As a more right-leaning crowd of tech elite and terminally online Gen-Z founders emerged, they turned against politics in the workplace and globalism. Sharing technology globally had put Silicon Valley’s tech leadership at risk of being overtaken by China, some said.

If Silicon Valley’s Web 2.0 era was defined by founders playing God on their computers by creating social networks and other services, the new era is about founders angling to create ‘superintelligent’ computers that may one day surpass humans and become a kind of ‘God’ in the machine.

A contingent of venture capitalists and entrepreneurs have spurred a rightward shift, leading to the rise of the “Liberaltarian” — a term coined by two Stanford political economists to describe the tech industry’s proclivity toward trumpeting liberalism in some social issues but maintaining antigovernment posturing in regulating businesses.

That Silicon Valley is now mostly ancient history. Today, the tech has become harder, the perks are fewer and the mood has turned more serious. The nation’s tech capital has shifted into its artificial intelligence age — some call it the “hard tech” era — and the signs are everywhere.