A new rift has opened up amid Donald Trump's camp: After the inter-Republican clash in Congress over raising the debt ceiling, the – somewhat unnatural – alliance between the president-elect's Make America Great Again ("MAGA") base of supporters and right-wing Silicon Valley figures is now under strain, riven with dissensions over legal immigration and the place that should be given to foreign engineers in the American economy.

The feud began on December 22, when Trump announced the appointment of Indian-born investor Sriram Krishnan as his artificial intelligence (AI) advisor within the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), a body that will likely prove to be a strategic one, as American authorities will have to rule on AI regulation in the year to come. He would serve there alongside David Sacks, another San Francisco investor who, on December 5, was appointed by the president-elect as his AI and cryptocurrency czar. Just like Elon Musk, Sacks was born in South Africa.

A trained engineer, Krishnan has worked for Microsoft and Facebook, served Musk by orchestrating the implementation of his plans for Twitter after taking it over, and now, together with his wife, is the host of a podcast that is popular among his peers among Silicon Valley's libertarian circles of power. Until recently, he had been based in London, where he opened the British branch of businessman Marc Andreessen's investment firm, dubbed a16z. Andreessen is another prominent tech figure to have been won over by Trump and his promises of tax cuts and cryptocurrency deregulation. While in London, Krishnan also put Musk in touch with British ex-prime minister Boris Johnson.

You have 72.26% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.