Tech billionaire Elon Musk and Donald Trump’s hard-line “Make America great again” stronghold of US president-elect picks Indian-born entrepreneur as artificial intelligence advisor A fierce internal conflict broke out between them.
The controversy has pitted Musk and fellow entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy against enthusiastic supporters such as far-right activist Laura Loomer and former congressman and attorney general candidate Matt Gaetz, who had an abortion. are. The spat threatens to open a rift between President Trump’s supporters over immigration, a key issue in his election victory.
Predicting what has been dubbed a “MAGA civil war,” Loomer attacked the choice of Silicon Valley venture capitalist Sriram Krishnan as the new administration’s AI policy advisor, calling it “very disturbing.” Mr. Musk went on the offensive.
Loomer is widely known as an anti-immigrant activist who persuaded Trump to highlight a false rumor that Haitian immigrants were eating pets during a presidential debate with Kamala Harris last September. , criticized Mr. Krishnan on social media for supporting visa and green card extensions for skilled workers. She said it was “diametrically opposed” to President Trump’s policies.
Her comments sparked a backlash from Trump’s most influential supporter, SpaceX and Tesla billionaire Musk, himself an immigrant from South Africa.
“There is a permanent shortage of talented engineering talent. That is the fundamental limiting factor in Silicon Valley,” Musk posted on his social media platform X on Christmas Day.
In a subsequent post, he wrote: “At the end of the day, do you want America to win or do you want America to lose? If you have the best talent in the world playing on the other team, America is going to lose. End of story.”
Musk’s stance is supported by Ramaswamy, a partner in the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), an unofficial body that Trump has said he will create, under which the two will be tasked with cutting government spending. Become.
In a lengthy social media post, Ramaswamy, the son of Indian immigrants, argued that the United States is doomed to decline without highly skilled foreign workers, arguing that American culture is “mediocre.” ”, he suggested.
“The reason why top technology companies often hire foreign-born first-generation engineers rather than ‘native’ Americans is not because Americans lack innate IQ,” he writes.
“A big part of that comes down to the keyword culture.
“For too long, our American culture has worshiped mediocrity over excellence, and that doesn’t start in college, it starts at a young age.
“A culture that celebrates prom queens more than math Olympiad champions, athletes more than valedictorians, doesn’t produce the best engineers. ‘Normal’ doesn’t cut it in the competitive global market for technical talent. And if we pretend like that, we’ll get our butts handed over by China. ”
The debate was met with fierce backlash from pro-MAGA advocates led by Loomer, who delved into racist arguments.
“@VivekGRAmaswamy knows that the Great Replacement is real,” she wrote. “My desire for the original MAGA policy I voted for is not racism against Indians. I voted to reduce H1B visas, not extensions.
“Tech billionaires can’t just walk into Mar-a-Lago, write huge checkbooks, and rewrite immigration policy so they can admit unlimited slave labor from India and China that will never assimilate. .
“You don’t even know what MAGA immigration policy is.”
Ramaswamy’s claims also drew criticism from pro-Trump podcaster Brenden Dilley, who posted: It’s a problem with America. ”
And even former Republican presidential candidate and Trump critic Nikki Haley, whose parents were Indian immigrants, posted: “There’s nothing wrong with American workers or American culture. All you have to do is look at the borders and see how many people want what we have. We should invest and prioritize Americans, not foreign workers.”
The debate is a political appeal based on an anti-immigrant message and a battle to dissuade President Trump, who during his first presidency restricted access to H-1B visas on the grounds that they were susceptible to abuse. It seemed like an omen.
However, in the recent presidential election, the president-elect expressed a positive attitude toward legal immigration of educated workers, saying he wanted to grant permanent residency to foreigners who graduated from U.S. universities.
“If you graduate from college or get a PhD, you should be able to stay in this country,” he said on the All In podcast last June.
Samuel Hammond, senior economist at the American Innovation Foundation, said the unrest points to potential future conflict within the Trump administration. “This is a sign of future conflict,” he told The Washington Post. “This is like pre-game.”
