BIG INTV: Silicon Valley Tech Workers’ Campaign to Get ICE Out of US Cities

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1:59From WIRED, this is The Big Interview. I'm Katie Drummond. In 2017, when President Trump issued a series of executive orders instituting a travel ban on foreigners from certain countries, largely those with a majority Muslim population, people all over the United States vigorously protested the policy. Among them was Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who joined a demonstration at the San Francisco airport. At the same time, tech industry leaders like Apple and Amazon actively considered legal action against the administration over bans on visas. Some argued that the pushback from big tech worked to delay and temper Trump's plans.

2:36How times have changed. On Saturday, hours after federal agents shot and killed ICU nurse Alex Preddy in the streets of Minneapolis, tech CEOs like Apple's Tim Cook, AMD's Lisa Su, and Zoom's Eric Wan attended a private White House screening of Melania, a documentary produced by Amazon MGM Studios. The timing and the stark contrast of those tech leaders' attitudes back then compared to now was not lost on a group of Silicon Valley workers who'd recently launched IceOut.Tech, essentially an open letter to their bosses. In the letter, they acknowledge the considerable influence the tech industry has in this moment and ask their leaders to use that leverage to demand that ICE leave American cities.

3:19Over a thousand tech employees have now signed on and momentum continues to grow. When I read the letter, I knew I wanted to hear more from these workers. Two signatories, Pete Worden and Lisa Kahn, jumped on the phone with me earlier this week.

3:43Thank you so much for joining me. I'm really thrilled that you're able to be here. It's great to be here. Thank you for having us. Yeah, of course. What a moment. So let me start. You both work in the tech industry. You have for a long time. You're among the many, many who've now signed the Ice Out letter and joined the Ice Out.Tech movement that has now been widely shared and circulated among people in Silicon Valley. Now, that movement and the website actually launched earlier this month after the tragic shooting of Renee Good, obviously a Minneapolis resident. Tell me, each of you, maybe Lisa, we'll start with you.

4:17What made you decide to put your name on this letter? It is particularly in this moment in the tech industry, it is no small thing to put your name out there on a document like this. Tell me about that for you. Yeah, I signed the letter for a bunch of reasons. I think one of the primary ones is it feels that we are entering an economic and governance crisis when the government starts killing people on the streets and then denying or reframing what is clearly documented. It's really a bad situation. Just purely thinking about the economics of it, in those circumstances, capital starts to flee, talent leaves, and it will take decades to recover from a situation like this.

5:01businesses are not going to invest where employees fear for their safety and where communities are being terrorized. And tech hubs and tech leaders and employees are especially vulnerable because our talent is so mobile. People can and will leave, start companies elsewhere, choose to work elsewhere. And this is not hypothetical. This is happening in front of us right now. And so I suppose it is risky within the tech community and when thinking about potential retaliation from the Trump administration, but the stakes are too high not to act and not to speak up. It feels like a no-brainer to me.

5:38Pete, what about you? So much like Lisa, there were a lot of reasons behind this, but a big one was seeing how much courage the people of Minneapolis were showing. They were literally, and they still are literally putting their bodies at risk of being beaten or murdered to save their neighbors. And so the fact that nobody in the tech industry was willing to risk a ding to their career in order to actually do whatever we can to stop this happening, save people's lives, felt like it was the least I could do. And the other side as well is that I know a lot of my former colleagues, you know, I spent five years at Apple, seven years at Google.

6:30A lot of them are too afraid to speak up. And I'm a startup founder. There may be retaliation if I can't raise funding for my startup because people like Marc Andreessen do hold a lot of sway in the industry. but I'm not going to get fired. And a lot of my former colleagues are rightfully afraid that they will get fired if they speak up. I want to ask you both about that for a minute. I want to ask about the difference you've seen in the tech industry from the 2016 Trump administration to today. How would you characterize the way that tech leadership has shown up? And what about the workers? What has changed to you in that decade?

7:17I think there's been a pretty significant power shift away from the employees in the tech industry and in most industries. 2016 through 2021, retaining employees was a top business priority. It really mattered to companies. Talent was considered the most precious resource. And companies couldn't hire fast enough. Perks were abundant. and layoffs hadn't really happened. It was considered bad leadership and a failure as a CEO to lay people off. Mark Zuckerberg was very proud of his record never having laid people off. And so employees had a lot of power. And we saw this in 2020, I think as sort of the peak moment during George Floyd and the sort of DEI moment where employees put a lot of pressure on the employers to make statements, to stand up, to speak out.

