By Jacob Adelman

A cryptocurrency promoter is set to helm the nation's commodities regulator. An online-payment entrepreneur has been nominated to lead its space program. An electric-car, aerospace, and social-media mogul -- the world's richest person -- is overseeing the dismantling of long-established federal agencies.

An unprecedented number of figures from a single industry -- technology -- are assuming posts in the Trump administration. They are already leaving a deeper mark on Washington than past business power centers -- defense, banking, and energy -- whose executives have frequently assumed cabinet posts.

The most scrutiny so far has fallen on Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, which wields broad authority over federal spending and workforce reductions. Yet to come is a wave of appointments that will influence policy in areas ranging from cryptocurrencies to healthcare to competition with China.

"What we see now isn't different in kind from what we've seen before," says University of Texas at Austin history professor Henry W. Brands. "But it's different in degree."

A common denominator among many of these figures is their links to Musk and venture capitalist Peter Thiel, who, along with newly appointed crypto and artificial-intelligence "czar" David Sacks, are members of the Silicon Valley clique known as the PayPal Mafia -- entrepreneurs who found some of their earliest riches as founders of the payment portal. Others are in the overlapping orbit of tech investor Marc Andreessen.

Thiel and Sacks are stalwart political conservatives, long an anomaly in Silicon Valley. Musk and Andreessen swung to the right more recently amid perceived slights by the Biden administration, which they saw as overly meddlesome.

"The seeming unfriendliness of Biden toward Silicon Valley has been an important driver of why there's been such an enthusiastic embrace of Trump by some of these tech investors and entrepreneurs," says University of Washington history professor Margaret O'Mara, author of The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America.

This clique's worldview is shaped by their staggering Silicon Valley ascents. They revere personal achievement and see their own success as a mandate to lead. They scorn regulation, convinced it stifles progress not just for business, but for humanity itself. They move fast and break things, confident they are clearing the way for something better. They share the broader MAGA skepticism toward diversity, equity, and inclusion policies, which they see as elevating people based on criteria other than merit. They sympathize with advocates of strong borders, up to a point: Their businesses rely on highly skilled foreign workers.

Finally, they are very rich, so they presumably aren't in it for the government paycheck (which, in some instances, is being waived). Rather, the postings offer an opportunity to make a mark on society, while tilting policy to benefit their business niches.

"They believe they have lots of answers," says Peter Cappelli, who has examined start-ups as a management professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. "You might call it unbridled optimism, or you might call it real overconfidence."

Their impact is already being felt, largely because of DOGE, the ad hoc department led by executives on loan from Tesla, SpaceX, and X, formerly Twitter. Trump has empowered it to take drastic steps in the name of boosting efficiency and fighting waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer resources.

DOGE has sought access to vast troves of financial records maintained by the U.S. Treasury and other agencies, and was instrumental in freezing funding for the U.S. Agency for International Development. Thousands have been laid off at DOGE's behest, though some of its efforts remain stymied by court challenges.

On its website, DOGE credits itself with $65 billion in savings through detecting fraud, canceling or renegotiating leases and contracts, layoffs, and other efforts, though an analysis by The Wall Street Journal suggests the savings figures may be overstated.

Even those with few direct ties to Musk come steeped in the same Silicon Valley culture that values questioning norms and unfettering technology.

Some see in this worldview a lack of consciousness of the negative consequences of moving fast and breaking things on a governmental scale, where the stakes are higher than at a corporate level.

"Smashing things up fast with a view to possibly rebuilding later is fine if you're running a private company and the rest of society doesn't depend on you," says Sebastian Mallaby, author of The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future, referring to Musk's DOGE efforts.

"The one thing that seems to elude him is that it's not a good idea to apply the same move-fast, break-things disruption strategy to government as you do in the private sector," Mallaby says.

There are also inherent conflicts. Democrats worry Musk could leverage his government role to steer lucrative contracts toward SpaceX. Other appointees and nominees have ties to Thiel-linked defense firms that stand to gain from heightened tensions with foreign adversaries, such as China.

"They presumably believe that if they have Trump's ear, if they're there when the sausage is being made, they'll have a chance to influence the product," says historian Brands.

Most of Musk's lieutenants at DOGE are executives from his past companies. They include Boring Co. executives Steve Davis and Riccardo Biasini, along with SpaceX human resources official Brian Bjelde, according to a fact-finding letter from Senate Democrats.

Musk associates are also among those taking more formal roles: Thomas Shedd, a Tesla software engineer, is now serving as a deputy at the General Services Administration, overseeing technological modernization; and digital-payment billionaire Jared Isaacman, founder of Shift4, has been nominated to lead NASA after commanding two SpaceX missions.

Another faction is tied to tech investor Andreessen, co-founder of venture-capital giant Andreessen Horowitz.

Scott Kupor, a managing partner at Andreessen Horowitz, has been nominated to lead the Office of Personnel Management, and Brian Quintenz, head of crypto policy at Andreessen's firm, is seeking confirmation to chair the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, where he previously served as a commissioner during Trump's first administration.

Another incoming official, Sriram Krishnan, is the Andreessen Horowitz partner who faced backlash from Trump supporters over his previous advocacy for expanding high-skilled immigration caps after he was appointed to advise on AI policy with Sacks.

The other contingent is connected to Thiel, a longtime Silicon Valley conservative who was one of the first in the sector to publicly back Trump in 2016. His firm has invested alongside Andreessen's in onetime start-ups, including Meta Platforms' Facebook, Airbnb, and Lyft.

That group includes Jacob Helberg -- a former senior advisor to Palantir Technologies, the data-analytics company co-founded by Thiel -- who has been nominated to a role overseeing economic and energy policy at the State Department; and Michael Kratsios, a former Thiel Capital executive who served in high-level roles at the Defense Department during Trump's first term and has been tapped to direct the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy in his second.

Medical technology executive Jim O'Neill, a co-founder of Thiel's fellowship program, which supports entrepreneurs who drop out of college, has been nominated as deputy Health and Human Services secretary. O'Neill also served as managing director at Mithril Capital Management, a firm co-founded by Thiel where Vice President JD Vance got his start in venture capital.

"These are people who have done business with one another," says University of Washington's O'Mara. "They are kind of the PayPal Mafia, writ large."

Write to Jacob Adelman at jacob.adelman@barrons.com

This content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 25, 2025 17:51 ET (22:51 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.