Silicon Valley’s political turn: Ex-Meta executive Nick Clegg says ‘MAGA influence is rising’

Silicon Valley’s tech companies including Meta have increasingly adopted MAGA politics in pursuit of “self-interested” motives, says former Meta executive Nick Clegg in a recent podcast.

Nick Clegg served as President of Global Affairs at Meta and quit the position in March 2025. Clegg felt it was the right time to leave the company soon after the start of the second Trump administration.

Speaking at The Rest is Money podcast, Clegg discussed how Silicon Valley shifted its political leanings from Leftists and adopted MAGA politics.

“Fast forward to now and the whole of Silicon Valley, not just Mark Zuckerberg, but all that you saw that in the inauguration have decided to, rather than shun politics, which is what they did for a long time, in my view, sensibly, they’ve decided to embrace at least Maga politics for a whole bunch of reasons – some no doubt high-minded and some more self-interested,” Clegg said.

The former UK deputy prime minister also slammed the existing nature of social media, stating, “it had gone from being human-centric to one of synthetic content heavily driven by algorithms.”

According to Clegg, Meta also carried out some efforts with an aim to curry favour with the Trump administration. At the time of departure from Meta, the CEO Mark Zuckerberg donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration funds and replaced fact-checkers with a system of community notes.

He also expressed concerns regarding the growing involvement of Palantir, creating dangerous level dependency for the clients.

The Palantir’s, the US-based spyware firm, contracts with the UK government have been the reason of growing discontent as the UK parliamentary committee labeled “Palantir the most concerning example of the public sector's over-reliance on a few major tech providers.”

The committee also urged the government to end its contract with the firm in 2027 by triggering the break clause.

According to Clegg, the role of Palantir is going to be disrupted in coming years due to rapid evolution of artificial intelligence models and AI-powered rivals.