Announcing “Democrats’ Techlash Trap”
A Comprehensive Retrospective on Democrats’ Biden-Era Turn Against Tech
Today we are releasing a report that we’ve been building for the past seven months on the virtual pages of this substack: a comprehensive look back at what the Biden Administration got right and wrong on technology and innovation.
The report is called “Democrats’ Techlash Trap” and I hope you’ll check it out here.
This report is vital to understanding where the party has shifted from being the party of innovation, and the political consequences of that shift.
One of the key things I set out to accomplish with this report was understanding exactly why so many leaders in the tech industry turned against Democrats during the Biden Administration. So over the past several months, I discussed this project with people who had close-up and behind-the-scenes perspectives on the Biden Administration’s approach to technology policy, including former administration officials, industry advocates, and Silicon Valley leaders.
The next era of politics will be shaped by artificial intelligence, advanced manufacturing, clean energy, crypto, defense innovation, autonomous systems, digital services, and global technology competition. Democrats cannot lead that era while fighting the people and companies building it. We do not need to choose between accountability and optimism. We can protect consumers, enforce the law, and address real harms while still being unmistakably pro-innovation.
But in order to embrace a tech-forward future, Democrats have to understand how and why we took a turn against tech in the Biden era - and what it cost us. We can’t chart out future without fully understanding our past.
The Party of Innovation
The report begins by reminding Democrats who we used to be.
From the Atari Democrats of the 1980s to the Clinton-Gore technology agenda to the Obama era, Democrats built a durable identity as the party of technological progress. The Atari Democrats argued that emerging industries and knowledge workers were central to economic growth. Clinton and Gore turned that vision into policy, expanding R&D, supporting the internet economy, and helping build the conditions for a historic tech boom.
Obama deepened the relationship by using digital tools in his campaigns, creating new technology roles in government, and bringing tech talent into public service. With the New Democrats Coalition in Congress came a new Democratic identity: An optimistic one that believed technology could make government work better, create jobs, and strengthen American leadership.
The Road to the Techlash
That tradition started to crack after 2016. Hillary Clinton’s loss shocked Democrats, and many looked for explanations outside the party’s own strategic failures. Facebook, Russian disinformation, and Cambridge Analytica became convenient villains and laid the foundation for a belief that technology platforms had betrayed Democrats.
At the same time, foundation-funded post-neoliberal economic thinking gained influence among party elites. A critique that began as concern about inequality and market power increasingly hardened into skepticism toward technology itself. The result was the “techlash trap”: Democrats stopped treating platforms as tools to compete on and started treating them as adversaries to be punished.
The irony is that while influential parts of the party drove the techlash forward, Democratic voters themselves never became broadly anti-tech.
What Biden Got Right
Despite my criticisms I want to be clear: it is vital not to flatten the Biden record to a pure anti-tech story.
Some of the administration’s strongest accomplishments came when the tech-friendly elements of the Administration led the way. The CHIPS Act, clean energy deployment, electric vehicle supply-chain strategy, international digital tax diplomacy, defense innovation, and the early crypto executive order all showed that Biden often had the right instincts to advance innovation and national competitiveness.
The CHIPS Act implementation effort receives special attention in the report because the Commerce Department succeeded by bringing private-sector expertise into government over the objections of Elizabeth Warren and outside groups. When Democrats combine public purpose with people who truly understand technology and markets, they can deliver a major administration victory.
Biden’s Closed Door Policy
However, too much of the administration moved in the opposite direction.
Instead of recruiting technologists and business leaders, Biden’s team often treated industry experience as a political liability. Progressive pressure over the “revolving door” made officials wary of hiring people from technology companies or even meeting with industry leaders. The result was a reflexively closed-door posture when dealing with tech executives: fewer conversations, less expertise, slower execution, and a growing sense in Silicon Valley that Democrats no longer wanted to listen.
By seeking to manage the left-wing faction of the party, the coalition managers Biden put in charge of building the Administration’s tech policy team ended up unresponsive to the politics. Voters want leaders who understand business and the economy; they do not reward an administration for insulating itself from the people building the future.
Faculty Lounge Populism
“Faculty lounge populism” describes how Biden’s tech regulation agenda was driven by elite academic theories and activist priorities – rather than the concrete concerns of voters. Biden-era tech regulators focused too heavily on abstract fights over mergers, targeted advertising, crypto enforcement, and anti-corporate symbolism while voters cared more about privacy, security, scams, prices, and practical consumer protection.
The critique is not that regulation is wrong. It is that regulation should solve problems people actually feel - an especially important lesson as inflation ramped up and became the dominant issue on voter’s minds. Biden’s regulatory teams too often conflated headline-grabbing lawsuits with a governing agenda that would resonate with consumers.
The Digital Deficit
Some might ask, what were the costs of Biden-era tech hostilities?
The Biden Administration’s anti-tech elements limited the government’s ability to maximize the societal benefits that American technology could deliver. The “digital deficit” showed up in several ways: failing to defend U.S. technology companies against discriminatory foreign regulation, allowing Obama-era digital government modernization efforts to languish, missing the chance to build a national tech jobs strategy, and moving too slowly on life-improving technologies like autonomous vehicles and drone delivery.
Sound technology policy feeds directly into good governance, and Democrats are clearly the party most closely associated with government solutions. A party that wants to make government work cannot afford to be indifferent or hostile to the digital economy.
Lose-Lose Politics
Anti-tech populism was sold within the Biden Administration as helping Democrats reconnect with working-class voters. This simply failed.
Non-college voters did not come back, while many parts of the tech community shifted rightward or disengaged. Young men, many of whom use, build, invest in, or aspire to work in technology, increasingly experienced Democrats as the HR Department party of restrictions and scolding. Democrats gave up an advantage on innovation without gaining a new coalition in return.
The path forward is a Democratic reset: rebuild relationships with innovators, recruit people who have built things and understand innovation, defend American tech leadership abroad, modernize government, connect workers to tech jobs, and tell a story of progress that is optimistic, practical, and grounded in Democratic values.
The techlash trap was built over years. Escaping it will take work. But Democrats can once again be the party of innovation.
