Roving Periscope: Trump hosts “high IQ” tech titans, tries to drive a wedge between foes
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: To save his face and credibility overseas and dull mounting criticism at home because of his unpredictable ‘policies,’ US President Donald Trump on Friday said India and Russia appear “lost” to the “deepest, darkest China.”
Also, trying to humour the USA’s high technology companies, and potentially to weaponize their products for his geopolitical objectives, Trump on Thursday hosted top tech leaders, the media reported.
“Looks like we’ve lost India and Russia to deepest, darkest, China. May they have a long and prosperous future together!” he wrote in a social media post accompanying a photo of the three other world leaders together—Presidents Vladimir Putin (Russia) and Xi Jinping (China) with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) at Tianjin, in China.
Trump said India and Russia seem to have been “lost” to China after their leaders met with Chinese President Xi Jinping this week, highlighting his split from New Delhi and Moscow as Beijing pushes a new world order, the media reported him as saying.
Xi hosted more than 20 leaders of non-Western countries for the SCO Summit in the Chinese port city of Tianjin, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Putin and Modi were seen holding hands at the Summit as they walked toward Xi before all three men stood side by side, and shared lighter moments as a visibly embarrassed and ignored Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif looking at them from some distance away.
PM Modi’s re-warming ties with China comes as Trump has chilled US-India ties amid trade tensions and other disputes. Trump earlier this week said he was “very disappointed” in Putin but not worried about growing Russia-China ties.
In another attempt to get even with his foes, the US President and his wife, First Lady Melania Trump, hosted a high-powered group of technology executives at the White House on Thursday as he showcased research on artificial intelligence (AI) and boasted of investments that companies are making around the US.
“This is taking our country to a new level,” he said at the center of a long table surrounded by what he described as “high IQ people.”
It was the latest example of a delicate two-way courtship between Trump and tech leaders, several of whom attended his inauguration for a second term on January 20. Trump has exulted in the attention from some of the world’s most successful businesspeople, while the companies are eager to remain on the good side of the mercurial President.
As the executives praised him and talked about their hopes for technological advancement, the Republican President was focused on dollar signs. He went around the table and asked executives how much they were investing in the country.
Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, who sat to Trump’s right, said USD 600 billion. Apple’s Tim Cook said the same. Google’s Sundar Pichai said USD 250 billion.
“What about Microsoft?” Trump said. “That’s a big number.”
CEO Satya Nadella said it was up to USD 80 billion per annum.
“Good,” Trump responded. “Very good.”
The one notable absent from the guest list was Elon Musk, once a close ally of Trump, tasked with running the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) from January to May this year. Musk had a public breakup with Trump thereafter.
At the table instead was one of Musk’s rivals in AI, Sam Altman of OpenAI.
In another reflection of shifting loyalties in Trump’s world, the dinner included Jared Isaacman, founder of the payment processing company Shift4.
Isaacman was a Musk ally chosen by Trump to lead NASA, only to have his nomination withdrawn because he was, in Trump’s words, “totally a Democrat.”
The White House confirmed that the guest list for the dinner also included: Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates; Google founder Sergey Brin; OpenAI founder Greg Brockman; Oracle CEO Safra Catz; Blue Origin CEO David Limp; Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra; TIBCO Software chairman Vivek Ranadive; Palantir executive Shyam Sankar; Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang; and Shift4 Payments CEO Jared Isaacman.
