When a tech CEO invokes values, ask what those values are positioning him for.
In June 2016, Sam Altman — then running Y Combinator, now running OpenAI — published a blog post comparing Donald Trump to Hitler.
“To anyone familiar with the history of Germany in the 1930s, it’s chilling to watch Trump in action,” Altman wrote. “Hitler taught us about the Big Lie — the lie so big, and so often repeated, that people end up believing it.”
He called Trump “irresponsible in the way dictators are.” He said Trump’s “casual racism, misogyny, and conspiracy theories are without precedent among major presidential nominees.” He invoked Edmund Burke: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
Altman didn’t stop there. He launched a website called “Track Trump” to monitor the administration’s actions. In March 2017, he tweeted: “I think Trump is terrible and few things would make me happier than him not being president.” At a Google event that year, he said: “When the future of the republic is at risk, the duty to the country and our values transcends the duty to your particular company and your stock price.”
He donated $200,000 to the Biden Victory Fund in 2023. He publicly thanked Reid Hoffman for spending money to stop Trump from getting re-elected in 2020, writing: “It seems reasonably likely to me that Trump would still be in office without his efforts.”
Then, in January 2025, Altman stood in the White House behind the presidential seal and praised Trump.
“For AGI to get built here, to create hundreds of thousands of jobs, to create a new industry centered here, we wouldn’t be able to do this without you, Mr. President.”
A few days later, he posted on X: “Watching @potus more carefully recently has really changed my perspective on him. I wish I had done more of my own thinking and definitely fell in the NPC trap.”
The NPC trap. The man who compared Trump to Hitler now says his previous views were the result of not thinking for himself.
The tempting read is hypocrisy
The obvious framing here is that Altman is a hypocrite. That he said one thing when it was convenient and another thing when circumstances changed. That his principles were revealed to be hollow.
I don’t think that framing is useful. It assumes he ever believed what he said. It treats the flip as a betrayal of some authentic position.
I think the more accurate read is simpler: this is consistency. Altman is showing you the actual operating principle. The principle was never “Trump is dangerous” or “democracy matters” or “the duty to country transcends duty to your company.” The principle was always: position yourself near power.
In 2016, Trump was an outsider threatening the existing power structure. The Democratic establishment, the regulatory framework, the institutional relationships that Silicon Valley was embedded in — all of it seemed more durable than a reality TV candidate. Opposing Trump was the power-aligned move. It signaled to the people who controlled access to talent, capital, and political favor.
In 2025, Trump is the power structure. He controls the regulatory environment. He can greenlight or obstruct AI development. He represents access to hundreds of billions in infrastructure investment.
Altman didn’t change. The location of power changed. He followed it.
What the Hitler comparison was actually doing
Go back and read that 2016 blog post. Altman acknowledged the risk he was taking: “I take some risk by writing this… and I’ll feel bad if I end up hurting Y Combinator by doing so.”
He was calculating. He assessed the risk of speaking out against Trump and decided it was worth taking. Why? Because in 2016, opposing Trump was the safe bet in Silicon Valley. The overwhelming bulk of tech political donations went to Democrats. The cultural consensus in his world was anti-Trump. Speaking out positioned him as principled, courageous, aligned with his peer group.
The Hitler comparison wasn’t reckless moral clarity. It was strategic communication. It signaled to a particular audience — the liberal establishment, the Democratic donor class, the institutional players who controlled the levers Altman needed to pull.
When he said “the duty to the country and our values transcends the duty to your particular company,” he was speaking to people who wanted to hear exactly that. It cost him nothing with his actual audience and positioned him as a leader willing to sacrifice for principle.
Now watch what happens when the audience changes.
The pattern you’ve seen before
If you’ve been following the recent behavior of tech leadership, this should look familiar.
Last week, I wrote about Palantir CEO Alex Karp explaining that constitutional scrutiny of potential war crimes would be good for business. He wasn’t hiding anything. He was saying plainly: organized violence is what we do, and precision violence requires our products.
Peter Thiel, Palantir’s co-founder, wrote in 2009 that he “no longer believed that freedom and democracy are compatible.” That wasn’t provocation. It was a statement of operating principle.
