Since Donald Trump returned to the White House last January, most tech giants have largely cooperated with the new management, attending dinners with officials,offering praise,presenting the president with lavish gifts, and seeking permission to sell their products to China. It’s been business as usual for Silicon Valley, even as the administration disregarded constitutional norms and imposed fees on things like chip exports and worker visas.
But the shooting of Renee Nicole good, an unarmed US citizen, by an ICE agent in Minneapolis last week, has prompted some tech leaders to speak out. Researchers at Google and Anthropic have condemned the killing as callous and immoral. While most tech CEOs remain silent as ICE increases its presence,some engineers and researchers are breaking that silence.
Over 150 tech workers have signed a petition urging their CEOs to contact the White House, demand ICE’s withdrawal from US cities, and publicly denounce the agency’s violence. Anne Diemer, a human resources consultant and former Stripe employee who organized the petition, says workers from Meta, Google, Amazon, OpenAI, TikTok, Spotify, Salesforce, LinkedIn, and Rippling are among the signatories.The group plans to publish the full list once it reaches 200 names.
“Many in tech have felt unable to speak up,” Diemer told WIRED. “I want leaders to condemn ICE’s actions, but even if this helps people connect and fight against fascism, that’s a win.”
nikhil Thorat, an engineer at Anthropic, shared his reaction on X, stating Good’s killing “stirred something” in him. He wrote that a mother was gunned down by ICE, and the government didn’t even offer a standard expression of sympathy. He believes the moral foundation of society is “infected” and that the contry is living in a “cosplay” of Nazi Germany, where silence reigned out of fear.
Jonathan Frankle, chief AI scientist at Databricks, echoed Thorat’s sentiment with a “+1.” Shrisha Radhakrishna, CTO and CPO of Opendoor, responded that the incident was “not normal” and “immoral,” adding that the administration’s speed in dehumanizing Good was “terrifying.” Other users identifying as OpenAI and Anthropic employees also voiced their support.
jeff Dean, a Google DeepMind and Google Research chief scientist and University of Minnesota graduate, began resharing posts criticizing the administration’s immigration policies shortly after the shooting.He shared posts outlining when deadly force isn’t justified for officers dealing with moving vehicles.
on January 10,Dean posted,“This is completely unacceptable,and we can’t become numb to repeated unconstitutional actions by government agencies. The recent days have been horrific.” He included a link to a video of a teenager—a US citizen—being violently arrested at a Target in Richfield, Minnesota.
Responding to Vice President JD Vance’s claim on X that Good was attempting to run over the ICE agent, Aaron Levie, CEO of Box, questioned why the agent continued shooting after being safe. He asked why the agent didn’t simply move away from the vehicle and shared a link to a Justice Department webpage detailing best practices for law enforcement interactions with moving vehicles.
