There are many oddities chasing each other in these days leading up to the official inauguration of US President-elect Donald Trump as he prepares for his second term.
There are the geographical oddities such as the idea of regaining control of the Panama Canal, of making Canada the 51st state of the union and of buying Greenland, with a rather direct response from the Danish government that has announced investments of two billion euros to defend the Arctic territory, and there are many controversial figures who have more or less officially been mentioned as recipients of an appointment within the Trump 2.0 administration. Among them are Matt Gaetz, a possible attorney general but accused of sex trafficking and drug use, Tulsi Gabbard, appointed to head the National Intelligence Service but much criticised for her international positions close to Russia and Syria before the fall of Assad, Robert Kennedy as health secretary but a notorious anti-vaccinationist, Pete Hegseth as defence secretary but without the slightest military experience as anchor of the Fox News TV channel, notoriously close to Trump’s positions, just to name those who have most captured the headlines, but the list is longer.
Among these appointments that have raised the eyebrows of most, two are of particular interest to those involved in technology and innovation, and both are also highly controversial. They are David Sacks and Jared Isaacman. Both of these appointments are daughters of the direct influence that Elon Musk has on the choices of Donald Trump, who we have already seen be absolutely attentive to the tycoon’s suggestions, starting with the choice of vice-president J.D. Vance, who grew up in the stable of Peter Thiel (Silicon Valley investor and member of the so-called PayPal Mafia, of which Musk himself is also a member).
Sacks also has in common with Musk the fact that he is of South African origin, is an entrepreneur and investor, is a podcaster, is regarded as one of the most influential figures in Silicon Valley and, according to Trump, is the person to be entrusted with policies related to crypto and artificial intelligence. He founded the social networking platform Yammer, which was acquired, only four years after its foundation, by Microsoft, and is co-founder of the investment vehicle Craft Ventures, of which he is a general partner and which has invested, among others, in Airbnb, Uber, SpaceX, and Palantir Technologies. Sacks will thus be the holder of the post, entirely new in a US administration, which Trump himself described as ‘AI and crypto czar’ with also the responsibility of overseeing the protection of freedom of expression through online channels.
Isaacman is an entrepreneur, philanthropist, pilot and commercial astronaut. He founded Shift4 Payments and Draken International, the former operates a payment platform used by a large number of restaurants and hotels in the US, the latter provides training for the US, UK and other NATO member states’ armed forces and is known to be the private entity to own the largest fleet of military aircraft. He was the commander of the first entirely private space mission to orbit the Earth, Inspiration4, and the Polaris Program mission that conducted the first civilian-led spacewalk, both of which were carried out by SpaceX spacecraft. Isaacman was appointed in December 2024 as the new administrator of NASA, the US space agency.
Two people with certainly entrepreneurial experience, linked to the tech industry and above all linked to Elon Musk, and here the first thoughts arise given that the domains over which they will have decision-making responsibility are both domains in which Musk’s companies operate. Artificial intelligence and spacetech are domains that Musk presides over with his companies xAI, which on Christmas Day announced that it had closed a six billion dollar round in which among others Andreessen Horowitz (here it should also be mentioned that Marc Andreessen, considered one of Silicon Valley’s most influential VCs, recently made public his support for Trump, challenged the fact that it is not true that the tech industry supports the democrats as many believe, and was also called upon, again by Musk, to help choose the people for the nascent Department of Government Efficiency to be headed by Musk himself), Blackrock, Fidelity, Lightspeed, MGX, Morgan Stanley, OIA, QIA, Sequoia Capital, Valor Equity Partners, Vy Capital, Nvidia, AMD, and the well-known SpaceX, which has long since positioned itself as a key partner for NASA.
Having Sacks and Isaacman in those positions will therefore, without any great doubt, be a great advantage for the companies of the pyrotechnic entrepreneur of South African origin and this, in a country that has always been attentive to conflicts of interest, to the application of anti-trust regulations and in general to maintaining a business environment that is as worthy of credibility as possible, could prove to be a problem in the medium term. Certainly Sacks and Isaacman have little experience both as politicians and as administrators of public affairs, but this cannot be considered an a priori limitation, what could instead become a real problem would be the evolution of choices and decisions blatantly in favour of Musk’s activities.
If this were to happen, it cannot be ruled out that there will be risings and that any lack of transparency could lead to a collapse of the incoming administration’s credibility. Therefore, it remains to be seen whether the Trumpian team will choose the path of all and now with the risk of creating friction both internally and in the country, or whether it will maintain ethics and transparency in these areas as well, because more than all and now it is important to go down in history and do so for the positive things that have been built.
If it is true that power corrupts, it may however also be true that putting people in power who have already largely conquered their slice of wealth and decision-making power, might turn out to be a not entirely bad choice, but this is net of personal positions, and the two characters are both fervent conservatives, to use a euphemism, and above all net of contingent scenarios, if for any reason Musk’s companies should go wrong, it is quite likely that the entrepreneur will rush to solicit the support of his friends who have come to lead NASA and the strategies on artificial intelligence and crypto precisely because of him. (photo by Jared Allen on Unsplash)
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