MAGA Must Resolve Tech vs. Populist Tensions

“Non-college educated whites [are] a group that is less informed, less educated than average, and as a result, they are less supportive of free trade. You have to be smart to see the invisible hand. And less smart people are less likely to see that.”

This was the opening statement of Garett Jones, an economist at George Mason University, during last month’s Harvard Conservative and Republican Conference. The audience reaction at first seemed mixed. At my table various expressions of consternation emerged: raised eyebrows, shaking heads, and a soft smattering of murmurs.

Jones continued by advocating for free trade policies and high-IQ immigration into America—what edgier right-wingers promote under the banner of “elite human capital.” But as Jones elaborated, a question shot to the top of the audience submission chart after a surge of attendee up-votes:

“Would Garett Jones be willing to trade his American citizenship for a higher IQ migrant?” The audience, perhaps, was so eager to register disapproval that they had boosted a question whose meaning wasn’t entirely clear. The question wasn’t so much a query as a protest: Love it or leave it, Jones—America is full. 

Jones’s remarks might have been well-received in the pre-Trump era of bow-tied Republicans, when “fusionism”—comprising free-market fundamentalism, social conservatism, and hawkish foreign policy—was taken for granted at elite institutions like Harvard. But right-wing political dynamics have shifted rapidly, especially among the youth, and even in the Ivy League. The question now is whether the Republican Party can withstand the winds of change.

Winning in an electoral system forces political parties to cobble together a coalition that can work toward a shared vision for the future. Party coalitions vary in coherence and are often in flux. There tend to be stable, beholden factions and less reliable mercenary factions.

For example, in the Reagan era, Evangelical voters became a beholden faction (low demand, high turnout) for the GOP. And in the Civil Rights era, black voters became a beholden faction for the DNC.

Modern mercenary factions tend to fall into two categories: apathetic (low demand, low turnout) and keen (high demand, high turnout). Apathetic mercenary factions today include Muslims, Amish, and Latinos, while keen mercenary factions include Jews, LGBTQ groups, the emerging  “crypto bros,” and now, after their strong support for Donald Trump in 2024, titans of technology.

Today, the MAGA coalition is basically a loose alliance between a beholden faction—the Populist Right—and a keen mercenary faction—the Tech Right.

On the Populist Right, Steve Bannon is perhaps the most prominent leader. The faction’s base is composed primarily of working-class whites, who have embraced Trump as a means to resist the forces destroying their communities—namely, economic globalization and mass migration. Strikingly, this year Bannon came in second in CPAC’s 2028 Republican Party straw poll, winning a respectable 12 percent of the vote.

On the Tech Right, Elon Musk reigns supreme. Major figures also include other entrepreneurs who dissent from liberal orthodoxy, such as Marc Andreessen, David Sacks, and Balaji Srinivasan. Their objectives are mixed, but generally, they just want to build things without the constraints of the Managerial Left. Their defining ethos is well-summarized by Elon’s famous question: “What did you get done this week?”

The Populist Right displacing the Religious Right in the GOP base is a notable recent shift. One important question is whether Evangelicals, the core of the Religious Right, will slide back into apathy or find a new home. Before the rise of the Moral Majority in the 1970s, the Evangelical default position was low turnout. Today, Evangelicals are particularly susceptible to anti-political rhetoric advanced by organizations like The Gospel Coalition, which emphasizes Jesus’ statement that “my kingdom is not of this world” and similar Biblical verses. Such ideas could plausibly drive Evangelicals, a mainstay of the GOP coalition, to political apathy. Alternatively, as historically-conservative Evangelical institutions like Christianity Today and Wheaton College continue to retreat from the MAGA coalition, they may find that they fold naturally into a future left-wing coalition given their vocal commitments to egalitarianism, foreign aid, and the defense of refugees.

But the coalitional changes extend beyond the Religious Right— legacy conservative fusionism in general has splintered, especially among young people. The fusionist project, advanced by conservative intellectuals like William F. Buckley during the Cold War, may have kept taxes relatively low and resisted the Soviet threat in the back half of the 20th century, but it failed to conserve the towns that today’s young people grew up in. Fusionism also failed to prevent the prioritization of foreign students and workers over young Americans. And with the memory of the Cold War fading, young Americans have few tangible reasons to remain loyal to this project. Accordingly, right-wing American students on college campuses today are eager to explore new ideas.

The Populist Right is clearly the locus of political energy at elite universities. At the same conference on Harvard’s campus last month, Steve Bannon took the stage and declared, “I am not a conservative.” The room erupted in applause—not academic golf claps, but the kind of raw energy you would expect at a political rally. Steve Bannon’s working-class attire and plain speech made for a sharp contrast with the other dressed-up, self-serious speakers—and also with the private-school-educated young people. But Bannon and the students obviously shared the same cause, one foreign to free marketeers like Garett Jones.