David Sacks, another member of the PayPal network, now serves as White House AI and Crypto Czar while holding 449 AI investments that could benefit from the policies he shapes. When the New York Times investigated his conflicts of interest, he called it a “hoax” and hired lawyers.
These are not isolated incidents. They’re expressions of a consistent worldview. The worldview is: power is the value. Everything else — democracy, ethics, safety, the future of the republic — is negotiable. These concepts are invoked when useful and discarded when not.
The “values” tell
Here’s how to read statements from tech leadership going forward.
When Altman invoked Hitler in 2016, ask: who was he signaling to? The liberal establishment. What did that signal accomplish? It positioned him as principled and aligned with the dominant cultural consensus in his industry.
When Altman praises Trump in 2025, ask the same questions. Who is he signaling to? The new power center. What does that signal accomplish? It positions him for access to the $500 billion Stargate initiative and regulatory favor for OpenAI.
The content of the signal changed completely. The function didn’t change at all.
This is what I mean when I say the principle is consistent. The principle is: assess where power is located and position yourself accordingly. “Values” are the vocabulary you use to execute that positioning. When the power center was Democratic, the vocabulary was about democracy, norms, the danger of authoritarianism. When the power center shifted, the vocabulary shifted with it.
Altman now describes himself as “politically homeless.” He says the Democratic Party “completely moved somewhere else.” But nothing about the Democratic Party’s actual positions changed more dramatically than Altman’s own statements. What changed is that Democrats lost, and Altman needs to be close to whoever won.
What this means for AI safety
This matters beyond the entertainment value of watching a tech CEO contort himself.
Altman has spent years positioning OpenAI as the responsible AI company. The company that cares about safety. The company that wants regulation — the right kind of regulation, designed in partnership with the companies being regulated. The company that takes existential risk seriously.
If the operating principle is “position yourself near power,” what does that tell you about the safety commitments?
It tells you they’re strategic communications. They’re adopted when they serve positioning and discarded when they don’t. When advocating for safety aligned Altman with the institutional consensus, he advocated for safety. When the institutional consensus shifts — when the power center decides that safety concerns are obstacles to dominance in the AI race — watch what happens to those commitments.
The same man who said “the duty to the country and our values transcends the duty to your particular company” is now saying he was in an “NPC trap” when he criticized Trump. If he can reframe his own Hitler comparisons as groupthink he fell into, he can reframe anything.
The clarity underneath
I’ve been writing lately about the hidden rules that govern who rises and how class actually operates. One of those rules is that stated values are often instrumental — tools for positioning rather than commitments that constrain behavior.
Altman’s flip is a clean demonstration. He’s not embarrassed by the contradiction because he doesn’t experience it as a contradiction. The 2016 statements served their purpose. The 2025 statements serve a different purpose. Both are rational given the goal of proximity to power.
This is what Karp meant when he quoted the political scientist who said the West rose through “superiority in applying organized violence,” not through superior values. Values are the story told afterward. Power is the reality underneath.
Altman told you this himself, though not in those words. “Watching @potus more carefully recently has really changed my perspective.” What he’s actually saying: I reassessed where power is located, and I repositioned accordingly.
The republic wasn’t at risk when he said it was. Or it’s still at risk and he doesn’t care. Either way, the statement was never about the republic. It was about Sam Altman.
What you can predict from here
If power shifts again, Altman will shift with it. So will the others. The vocabulary will change. The principles will be restated in whatever form serves the new positioning. The previous statements will be reframed as errors, groupthink, or youthful naivety — anything except what they actually were, which was strategic communication that served its purpose at the time.
When you hear a tech leader invoke values — safety, democracy, ethics, responsibility — ask: what is this positioning them for? Who holds power right now? What does this statement accomplish?
The answers will predict the next flip better than any statement of principle.
Altman compared Trump to Hitler. Then he stood in the White House and said none of this would be possible without him. The flip isn’t the story. The flip is the tell. It shows you what was always underneath.
Power is the value. Everything else is positioning.
