Billionaire immigrant Elon Musk and his supporters are beefing over how to grow Silicon Valley.
“There is a permanent shortage of excellent engineering talent. It is the fundamental limiting factor in Silicon Valley,” Musk wrote on X on Wednesday morning, in response to Replit CEO Amjad Masad, suggesting that the industry needs to look outside of the United States for its engineers.
“The number of people who are super talented engineers AND super motivated in the USA is far too low,” Musk continued in another post. “Think of this like a pro sports team: if you want your TEAM to win the championship, you need to recruit top talent wherever they may be. That enables the whole TEAM to win.”
This ruffled the feathers of many MAGA fans on the right who are anti-immigration.
“There are over 330 million people in America. Surely, there must be enough among them to build your ultimate team?” said one X user in a viral reply to Musk. “Why would you deny real Americans that opportunity by bringing foreigners here?”
That “real Americans” quip underscores some of the tension between Musk, himself an immigrant from South Africa, and the MAGA base. Musk thinks it necessary to draw an influx of international engineering talent while many of those who voted for Trump (and arguably Musk by proxy) are against that on principle. The end result of this tension is yet to be seen.
“It comes down to this: do you want America to WIN or do you want America to LOSE. If you force the world’s best talent to play for the other side, America will LOSE,” Musk reiterated in another post. “End of story.”
