TOI Correspondent from Washington: A fierce skirmish has broken out in the Trumpworld between his so-called “tech cabal” and MAGA nativists, with Indian-Americans and Indian immigrants caught in a crossfire that has taken on an ugly racist tone.
The trigger for the firefight is the announcement by MAGA supremo Donald Trump that Indian-American Sriram Krishnan would serve as the White House policy advisor on Artificial Intelligence, a pick that stirred disquiet in nativist sections of the MAGA world already in ferment over the perceived influence on Trump of “big tech” led by Elon Musk.
Read also: Why Trump supporters are going crazy about Sriram Krishnan and high-skilled Indian immigrants
Soon, MAGA radicals like Trump acolyte Laura Loomer, banished from the President-elect’s inner circle but still loyal to him, were questioning the pick. “Deeply disturbing to see the appointment of Sriram Krishnan @sriramk as Senior Policy Advisor for AI at the Office of Science and Technology Policy. It’s alarming to see the number of career leftists who are now being appointed to serve in Trump’s admin when they share views that are in direct opposition to Trump’s America First agenda,” Loomer said in a post on X.
Loomer and other MAGA nativists also cherry-picked Krishnan’s past posts and podcasts to characterize him as being an India loyalist who was arguing to increase guest worker visas and green card caps for Indians in a bid to exploit the US at the expense of native-born Americans.
“This is very troubling. Mind you, none of the tech executives who are meeting with Trump and getting appointed in his cabinet supported him in 2020 or during the 2024 primary. I feel like many of them are trying to get into Trump’s admin to enrich themselves and get contracts at DOD,” Loomer wrote, in a series of posts that also included rank racist attacks on India and Indians and was also aimed at Elon Musk, increasingly perceived as the most influential person in the Trump circle.
Musk in turn defended Trump’s choice of Sriram, his longtime associate, making the broader argument that the US needs to attract the best and the brightest from across the world to maintain its global primacy. He also endorsed the proposition that skilled immigration, and Indian-Americans in particular, have contributed enormously to the US economy, reposting charts that show them having the highest median income of all ethnic cohorts, almost double that of white Americans.
Krishnan also found support from other major tech principals, including David Sacks, Trump’s appointed crypto czar, who Trump has tasked Krishnan to work with.
“Sriram has been a US citizen for a decade. He’s not “running America.” He’s advising on A.I. policy. He will have no influence over US immigration policy. These attacks have become crude, and not in the holiday spirit,” Sacks said in a post pushing back at the dodgy MAGA narrative, based on Sriram’s posts, that he could have a role in immigration policy too.
Sacks also argued that Krishnan had worked with him and Elon Musk to restore free speech on Twitter and get MAGA their accounts back at a time the platform was said to have been run by leftists and liberals.
Lawmakers too jumped into the fray with Democrats rushing to defend the immigration policies that allowed Krishnan to study, work and rise in the US. “Sriram embodies the American Dream—talent, hard work, and contribution to something bigger than himself. The people attacking him aren’t critiquing his credentials; they’re exposing their own insecurities. America succeeds when it embraces merit, not when it panders to bitterness,” Richie Torres, a NewYork lawmaker said.
From Silicon Valley’s Indian-American Congressman Ro Khanna:
“You fools criticizing @sriramk as Indian born criticize Musk as South African born or Jensen as Taiwanese born. It is GREAT that talent around the world wants to come here, not to China, & that Sriram can rise to the highest levels. It’s called American exceptionalism.”
Loomer and other MAGA hardliners however descended into a racist rabbithole with crude posts about Indians, arguing that foreign-born executives like Sriram “view Western nations as economic zones and nothing more” and “people like this have no business holding positions of power in the American government.” Regarded as toxic flame-thrower even in Trump circles, Loomer also made derogatory references to India.
“You shouldn’t be happy about mocking the MAGA base, posting anti-White hatred and saying America can’t be exceptional without Indians. Big Tech executives want to see Trump abandon his base for them. Trump will choose his base. Because we have been loyal to him. And loyalty matters,” she wrote.
Absent from the MAGA narrative about Indian pre-ponderence and influence in the tech world is the fact that the US just does not produce sufficient number of qualified STEM graduates to meet the country’s need, not to speak of its desire to maintain global primacy.
Musk himself highlighted a post in this regard that read, “As an American with a masters in aerospace engineering, I can tell you there are not enough of us. My graduation at UF (University of Florida) was literally about 600 Indians and 10 Americans. The classes weren’t rejecting American students, there was simply not enough supply,”