On a Friday morning in May, a day after Donald Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts in a scheme to influence the 2016 election by falsifying business records, I met a tech leader for breakfast in the Flatiron district of Manhattan. A lifelong Democrat, he had recently reinvented himself as an ardent Trump supporter. Unmoved by the convictionyabby, he was on his way to a fund-raiser for the former president about a week later (starting ticket price: $50,000).

I co-founded Facebook in college 20 years ago, but I left California and start-up culture behind long ago for public policy and economics. As we sat over scrambled eggs, chicken sausage and whole-wheat toast, I was struck by how many of the wealthiest and most powerful figures in Silicon Valley — including some I knew — were now loudly backing Mr. Trump.

The event my companion jetted off to raised $12 million in a single evening. Among the former president’s highest-profile backers in the Valley are the venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, who endorsed Mr. Trump on their podcast, and Elon Musk, who founded one of the most well-funded super PACs supporting his campaign. Mr. Trump claims that Mark Zuckerberg called him to say that he wouldn’t support a Democrat in November, although Mr. Zuckerberg’s spokesperson denied the claim.

It would be easy to write off tech’s rightward drift as nothing more than the rich acting in their economic self-interest, but Silicon Valley has always been driven by profit, and it hasn’t tilted Republican since the 1980s. Even now, it remains largely Democratic, though even some of Kamala Harris’s strongest Valley supporters worry about how she might approach tech policy.

Mr. Trump appeals to some Silicon Valley elites because they identify with the man. To them, he is a fellow victim of the state, unjustly persecuted for his bold ideas. Practically, he is also the shield they need to escape accountability. Mr. Trump may threaten democratic norms and spread disinformation; he could even set off a recession, but he won’t challenge their ability to build the technology they like, no matter the social cost.

These leaders are betting they can sway Mr. Trump to their ideas through public support and financial backing, and they might be right. Once a critic of cryptocurrency, he has shifted to opposing regulation after crypto executives donated to his campaign, and this month he and his sons unveiled a crypto business. Mr. Trump recently proposed a “government efficiency commission” — an idea Mr. Musk floated to him only weeks earlier. While Mr. Trump’s allies in Silicon Valley may be few, their support could grant them influence over how his potential second administration — and by extension, the Republican Party — shapes tech policy for years to come.

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