8:11And a lot did performatively, maybe some authentically, but it was clear that employees had a lot of power. As the economy started to shift and companies started to do layoffs in 2021, 2022, employees lost a lot of that power because retaining them wasn't as important. And so we started to see Coinbase in some ways was a real leader in this way. Coinbase both was one of the first big companies to do layoffs. And Brian Armstrong was one of the first CEOs to say no talk about politics in the workplace. And so there was sort of this correction that happened where companies were much less willing to listen because listening to their employees just didn't matter as much.

8:52If they wanted to leave, they could leave. It would save the company in severance. So I think that's one big distinction is the dynamic of worker power in the tech industry and probably also in other industries. I imagine this is going to shift back. These things always do. But we are still in a moment where employee power is not as high as it was a decade ago and certainly five years ago. Yeah. And if I can add to that, I think another aspect is there's a lot more willingness on the administration to go after people in industry who step out of line. Yeah. If you're a tech CEO with a large company and you do not kiss the ring, you're going to be targeted.

9:38You're going to have the power of the federal government used against you in a vindictive way. So in some ways, I actually sympathize with the CEOs because this is not a choice that anybody ever expected to have to make between free speech and having your company destroyed. Yeah, there's so much there. And certainly, you know, when I talk to people at different companies in the tech industry or sort of outside observers, I mean, certainly, Lisa, to your point, there is that that power shift and that dynamic. And then, Pete, of course, I mean, the Trump administration has been very open and very overt about, you know, what could potentially happen to, let's say, an Apple if Tim Cook doesn't get in line.

10:25And so there is that sort of business imperative that they're dealing with. At the same time, I think there is this open question of, and Lisa, you alluded to this a minute ago, how much of what happened on behalf of tech executives from 2016 to 2020 when they were speaking out, right, when they were sort of decrying, you know, the Trump administration's immigration policies, for example, how much of that was performative? and how much of that was sincere and how to what extent do some of them now see this as just an open invitation to be who they really are and to sort of practice what they really have wanted to for a long time do you have any thoughts around that or ways that you would characterize it that maybe for someone like me sitting in New York City I might not be as close to I am generally an optimist and I generally think that people are good and when people aren't good it's because of their circumstances, not any kind of innate evil.

11:21You know, my sense of the psychology of a lot of tech CEOs, especially those that are also founders, and this is speaking as a founder myself, is at some point the company becomes their ideology and protecting the company, keeping the company safe, succeeding, protecting employees, shareholders, if you have them, investors, et cetera, is the ideology and is the prevailing motivator. And so I think when the culture and the power dynamics are such that being on one side of an issue is more favorable, it's easier to speak up. And when there could be harm to the thing that feels like life or death for you as a founder, it's a lot harder just to speak up and to be critical.

12:11And so, you know, It's hard for me to truly believe that in a decade, people's ideals, people meaning tech CEOs' ideals and values, have completely changed. I just, everything I know about how people change their minds and what persuades people suggests that doesn't really happen. So I don't think it's that this is somehow giving them permission to be their true selves, but rather that it is more beneficial to companies in 2026 to be quiet. And I think that's what's unique about this moment and so important about this moment is maybe that was true two weeks ago, but I actually don't think that's necessarily true anymore.

12:57And a key distinction between 2016 and now that we didn't speak about is how much more brutal the Trump administration is and how much more is at risk. The brutality of ICE is so much greater. Trump's corruption is so much more blatant. And there are a lot of things that are harmful to the tech industry, the very foundation of the tech industry. Scientific research has been cut and is underfunded. Economic stability is at risk. Our ability to attract global talent, all these things are hurting, and that is going to hurt these companies in turn. So while perhaps in the short term, being friendly, speaking publicly in favorable ways towards the administration is beneficial to the companies, holding fixed this idea that the company is the ideology and protecting the company is the ideology, I still think we could reach CEOs of the top 10 tech companies and ask them to speak up.

