• Donald Trump has tapped several Big Tech critics for top roles in his second administration.

• Matt Gaetz and JD Vance advocated for strict antitrust enforcement.

• Like Trump, Elon Musk has regularly criticized tech giants.

Donald Trump has selected a steady stream of loyalists he wants to serve second administration. Some of his picks were harsh criticisms of the Big Tech industry.

Trump’s choices, some of which are controversial even within GOPhave not yet been confirmed by mass vote. The president-elect pushed to skip the process by using his own break schedule power.

Big tech companies like Google, Apple, Meta, Amazon and Microsoft have attracted the likes of Matt Gaetz, Trump’s pick for attorney general, and Brendan Carr, Trump’s pick to head the Federal Communications Commission. Trump has repeatedly threatened to escalate the situation when he resumes White house.

Instead, some Silicon Valley venture capitalists are betting that deregulation in a second Trump term could spur innovation and unleash a starting boom.

Here’s what some of Trump’s picks said about the tech industry.

Brendan Carr

Carr called some of the biggest tech companies a “censorship cartel.” Carr, who already works at the FCC, wrote part of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025. In his piece, Carr wrote that the FCC should take the lead in eliminating Section 230, the law that shields technology companies from liability for third-party content.

An ally of Elon Musk, Carry recently wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed that blasted the FCC for revoking an $885 million award to Musk’s StarLink. Carr is likely to use his new perch to try to find other ways to rise Starlink and Amazon competitor Kuiper.

Carr advocated banning TikTok, a policy that Trump himself supported during his first administration but has since abandoned. It remains to be seen how the Trump administration will handle a looming deadline for TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, to cut ties with the Chinese property.

Matt Gaetz

Trump’s pick for attorney general, former Florida representative Matt Gaetz, has been criticized for years Big Tech companies.

During an appearance in 2021, shortly after Trump was banned from social media platforms following the Capitol riot, Gaetz suggested that Big Tech companies were destroying Americans’ right to freedom of expression.

“The Internet room is monitoring Silicon Valley, they think they can suppress us, discourage us,” Gaetz said at the time. “Well, you know what? Silicon Valley can’t undo this movement, or this rally, or this congressman.”

“We have a Second Amendment in this country, and I think we have an obligation to use it,” he continued.

Gaetz has also advocated for strong antitrust enforcement — a position that aligns him with current Federal Trade Commission Chairwoman Lina Khan, whose work Gaetz praised.

While a member of Congress, in 2020 Gaetz tried to pass a package of bills this would have been one of the most important antitrust overhauls in decades.

And during a Hearing of the Judiciary Committee of the Chamber last year, Gaetz said he was “concerned about monopoly power of Google,” and encouraged Jonathan Kanter, the deputy attorney general in charge of the DOJ’s antitrust division, to continue pursuing cases like Google’s.

Elon Musk

Elon Musk, whom Trump tapped to lead a new Department for Government Efficiencyhas had a tumultuous relationship with Big Tech, both as a leader in the industry and a staunch critic of it.

Musk has frequently used his huge presence on X, his social media platform, to attack Google.

In July, Musk accused the tech giant of having a the “search ban” on Trump because, according to a screenshot posted by Musk on X, the search query “president donald” did not include Trump in the first two autocomplete results. He then suggested in the post that Google was engaging in election interference.

A day later, Musk posted on X“Probably Coincidental Alphabet (Google) Employees Were Biden’s Top Donors,” alongside a chart showing political contributions from employees of top companies.

The billionaire also has a beef with Apple and its CEO Tim Cook.

Earlier this year, Musk threatened to ban them all Apple devices from its companies — which include Tesla, SpaceX, xAI and X — after the iPhone maker announced it had partnered with OpenAIanother one of Musk’s frequent tech targets.

“Apple has no idea what actually happens once they hand over your data to OpenAI,” Musk posted at the time, without adding any evidence to support his claim. – I’m selling you down the river.

JD Vance

Vice President-elect JD Vance cut his teeth in venture capital and has long been an advocate for breaking up Big Tech.

Vance said his experience in Silicon Valley taught him to be weary of Big Tech. He specifically called out Facebook and Apple, saying their business is based on attracting users to screens that are loaded with ads.

“I see the technology sector as we understand it today — and we’re really talking about digital technology, consumer internet, IT and so on — those companies that I see as fundamentally parasitic on the broader economy.”

Vance called for Google’s divestment and repeatedly praised FTC Chairwoman Lina Khan. Khan is now likely to step down, however, according to Bloomberg Newsone of Vance’s top advisers is heavily involved in choosing her replacement.

Like Trump’s nominee for the FCC, Vance has advocated narrowing Section 230.

“It seems absurd to me to think that 40 or 50 years ago, you would have had your phone service cut off because you had the wrong political views,” Vance said during a 2023 Senate hearing, according to Roll Call. “Now you are regularly denied access to modern forms of communication because you hold the wrong political views.”

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