Not long after the new year began, political provocateur and Pied Piper of right-wing San Francisco Garry Tan announced his departure from Astroturf group, GrowSF. Using his famously hyperactive X/Twitter account, Tan issued a terse message. He was abandoning local politics to spend more time in Washington, D.C.

Since then Tan’s plans have taken sharper form and not surprisingly lie at the confluence of tech-fascism and lining his pockets. The chief executive of Y Combinator, the world’s largest incubator of technology startups, is cozying up to Donald Trump joining a growing group of tech executives surrounding the President. Tan continues to call himself a “San Francisco Democrat.” As if to explain how a “San Francisco Democrat” came to appreciate a president that many have called a fascist, Tan often retweets posts from disgruntled “Democrats” and airs his own complaints about the party.

Recently, Tan called for repealing the California Environmental Quality Act and disbanding the state’s Coastal Commission, calling them impediments to housing development. A recent letter from the League of Women Voters, the League of Conservation Voters and the Sierra Club, stated that  CEQA “despite constant attacks from special interests,”  the law “routinely results in projects that improve public health and the environment.”

He spends much of his time on social media attacking harm reduction, an approach to drug addiction that medical experts have established has saved countless lives.

Not long after the November 2024 election, Tan began what appears to have become a full-blown lobbying campaign with a charm offensive aimed at wooing Trump. In late December, Tan told Punchbowl News, an online news site that tracks national politics, that he had yet to meet the President. Even so, he sounded like a man prepared to fall in love. “There’s a lot to be hopeful for in this transition,” Tan said. “There is bipartisan hope, actually, that the new administration can bring in technology, and serve the American people in a much more fundamental way.”

He was particularly enthusiastic about Vice President J.D. Vance, a former tech venture capitalist and protégé of Tan associate Peter Thiel. I hope he “has a really deep influence on what the Trump Administration does.” 

Lately Tan seems to be spending at least some of his time lobbying Trump’s U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. Trump, Duffy recently stated, had charged him with developing a “world-class air traffic control system that will be the envy of the world.” Tan was quick with a response: “Secretary Duffy, please DM me — at YC we have a large set of excellent developers and software engineers and founders who want to answer your call.”

Tan’s main goal is getting breaks for technology startups, particularly those peddling artificial intelligence and crypto products. Policy makers “need to consult with founders who are building real AI services before just forging ahead with these overly burdensome regulatory frameworks that try to promote AI safety.” Tan has an ally for his views in David Sacks, his friend and the White House’s new  AI and crypto czar.

Tan believes the Trump Administration should privilege the needs of tech startups before those of established companies, which he called “Big Tech.”  (Take heed: Tim Cook and Mark Zuckerberg.) It should be noted that relieving tech startups regulatory burdens will further enrich Tan, already a centi-miillionaire.

Despite his protests to the contrary, Tan’s views are aligned with a gang of Silicon Valley executives called techno-fascists. Last year, Tan hosted a talk on tech and theology with Thiel, a man who’s called for tech elites to exit democracy and form their own sovereign states. At a recent conference, Tan said San Francisco is an ideal place for a Network State. "Because if we can build here, we can take over the whole country – we're going to take over every nation in the world," Tan said.

Tan stepped away from San Francisco politics after the Astroturf Network suffered humiliating losses in the November 2024 election. At the time, it looked like the actions of a child who, finding himself losing, picks up his marbles and goes  home. It turns out that Washington, under Trump, is a much better fit for his brand of politics. Besides, he can always weigh in on the local scene on his platform of choice, X/Twitter. Recently, Tan took a swipe at Jackie Fielder: “Fielder is a corrupt destroyer of the city.” The District 9 Supervisor was sworn into her first term of office less than two months ago. 

Like Trump, Tan never lets facts get in the way of a good story.