13:55because their companies are at risk if this continues. Yeah. Pete, anything to add on that? Yeah, I do think that, you know, I can't know what's in people's hearts, but there's been this dynamic around we used to lionize tech startup founders. Like they would be held in universally high esteem. You know, everybody thought what they were doing was cool. and the tech industry won we became a dominant industry and that came with a whole different dynamic around being held accountable people not liking everything you're doing and i really feel like that shift from being given a lot of leeway because you were the scrappy underdog to being you know owning massive parts of the economy means that you are going to get a lot more criticism and i can't know but i have to believe that that was shocking to a lot of people who'd been a lot of the top-end tech ceos who'd been used to very friendly treatment by the media and the public.

15:14And suddenly they were being treated like the CEO of Exxon or something. And that had to be a shock. And I think it's hard for people to change their self-perception away from being the underdog. And when you're the underdog, punching is not as bad as when you're a bully and you're punching down. So if you see yourself as punching up, but the world sees you as punching down, it's challenging to change that. Well, Lisa, you mentioned a minute ago that that what has happened in Minneapolis in the last few weeks has tipped the scales, right? It has really changed the conversation. I'm curious to hear from both of you about sort of behind the scenes, right, among colleagues, among friends in the industry.

15:56What have those conversations been like in the last couple weeks? What are people saying? What are they worried about? What are they thinking? One thing that I've observed is this is not just folks on the left. There's a really, really big tent. We're hearing from people who identify as moderates and independents and libertarians and Republicans. And people who also have never really been politically active before. And we're seeing a big range of roles, engineers, CEOs, directors, VPs, people at the big tech companies, people at the AI labs, startup founders, VCs. Many people in the tech industry have been troubled about this administration from the beginning.

16:33But these violent attacks on our neighbors and desire to suppress dissent is a breaking point for it to come out. we've seen in the last 18 19 days since this pledge has circulated exponential growth and interest from all these companies across the political spectrum and across a variety of roles and that is unique absolutely and for my side it's really just that seeing the murder of two innocent people on video in the most brutal way even people who do not follow politics and i can totally understand why people do not want to deal with you know everything that's been going on for the last few years just people couldn't ignore that and people really responded to that in a way of saying, look, this is wrong.

17:28Like, this is obviously wrong. And I think that that has been the big difference I've seen in conversations with people across the political spectrum.

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20:00Now, when Wired first reported on this open letter on this list, which was, I think, maybe 10 days ago, you had a few hundred signatures, right? Yeah. You now have over a thousand. We're talking on Wednesday. This will come out on Friday, which is remarkable, right? That's many, many, many people. But the tech industry is a huge business, right? Amazon alone employs over a million people in the United States. Pete, I know that you talked a little bit earlier about fear. I have to ask, why do you think this list isn't in the tens or hundreds of thousands of names by now? Where is everybody else?

20:34So there's a very real fear of retaliation. if you're in a big tech company by speaking out you're marking yourself as somebody that the trump administration will demand that that big tech company fires you or the tech company will suffer harm to its business and in even if you're a startup like we think of startups as these like crazy renegade you know the romantic ideal is this like we're crazy renegades you know sort of march into the beat of our own drummer but the reality of the venture capital industry is if somebody like mark andreessen is saying i will not do business with people who are against the trump administration which is really feels like a lot of what's coming from some of the top people in the VC industry, even VCs who are sympathetic, they're going to have to do deals with the Andresen Horowitz in the future.

21:41Just having a few key influential people in the venture capital industry means that even startups who are all supposed to be about, you know, think different, and all of these other slogans we've been throwing around for years, like glorifying ourselves, there's actually a very centralized system that makes it very costly to go against the handful of big figures who are at the top of this industry. Have either of you spoken with anyone directly who didn't want to sign on, who decided not to? So I definitely have multiple people at Google that I've spoken to who are absolute believers in this, but they are too afraid to put their names behind this.

22:34Wow. Most people that I've spoken to are putting their ethics above any fears that they have. I've talked to a couple people who said, I don't think I'm allowed to sign this. And that was sort of the end of it. But those same people might be more comfortable posting internally in Slack or having a conversation internally in Slack. For instance, we've seen there was reporting that there was a Slack channel within Palantir where folks were expressing concerns, talking about this. And that's a different effort than our effort, which is great, which is OK. So if companies, if employees of companies get inspired reading about this, seeing it, but maybe feel that handling things internally is more effective, fabulous.

