The American political landscape is being reshaped by a 'New Right' coalition composed of three distinct pillars: the tech right, the MAGA movement, and the health-focused 'Maha' movement.
The tech industry's recent shift away from the Democratic party is driven by existential business threats from policies on energy, AI, and cryptocurrency, rather than a purely ideological conversion.
A key objective of the tech right is to use technology, particularly AI, to fundamentally remake government by replacing human bureaucracy and increasing efficiency, as seen in the DOGE initiative.
The New Right coalition is inherently unstable, with significant internal fault lines over critical issues like immigration, biotechnology, and food technology that pit its constituent parts against each other.
Political identities and issue ownership are fluid over time; for example, vaccine resistance has flipped from a left-coded to a right-coded issue, and former mainstream Democratic positions are now central to the Trump platform.
1980s
Fortune 500 CEOs were considered a core part of the Republican Party coalition.
1990s
Positions now associated with President Trump, such as opposition to immigration and free trade, were mainstream within the Democratic Party.
c. 2014
Askonas notes that a decade ago, vaccine resistance was primarily a left-coded political issue before shifting to the right.
Pre-2024
Silicon Valley began a strategic pivot from consumer SaaS towards AI and hard tech, setting the stage for direct conflict with the Democratic Party's policy goals.
2024 Election
A significant portion of the tech elite defected from the Democratic party, influenced heavily by the Biden administration's anti-crypto policies. Cryptocurrency ownership emerged as a 'sleeper issue' with a constituency of tens of millions of Americans.
Future
Askonas predicts that advanced biotechnologies, including new vaccines and genetic screening, will become a major source of political tension within the new right coalition.
▶The Political Realignment of Silicon ValleyMay 2026
Askonas argues that a significant portion of the tech elite has defected from the Democratic party. This shift is not primarily ideological but a pragmatic reaction to the Democratic coalition's policies on energy, AI, and cryptocurrency, which are perceived as existential threats to the tech industry's new focus on AI and hard tech.
For investors, this suggests that the tech sector's political allegiance is becoming more transactional and less predictable, creating new regulatory risks and opportunities depending on which party is in power.
▶The Composition and Fragility of the 'New Right' CoalitionMay 2026
Askonas defines the modern right-wing coalition as an alliance of three distinct groups: the tech right, the MAGA movement, and the 'Maha' (Make America Healthy Again) movement. While united in opposition to the current establishment, this coalition is inherently unstable due to fundamental disagreements on core issues like immigration and biotechnology.
Analysts should not view this coalition as monolithic; its internal fault lines, particularly on immigration, represent significant vulnerabilities that could be exploited by political opponents or lead to policy gridlock.
▶Techno-Utopian GovernanceMay 2026
A core objective of the 'tech right' is to use technology to fundamentally alter the state. This involves deploying AI and digital automation to replace human bureaucracy, increase efficiency, and expose government waste, as demonstrated by the Department of Government Efficiency's (DOGE) strategy of taking over agency digital infrastructure.
The success of initiatives like DOGE could signal a paradigm shift in public administration, potentially leading to radical increases in efficiency but also raising concerns about accountability, transparency, and the concentration of power.
▶The Politicization of Health and BiologyMay 2026
Askonas identifies a growing political movement, 'Maha,' radicalized by COVID-19 and a perceived credibility crisis in the health system. This trend is creating new political battlegrounds over issues like lab-grown meat, vaccines, and future biotechnologies, indicating that biology and health are becoming central to political identity.
Companies in the biotech, pharmaceutical, and food tech sectors will increasingly need to navigate a complex and polarized political landscape where their products become subjects of intense cultural and partisan debate.