The 'Little Tech Agenda' Becomes a Manifesto for Trump 2.0
Deregulation, spending cuts, H1-B visas for legal immigration. Are these now Trump administration policy?
Drew Clark
If there was a defining moment in the 2024 election, in hindsight, it was not the assassination attempt on Donald Trump. It was not J.D. Vance’s unverified claims about dogs and cats being eating by immigrants in Springfield, Ohio. It was not the photo ops at McDonalds, Madison Square Garden, or the garbage truck.
It was, instead, an obscure blog post, “The Little Tech Agenda,” written by two wonky (if rich) Silicon Valley insiders, founders of their eponymous Venture Capital firm, Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz.
The 12 Days of Broadband (click to open)
- On the First Day of Broadband, my true love sent to me:
An extra-planetary-life-promoting tech billionaire set on electing a president. - On the Second Day of Broadband, my true love sent to me: 23 million served by the Affordable Connectivity Program.
- On the Third Day of Broadband, my true love sent to me:
3rd year without the Federal Communications Commission having spectrum auction authority. - On the Fourth Day of Broadband, my true love sent to me:
$42.5 billion in Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment funds already allocated. - On the Fifth Day of Broadband, my true love sent to me:
5,500 active satellites currently in Low-Earth Orbit. - On the Sixth Day of Broadband, my true love sent to me:
More than 6 years of service at the FCC by Commissioner and Chairman-designate Brendan Carr. - On the Seventh Day of Broadband, my true love sent to me:
More than 70 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually consumed by data centers in the U.S. - On the Eighth Day of Broadband, my true love sent to me:
$8.1 billion dollars in annual Universal Service Funds. - On the Ninth Day of Broadband, my true love sent to me:
$90 billion in global telecom Merger & Acquisition deals value in 2024. - On the Tenth Day of Broadband, my true love sent to me:
100 broadband-related rulemakings at the FCC relying on Chevron Deference. - On the Eleventh Day of Broadband, my true love sent to me:
Nearly 11 years to complete the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, complete with defaulted locations. - On the Twelfth Day of Broadband, my true love sent to me:
More than a dozen policy-makers and pro-tech thinkers echoing the Andreessen-Horowitz “Little Tech” agenda.
The agenda, on the surface, is decidedly modest. Claiming not to support “Big Tech,” the authors want regulatory agencies to be more hands off to startup tech companies, specifically those innovating in cryptocurrencies and artificial intelligence. And they wanted to stop a proposal to tax unrealized capital gains.
In many ways, “The Little Tech Agenda” has gone from being the tail wagging to the dog barking: Observers seeking to deduce how Trump will govern in his next administration will do better to study the Andreessen-Horowitz document than anything else said or written by Trump or Trump campaign officials.