23:20Do it. I wanted to ask you about Palantir, actually. For some companies whose work is so tied to ICE, right, and so reliant on those government contracts, so like Palantir is a great example, it may not be realistic from a business perspective, right, from a financial perspective, or at least so the argument goes, right, that companies being asked to cancel contracts they have with ICE, which is one of the asks in the ICE Out letter, that that just might not be within the realm of possibility. How do you respond to that, to that idea? I would say that if you look at Palantir, it's not like they're going to go bust if they turn down the ICE contracts.

24:02And I think what a lot of people aren't realizing on the business side is Trump is not going to be in power forever. And people are looking at what these companies are doing for the long term. People are not going to forget that Palantir was a key enabler of ICE, and that has benefits for them right now with this administration. But down the line, they have publicly allied themselves as keen supporters of this horrific brutality. and you know even not thinking about morality like that's not going to be good for business yeah yeah the short-term thinking versus long-term absolutely do you both feel and sort of in your experience does that kind of internal pressure work i mean i'm talking about sort of palantir employees in company forums questioning the ethics the business logic of of the company's work with ice or there are other examples you know earlier this week google deep mind employees really pressed their leadership over sort of how are you going to protect us from ICE and from everything going on.

25:13Does it work? Are they listening? Is it effective? Kim Scott, former Google and amazing author, coach, wrote about this effect for The Times last year where she talked about how CEOs are rarely the first to break with perceived political consensus and that only when they feel pressure from a range of folks in their organizations, from their peers, from their friends and family, and from their employees, will they seriously consider shifting their positions? So yes, if it becomes untenable, it does work. Already we've seen Sam Altman made a statement internally in response to pressure from employees.

25:50We've seen Dario and Daniella from Anthropic, a number of other leaders have made statements in response to this. So it does work. There's no question that it works. What I think is interesting is we may not know what's working. because it is totally fair game for CEOs who maybe are in tuxedos at movie screenings at the White House to be having private conversations that are never reported. That may be more effective than making public statements. That may be more effective than speaking up at all hands and making declarative statements. Trump was in Washington over the weekend, and he was with a lot of these people this weekend.

26:27And it does seem, as of today, that things are changing in Minnesota. So we may not know exactly what's going on, but there's no question that being a thorn in the side of a lot of these leaders, they notice that there's a thorn in their side and they want to pull it out one way or another. Sure. And I think just to add to that as well, one of the first places that pressure shows up is in recruiting. And even though general tech employees are now treated as disposable, essentially, and they've lost a lot of their bargaining power and leverage, in the field of AI, there's still very fierce competition for talent.

27:10And if you're an AI researcher, and you're looking around and you look at a company that's doing all of this really controversial, brutal stuff, that's not going to be attractive to you. You're going to worry about your own reputation having that on your resume. And so that's the most immediate place where, you know, once candidates start turning down offers at these companies and the feedback is that they don't want to work for somebody who's causing this much harm, that is very quick to go up the chain in my experience. That's really interesting. That's a good point. I'm curious too. I mean, you mentioned, you know, several of these executives at the Melania screening at the White House over the weekend, auspicious timing.

28:05But you're right that sort of prior to that and then sort of subsequently this week, you know, Tim Cook issued a public statement, Sam Altman issued a statement internally, anthropics leaders and so on. What do you make of that? Is it too little too late? Does it feel performative? Or are you sort of of the mind that the more of these leaders speaking out in any forum, internal, external, the better, just bring it on? I applaud it. You applaud it. Absolutely. Come join us. This is a broad coalition. This is not about purity tests. This is about trying to make practical change happen. And anybody who's helping with that, we're super happy to be working alongside them.

28:50Who are we still waiting to hear from? Whose voice in this have we not heard who might really move the needle, who really matters in Silicon Valley? Alphabet. it. Amanda, I don't know if we're getting. I think Mark might be in his mega era. But who knows? Who knows what is being said behind closed doors, truly? Sure. Yeah. And I'm hoping to see more from the, as a startup founder, to see more from the venture capital industry. You know, like I said, I think the dynamics of that industry make it very hard to break from the pack, even though everyone likes to think of themselves as contrarian. but the costs of doing that in the VC industry can be very high but once it becomes acceptable to speak out about this I think that that's gonna open up a lot of other people in the industry give them permission to support this and so I'm really hoping some of the leaders like some of the people that I've, you know, Vinod Kozler, who was an investor in my first startup, you know, it's been great to see him being very vocal.