Donald Trump has done the unthinkable: Unite Silicon Valley

The innovation economy has a serious distaste for Donald Trump.

The masters of this world complain that his ignorance about their work and its relationship to the global economy is horrifying. Rank-and-file programmers are quick to call him a clown, or worse. The unity is notable in an environment where groupthink is frowned upon and nobody ever seems to color inside ideological lines. Trump has practically written a playbook on how not to court this well-heeled group that other politicians seem desperate to shower with affection. Ambitious start-up CEOs who swore off talking politics for fear of offending investors are enlisting in campaigns to discredit Trump. Longtime valley Republican stalwarts who have voted for every GOP nominee for decades say they can’t do it this year. The libertarian-minded innovators who just want to get government out of their way have less faith in Trump than they do in even Hillary Clinton, the Democrat with big plans to grow the bureaucracy.

“At least Clinton is not going to go in and burn the place down,” said Reed Galen, a GOP consultant who advises tech companies. “But Trump comes in, and God knows what happens.”

The grievances that innovation leaders have with Trump are almost too many to list. They are baffled by an immigration policy that they warn would be disastrous for their workforce. Trump's trade agenda, they say, threatens to tear apart global business relationships crucial to tech industry success. The candidate’s threat to boycott Apple as it tussled with law enforcement over encryption technology will not soon be forgotten.