Who Sets the Defaults?
Silicon Valley’s political shift isn’t about ideology; it’s a recognition that power resides in the "defaults"—the upstream rules and norms that determine outcomes before a single vote is cast.
Something has shifted in Silicon Valley, and once again, the mainstream media doesn’t understand it. Over the past two years, many leading industry figures who once treated national politics as background noise have begun paying closer attention—not because they’ve undergone ideological conversions, but because they’ve grown uneasy about where power is actually exercised.
This shift is less about candidates or parties than it is about governance. It reflects a recognition that decisions shaping innovation, speech, and professional survival now occur far upstream from elections, inside systems that do not change hands when votes are counted.
Despite what the mainstream media says, this is not chiefly a story about Silicon Valley moving right or left. It is a story about understanding leverage—and about who has it.
As I argued last week, in modern politics, power does not operate where we are told to look. It does not operate primarily at the ballot box or in campaign slogans. It operates in the rules, constraints, and defaults that determine what is permitted long before any vote is cast. By defaults (a term I’m borrowing from software and platform design), I mean the rules, standards, and enforcement practices that determine what is allowed, what is risky, and what carries consequences. Those who control these parameters shape outcomes. Those who enforce them ensure those outcomes endure.
The Hidden Operating System
Defaults are rarely debated openly. Regulators embed them in rulemaking, and credentialing bodies enforce them through standards. Professional norms do the rest. Together, they decide which actions are routine, which require special approval, and which will (swiftly) end a promising career. Institutions preserve these defaults because their authority depends on them; professionals enforce them because their livelihoods do.
By the time an election occurs, these defaults are already in place. They define what elected officials can realistically change—and what lies beyond reach.
As I see it, what looks superficially like a partisan shift in Silicon Valley is better understood as a response to overregulation, enforcement, and institutional control. The contest is not over elections, but over who sets the terms under which innovation, speech, and professional survival are permitted.
The changing politics of Silicon Valley are rooted in a growing recognition of this fact: the most consequential decisions shaping American life now occur inside systems that operate upstream from elections. Bureaucratic agencies issue binding rules with limited accountability. Courts reinterpret statutes beyond their plain meaning. Credentialing boards and professional associations define acceptable belief and conduct, attaching real penalties to noncompliance. Universities train future elites according to doctrines never submitted for public approval. Media organizations shape perception long before public debate begins.
Governance by Demonstration
DEI makes this concrete. It operates as a default-setting regime—defining acceptable speech, professional risk, and advancement, and enforcing those boundaries regardless of who holds office. Those who challenge these defaults incur brutal and enduring consequences. The rest learn quickly not to risk it.
Let me illustrate how this works. In 2017, a Google engineer named James Damore circulated an internal memo questioning aspects of the company’s diversity programs. Damore cited peer-reviewed research, suggested alternative approaches to achieving diversity, and explicitly endorsed diversity as a worthwhile goal. He wrote carefully. He engaged in good faith. He sought genuine discussion.
Less than three days later, James Damore was fired.
Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, issued a statement declaring that “portions of the memo violate our Code of Conduct and cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace.” The company did not specify which portions violated which rules, nor did it engage with any of Damore’s actual arguments. There was no internal debate. There was no weighing of evidence. There was only swift, certain, and very public enforcement.
The content of Damore’s memo matters less than what happened to him—and what every other Google employee learned from his unhappy example. The lesson was unmistakable: certain questions, no matter how carefully researched or respectfully framed, are not permissible. Challenge the framework, and you will face immediate professional consequences. The defaults don’t announce themselves in an employee handbook. They reveal themselves through enforcement. And once revealed, they require no further explanation. Everyone gets the message.
This is how defaults operate. They don’t need constant defense or repeated justification. They govern through demonstration. One high-profile termination teaches a thousand employees what they dare not say. The architecture does the rest of the work.
Anyone who has built or worked inside large technical platforms will recognize the pattern. Defaults endure because most people never change them. Architecture outlasts leadership. Governance happens where rules are enforced, not where intentions are announced.
Why Architecture Always Outlasts Leadership
Silicon Valley is not merely observing this dynamic. It has lived inside it—and, at times, helped construct it. The recent political realignment within tech reflects less a change in values than a clearer understanding of leverage, and a growing unease about defaults that now constrain the very people who once benefited from them. The central question is not just who will govern next, but who will control the systems that determine what governance can do once in office.
Elections still matter. They create openings. They buy time. They can slow institutional drift and, in rare moments, reverse it. But elections cannot substitute for the long, unglamorous work of institutional control—of reclaiming authority over the defaults that shape daily life. Silicon Valley’s experience is instructive. Even an industry accustomed to shaping the future has learned that power ultimately belongs to those who design and enforce the systems everyone else must operate within.
This is the task I focus on in The Political Vise: not trembling before each election as if it were an existential threat but patiently reclaiming the commanding heights where rules are written, credentials are granted, and authority is exercised over time.
Defaults, once established, resist reversal. Time favors those who control them.Until they are reclaimed, even the most decisive election will change personnel without changing how power is exercised—or altering the direction of our national life.