WASHINGTON, D.C. — Vice President JD Vance headlined a tech summit in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, underscoring the Trump administration’s focus on the industry. Tech’s growing influence could reshape what was long an adversarial relationship between government and Big Tech—and could impact the fortunes of industries ranging from online services and social media to the emerging technologies of AI and crypto.

Vance has long held high-powered connections in the tech world. In 2016 the Ohio Republicans worked for PayPal founder Peter Theil’s venture capital firm. When Vance went on to found his own venture capital firm in 2020, Mosaic co-founder and billionaire investor Marc Andreeson help raise funds.

Those ties were on full display Tuesday when Vance spoke at the American Dynamism Summit, hosted by Andreeson’s firm, Andreeson Horowitz.

In his remarks, Vance sought to bridge the divide between Silicon Valley and President Donald Trump’s populist base. Tensions between the two groups have developed over issues like the H-1B visa program that allows skilled workers, including in tech, to come to the U.S.

“Now in our administration is the time to align our work interests with those of all of you,” Vance told the audience of tech industry leaders. “It's time to align the interests of our technology firms with the interests of the United States of America writ large.”

The nation’s tech titans have been working to curry favor with the president in recent months. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google’s parent company Alphabet, all attended Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20.

Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla and SpaceX and owner of X, has become the largest tech presence in the Trump administration. Last week several Tesla cars were brought to the White House for the president to appraise; he ended up purchasing a red Model S.

Tech industry analysts said such actions represent growing influence of the tech industry on the Trump administration.

“They’re not even trying to hide the interest anymore, having the Teslas pull up on the lawn at the white House, having the president flanked by all of these tech billionaires. I mean, there's just no hiding it now,” said Laura Manley, executive director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University.

Manley said tech leaders are using their influence to push for policies helpful to their companies in three areas: deregulation, pushing against existing policies and gaining favor for federal contracts.

Tech leaders have often framed current regulations as barriers to innovation.

For example, the crypto industry is lobbying for less stringent regulations via legislation to reclassify many kinds of crypto as commodities rather than securities. Rules for commodities, examples of which include oil, wheat or electricity, are generally looser than those for financial securities like stocks or bonds. 

In another example, social media companies have criticized the European Union’s Digital Services Act, which holds companies financially liable for certain hate speech and disinformation shared on their platforms.

Vance has echoed that argument, accusing the European Union of holding back tech and artificial intelligence innovation at the Munich Security Conference last month.

That rhetoric is already translating into action. Following Vance’s comments, congressional Trump ally Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, launched an investigation into EU tech regulations.

Vance continued to argue for regulation reform at the tech summit.

“I think about this from the perspective of the tech optimists,” he said. “I think a lot of the tech optimists, they see overregulation. They see stifling innovation.”