but between DOGE, The Washington Post’s hard-right turn, and Nvidia’s dealmaking, it’s safe to say they’re already in Trump’s good graces.)
There’s also the matter of who got to speak and who didn’t. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman did, while Meta Superintelligence Labs leader Alexandr Wang did not. White House AI and crypto czar David Sacks got prime speaking placement, while his podcast cohost Chamanth Palihapitiya stared quietly at his stemware.
Even more telling than who didn’t speak is what wasn’t said. The topic of immigration, critically important to the future of the US tech industry—and surely of personal significance to the many immigrants seated at the table—went unmentioned. Other than Cook’s rosy allusion, the potentially devastating effect of tariffs on consumer tech prices was off the table. And while it likely would have been too much to ask, particularly for this audience, the question of how exactly the US plans to power all of this AI innovation, and the accompanying, astronomical environmental and consumer costs, didn’t even amount to an afterthought.
For years, a convenient shorthand for the average person’s relationship with Big Tech has been that you’re the product. That’s still true. But as the most powerful executives in America continue to kowtow to a president who is systematically dismantling the foundations of democracy, it may be time for another axiom: The only principle is power.