What explains the political shift among right-wing young people? The shared experience of failed Covid-19 policies, pervasive Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs, and the daily impacts of mass migration have pushed young Americans from all socio-economic backgrounds to embrace the ideology and rhetoric of the Populist Right. And these students are growing in number and influence on campus.

The President of the Harvard Republicans, Leo Koerner, told me that the number of active students in the organization tripled over the past year. Engagement with polarizing right-wing figures, including former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince, has increased, while previously taboo topics such as immigration and identity are being addressed head-on. Koerner added, “managing decline is not a winning strategy; we’re communicating that the interests of Americans have to come first, and increasingly, Harvard students embrace our message.” The Harvard Republicans fully endorsed Trump in 2024, solidifying the organization’s break from the legacy positions of the organization, which refused to endorse Trump in 2016 and gave a “qualified” endorsement in 2020.

While populism is a source of political will and legitimacy, the next generation of right-wing leaders won’t succeed at making America great again without technologies and capabilities that only the Tech Right can provide. Replacing bureaucrats will require large language models. Accomplishing remigration will require national security technology of the kind provided by Peter Thiel’s company Palantir. Reindustrializing the homeland will require capital and entrepreneurs capable of building new technology products here in America. 

The Tech Right has its own loose ideology, blending an industrialist sensibility with a techno-accelerationist vision for the future. With the exception of certain “transhumanist” tendencies, the Tech Right is basically pro-civilizational and can be aligned toward populist ends. The seeds of this alignment can be seen in Ohio, where Anduril, a defense technology company founded by longtime Trump supporter Palmer Luckey, is setting up shop and creating manufacturing jobs. At heart, many in the Tech Right never cared much about politics. They want to build, and along the way, they’ve realized they need to eliminate regulations and the managerial regime—hence their embrace of Trump.

The current alliance between the Tech Right and the Populist Right is held together by shared objectives: 1) Elimination of bureaucracy: Removing the endless forms, tedium, and scolding that suck up so much energy, especially American youth energy. 2) Reindustrialization: Bringing American manufacturing back, ideally by reversing off-shoring and investing in fast-growing, hard-tech companies that can create working-class jobs and strengthen national security.

The Tech Right has been relatively successful so far against the bureaucracy, primarily through DOGE, and while reindustrialization is still in early stages, the Tech Right is energized and acting fast.

But a schism in the coalition has emerged on the issue of immigration. The Populist Right favors strong borders and remigration (mass deportations), while the Tech Right has an interest in expediting legal, higher-skill immigration.

If the Tech Right collaborates on remigration, the coalition will hold together. If it doesn’t, the populists will defect (as previewed in the Christmas H-1B visa debacle). This would destabilize the Right’s grip on political power, preventing the Tech Right from accomplishing its primary objectives: elimination of bureaucracy and reindustrialization. The Tech Right has good reason to compromise and take a harder line on immigration, and if artificial intelligence holds as much potential as people like Musk and Andreessen say, then America doesn’t actually need to flood the country with coders from India.

Judging by recent comments from Bannon, the Tech Right won’t collaborate on immigration and other issues that matter to patriotic Americans. In a recent New York Times interview, Bannon offered harsh words for what he called the “hard-core technofeudalists”: 

They don’t believe in this country. They believe in this country right now because it protects them and provides some benefits to them [...] But their America is an idea. America’s not an idea. It’s not. It’s a country with a border and a group of citizens that’s the greatest resource we’ve ever had.  […] Silicon Valley thinks we don’t need our greatest resource, which is the American citizen.

If Bannon is right about the lack of patriotism in the Tech Right, tensions within the coalition are unlikely to be resolved, because the technology titans won’t sacrifice the short-term gains offered by cheaper foreign labor. But we should hope for a more productive partnership, and not only because the tech titans fervently proclaim their love for America and concerns for the fate of Western civilization. Both sides need each other. The Tech Right needs the populist base for legitimacy, and the Populist Right needs the Tech Right’s capabilities to restore American greatness.

The MAGA coalition has already buried the old GOP establishment—Cold War hawks, the Chamber of Commerce, and even the Religious Right. At Harvard, of all places, the students aren’t quoting Buckley—they’re cheering for Bannon. But they are also looking to Elon as an uber-successful and powerful figure helping to drive America forward.

In this new era, leaders on the right, to succeed in making America great again, will need to harness the political will of the populists and embrace technology to achieve their aims. What comes next depends on whether the populists and tech entrepreneurs can maintain their uneasy alliance. If they do, we could succeed in revitalizing America. If they don’t, progress will halt—and opportunistic political innovators on the Left will exploit our weakness.