This weekend, a former Manhattan real estate developer and one-time crypto critic will be in Nashville to speak at Bitcoin 2024, the world’s largest bitcoin conference.

As Forbes reports, “Trump will give a 30-minute keynote address Saturday during the conference’s final day, in a speech that will likely attempt to court voters and capitalize on support he has already received from key cryptocurrency figures like the Winklevoss twins” of early Facebook fame.

Times have certainly changed.

Indeed, it would’ve been hard to imagine, just 10 years ago, that a 78-year-old Republican presidential nominee would be beating the hip, cool, trendy party of Barack Obama at its own technology game. But here we are.

“A sea change is underway in the tech industry,” write Robert Bellafiore and Jon Askonas at City Journal. “It is increasingly not just permitted, but downright fashionable, for technologists to reside on the political right. Moments after the Trump assassination attempt, Elon Musk ‘fully endorse[d]’ the former president. In the following days, venture capitalist and PayPal alumnus David Sacks spoke at the Republican National Convention, leading venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz announced their support for Trump, and Trump tapped former venture capitalist J.D. Vance as his running mate. A new Trump super PAC enjoys the backing of Palantir’s Joe Lonsdale, the Winklevoss twins … and Musk himself.”

We might also consider a recent comment from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, he of the infamous infusion of nearly half a billion Zuckerbucks into the 2020 election to help get out the vote in the Democrat-controlled urban areas of the narrowly decided swing states. Perhaps, having seen the error in his ways; and perhaps, having seen the electoral writing on the wall; and perhaps, wanting to hedge his bets should a Republican-controlled Congress in 2025 seek to do away with the Section 230 protections that allow social media sites like Facebook to censor conservative speech while enjoying the legal protections of platforms as opposed to publishers — perhaps, given all these factors, Zuck thought it might be wise to send a shoutout to the assassination-dodging, fist-pumping former and perhaps future president.

“Seeing Donald Trump get up after getting shot in the face and pump his fist in the air with the American flag is one of the most badass things I’ve ever seen in my life,” said an admiring Zuckerberg recently, adding, “On some level as an American, it’s like hard to not get kind of emotional about that spirit and that fight, and I think that that’s why a lot of people like the guy.”

According to Trump’s brief Bitcoin 2024 speaker bio, he “announced his support for the American Bitcoin industry in May 2024, advocating for financial freedom and the growth of the U.S. Bitcoin industry on the global stage.” That seems to be the message, then: One party regulates and thereby oppresses innovation and entrepreneurship, while the other party deregulates and thereby encourages the same.

But it’s not just financial freedom; it’s also freedom of speech. The Left’s sordid history of suppression has always irked us, and it likely turns off technologists, too. Big Tech’s dirty work on behalf of the Democrats reached its zenith in the election-rigging censorship of the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story. But things began to turn in 2022, when Elon Musk purchased Twitter and thereby established a free-speech beachhead on social media.

Today, even the history-rewriting, Harris-protecting, Trump-hating shills at Axios are sounding the Trump-Tech alarm:

A significant chunk of the tech industry’s money and power is lining up behind former President Trump. … Silicon Valley was once solidly Democratic, with just a handful of Republican outliers. Now its red camp is growing and throwing around its weight. … Venture capital billionaires Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz each will make donations to Trump’s re-election effort [and] are following hot on the heels of Elon Musk’s announcement that he would endorse Trump and form a PAC to aid his campaign.

Not to be lost in all this is the Trump campaign’s other tech proponent. While he’s most noted for his bestselling memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, J.D. Vance is not only the first Millennial to appear on a major party’s presidential ticket; the retired Marine and Yale Law grad is also the second venture capitalist to do so, Mitt Romney having been the first.

As Bellafiore and Jon Askonas write: “Republican megadonor and Vance mentor Peter Thiel, of PayPal and Palantir, has long been the exception proving the rule of tech’s alignment with liberalism. Not anymore. The nascent ‘tech bros for Trump’ movement demands an explanation.”

That explanation involves the tech industry doing what it should’ve done long ago: protect its own interests as a growing industry. They continue:

The Trump-Vance ticket has shown a far greater openness to new technologies. Trump can tout a track record of cutting regulations. He has promised to “Make America First in AI” by, among other things, creating “industry-led” agencies to oversee AI development. He will speak at a major Bitcoin conference later this month. For his part, Vance hails from the venture capital scene, reported owning six figures’ worth of Bitcoin in his public financial filings, and has taken a strong public stance in favor of open-source AI.

If Donald Trump retakes the White House, it’ll be in large part because he patiently went to work in the past four years growing the Republican base — whether they be blacks or Hispanics or blue-collar workers or safety-conscious suburban moms.

As for Big Tech’s longtime dalliance with the Democrat Party, perhaps they’ve finally been mugged by reality.